[recycled post; first appeared here]
An imagined dialogue:
Biologist: Young man, you don’t really like breasts . . .
Young Man: What?! I love breasts! Are you crazy?! Do you think I’m gay?!
B: Let me finish. You are not attracted to breasts for the breasts alone.
YM: Sure I am. Show me a photo of just a set of breasts, preferably full and upright and naked breasts, and I’ll be attracted to them.
B: Hold on. What I am trying to say is that your genes are causing you to be excited by signs of sexual maturity and fertility.
YM: If they are signs they definitely aren’t “Stop” signs. Maybe “Go” signs. Or “dangerous curves ahead.” But really, I just like breasts and that’s all there is to it.
B: Okay. Consider this: Is the reason why you crack open a nut simply because you enjoy cracking nuts?
YM: From breasts to nuts, I think you have issues, man.
B: The purpose to cracking open nuts is to get at the edible nut-meat. And the purpose of that is to eat and satisfy your hunger. One of the purposes of that, in turn, is to feed your liver fats and sugars that will keep you fueled during the hours between meals.
YM: I don’t eat for my liver. I eat because I am hungry. Screw my liver.
B: It may seem that way. But there are causes deeper than what our minds can readily perceive.
YM: I’ll tell you one thing – I definitely prefer breasts over nuts.
The best in news parody* — a sampling of recent headlines from The Onion:
Opinion: If I Hadn’t Found Jesus, I’d Feel Pretty Shitty About My Crimes
Man Read Somewhere They Proved Thing He Just Made Up
Really Fun Toy Banned Because Of 3 Stupid Dead Kids
* Parody, from on Online Etymology* Dictionary
1590s (first recorded use in English is in Ben Jonson), from or in imitation of L. parodia “parody,” from Gk. paroidia “burlesque song or poem,” from para- “beside, parallel to” (in this case, “mock-”) + oide “song, ode” (see ode).
* Etymology
late 14c., from Gk. etymologia, from etymon “true sense” (neut. of etymos “true,” related to eteos “true”) + logos “word.” In classical times, of meanings; later, of histories.
Love these headlines from The Onion:
New Robot Capable Of Unhealthily Repressing Emotion
Now that’s progress!
World’s Scientists Admit They Just Don’t Like Mice
Which explains a lot.
Just in case you haven’t seen this brilliant cartoon from xkcd.
See if you spot the possible flaw in the study reported on in this ScienceDaily news release: A Sense of Humor Helps Keep You Healthy Until Retirement Age
(I say “possible” because I only read the article once and may have missed something. I’m going to read it again, and will mention the results further down.)
As the title and the first sentence assert — “A sense of humor helps to keep people healthy and increases their chances of reaching retirement age” — the research focused on two variables: a sense of humor and life expectancy. And they’ve found an inverse relation between them.
Life expectancy — that’s pretty straightforward to define and measure. What about sense of humor?
Svebak and his colleagues evaluated people’s sense of humor with three questions from a test designed to measure only friendly humor. The test is not sensitive to humor that creates conflicts, is insulting or that is a variation of bullying, explains Svebak.
The questions revealed a person’s ability to understand humor and to think in a humorous way, Svebak says….
Did you spot the possible flaw to this study (at least the one that immediately came to my mind)?
Need a hint? Think beyond the highlighted variables.
I immediately wondered if they had controlled for types of intelligence. And perhaps personality variables. These could certainly be hidden influences, doing the real work behind the scenes, so to speak.
After a re-read it still seems these variables weren’t controlled for. But I can’t be sure, for I only read the news release — though it was fairly in-depth, for a news release — and I am unable to read the original paper, for it is written in Norwegian.
In particular, I wonder if verbal intelligence was controlled for. And if that variable is somehow related to health. Maybe via education and life style?
I do know that research into risk factors for crime have identified “low verbal intelligence” as one of them….
Oh-oh, just had a thought. Did those studies control for poverty? Man, doing social/psychological science isn’t easy!
And I guess I’ll stop there. Because that’s the point. The social and psychological sciences, and the medical as well, aren’t easy because there are so many darn variables involved. So when evaluating the findings from these fields, we need to be extra careful.
The humor (from the ONION), the title saying it all: Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles
True, that.
Well, in my case a quick back-of-the envelope calculation yields . . . roughly 62% of my time spend with a glowing rectangle as the designated center/focus of attention.
Is that bad? In the sense that my laptop is more essential to my work than a desk . . . maybe not.
The humanism, found at No Forbidden Questions: The Humanist Symposium #55.
