A Truth Universally Acknowledged

In the first article on this topic, I suggested that we can measure what people prefer and value, but we don’t know the “why” behind those preferences and values. An evolutionary psychologist from the London School of Economics, Satoshi Kanazawa, wrote a paper on the origin of individual values and preferences that suggests values are tied to IQ, and you can theoretically predict the values of a nation based on its average intelligence.

We can measure what people prefer and value, but do we know why? And can we predict whether a nation will be liberal or conservative, atheist or religious, polygynous or monogamous?While researching for a forthcoming article I stumbled upon a paper by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, on the origin of individual values and preferences that indicate that the values of a nation are tied to its IQ.The article, to be published in the July issue of Journal of Biosocial Science, is a quick read (despite being 20 pages long), and offers one possible explanation of why people have individual values and preferences: the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis.

With school budgets already sub-par, and the purse strings futher tightened in this current economic state, teachers have to find ways to do more with less. One suggestion, if I may, is to combine chemistry and history. Checking off the list of U.S. presidents while also teaching children about the periodic table is a great way to kill two birds with one stone, and who knows, it may even help retention of each subject. (I use U.S. presidents as one example; you could easily apply the venerable Table to a whole host of subjects.) Let's start easy.

I awoke early this morning, confused in my half-asleep stupor as to why the neighbors were rolling the garbage cans up and down the driveway while at the same time the nearby naval air station was staging extremely low-flying drills about 10 feet from the roof. After I ruled out the garbage can theory (garbage day is Wednesday, so that would just be silly) and I didn't see Maverick and Goose buzzing the house tower, I thought, "Is that thunder?" It couldn't be - I'd never heard thunder like that, and I grew up in the upper midwest where tornadoes are the only relief from mosquitoes. But it was.

The media is a powerful teacher of children and adolescents, an editorial in JAMA says. But what are they learning, and how can it be modified? "When children and adolescents spend more time with media than they do in school or in any leisure-time activity except for sleeping, much closer attention should be paid to the influence media has on them."Editorial author Victor C. Strasburger writes:

On the drive home yesterday afternoon I heard a fascinating story on NPR about an ecosystem near and dear to all humans - our skin. Even if bacteria aren't your thing, the story and the findings are really interesting (and actually could be applicable to a wide host of conditions and diseases).

Is there an advantage to being short? I think so, but I'm biased, being what the French call quite "petite." Good things come in small packages, I say.But now at least one person with a presumably solid foundation in science backs me up. So when I hear yet another short joke (and I think I've heard 'em all), I can smile smugly to myself and know that all you leviathan, Brobdingnagian skyscrapers over 5' (or for the non-abnormal-American-measurementally inclined, 1.5 m) are actually at a disadvantage.Later In Life

If you know anyone who grew up in Chicago or was raised there yourself, you've likely heard a classy, intellectual term applied to anyone exhibiting a wide variety of behaviors.That's right, I'm talking about the deeb, or, in more vulgar terms, the douchebag. As urban dictionary so eloquently says, being a douchebag, or committing acts of douchebaggery, "is one of those things as easily understood by definition as it is by one's demonstrations of it." So, deebs, welcome to the scales of depravity.

Who among us hasn't been tempted to take the easy way out? Hopefully we choose to do the right thing, but this isn't always the case. It's bad enough when your actions just affect you. But when they affect the rest of the world? And mislead people working toward collective knowledge? That puts you on the ranks of the scales of depravity.Part 1 dealt with the Rock of Love; part 2 examined anything with "real" in the title. Part 3 lists a few of the frauds, fakers and other cheaters in the realm of science.

The march toward understanding the etiology of autism took a giant step foward today. In a landmark genome-wide association study, published online today in Nature, researchers found that a variant on chromosome 5 was about 20 percent more common in autistic children. Researchers examined DNA from more than 3,100 people in 780 families (with at least two autistic children), and then looked at an additional 1,200 individuals from families affected by autism, as well as nearly 6,500 healthy controls.

I was inadvertently exposed to the filth and depravity of VH1's "Rock of Love Bus," also known as STDs on Wheels, when I turned on my TV to watch the (relatively) innocent and science-fueled Big Bang Theory. If you feel like dropping 150 IQ points, here's the clip in all its intellectual and classy glory. If you don't have any neurons to spare, here's a quote that sums up the few minutes' worth of the show I saw (and that's all I ever want to see), as Bret Michaels expresses his heartfelt emotions with lyricism inspired by the deep wells of pure love: "You are this rocking hot centerfold, ok?"

If I were a sneaky disease, working my pathological magic through mimicry, I think I'd be vocal cord dysfunction.What's VCD? I didn't even know it existed until last week, so don't feel embarrassed. Also known as laryngeal dysfunction, paradoxical vocal cord motion, laryngeal dyskinesia, vocal cord malfunction and a number of medicalese terms, this tricky little guy masquerades most commonly as the everyman of respiratory conditions, asthma. (And from the dawn of the 20th century to today, occasionally it's diagnosed as hysteria. It's all in your head, person who can't  breathe, it's all in your head.)