Category: Science

This is about Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, from Frommer's Guide:

Bald eagles have become so plentiful around the lake that they are exported to the United States to restock natural habitats.

No, I don't mean you should do that.  I mean you should apply location theory.  Maybe you think that Alex's claims don't adjust for the nationality or ethnicities of the women under consideration.  Pick then a city of your choice in a country of your choice.  Ask where, in that city, can the beautiful women be found.  Will you find them in the most globalized parts of the chosen city?  Probably so.  Will the least globalized parts of the city have less attractive women or perhaps even the least attractive women?

I also believe, in accord with my previous hypothesis, that you'll find the most beautiful women in the parts of the city where different income classes mix and there is lots of inequality among passersby.  That's in a museum, or in the Village, not in a Tiffany store or even in most of the upper East Side.   

I think about location theory a lot.

In her analysis, Dr. Borgerhoff Mulder found that although Pimbwe men
were somewhat more likely than their female counterparts to marry
multiple times, women held their own and even outshone men in the upper
Zsa Zsa Gabor end of the scale, of five consecutive spouses and
counting. And when Dr. Borgerhoff Mulder looked at who extracted the
greatest reproductive payoff from serial monogamy, as measured by who
had the most children survive past the first five hazardous years of
life, she found a small but significant advantage female. Women who
worked their way through more than two husbands had, on average, higher
reproductive success, a greater number of surviving children, than
either the more sedately mating women, or than men regardless of
wifetime total.

Here is more.  I believe those last two words — "wifetime total" — should in fact be "lifetime total."  This was interesting:

Provocatively, the character sketches of the male versus female
serialists proved to be inversely related. Among the women, those with
the greatest number of spouses were themselves considered high-quality
mates, the hardest working, the most reliable, with scant taste for the
strong maize beer the Pimbwe famously brew. Among the men, by contrast,
the higher the nuptial count, the lower the customer ranking, and the
likelier the men were to be layabout drunks.

“We’re so wedded
to the model that men will benefit from multiple marriages and women
won’t, that women are victims of the game,” Dr. Borgerhoff Mulder said.
“But what my data suggest is that Pimbwe women are strategically
choosing men, abandoning men and remarrying men as their economic
situation goes up and down.”

Dare one whisper "hypergamy"?

That’s right: someday soon scientists may be working to develop a pill that can mimic the placebo effect.

That's from Tom Lee, my source was here.

Here is the abstract of a new paper in Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress.

Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions. We then refine the model to introduce a latent period of zombification, whereby humans are infected, but not infectious, before becoming undead. We then modify the model to include the effects of possible quarantine or a cure. Finally, we examine the impact of regular, impulsive reductions in the number of zombies and derive conditions under which eradication can occur. We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.

Hat tip to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.

That's a question from Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing.  The answer says a lot about how you implicitly think about time.

According to this research, a bit sketchy it seems to me, Friday people tend to be angrier.  FYI, I'm a Monday person (it took me some time to see the question could have another answer!).

Paul Krugman once wrote a very good and very funny paper that used economics and the theory of relativity to produce a Theory of Interstellar Trade.  Charlie Stross is a great science fiction writer who uses a lot of economics in his work so this joint interview at the World Science Fiction convention is self recommending.

If you measure people's thoughts, rather than asking them about their feelings, it seems they really enjoy the time they spend with their kids.  Here is an excerpt from BPS Research Digest:

In terms of pleasure, the results confirmed earlier findings,
suggesting that we spend an awful lot of time doing things we don't
find pleasurable, including "work" and "shopping". Out of 18 key
activities, "time with children" and "sex" both came in around
mid-table, far below "outdoor activities" and "watching TV". However,
consideration of the ratings for "reward" (as opposed to pleasure) told
a rather different story, with "work" now the top scorer, and "time
with children" not far behind.

Commuting, however, cannot be saved by a similar move.

I thought this was one of the more interesting blog posts I've read in some time:

What do you think are the odds that you will die during the next
year?  Try to put a number to it – 1 in 100?  1 in 10,000?  Whatever it
is, it will be twice as large 8 years from now.

This startling fact was first noticed by the British actuary
Benjamin Gompertz in 1825 and is now called the “Gompertz Law of human
mortality.”  Your probability of dying during a given year doubles
every 8 years.  For me, a 25-year-old American, the probability of
dying during the next year is a fairly miniscule 0.03% – about 1 in
3,000.  When I’m 33 it will be about 1 in 1,500, when I’m 42 it will be
about 1 in 750, and so on.  By the time I reach age 100 (and I do
plan on it) the probability of living to 101 will only be about 50%. 
This is seriously fast growth – my mortality rate is increasing
exponentially with age.

And if my mortality rate (the probability of dying during the next
year, or during the next second, however you want to phrase it) is
rising exponentially, that means that the probability of me surviving to a particular age is falling super-exponentially.

The post has much more, including excellent visuals.  Here is Wikipedia on the law.  Here is an attempted derivation of the law. 

Three thought questions: a) what does the law imply about systematic risk and asset pricing? b) what does the law imply for regulatory structures and Arnold Kling's chess game analogy?  c) what does the law imply for the Fermi paradox?

I've had a few reader requests to blog puffins.  My interest in puffins dates from a visit to Iceland in the early 1990s, where I went on a lovely mini-quest to track down a colony.  Here is a YouTube of puffins.  Here is a longer and more scenic video of puffins in Iceland.  Here is the sound of puffins, UK puffins at least. 

"The fresh heart of a Puffin is eaten raw as a traditional Icelandic delicacy."

But that is not for me.  I am interested in puffins for a few reasons: a) they appear unlikely, b) they often seem to be anticipating something, and c) nature has produced them.

Here is a collection of poems about puffins.  None seems good.  Here is a Russian video about Puffincat.  It is recommended.  Here are postage stamps featuring puffins.

On this site if you scroll down you will see pictures of albino puffins, among other delights.

Here are twenty-six questions about puffins, along with answers; e.g.,

The greatest natural predator
of the puffin is the Great Black-backed Gull.  This gull can catch
adult puffins in mid-air. 

Currently puffins are not at serious risk of extinction.

Jason Kottke reports:

The collective optimization of individual driving routes by drivers using realtime traffic maps slows everyone down.
That is, everyone picking the "fastest" route on the map results in
overall slowdowns. Interestingly, the solution to this problem may be
to remove some roads so that drivers have fewer options for route
optimization.

Here is more.  To how many other problems can this point be applied?

Michelle Dawson (without endorsing it) directs my attention to this paper:

The evolutionary status of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is central to assessments of whether modern society has created it, either physically or socially; and is potentially useful in understanding its neurobiological basis and treatment. The high prevalence of ADHD (5–10%) and its association with the seven-repeat allele of DRD4, which is positively selected in evolution, raise the possibility that ADHD increases the reproductive fitness of the individual, and/or the group. However, previous suggestions of evolutionary roles for ADHD have not accounted for its confinement to a substantial minority. Because one of the key features of ADHD is its diversity, and many benefits of population diversity are well recognized (as in immunity), we study the impact of groups’ behavioural diversity on their fitness. Diversity occurs along many dimensions, and for simplicity we choose unpredictability (or variability), excess of which is a well-established characteristic of ADHD. Simulations of the Changing Food group task show that unpredictable behaviour by a minority optimizes results for the group. Characteristics of such group exploration tasks are risk-taking, in which costs are borne mainly by the individual; and information-sharing, in which benefits accrue to the entire group. Hence, this work is closely linked to previous studies of evolved altruism.

We conclude that even individually impairing combinations of genes, such as ADHD, can carry specific benefits for society, which can be selected for at that level, rather than being merely genetic coincidences with effects confined to the individual. The social benefits conferred by diversity occur both inside and outside the ‘normal’ range, and these may be distinct. This view has the additional merit of offering explanations for the prevalence, sex and age distribution, severity distribution and heterogeneity of ADHD.

Overall the argument is weak because it relies too much on group selection.  An alternative tack is to admit that ADHD, and correlated traits, can have cognitive advantages and thus survival and mating advantages.  One simple story is that many people with ADHD can use their "jumpiness" to propel themselves to sample and learn extra new pieces of information.  The current distribution of identified cases from the ADHD population likely suffers from selection bias, namely that it identifies ADHD cases associated with greater life problems.

Addendum: Jerry Fodor has a recent paper challenging common applications of evolutionary psychology; Razib defends Darwin.