Psychological oddities

Men (particularly singers) with a deep, deep voice are often said to sound sexy, but the downside may be that women will also expect them to cheat:

"In terms of sexual strategy, we found that men and women will use voice pitch as a warning sign of future betrayal. So the more attractive the voice—a higher pitch for women and lower pitch for men—the more likely the chances he or she will cheat," says Jillian O'Connor, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University and lead author of the study.

"Infidelity is costly with the emotional impact, financial costs and potential loss of the family unit. But this suggests that through the evolutionary process, we have learned ways to avoid partners who may be unfaithful as a protection mechanism," she says.

Participants in the study were asked to listen to two versions of recorded clips from a male voice and a female voice, which were electronically manipulated to be both higher and lower in pitch. They were then asked which one, from each pair, was more likely to cheat sexually on their romantic partner.

"The reason voice pitch influences perceptions of cheating is likely due to the relationship between pitch, hormones and infidelity," explains David Feinberg, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour and advisor on the study. "Men with higher testosterone levels have lower pitched voices, and women with higher estrogen levels have higher pitched voices. High levels of these hormones are associated with adulterous behaviour and our findings indicate individuals are somewhat aware of the link and may use this in their search for a romantic partner."

Higher levels of estrogen is associated with adulterous behaviour? I wasn't aware of that. With some women, low testosterone seems to be the issue with lack of libido. And besides which, a woman's voice can only be so high before it becomes irritating. I mean, on the Mary Tyler Moore Show (which I have been watching a bit on re-runs lately), is Ted's girlfriend Georgette meant to be the sexiest sounding woman in the room?

The other odd story from last week was the one about how people are better at delaying rewards for themselves if the decision is made while having a full bladder:

In one experiment, participants either drank five cups of water (about 750 milliliters), or took small sips of water from five separate cups. Then, after about 40 minutes—the amount of time it takes for water to reach the bladder—the researchers assessed participants' self-control. Participants were asked to make eight choices; each was between receiving a small, but immediate, reward and a larger, but delayed, reward. For example, they could choose to receive either $16 tomorrow or $30 in 35 days.

The researchers found that the people with full bladders were better at holding out for the larger reward later. Other experiments reinforced this link; for example, in one, just thinking about words related to urination triggered the same effect.

It is obviously therefore important for parents to keep emphasising to their teenage children the importance of keeping very well hydrated as they leave to go to a party with any half disreputable boyfriend/girlfriend.

Free to question

I noted with interest last week how Pope Benedict’s new book re-declares the Catholic teaching since the 1960’s that the Jews are definitely not collectively responsible for the death of Christ.  As the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets noted, this seemed particularly good timing given that it was also only last week that some weird looking fashion figure, with whom I was previously unfamiliar, turned up on video spouting anti-semitic lines (and praise for Hitler) that is hard to credit as still existing post Holocaust. 

But I thought I would mention it here more because of the Tablet’s explanation of Benedict’s analysis:

Benedict follows the scholarly consensus that “the Jews” mentioned in St John’s gospel as calling for Jesus to be executed cannot possibly refer to the whole population of Israel at the time, but refers to the Jerusalem Temple authorities alone; and not even all of those. But the greater problem is presented by Matthew’s account, which refers to the demand of “the whole people” for Jesus to be crucified and which – alone of the four gospels – has them cry out, “His blood be on us and on our children!” This verse kept Christian anti-Semitism alive for many centuries, and was the basis of the charge of deicide or “Christ-killing” laid against all Jews, alive or dead.

Benedict simply rejects Matthew’s historical accuracy, preferring the account in John and Mark. Matthew had gone “beyond” historical considerations and “is certainly not recounting historical fact here”. Matthew is attempting a “theo­logical etiology”, he suggests, with which to account for the fate of the Jewish people in the forthcoming Jewish-Roman war. Furthermore, seen through the eyes of Christian faith, Jesus’ blood has the purifying power of redemption, so the words attributed to the crowd are not a curse but rather “redemption, salvation”. Why that matters, if the words were never uttered, Benedict does not explain.

How interesting.   Catholics don’t take a fundamentalist approach to Scripture, and of course has no problem with understanding Genesis and other parts of the Old Testament as not being written as literal history.

The New Testament, though, comes in for a lot less Catholic doubt as to its relationship with fact, and it’s interesting to see we have it from the top, so to speak, that the Gospels are not always historically accurate.

There’ll be some Protestant churches decrying this is why you can’t trust the Catholic Church.  Mind you, few will go as far as the website www.popebenedictantichrist.com.  (Don’t bother going there, it’s only one page, but it has obviously picked a good name given how high it came up on my Google search results when looking for sources for this post.)  I like this line from the said site, though:

Could it be that Pope Benedict XVI will one day become the Antichrist?  Look closely at the coldness of his eyes in above photo.  Can you really trust this man?  Do his eyes remind you of Adolph Hitler's eyes?

Can't say I've noticed the Hitler resemblance myself.

Of course, the problem once you do allow for historical revision of the truth of Gospel statements, it can be a tricky issue as to knowing where to stop.  Still, it keeps life interesting.

Reefer madness, yet again

I only indirectly referred to a recent Australian study that said cannabis use in teenagers was associated with earlier onset of psychosis, and that alcohol use wasn’t. I see now that it was in fact a meta-analysis of other studies.

The most surprising thing I saw the authors say appeared in the ABC report:

"The risks for older people is about double, so instead of having a 1 per cent chance of developing schizophrenia you are probably likely to have about a 2 per cent chance," he said.

"But for young people who smoke cannabis regularly, instead of having around a 1 per cent chance of developing schizophrenia during their life, they will end up with something like a 5 per cent chance of developing schizophrenia."

I was a bit puzzled, with such a high increase in risk for teenager smokers of developing schizophrenia, that the authors were still hedging their bets on whether you could say cannabis caused their illness.

Anyway, here’s another just published study relevant to causation, and this one followed real people to see what happened:

The study took place in Germany and involved a random sample of 1,923 adolescents and young adults aged 14 to 24 years.

The researchers excluded anyone who reported cannabis use or pre-existing psychotic symptoms at the start of the study so that they could examine the relation between new (incident) cannabis use and psychotic symptoms.

The remaining participants were then assessed for cannabis use and psychotic symptoms at three time points over the study period (on average four years apart).

Incident cannabis use almost doubled the risk of later incident psychotic symptoms, even after accounting for factors such as age, sex, socioeconomic status, use of other drugs, and other psychiatric diagnoses. Furthermore, in those with cannabis use at the start of the study, continued use of cannabis over the study period increased the risk of persistent psychotic symptoms

There was no evidence for self medication effects as psychotic symptoms did not predict later cannabis use.

Interesting. Of course, as I mentioned in my previous post, nothing annoys cannabis smokers more than the studies that keep indicating the connection between their habit and a debilitating disease, especially for those who start smoking young. See the comments following that Physorg at the above link for some examples. It’s such a shame how the evidence keeps piling up against them, though. (Ha.)

Disease news

* Amphetamines may increase risk of Parkinson's Disease:

According to the study, those people who reported using Benzedrine or Dexedrine were nearly 60 percent more likely to develop Parkinson's than those people who didn't take the drugs.

As the article notes, amphetamines plays around with dopamine in the brain, so it doesn't seem a stretch to see a connection.

* It's been noted before, but it looks like another study suggests that taking Ibuprofen reduces risk of Parkinson's.

* Alzheimer's disease has a liver connection?:

Unexpected results from a Scripps Research Institute and ModGene, LLC study could completely alter scientists' ideas about Alzheimer's disease -- pointing to the liver instead of the brain as the source of the "amyloid" that deposits as brain plaques associated with this devastating condition. The findings could offer a relatively simple approach for Alzheimer's prevention and treatment.

iPad2 noted

At the risk of sounding like an Apple fanboy convert, the new iPad2 does sound very good.   The basic iPad I got for free (well, as part of an office equipment deal) is often the subject of evening competition for its use.

For the record, the most popular applications on mine are:

*  Mercury browser:   abandon Safari, and use a browser that actually looks and feels like a Windows tabbed browser.   It’s fantastic, and cost all of $1.19.

*  Sketchpad Pro:   a very good sketch program that even my daughter has worked out how to use now, and enjoy.  I think it cost under $10.

*  For games, the kids have spent a ridiculous amount of time on hunting dinosaurs in Carnivore, the free version of hangman known as Doodlehang is fun for adults and kids, and my wife spents an inordinate amount of time on sudoku with Sudoku Joy.  I don’t actually use it for any games for any length of time.

*  I try to read downloaded (free books) on it using GoodReader, but I usually get too easily distracted and back to the internet instead.

Not wanting to be belong to the club to which I belong

As much as I value the ABC, I have always recognized that its listeners and watchers can be extremely pedantic and nitpicking. Remember when they used to have that feedback program on TV, and how trivial many of the complaints could be? I have a vague memory, from perhaps the 1980's, of hearing a plummy voiced woman complain on radio about the use of "kids" for children (that word refers to young goats, she pointed out.) But then, it was only last year (maybe the year before?) they had a long session on Geraldine Doogue's radio show about computer font changes, and the listener response was large and opinionated. (Worrying excessively about fonts is, in my books, close to the most trivial of obsessions that exist.)

So, I was amused to see at Slate that public radio listeners in America like to make pedantic and snobbish complaints too. They annoy Farhad Manjoo, to put it mildly. He writes of his fellow NPR listeners:

Oh, I hate them, hate them, hate them. Every time one of their narrow-minded, classist letters makes it on the air, I contemplate burning my tote bag in protest. The problem, for me, isn't just that some people don't like some things NPR covers. It's that these reflexively snobby pseudo-intellectuals see NPR as their own—a refuge from the mad world outside, a "safe," high-minded palace that should never be sullied by anything more outré than James Taylor (whom, of course, they love).

I understand where he is coming from, although I have to say, they sound quite a bit worse than Radio National listeners in Australia.

The personal hygrometer

This summer of high humidity and torrential downpours in Brisbane has quite often been marked by my glasses fogging up for a minute upon getting out of my airconditioned car after the short drive to work.

It's like having a personal hygrometer.

It happened again this morning.

I therefore predict more rain is coming.

Disaster someday

Greg Laden has a lengthy post talking about the potential for the Yellowstone Caldera to erupt in the future.  Lots of detail, a fair bit of uncertainty, but seems it’ll happen some day.

Neat theory in big trouble?

I don't know much about supersymmetry, except that it's an idea that's been around for some time.

Nature has an article up that explains it to some degree (it's one way to explain the incomplete knowledge of the standard model of particle physics,) but more importantly, it notes that early results from the LHC runs to date indicate that the theory may be in trouble. The implications are summed up towards the end:

"Privately, a lot of people think that the situation is not good for SUSY," says Alessandro Strumia, a theorist at the University of Pisa in Italy, who recently produced a paper about the impact of the LHC's latest results on the fine-tuning problem⁴. "This is a big political issue in our field," he adds. "For some great physicists, it is the difference between getting a Nobel prize and admitting they spent their lives on the wrong track." Ellis agrees: "I've been working on it for almost 30 years now, and I can imagine that some people might get a little bit nervous."

"Plenty of things will change if we fail to discover SUSY," says Lester. Theoretical physicists will have to go back to the drawing board and find an alternative way to solve the problems with the standard model. That's not necessarily a bad thing, he adds: "For particle physics as a whole it will be really exciting."

Hollywood or Bust (actually, just Bust)

Surely to God American TV cannot employ Charlie Sheen for the next couple of years at least.

As every media outlet in the world is reporting today, Sheen does not know when to leave a job disaster alone, and instead is trying to create his own career China Syndrome (even though I don't think even the Japanese would employ him for a canned coffee commercial at the moment.)

Here are highlights of his Today show interview:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

If you can't be bothered watching the clip:

"It's like, everybody thinks I should be begging for my job back, and I'm just going to forewarn them that it's everybody else that's going to be begging me for their job back."

"I am a man of my word, so I will finish the TV show. I'll even do Season 10, but at this point, (because of) psychological distress, oh my God, it's 3 mil an episode. Take it or leave it," he said.

"I'm tired of pretending like I'm not special," Sheen added. "You can't process me with a normal brain."

It looks even worse than it sounds on video, though.

The itch

When I saw this headline on a Physorg story a couple of weeks ago:

Tiny 'microworms' could be implanted under the skin for continuous medical monitoring

it immediately struck me as something you would not want a potential sufferer of Morgellons disease to read. But, if you did have a delusional belief that you had itchy fibres under your skin, wouldn't it be more comforting to believe they are a high tech monitoring device implanted by aliens (or time travelling doctors) rather than a mystery bug or fungus? I'd go for the high tech explanation; it would make me seem more special.

In any event, I've just noticed that Neuroskeptic has a long and interesting post about the "disease". Well worth reading, if you like strange diseases of the mind.

By the way, while I'm certainly a Morgellon's skeptic, I have had this persistent itchy spot on my left shoulder blade for years. If ever I start talking about finding fibres coming out that of it, readers are authorised to email me with strong recommendations to see a psychiatrist.

Carbon taxing

There are three opinion pieces about pricing carbon today which are of interest:

*  Henry Ergas runs the “traditional” arguments against acting unilaterally.  In The Australian (of course.)

*  Kenneth Davidson goes apocalyptic and believes the Australian scheme and targets are a pittance anyway, and arguments that people should get used to the fact that much, much more to reduce CO2 will be necessary:

A safe climate scenario requires that the present global warming of just under 1 degree not be exceeded. Globally, this requires the end of the fossil fuel industries.

According to David Spratt, co-author of Climate Code Red: the case for emergency action, ''This requires emergency action, and probably 10 per cent or more of world production will be required for a sustained period to build a new energy system and economy. This is huge but is about a third of the production countries such as Australia, the United States and Britain diverted to defence production during World War II.''

The latest scientific modelling of climate change suggests that if the globe warms by 4 degrees - the likely result if the commitments made at Copenhagen in 2009 are all that is done - the consequences would be far more serious than if the allies were defeated in WWII.

According to Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in Britain, ''If you have got a population of 9 billion by 2050 and you hit 4, 5 or 6 degrees, you might have half a billion people surviving.''

Well, we all hope it's not as bad as that.

*  Phillip Coorey speculates (in a plausible way, I think) about the future politics of all this. 

Galaxies, worm holes and spoilsports

It was reported last week that a new study showed that the MOND theory (the modified gravity theory that some astrophysicists are still pursing despite it not being widely accepted) works well with yet another class of galaxy.  This got some mainstream media attention, which really annoyed physicist Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance.    Carroll complains about the reports said this theory challenges the existence of dark matter.  Not so, said Carroll, pointing out that MOND works well at galaxy level, but everyone knows it doesn’t work at the scale of galactic clusters.   What’s more (he says) it’s not an elegant theory at all – it’s ugly, and we all know how physicists hate “ugly”.  (Except when it comes to string theory, in a large number of cases.)

So the short story is:  even with MOND, you still need dark matter to make the universe work right.

I find that’s a pity.  Big science is stuck in a bit of a rut at the moment, and it would be good to see something major which is currently widely accepted turn out to be wrong.

Of more science fiction-y interest is a new paper that talks about the possibility of wormholes existing on the insides of stars - forming connections with stars on the other side of the universe:

The scientists began investigating the idea of wormholes between stars when they were researching what kinds of astrophysical objects could serve as entrances to wormholes. According to previous models, some of these objects could look similar to stars.

This idea led the scientists to wonder if wormholes might exist in otherwise ordinary stars and neutron stars. From a distance, these stars would look very much like normal stars (and normal neutron stars), but they might have a few differences that could be detectable.

To investigate these differences, the researchers developed a model of an ordinary star with a tunnel at the star’s center, through which matter could move. Two stars that share a wormhole would have a unique connection, since they are associated with the two mouths of the wormhole. Because exotic matter in the wormhole could flow like a fluid between the stars, both stars would likely pulse in an unusual way. This pulsing could lead to the release of various kinds of energy, such as ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays.

I hope Sean Carroll stays away from this one: it's too intriguing an idea to be shot down too quickly.

In the garden today

There were lots of these type of smallish butterflies around.  I don’t know why, but Brisbane always seems to have an overabundance of black and white butterflies.  It seems rare to find one with more interesting colours. 

In any event, the photos came out pretty well, I thought:

Trouble in China

Did you realise there was a pretty severe drought going on in China? No, nor did I; I'm obviously not paying enough attention:

Gripped by its worst drought for 60 years, the world's biggest wheat producer is desperate for a downpour to avoid a crop failure that would have an impact on food prices around the world.

Update:

In other drought news, here's a discussion of a really big one in recent-ish pre-history (50,000 years ago). Lake Victoria dried up?:

The "H1 megadrought," as it's known, was one of the most severe climate trials ever faced by anatomically modern humans.

Africa's Lake Victoria, now the world's largest tropical lake, dried out, as did Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and Lake Van in Turkey.

The Nile, Congo and other major rivers shriveled, and Asian summer monsoons weakened or failed from China to the Mediterranean, meaning the monsoon season carried little or no rainwater.

The article notes that they think it had something to do with "a massive surge of icebergs and meltwater into the North Atlantic at the close of the last ice age", and as there is less water to go there now, maybe it won't happen again. We all hope so.

I also see that The Economist has an article about the difficulties of feeding an anticipated 9 billion people; drought or no drought.

Please keep liking me

The Christian Science Monitor notes that Saudi Arabia's king has become very generous suddenly:

As other leaders across the Middle East scurry to appease discontented citizens, the king introduced 19 new measures estimated to cost 135 riyals ($36 billion), according to John Sfakianakis, chief economist of Banque Sausi Fransi. The measures address inflation and housing, expand social security benefits, and ease unemployment and education costs – two areas of particular concern to Saudi youths.

The article says that King Abdullah is already reasonably popular. You can never be too sure these days, though.

As if they aren't in enough trouble already...

Japan has strange ideas at times as to how to help the environment, such as "we love whales so much that we need to kill a hundred or two each year in the name of science just to make sure they're still getting on OK. Now pass me the whale bacon."

Along the same lines:

Sakana-kun, the fish expert and TV figure well-known for his blowfish-shaped cap, is about to become Japan's "osakana taishi" (fish ambassador) to promote fish consumption and boost the declining industry.... The farm ministry expects Sakana-kun to "send out information" about fish, the fishing industry and related government policies, it said in a statement. Fish has been declining as a staple amid a shift to more Western diets.

I don't think the fish feel they need such an ambassador.

Bridge to nowhere

Judith Curry, the climate scientist who started a blog with the stated aim of building bridges between climate scientists and climate skeptics, has revealed that she never intended including those scientists who blog at Real Climate.

This all comes out in the post she finally decided to run on “hide the decline” and the use of tree ring proxies.  Gavin Schmidt from Real Climate turned up in comments, and a good slanging match evolved from there.

But I can’t see how anyone can read Curry and think she is genuinely open minded.  Her initial post indicates that she is not widely read on the topic, but that she is sceptical that work to date has any value.    She ends with (my emphasis):

If there is a problem, lets get to the bottom of it and fix it.

But when Schmidt turns up and complains that, as she’s saying that she agrees with the never-fail- to-bore windbag McIntyre , she’s accusing the scientists concerned of being outright dishonest, rather than having a mere difference of opinion as to how to display information, she responds with:

If you don’t like dishonest, try misguided and pseudoscience.

Gavin further down:

your method of argument in the top post and the conclusions you draw can be argued and drawn for any subjective decision about pretty much any presentation of complex data. Once you do it based on your prior prejudices against one set of researchers, the flood gates are open to apply it to anyone. We therefore end up with a situation where any difference of opinion is put down to dishonesty, and the process of objective scientific analysis has been tossed to the wolves.

You see your stance as brave, while in fact it is just lazy. I’m sure your students are proud.

And further down, when Curry starts making the big sweeping statements that her initial post indicated were only hunches, Gavin writes:

You betray complete ignorance of any of this literature. “Statistical models that make no sense in terms of calculating hemispheric or global average temperature anomalies” – got a cite for that?

• curryja | February 22, 2011 at 8:52 pm | Reply

  Another zinger, I’m dying here.

And yes, as is her habit, she excuses sweeping statements by telling us her detailed criticisms are coming in a later post. 

Her real attitude to Real Climate is shown towards the end of the thread we get this from Curry:

I find it of primary importance to build bridges with the broader community of scientists (including skeptics), the public, and policy makers. I stopped bothering with the RC crowd in summer 2007, when i received an unpleasant email from Mike Mann chastising me over congratulating Steve McIntyre on winning the 2008 Science Webblog Award. It was at that point that I stopped having anything to do with RC (other than my driveby comments about Montford’s book last summer). So I have built a bridge in the form of a platform for dialogue, they can meet me half way or not (pretty much not, the prefer the circling wagons strategy). But that is not the bridge that I am particularly interested in.

But the best summary of Curry’s disingenuous approach in her blog is from dhogaza:

Judith Curry … you’ve used this “my eyes glaze over”, and “it’s outside the arena of my personal expertise” argument before.

Yet … whenever you do, you come down on the side of the denialists.

Your personal philosophy seems to be…

“If I don’t understand it, the anti-science people are probably right”.

Ponder what this means to your personal reputation (whatever is left of it).

Absolutely spot on.

Christchurch remembered

It’s so very sad to see the devastation and loss of life in Christchurch. This is from my family’s visit there nearly one year ago.

James on the moon

If it had been on TV before, I must have missed it. But I very much enjoyed James May on the Moon on SBS tonight. His struggle to find words to explain his feelings while at the height of his U2 flight was sort of touching.

It's showing on line at SBS for now, at least.