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Water and reduction

Way back in 1843, John Stuart Mill wrote this: When the laws of the original agent cease entirely, and a phenomenon makes its appearance, which, with reference to those laws, is quite heterogeneous; when, for example, two gaseous substances, hydrogen and oxygen, on being brought together, throw off their peculiar properties, and produce the substance called water---in such cases the new fact may be subjected to experimental inquiry, like any other phenomenon; and the elements which are said to compose it may be considered as the mere agents of its production; the conditions on which it…

Reflections on suicide

A friend of mine just attempted suicide. When I was in my teens, I attempted suicide several times. It wasn't a cry for help, because nobody ever knew I tried. It was a reaction to the bad situation I found myself in, at a time when my hormones were raging, and when I was mostly alone. The reason I stopped trying is because I saw the look on the face of the train driver in my last attempt, and I realised what it would mean to him and his family, and later it occurred to me, also to mine. So I jumped off the track. A new film in Australia, 2:37, has been released in which suicide by teens is…

How many slices does it take to accurately judge personality and intelligence?

Suppose your organization is interviewing candidates for an important job. Would it be better for one trusted person to have an extended interview with them, or for several people to talk to them for less time? How many people would you need to conduct the interviews? Would three be enough? Would ten be too many? If ten is good, wouldn't twenty be even better? We've discussed thin-slicing studies before -- the idea that a few brief exposures to an individual can give just as accurate an impression of key traits as much more extended interactions. For judging sexual preference in men, a 10-…

Just so we know who we're talking about

Below the fold is a humorous and possibly true account of reality TV trying to include geologists. With appropriate substitutions, the same thing could be said of any academic... While the media rarely represents geologists to the general population, (excluding sound bytes on Discovery Channel volcano specials), there was one recent attempt to integrate geologists into a television program. According to various blog sources, CBS was looking to produce a new reality TV show for 2008, after correctly predicting that the writers’ strike would cut down on their ability to create blue-toned…

What's so cool about Darwin?

So, it's Darwin Day tomorrow my time. So what? What's so great about Darwin? I mean, Darwin did some very cool science, and often was remarkably perceptive about the nature of biology, but he's not the only one in his day. In fact, he was beaten by a great many people on various notions like the Tree of Life (Heinrich Bronn), Natural Selection (Patrick Matthew, and possibly Alfred Wallace), universal common ancestry (his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin), transmutation (Pierre Maupertuis, Lamarck) the struggle for existence (de Candolle), division of labour (Adam Smith, of course),…

Taking drugs to enhance cognitive performance

Janet and Shelley have opened up the question of whether students and others should use drugs to enhance their cognitive performance. Janet thinks one shouldn't, and Shelley thinks that, in the absence of bad side effects, one might as well. So lacking any particular knowledge, a prerequisite for a philosopher other than Janet, I might as well weigh in. If neurobiology, and indeed all of biology, is right, then we are the sum of the capacities of our chemical constitution arranged as cells in a coherent organism. What brains can do is in large part dependent upon what chemical signals are…

The constancy of change and the lack of balance

All the strangers look like family All the family looks so strange The only constant I am sure of Is this accelerating rate of change — Peter Gabriel, Downside-Up, from the Ovo Album Creek Running North has a delightful rumination on the lack of a balance of nature, in which he notes that The sheer fecundity of the world conceals its vulnerability to change. and There is no balance of nature. Or if there is, it is the balance of a teetering rock on a pedestal stable enough to hold it for the moment. This instability of the world bothers many people, or they ignore it and hold fast…

A Very Bad Idea: Commenting on the VT tragedy

It is always a Very Bad Idea, as Pooh Bear might have said, for a foreigner to comment on another nation's internal policy after a tragedy. As I am inveterately attracted to Very Bad Ideas, being a Philosopher of Little Brain, this does not deter me. If one cannot comment on gun policy after a tragedy like this, when can you? First thing is the necessity for weapons in a civil society. I do not mean a society run by gangsters (or gangstas), or one in a Somalian warlord condition, or the Wild West, but a well-ordered civil society. One in which order is maintained with a balance of civil…

This Post Sucks -- A Joke About Einstein

Called: "Dale Peck Reviews Einstein's Latest." I'm serious. This is a failed piece. Failed because it's too obscure, although it was fun to do. But it requires too much from the audience, and who really cares and wants to do all that work? You have to know that Dale Peck is the lit-crit bad boy, famous for trashing every single piece of fiction written in the last decade. Even though that's not entirely true, and even though, somehow, for reasons that escape me, he actually is a good writer -- that is, he writes decent fiction himself -- the guy simply loathes all manner of…

Science versus science fiction

I am a fan of science fiction as far back as I can recall. The flights of imagination about large things, ideas and worlds, was enough to trigger off my own imagination. I read pretty well everything I could for over two decades before it all petered out into second rate thick books of fantasy and Star Wars knockoffs. Science fiction had a use-by date, and roughly when Dick Tracy's radio watch became ordinary, it stopped appealing, and I started getting interested in the science. However, I had to unlearn much of the "science" I had picked up by reading SF (scifi is for latercomers). I…

The unintended consequences of making a fist -- and how they depend on gender

I was a little surprised by an offhand observation Thomas Schubert made in a recent research report. He claimed that while men will commonly make a fist to celebrate a goal in a soccer match or a home run in baseball, it's unusual for women to do so. I'm sure I've seen both female athletes and fans celebrating with fist pumps. But maybe I only noticed these cases because they were exceptions. Let's see if we can verify Schubert's observation with a little poll. Take the pollFree Poll by Blog Flux But there are additional gender dynamics to making fists besides who celebrates that way at a…

What's the best way to help kids become good adults? Some possible answers

What do most parents want for their kids as they grow into adults? Successful careers? Happy family lives? Or do they simply want their children to be good people? They probably want all of these things -- and a little wealth and fame wouldn't hurt either. The bigger question parents have is about the right way to inspire, motivate, cajole, or prod their kids in the direction they believe is most likely to yield the desired results. There's been a lot of research about good parenting, but much of that research has focused on parenting style: parents' overall philosophy of childrearing, such…

Why aren't there more women in science and math? Part 1

When Lawrence Summers suggested that the reason there aren't more women in the top academic positions in math and science is that they don't have the aptitude for it, a firestorm was created that may have cost him his job as president of Harvard University. Sometimes lost in the hullabaloo surrounding the incident is the science surrounding that bit of speculation. The entire August 2007 issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest was devoted to the "science of sex differences in science and mathematics," and Cognitive Daily will spend the remainder of this week discussing that…

Perfectionism, Stress, and Depression

This is a guest post by Dominic Ippolito, one of my top student writers from Fall of 2006 Everyone knows a "perfectionist." We think of him or her as someone who strives for, and often attains, a high level of performance. But what are the psychological effects of this behavior? Psychologists categorize perfectionists according to two commonly accepted forms. Adaptive ('healthy') perfectionists set high standards for themselves, and use these goals to elicit their best effort. This form of perfectionism, measured by a subscale of the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R), called the High…

Help prepare kids for a lifetime of learning

Greta and I love what we do here at Cognitive Daily, and we'd love to see more people getting excited about careers in cognitive psychology. But before you can become a scientist (or a science writer), you need a good background in the basics. Unfortunately, for too many children, that education is just out of reach. They've got great teachers, but the teachers don't have the resources to provide them with the learning experience that will help them not only build skills, but get excited about science. That's where you come in. We're participating in the ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-…

Tony Snow Gives Up the Game

Is someone in the White House Press Corps reading this blog, and in particular, did someone in the press corps read this entry? If you read the following exchange from the gaggle yesterday, you have to wonder... Q And also, the White House yesterday issued an open letter on climate change -- MR. SNOW: Yes. Q -- and in it there is cited a National Academy of Science study, but it doesn't include in it part of the National Academy of Science conclusion that the verdict is still out to the extent that natural greenhouse cycle contributes to climate change, versus the human generation -- MR. SNOW…

Katrina One Year Later: Slaughtering Strawmen

Timed for the Katrina anniversary, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has put out a short report on the hurricane-climate issue (PDF). Without taking a premature stand on who is or isn't winning the scientific debate at the present moment, I'd like to point out how CEI misrepresents the state of that debate. The chief technique seems to be to debunk strawman arguments that no one is actually making. Consider the following: Claims of a definite link between hurricanes and global warming rely on the simple hypothesis that, as waters warm, storms get stronger. In fact, some storms may get…

That didn't take long

Already, deranged Discovery Institute shill David Klinghoffer is blaming the hostage-taking nut James Lee's actions on Darwinism. Witness the recent examples of Holocaust Memorial Museum shooter James von Brunn, Columbine High School shooter Eric Harris, Jokela High School shooter Pekka Eric Auvinen. Historical figures who drew inspiration, if indirectly, from Darwinian theory include Charles Manson, Mao Tse-tung, Joseph Stalin, Josef Mengele, and of course Adolf Hitler. I've written about this many times before and received much abuse for it, not least when I took up the theme on the…

An experimental test of flashbulb memory

The Stroop effect is a well-documented phenomenon that shows how easily we can be distracted from a simple task. In the classic Stroop experiment, we are shown a word, such as GREEN, and asked to indicate the color it is printed in. When the meaning of the word itself conflicts with the word's color, the task is more difficult. There's a good demo of the effect here. Go ahead and try it—it's easy and it only takes about 30 seconds. If you're like most people, you will take longer to respond to the words that are printed in an incongruent color. The Stroop task can also be used to measure…

Inventing excuses for a Bible story, and getting them published in a science journal?

I sometimes teach a course in scientific writing, in which we instruct students in the basics of writing a paper: citing the literature, the conventions of the standard science paper (introduction, methods, results, discussion), all that sort of thing. We also discuss research topics and coming up with a reasonable rationale for doing the work, and "the instructor told me to do it" or "I like turtles" isn't adequate — that one of the results of researching a topic should be the discovery of genuine problems that warrant deeper analysis. A science paper is a story, and it always begins with a…

Astroturfing the scientific databases: spamming the lobster eye

The Encyclopedia of Life is a cool tool which is a sort of wikification of taxonomy — it allows a large number of contributors to add descriptions of species with the goal of eventually documenting all 1.8 million known species in a single searchable source. Look at the page for my experimental animal, Danio rerio; lots of information in a standard format with links and references. Thumbs up! However, there's a problem here: the sources. To organize that much data, a large mob of contributors are needed, and that means some fairly open policies to allow contributors have been instituted, and…

Human children versus apes: Who's better at tracking hidden objects, and why

Take a look at this astonishing (and adorable) video demonstrating how a baby acquires object permanence. At 6 months old, the baby can see and reach for an object, but as soon as it is hidden, she doesn't seem to realize it's there. The baby is interested and excited by the objects, but when they're not visible, it's as if her memory has been wiped clean. By 10 months, the phenomenon has vanished and the baby behaves like any older child would, clearly realizing that the book is hidden under the blanket and immediately uncovering it. But 10-month-olds will make another error. If you have…

Casual Fridays: Are workplace internet restrictions counterproductive?

Last week's Casual Fridays study was supposed to be about distractions and distractibility. Many of us struggle to keep our minds on work when the whole wide internet is available to entertain and inform us. So I wondered: Are people who are more easily distracted by the temptations of the internet actually better-informed? Do they know more about current events, tempted as they are by the incessant flow of news update not just hour by hour, but minute by minute? The answer: not really. We asked respondents several questions about how easily distracted they were, and how much time they spend…

Objects changing right before our eyes -- and still not being seen

Take a look at the short movie I've linked below (Click on the picture to play. QuickTime required). The movie shows a virtual gripping device (two red balls) lifting rectangular objects and placing them on a conveyor belt. Do you notice anything unusual happening as the objects are being moved? This is a recording of the image seen by a volunteer using a virtual-reality headset and two force-feedback devices to simulate moving objects by picking them up with a thumb and index finger. The force-feedback devices offer resistance so that the volunteer feels as if he is lifting real objects…

How body movements can help with arithmetic

Clicking on the link below will bring up an image in a new window (you may need to disable pop-up blockers to do this). The picture contains five rows of asterisks. Your job is to count them as quickly as possible. Try using your finger to point and help keep track. View image Now try the same task again, only this time, keep your hands flat on the table while you count. View image If you're like most people, this second task was a little more difficult for you. It's not that you need to use your finger to help you count, it just seems to help things along a bit. When you weren't using your…

Neurobiology of Anhedonia

rel="tag">Anhedonia is one of the most important symptoms of depression.  I wrote href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/03/basic_concepts_anhedonia.php">a post about it a while back, so I won't go into the definition in this post, other than to summarize by saying that it is the inability to experience pleasure in response to activities or events that otherwise would be pleasurable. It is difficult to do studies on the brain mechanisms involved in the genesis of individual symptoms.  Progress has been made, but it has been slow. When I was in residency, toward the end…

Lonely broken-hearted creationists

Aww, poor Intelligent Design creationism is feeling unloved. Or perhaps it's jealousy. David Klinghoffer, that clueless ideologue at the Discovery Institute, is whimpering that blogging scientists aren't paying enough attention to his brand of creationism. Darwinian scientists who blog -- in other words, those whose comments are most readily accessible to us -- may indeed not pay attention to ID arguments, but that's certainly not because of any lack of "rigorous and persuasive ideas" on ID's part. The proof is that Darwin defenders are typically very busy indeed picking on other arguments…

Health Care Debate

It is charitable to call it a "debate" about health care.  It is really a flame war with a veneer of civility. It started with an opinion piece published in what is ordinarily a respectable publication: the Los Angles Times (free registration required).  Two bloggers jumped on it.  Then the comments came in. The bloggers who weighed in on this, href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/04/ezra_klein_heal.html">Brad DeLong and href="http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/04/health_insuranc.html" rel="tag">Ezra Klein, both correctly identified the argument as deeply flawed.  But…

Can animals create art?

Zooillogix posted this video of an elephant that paints "realistic paintings of other elephants:" It's a fluff piece, granted, but it gestures towards credibility by bringing in an "art expert" (and, I'm guessing, cutting 98% of her comments). The genial narrator, anticipating our astonishment that an elephant could learn to paint portraits, reassures us that it is indeed possible, and that "what makes it possible is the trunk." Uh, no. The trunk is what makes it possible for the elephant to grasp a human-style brush and execute fine motor movements. The brain is what makes any artist an…

Poem of the Week: In Memory of Sigmund Freud by W.H. Auden

In Memory of Sigmund Freud by W.H. Auden When there are so many we shall have to mourn, when grief has been made so public, and exposed to the critique of a whole epoch the frailty of our conscience and anguish, of whom shall we speak? For every day they die among us, those who were doing us some good, who knew it was never enough but hoped to improve a little by living. Such was this doctor: still at eighty he wished to think of our life from whose unruliness so many plausible young futures with threats or flattery ask obedience, but his wish was denied him: he…

Is There A Correlation Between BMI and Cognitive Decline?

A recent (and IMHO, fascinating) study published in the journal Neurology suggests that heavier people score lower on cognitive tests and have a higher risk of dementia later in life than their thinner counterparts. I go into this post with the full knowledge that perhaps: a) people will attack me just for drawing attention to this research b) people will attack the quality of the research c) people will get pissed at the results d) people will get pissed at me e) and various other permutations of people getting their panties in a wad. That's their right, of course. HOWEVER, this is my blog…

Is Beauty Really in the Eyes of Your Friends?

If you're a New Scientist reader, you may have come across this article titled "Beauty is in the eye of your friends." The brief article (which I found via 3 Quarks Daily) describes research purporting to show that whether (heterosexual) women find a man attractive depends, in part, on whether other women find him attractive, a phenomenon called mate choice copying. In some animal species (guppies, quail, etc.), females sometimes pick mates based in part on the choices of other females, especially more experienced ones. If an experienced female guppy likes a male, then he's probably worth…

Are Generics Really Just As Good?

When generic drugs started to become popular, many people were skeptical.  Many people got switched from brand name to generic products, and complained that the generic did not work as well. These complaints often were treated with skepticism.  After all, generic drugs contain the same active ingredient(s) as the brand-name product, but cost less.  Plus, the FDA assured us that they were bioequivalent. Over the past decade or so, public acceptance of generics has increased.  Many people want to get the generic equivalent.  But now there are questions about the validity of the testing done…

RWOS Redux: Endocrine Disruptors

A while back, I wrote (twice) about the nettlesome issue of rel="tag" href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/02/endocrine_disruptors.php">endocrine disruptors.  A more detailed post was offered at href="http://scienceblogs.com/terrasig/2007/02/lavender_and_tea_tree_oils_may.php">Terra Sig.  The reason this is a nettlesome problem is that it is an area with potentially huge implications, but with not enough hard data.   The huge implications come in two forms: if we are not cautious enough, we could be inadvertently lowering our fertility by exposure to chemicals that…

Models, Ideologies and Self-Denial

As a scientist, I traffic in data, ideas, models and theories. I spend a lot of time thinking about how the whole process works. And many scientists and science philosophers have thought about this as well. One inescapable fact: humans tend to duck, deny and fool themselves into believing certain ideas even when data points the other way. It's the little voice in our head that says "I am not biased, it's everyone else." Humans are highly prone to much cognitive dissonance. It's just that in science you must confront this reality head on, all the time. These tendencies exist everywhere and are…

Generating Force at the Leading Edge

Last week I saw an awesome lecture by Gaudenz Danuser who has a lab at the Scripps institute in San Diego. It has taken me a week to fully digest what was said, plus I haven't had the time to jot this down. Over the past few years the Danuser lab along with Claire Waterman-Storer's group (see this post and then this post) have used speckle microscopy in order to figure out how the actin cytoskeleton is reorganized during migration. In the process they've really made quite a bit of headway in figuring out how cells crawl. Actin is just cool. It is the main polymer responsible for shaping the…

Need more paleontological women

The latest issue of Priscum, the newsletter of the Paleontological Society (pdf), has an interesting focus: where are the women in paleontology? They have a problem, in that only 23% of their membership are women, and I hate to say it, but the stereotype of a paleontologist is Roy Chapman Andrews — most people don't imagine a woman when they hear the word paleontologist (unjustly, I know!) On the other hand, 37% of the paleontology presentations at the GSA were by women. They're there, but they aren't getting far up the ladder of success. They're not achieving high status positions within…

When the tactics become the message.

Once again, researchers who use animals in their research have been the targets of violence at the hands of animal rights activists. As reported by the Santa Cruz Sentinel: In one incident, a faculty member's home on Village Circle off High Street was intentionally firebombed at about 5:40 a.m. [on Saturday, August 2], according to police. The residence belongs to a well-known UCSC molecular biologist who works with mice. He was one of 13 researchers listed in threatening animal rights pamphlets found Tuesday in a downtown coffee shop. In the second incident at about the same time, a Volvo…

Trying to understand framing (II): draw me a picture.

You'll remember that I tried to work out precisely what was being claimed in the premises behind framing set out by Chris Mooney. At the end of this exercise, I was left with the hunch that one's optimal communication strategy -- and how much scientific detail it will require -- might depend an awful lot on what kind of message you're trying to get across to your audience, to the point where trying to generalize about framing doesn't seem very helpful. At least, it's not helpful to me as I'm still trying to understand the strategy. So, I'm hopeful that those who are hip to the framing thing…

Book review: Never Let Me Go.

Last May, on my way back from a mini-conference in Stockholm, I had a long layover in Munich. Since major airports are now essentially shopping malls with parking for commercial jets, I used a little bit of that time to wander through a pretty impressive airport book store, where I picked up a copy of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I had heard a bit about it (maybe in reviews on the radio, if memory serves), and knew that it had some connection to ethical issues around biomedical technologies that seem not to be too far off from where we are now. Because I was taking a stab at using my…

Dissent in professional communities.

This is another piece in the discussion currently raging about the latitude members of a profession ought to have to follow conscience over the dictates of the profession. Professions are communities of a sort. What unites them is that the members of that community are taking on a certain set of shared values. This does not mean all members of a given profession are unanimous about all their values. A profession does not assimilate its members like the Borg. Indeed, there's something to be said for a professional community that reflects a diversity of values and perspectives -- it gives…

John Tierney thinks he's being daring.

The title of John Tierney's recent column in the New York Times, "Daring to Discuss Women's Potential in Science", suggests that Tierney thinks there's something dangerous about even raising the subject: The House of Representatives has passed what I like to think of as Larry's Law. The official title of this legislation is "Fulfilling the potential of women in academic science and engineering," but nothing did more to empower its advocates than the controversy over a speech by Lawrence H. Summers when he was president of Harvard. This proposed law, if passed by the Senate, would require the…

Some reflections on my fifth blogiversary.

Five years ago today, I put up the first post on a blog that was mean to capture the overflow of discussions and ideas from my "Ethics in Science" class. Back then, I wasn't entirely sure that I'd manage to maintain the blog through the end of the semester. It just goes to show you that you can't always tell which of the things you try will become sustainable practices (although maybe the ones that don't involve exercise equipment have better odds). On the occasion of my fifth blogiversary, I'm reflecting on a question posed by BlogHer upon BlogHer's 5th anniversary: What are five…

Spring term faculty meeting: it's still an exploding monkey factory in here.

(As before, I'm still not sure whether, in the metaphor, the factory is building monkeys or staffed by monkeys. Perhaps, really, we're in the business of making educated monkeys, and the problem is that our administration views this as akin to making widgets. Anyway, the point is: Explosions! Chaos! Shrieking! Brachiating along the pieces of wreckage!) We had our beginning-of-the-semester faculty meeting today, and I have to conclude that our department is in an abusive relationship with the university (and system) administration. Why I'm convinced of this is the simple fact that we have…

Friday Sprog Blogging: photosynthesis.

Dr. Free-Ride: Any ideas for tomorrow's sprog blog? Younger offspring: I wanted to do how photosynthesis works. Dr. Free-Ride: Did you do any research on that since last week? Younger offspring: I don't do research. Dr. Free-Ride: You don't do research?! How do you do science, then? Younger offspring: I don't research stuff. Dr. Free-Ride: Well, then, how do you learn stuff? Younger offspring: (after a pause) I didn't do research about how photosynthesis works at night. Dr. Free-Ride: Well, but does it work at night? 'Cause, what is photosynthesis? Younger offspring: The moon could make it…

Friday Sprog Blogging: adapt or get extinct.

The Free-Ride offspring try to explain what it means for an organism to be adapted to its environment, and why it matters: Dr. Free-Ride: OK, so you've been learning in school about? Younger offspring: Different adaptations. Dr. Free-Ride: Can you explain what an adaptation is? Younger offspring: Well, I forgot. Dr. Free-Ride: You don't need to use the exact words from your science book. Younger offspring: I know, but I still forgot the meaning. Elder offspring: An adaptation is a change made to ensure success and survival in animals. Younger offspring: I want to say it somewhat like my…

DonorsChoose 2009 Social Media Challenge: Did I mention fabulous prizes?

You already know that we're working with DonorsChoose to raise some money for public school teachers who are trying to give their students the engaging educational experiences they deserve (and who, owing to dismal state and local budgets, need our help more than ever). You also know that our benevolent overlords at Seed will be randomly selecting some donors to receive nifty prizes (details about this to be posted as soon as I get them). Of course, helping public school teachers deliver the education their students deserve is it's own reward, but that doesn't mean you might not want a little…

The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 17: More Nazis versus freedom!

Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging. So it was last night when I had to go to a work-related meeting and didn't get back until late. Still, that means today's a perfect opportunity to do what I'm usually not very good at: A brief post. I've related time and time again how when antivaccinationists claim to be "pro-vaccine safety" or "pro-freedom" (the latter of which is the newest favorite meme used by antivaccine advocates to argue that they aren't antivaccine, or, as I call it, an antivaccine dog whistle), they're either deluding themselves or lying. I've pointed out how sometimes…

No place to sit down

I knew a couple who had spent a lot of time in the Congo in the 1950s. He was doing primatology, and she was the wife of a primatologist. And when she spoke of the Congo or Uganda, where they spent most of the time, she always said two things that always put me off a little. First, she would Uganda and Congo as "Africa" (which is technically correct, but I've yet to hear of someone saying "I'll spend Spring Break in North America" on their way to Cancun) and she'd always say "The thing about Africa is that there's no place to sit down." It turns out that there are plenty of chairs and…

Which Googleois Do I Put In What Google+ Circles?

People on Google+ are discussing what to do with their circles. Here, I'm not going to explain what circles are; I wish merely to record for the moment what I'm doing with them on my account for others to consider and criticize. If you don't know what circles are, join Google+ and find out, and don't forget to put me in one of your circles! (Put me in a good one!) I have the following circles at the moment: Friends Family Acquaintances Following Anthropology BlogComs NewsOutlets Linux The first four are default for google+ though I think you can delete them. The remainder are ones I…