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POPSIs Intelligence Sexy? <<<Many traits in many species have evolved through sexual selection specifically to function as fitness indicators that reveal good genes and good health. Sexually selected fitness indicators typically show (1) higher coefficients of phenotypic and genetic variation than survival traits, (2) at least moderate genetic heritabilities and (3) positive correlations with many aspects of an animal's general condition, including body size, body symmetry, parasite resistance, longevity and freedom from deleterious mutations. These diagnostic criteria also appear to describe human intelligence (the g factor).>>> (from abstract). So then, is there some sort of mirror neuron circuitry in the brain that excites a cortical g spot?
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POPSThe Reassurance of Magic A very straightforward polemic to chew over between the cornflakes and the coffee. (Certainly, almost anything is better than pop science).
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POPSMetaphors We Live By A short step whence to seeing all language as metaphor and metaphor as the meeting of the body and consciousness. Hard to stomach for right-angled rationalists, those who carry tablets of stone truths, number crunchers and those who live in a bricked-up mind. Spot the metaphors.
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POPSArtforms of Nature The nineteen century German biologist Ernst Haeckel is famous for his fantastically illustrated book Artforms of Nature. The copyright for this book from 1904 has now expired and thanks to Wikimedia Commons it is available for everyone to appreciate. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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POPSIs the Internet melting our brains? I start with Plato's critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They're not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down -- the ultimate irony. We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won't have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there's no way to preserve or record a phone conversation.
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POPSAnti-Science and Global Warming Interesting. Seems to imply that some people without any knowledge of science or any science training 'know' that smoking isn't bad for you etc. If a thousand cardiologists say you need a heart operation and ten scientists paid by a pharma company say you don't who'd you go for?
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POPSFDR: electric Power and Health Reform <<<The political anger was fierce and unrelenting at this and other Roosevelt initiatives. According to New Deal historian William Edward Leuchtenberg, one US Senator compared the President to the beast of the Apocalypse, "who sets his slimy mark on everything." One enraged citizen wrote to FDR, "If you were a good and honest man, Jesus Christ would not have crippled you." The REA public option survived the frenzy. By the time the juice reached our neighborhood, more than 90 percent of American farms were electrified, nearly all of them by rural electric coops. At the worst of the storm against Roosevelt's initiatives, it seemed there were no limits to incivility. >>>
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POPSA Precious Gift for Lovers of Literature
The Paris Review Interview Archive "Since 1953, when the first issue of the magazine appeared with an interview of E. M. Forster, our Q&A encounters with the great writers of our times have come to be recognized as a sort of literary genre unto themselves: the Paris Review interview. More than fifty years—and more than three hundred interviews—later, the archive continues to grow with each new issue of the magazine. In November 2006, the first volume of a four-book set of The Paris Review Interviews was celebrated by reviewers across the English-speaking world. In tandem with this publishing project, we offer here online a complete index of every interview ever published, searchable by author and by date—as well as a substantial sampling of the archive’s finest interviews, posted in their entirety. Taken together, these conversations with novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists, biographers, journalists, and critics constitute what Salman Rushdie calls “the finest available inqui
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POPSFree Lectures and Courses... This was clipped some time ago by someone to whom I add thanks. Newer clippers may find it interesting. I've detailed the astronomy items as that is what I was searching for.
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POPSThe Romance of Alexander the Great The gorgeous full and half page illuminated manuscript miniatures seen above - definitely click through to large and very large versions for the full impact - were produced by the workshop of the Flemish illuminator, Jehan de Grise, between 1338 and 1344.
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POPSEver Wonder Where the RC Church gets its Money From? According to a BBC programme last night, the investments are in 'household names' that make millions from porn. Can't mention those names here, of course. When the collection plate next comes round, remember that blessed are the rich.
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POPSSex and Gender
In fact, behind your question is the fundamental problem of the degree to which behaviour is innate and to which it is acquired – an essential question that philosophers and scientists have been debating for centuries. This remains an ideologically-charged subject, which the media adore. Absolutely. The media often echo works that argue that cerebral specialisation differs between male and female. They say, for example, that language functions are undertaken by both hemispheres only in women’s brains. What do you say? The theories on the hemispheric differences between the sexes in language appeared over thirty years ago. They have not been confirmed by recent brain imaging studies which allow us to see the living brain at work. These theories are often based on observations carried out on very small samples – often a dozen people. People continue to quote these studies whereas contemporary scientific reality is very different. Meta-analyses, which draw conclusions from all the exp
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