moving beyond “man bites dog” news

On March 15, 2011, the New York Post reported:

TEL AVIV — A snake that bit Israeli model and actress Orit Fox in the chest has died of silicone poisoning from her surgically enhanced breasts.

Spanish TV channel Telecinco’s footage shows the model fondling the serpent for a feature last month on Israeli DJ Shmulik Tayar’s radio show.

Google News has about 34 articles covering this story, plus some blog posts that correct the facts. The Internet is helping to return the world to the golden age of public-interest journalism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXdfhrOaAj4

deep structure of social networks in human society

The few remaining human hunter-gather societies have social networks like those typical for Facebook.  Human hunter-gather groups consist predominately of persons who are not genetic kin, although brothers and sister often are part of the same group.  Moreover, young adults of both sexes sometimes remain within their natal group, and sometimes disperse.  Relationships between hunter-gather groups are often friendly, with visiting and migration common.[1]  In these senses, hunter-gather groups are like groups of Facebook friends

More generally, humans typically form multi-level, nested structures of alliances and a fission-fusion pattern in daily life.  Human adults typically form pair bonds associated with a stable, recognized living space for the pair and its dependents (a family).  At the same time, human families live within a larger, relative stable physical and social community.  In addition, humans readily associate with strangers in small groups for particular daily purposes.  These social patterns contain elements found in the social structure of humans’ nearest living primate relatives, the African great apes.[2]  No ape, however, has as many types or number of conspecific social relations as do humans.

The explanation for humans’ extraordinary evolutionary distinctiveness remains unclear.  Important recent work points to the development of pair bonds and paternal recognition within cooperative raising of young.[3]  Particular socially generated and maintained inventions or, at least in part, fortuitous, cumulative cultural developments, also are a second leading idea in current evolutionary ethological research.

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Notes:

[1] See Hill, Kim R., et al. “Co-Residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure.” Science. 331 (2011): 1286-1289.

[2] Humans have sexual bonds like gorillas (minus the polygyny), adult male bonds like chimpanzees (but perhaps less violently competitive), adult female bonds like bonobos (but probably less lesbian sex), and weak ties like orangutans.  For primate comparisons and analysis, see, e.g. Lars Rodseth and Shannon A. Novak, “The Impact of Primatology on the Study of Human Society,” pp. 187-220 in Barkow, Jerome H. 2006. Missing the revolution: Darwinism for social scientists. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[3] See Chapais, Bernard. 2008. Primeval kinship: how pair-bonding gave birth to human society. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

cost of color important competitive disadvantage for print

collapse into color

Humans prefer colorful images.  In print, color images have significant marginal cost.  With capable digital devices, color images have zero marginal cost.  The cost of color is an important competitive disadvantage for print.

A wide range of historical evidence indicates humans’ preference for colored images. Ancient Greek and Roman statues today appear as bare stone. That’s only because their once-painted surfaces have not survived.  Careful study of ancient Greek and Roman statues reveals that they were originally painted with bright colors and intricate color patterns. The Buddhas of Bamiyan, built in the sixth century in present-day Afghanistan, also were intensely colorful:

prior to the conversion of the region to Islam [about 1001 GC], the statues were overpainted several times, presumably because the colors had faded. The outer robes, or sangati, were painted dark blue on the inside and pink, and later bright orange, on top. In a further phase, the larger Buddha was painted red and the smaller white, while the interior of the robes was repainted in a paler blue.[1]

The sixth-century Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan, China, also contained brightly colored sculptures and paintings. These sixth-century Buddhist sculptures probably looked similar to the polychrome sculptures of seventeenth-century Spain.  A mass market for color prints, which were several times more expensive than monochrome prints, developed in Europe by the sixteenth century.

The difficulties facing print media businesses today are enormous.  Adoption of e-books is happening quickly, and the price of e-readers is dropping rapidly.[2]  Newspaper and magazine businesses are collapsing, as are those of print book publishers and brick-and-mortar book stores. In these circumstances, color may seem a superficial concern.  But the deep human preference for color may make the future for monochrome print even less promising.

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Notes:

[1] “Bamiyan Buddhas once glowed in red, white and blue,” News Release, Technische Universität Muenchen, Munich, February 25, 2011.

[2]  Amazon’s Kindle today does not support color.  Kindle e-books, and many others, are monochrome.  That’s likely to change soon.

transparency in government starts with personal knowledge

The extent of a person’s access to her or his own genetic information is currently under consideration in the U.S. Congress. Genetic information is uniquely personal. A person’s genetic information, along with that person’s life history, determines who that person is.  Surely good government of personal information gives a person, with respect to his or her own genetic information, equal or greater access than anyone else has or any organization or government has.  Know thyself is the first, ancient principle of good government.

The video below shows the FDA’s Jeffrey Shuren apparently lying to Congress about the activities of direct-to-consumer genetic information companies.  The video was anonymously created and has been distributed by the FDA Blog.  Shuren’s prepared Congressional testimony provides some context for his statements on the video.  Shuren’s statements shown in the video apparently came in response to Congresspersons’ questions.  Here’s further context for the video and the issues of concern.

The video is obviously tendentious.  So too may have been the Congressional hearing. If the sort of proceeding depicted in the video is acceptable to Congress, then the quality of our democratic government is highly questionable.

The crux of the problem seems to be at the mid-range of government. The FDA’s primary procedural clients are large pharmaceutical companies. The FDA could serve the public interest by helping persons more easily get access to their own personal genetic information. But the FDA instead appears to be trying to shut down a potentially very significant area of the information economy. Both the public and Congress need to act to ensure that the FDA serves the general public, not corporate clients.

Gene Expression’s Razib Khan is acting to secure self-knowledge. You should be, too.