“Creativity”

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Scott Adams points out a possible link between creativity and boredom. I can see where he’s coming from, in that when you’re bored you’re more likely to think of something creative than when you’re too busy to think, but I’m pretty sure people can be creative even without boredom, at least in the area that they’re already thinking about. Perhaps even more creative without boredom.

But as an introduction to pointing out some curious facts about the world today, it works. And yes, I’m quite familiar with the fact that this is a blog post about another blogger. 😉

“Acne Science: What Makes Pimples So Peculiar To People?”

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This article suggests that acne is simply an unfortunate byproduct of going hairless. While that’s a good explanation for why it originally developed, it’s not a good reason why we still have it.

It’s maladaptive, in that people with visible acne are seen as less desirable mates. But fifteen percent of people rarely if ever get it. That’s lots more than evolution would need to eliminate it entirely — if it hadn’t provided some kind of survival advantage to our ancestors.

When you think about it that way, it’s not hard to come up with a couple plausible answers. Why would being ugly, especially in their early teens, help humans to survive?

  • Being uglier might drive the afflicted person to become more intelligent than (s)he otherwise would. Loneliness and rejection are powerful incentives to social animals like us, and being even slightly more intelligent than others in your tribe can offset many minor physical imperfections, if you can turn that intelligence to useful tasks or politics.

  • Acne won’t drive off tigers or disease, but it might discourage the most dangerous predator of humans: other humans. At least long enough for women to finish maturing. It’s more dangerous for a woman to bear children in her early teens than later in life, so that might help more women to bear more children by delaying her childbearing to a somewhat safer time.

It’s just a hypothesis, of course, and one that would be devilishly tricky if not impossible to prove with today’s tools. It’s also one that, so far as I know, no scientist has suggested (though I’d be very surprised if it hadn’t been considered already). Of course, it wasn’t long ago that medical science thought that the tonsils and appendix were evolutionary leftovers, serving no useful purpose in modern man. Now scientists know better, both are still quite useful, but in my parents’ day kids routinely had their tonsils removed before their teenage years, even if they were perfectly healthy, which is insane by modern medical standards. Maybe a scientist will eventually address the evolutionary reasons why acne is still around, or already has and neither I nor the author of that article have heard about it yet. We’ll see.

This is the kind of system that I find endlessly fascinating.

Scammers, Part III

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This is getting ridiculous… in the last three days I’ve gotten two more of those computer scam calls. One woman, one man. Both with strong India accents, but both far more understandable than the first two. Far more annoying too. The novelty has worn off, people, go screw with someone else.

For the first one I was feeling kind, so I asked the woman if she knew that this was a scam — she might think that she was hired by a legitimate company, after all. Apparently she did, because she hung up. The second I was so ticked that I just asked the guy if he had any idea how many times that scam had been tried on me. He immediately hung up too.

I might play with the next one, if I’m at the computer and not busy at the time, and not so irritated that I immediately give the game away. We’ll see.

“Is Our Fate Written in the Lengths of Our Fingers?”

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It seems that the amount of prenatal testosterone that a person gets in the first trimester influences a laundry list of physical and mental characteristics, including sexual orientation, athletic ability, possibly autism, and (most importantly for this line of questioning), relative finger length. As well as a man’s penis length and chance of getting prostate cancer.

Isn’t science wonderful? Now you can tell how large a guy’s privates are likely to be just by comparing his fingers. Once word gets around — and you know it will — I can imagine ladies making sure they check out their dates’ hands first thing, and guys flaunting (or hiding) them depending on what they say. And ladies, it’s easier than trying to inconspicuously look at his feet. 😉

Greece and National Debts

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The countries of the world are in dire financial straits. They have been for years, but it’s finally coming to a head because they’re reaching the end of their credit. Everyone who watches the least bit of news knows about Greece, but that’s just the first; Portugal and Spain have also had their credit ratings cut recently and are likely to go the same way. Pretty much everyone in the know says that their debts are unpayable.

The US has about the same debt-per-person that Greece does.

Maybe this will prompt things to get better, but I doubt it. There’s no political will to do anything about the problem. The rich (both human and corporate) and their bought politicians are doing their damnedest to ensure that that doesn’t change, and they’re strong enough to keep the countries of the world on a course toward financial doom.

The next few years should be very interesting, in a Chinese-curse sort of way.