Why do the most flamboyant males have the evolutionary edge? – Alex Riley | Aeon Essays

Something relating to our Ecuador visit. And to Darwin of course. A most fascinating overview of why males spend so much time in impressing females. And other males so that they are frightened away from the females. We aren't that different from animals or peacocks and this has driven our behaviours. 
Very interesting to note how human behaviour is also aligned to ensuring our mitochondria is aligned with our partner's. 
Love
Baba



Why do the most flamboyant males have the evolutionary edge? – Alex Riley | Aeon Essays
https://aeon.co/essays/why-do-the-most-flamboyant-males-have-the-evolutionary-edge
(via Instapaper)

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For a large part of his life, Charles Darwin didn't like peacocks. It wasn't their loud vocalisations – a high-pitched, piercing combo of laughter and screaming. That he could deal with. What kept him up at night was the peacocks' tails. As he wrote to a friend in 1860, the sight of those ornate feathers made him feel sick whenever he gazed at them. Why? Because he couldn't explain them. The plumes of turquoise, blue and brown, trailing behind many times the bird's body length or spread into a wide fan of flamboyancy, was an affront to his theory of evolution by natural selection, a process founded on efficiency and removal of extravagance.
Not only is such a train of feathers metabolically costly, it is also readily visible to any carnivore looking for an easy meal. With all the predation, pathogens and diseases that living things need to overcome, Darwin wondered, how could such self-destructive beauty evolve? Why would an animal go to such extremes to make life harder, and death more likely? He finally hit on a plausible answer in 1871. In the second part of his book The Descent of Man, he explained that there is more to life than mere survival. Animals need to have sex, too. And because females are often more heavily invested than males in egg production and parental care, they are more likely to take the lead in choosing mates, too. As Darwin wrote: 'It's not a struggle for existence, but a struggle between the males for the possession of the females.'

Turkey, USA are the exceptions

Lessons learnt for teaching

Well, these were beautiful lessons to learn, and yes, I have ordered the book. Now that I am also teaching school children as part of the STEM Ambassadorship, its vital for me to make sure that every minute I have with them is lighting the fire. This was really really interesting. I started to apply this to my junior talent pool members who I run a training course every 2 weeks.

So few lessons learnt for this teacher.

• Bring everybody with you, not just the first person to raise their hands. wait till everybody else has had a think about it.
• move around the room. This is what I hate, when I am lecturing or teaching, and i have to be stuck out there in the front. Moving around is fun and allows you to engage everybody.
• Teaching can be taught, and you can learn even now when you're my advanced age…
• and yes, teaching isn't just imparting lessons, its a performance art.
• explain to the students what you are trying to do and how you are trying to help them.
• road to mastery leads through hard work, you have to push myself.

the article talks about TeachFirst, something that I am involved with heavily, its a great initiative..Also look at this letter we got, isn't that nice?

Letter from the Rt Hon Greg Clark MP The Minister for Universities, Science and Cities, Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, recently joined STEM Ambassadors to launch British Science Week at a school in Kent. The Minister participated in the activities and commended the STEM Ambassadors attending. Following the event the Minister expressed his desire to thank all STEM Ambassadors for volunteering their time. The Minister’s letter follows below. Kind regards, Kirsten Bodley, CEO STEMNET

Dear STEM Ambassador, I want to thank you for volunteering your time and energy to support the STEM Ambassadors programme and inspiring young people to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I was fortunate enough, on the first day of British Science Week, to see some of you in action at a school in my constituency. I met more of you on my recent visit to the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham. I was pleased to see the diverse range of sectors and professions that the STEM Ambassadors represent and highly impressed by the enthusiasm and commitment of those of you I met. During my recent visits I joined STEM Ambassadors and a group of Year 8s on several activities involving glow sticks and a 3D printer, and could see the enthusiasm these hands-on activities inspired. I know that all year round STEM Ambassadors plan and present exciting activities like these, which are an important part of the educational and inspirational process.  You’ll know how important the STEM workforce is to the country’s current and future economic growth. And to remain a world leader in research and technology we need a future generation that is passionate about, and skilled in, STEM. That is why the Government funds activities like the STEM Ambassadors Programme and British Science Week.  I am delighted that the STEM Ambassadors Programme is approaching an important milestone of almost 30,000 volunteers. I’m encouraged that 40% of these are women, inspiring both girls and boys to consider STEM careers.  I have been extremely impressed with what I’ve seen and heard during my recent visits and want to extend my thanks to all of you for your continued support for the STEM Ambassadors Programme, and your commitment to inspiring future generations. We couldn’t do it without you, thank you.

Book review Kurt Vonnegut Galapagos

I have to admit that this was one of the strangest books I've ever read. It's like it's written by a madman whose just slightly off phase to the rest of the world. It's about, God know what, set in 1984, about turtles, Galapagos, genetic faults, rockets, ghosts, a ship, riots and wars, humankind who evolve into furry creatures.

the man wrote this book in the backdrop of a severe currency and financial crisis on one hand, and the emerging AIDS epidemic on the other hand. Between these two events, humankind collapses…curious, we just had a severe financial crisis and dodged the EBOLA crisis, weird, eh?

So I'm going to go to Galapagos in a few months and this book was recommended. Well I'm not sure it helped me understand Ecuador or Galapagos at all. Nice collection of quotes though.

Would i recommend this book? Not sure. It'll make your hair hurt. Seriously weird book. Maddening. My first experience with Vonnegut’s work…am I too old to appreciate fiction like this?

Science Is Not Your Enemy

Kannu

This is a fascinating article on how science is perceived by many specially the religious sort. 

I do think that the author protests too much as broadly in developed countries and many other countries who aren't, science has won. If you want proof, compare the various human development indices and whether their constitutions have something religious in them. If they do like Nepal did, Poland and Saudi Arabia do, you know immediately that that is a place to be laughed at. Or pitied. Anybody who believes without evidence should be mocked hard and frequently because their beliefs can also be dismissed without evidence. 

Anyhow. Interesting reading also from an English logographic perspective son. Many words are technical. Pretty heavy duty writing. Test your understanding of the words. Also check your power of concentration. When faced with heavy writing, the tendency is to skip. But that's the key to mental discipline son. Force yourself to read and comprehend. It trains your mind to overcome higher and higher barriers. And then think, have I understood this good enough to make Diya understand? 

Love

Baba

Science Is Not Your Enemy
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-humanities

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Science Is Not Your Enemy An impassioned plea to neglected novelists, embattled professors, and tenure-less historians

BY STEVEN PINKER

The great thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment were scientists. Not only did many of them contribute to mathematics, physics, and physiology, but all of them were avid theorists in the sciences of human nature. They were cognitive neuroscientists, who tried to explain thought and emotion in terms of physical mechanisms of the nervous system. They were evolutionary psychologists, who speculated on life in a state of nature and on animal instincts that are “infused into our bosoms.” And they were social psychologists, who wrote of the moral sentiments that draw us together, the selfish passions that inflame us, and the foibles of shortsightedness that frustrate our best-laid plans.

These thinkers—Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Leibniz, Kant, Smith—are all the more remarkable for having crafted their ideas in the absence of formal theory and empirical data. The mathematical theories of information, computation, and games had yet to be invented. The words “neuron,” “hormone,” and “gene” meant nothing to them. When reading these thinkers, I often long to travel back in time and offer them some bit of twenty-first-century freshman science that would fill a gap in their arguments or guide them around a stumbling block. What would these Fausts have given for such knowledge? What could they have done with it?

WATCH: Leon Wieseltier’s rejoinder: Science doesn’t have all the answers

We don’t have to fantasize about this scenario, because we are living it. We have the works of the great thinkers and their heirs, and we have scientific knowledge they could not have dreamed of. This is an extraordinary time for the understanding of the human condition. Intellectual problems from antiquity are being illuminated by insights from the sciences of mind, brain, genes, and evolution. Powerful tools have been developed to explore them, from genetically engineered neurons that can be controlled with pinpoints of light to the mining of “big data” as a means of understanding how ideas propagate.

Lunch with the FT: Mary Midgley

Son
Here are two oxford graduates, coincidentally who both studied one of the topics you are going to read, philosophy, talking about philosophy.
It's an interesting topic. At one end, it can termed as meaningless mental masturbation, full of arcane meanderings in obtuse corners of the human experience, using convoluted language which bears no resemblance to reality.
On the other hand son, philosophy underpins and originates all human knowledge. Studying physics or economics or chemistry or astronomy hard enough and you end up in philosophy land.
Have a good grounding in it son. If nothing else it will help you keep questioning yourself and challenging yourself. Search for the truth always.
Love
Baba

I saw this article when using the Financial Times app and thought you might be interested:
Financial Times,
Lunch with the FT: Mary Midgley
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By Peter Aspden
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The moral philosopher who was labelled a ‘heretic’ for championing common sense talks about scientific arrogance, macho philosophers and impending ‘catastrophe’
Read the full article at: http://on.ft.com/1hK1A2D

Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?

Diya

You do fantastically well in science and mathematics. You are also awesome in the arts, history and drawing etc. Don't ever let anybody tell you that you can't do maths or science or physics if you're interested in them sweetheart. :) 

This is a bit of a long article but It's good to read about how other women managed to succeed in the sciences. 

Love

Baba

Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?pagewanted=all

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Last summer, researchers at Yale published a study proving that physicists, chemists and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favorably than a woman with the same qualifications. Presented with identical summaries of the accomplishments of two imaginary applicants, professors at six major research institutions were significantly more willing to offer the man a job. If they did hire the woman, they set her salary, on average, nearly $4,000 lower than the man’s. Surprisingly, female scientists were as biased as their male counterparts.

USA, for all its merits, is in some strange corners

Right now, it looks like only USA will be attacking the Syrian Regime now that the UK has not agreed to sign up. But USA usually ends up doing the right thing, other than few other notable exceptions.

It doesn't play cricket unlike most of the other commonwealth countries :P

it doesn't use the metric system.

And besides Somalia, its the only other country which hasn't signed up to the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child.

 

Paid maternal leave?

A Knack for Bashing Orthodoxy

Kannu

this is a good article. Talks about how at a certain point, science has to deal with philosophy as well. plus gives you some indication on how oxford works...

Show me the money teach

This was quite interesting. Not bad, eh? for a first time teacher, the salaries are not bad at all.

h/t Alice Cook

So I mapped this to the PISA results. Unfortunately I didnt have a full set of figures from the above table. Anyhooo,

Quite an interesting comparison, eh? Luxembourg is way down in the middle of the table. Germany is 1/4th down the table, Spain is also in the middle of the table. Doesn't seem to have a big correlation between teacher salaries and actual performance, eh? Food for thought, teach.

HU scientists discover 'Star of David' molecule

Hebrew University researchers have created a fascinating molecule which can be used for diabetes cures and for green fuel inputs.

Here’s the sucker in question.

And while i was of interest to me as the proverbial nerd, the idiot clown in me was laughing my head off thinking about the idiot rage boys now fulminating on clean fuel or medicines stating that its a Zionist plot. heh.

What factors drive Mathematics Achievement of students?

Quite an interesting paper, this one. The chaps analysed more than 100000 15 year old students and what did they find? Well, quite interestingly, they found that your scores in mathematics are better when:

• richer or more egalitarian countries;
• when living with two parents,
• without grandparents,
• with fewer siblings (especially fewer older siblings);
• with higher family SES,
• more books,
• cultural possessions,
• or cultural communication;
• or when they had greater interest in mathematics,
• more effort and perseverance,
• and higher self-efficacy or self-concept

Quite an interesting medley of factors, eh? Some surprises were there obviously. What on earth is the connection with grandparents? And nothing direct on teachers?

Saving money in the education system

Two political parties in the UK have pronounced on ways to save money in the education system. The Labour Party says that it can save up to £2bn by cutting thousands of senior staff and restraining pay. Here’s his proposal:

Mr Balls spoke of comprehensives merging to form federations, so a head teacher and a team of deputies would work across the different schools.

He estimated this option could save the department about £500m a year.

Another £250m could be saved by losing about 3,000 senior school jobs, mainly through "natural wastage", he said.

It was also likely more than 300 jobs in Whitehall which involve advising schools about the curriculum could go, he said.

Quite interesting and something that could actually work out. A federation of schools with good IT technology to work across the schools can work out. And yes, losing senior school jobs without replacement is a relatively good idea to save money and finally yes, definitely cut the damn bureaucrats.

The LibDems now are thinking about changing their promise to drop the tuition fees. I have made my views quite clear, primary and secondary education must be free, the state has a responsibility to have educated students. But tertiary education, in college and university, has to be made fee paying.

There is nothing in any form of logic which says that the taxpayers should pay for something that you personally as an individual will gain. And its a very highly regressive step. In effect, as a proportion of tax take, you are taking money from the lower strata to pay for somebody in the middle or upper strata to get educated. The middle and upper strata of the society can very well pay for their education, so in effect, the lower and poor people in this country are getting a double whammy.

Watch the left moan, but then, the left makes fleecing the poor into a master class while dressing it up as social justice. BAH!

But where are the ideas for improving the education system from the political parties? Where is the additional investment which we will actually require to improve the mathematics, the innovation, the science and technology, the pools of intelligent students? sighs, long way to go…

Splitting the moon

Ok, so I get this email which says the following:

After laughing my head off, I spoke to my sister who told me that this is considered to be an actual miracle in the Quran. But do a search for splitting the moon, there are so many hits. The bunch of crazies who are out there are amazing. Here’s a map of the moon, folks, go check it out to see if you can see this pattern? Notice that all these emails never tell you exactly where this is supposed to be. God, in this day and age…And specially around the time when we have had the first moon landings, but then, these silly buggers also think that the moon landings were staged.

Muslim Nobel Prize winners

I have written many times about why I think the idea of trying to link religion to science is evidence that the argument is very very weak. If you are indeed trying to say that there is something called as Muslim science or one should be proud of any medieval Muslim scientist just because they were Muslim (and ignoring any other scientist from another religion), then we have a bit of an issue. I discussed this on a list which had sent around a typical email talking about why people should be proud of Muslim scientists.

My first response:

Only if their respective achievements were primarily due to them belonging to Islam. If there is no connection or causality, then the fact that they were Muslims is about as important as them having hair or living in the northern hemisphere. ;)

My second response:

I am afraid then I am bit confused with Mike's original point. If he is saying that we should celebrate their success because they are Muslims, then yes, definitely.�
But he goes on to talk about Muslim Science & Technology which is frankly silly. One might as well as make the argument that so many Muslim Scientists have actually have had to face opposition from the Muslim jurists and theologians who presumably would know what Islam is. Reminds me of the emails I see about Jewish nobel prize winners. As it their religion had anything to do with the pursuit of science as Jack mentions. Hence the confusion.�

Then when i was asked about the opposition, this is what I wrote:

Hi XXX

I didnt mean to refer to the article itself, but we do not have to go that far back to prove that point. We were talking about nobel prizes earlier. Out of the handful of Muslim nobel prize winners, we have Mahfouz who was given death threats, nearly assasinated and frankly because of the attack, his golden pen was almost silenced. The man who wrote for days on end, forgetting to eat, sitting at that souk cafe and churning out wonderful prose was condemned to just be able to write for few minutes per day.

How about Abdus Salam? A man, who was by all accounts a brilliant teacher and researcher, who wanted to setup educational institutions in his country, was buried in a cold and lonely grave without any official recognition. His grave stone first said, the First Muslim Nobel Laureate, and then amazingly enough, on government orders pushed by clerics, the word Muslim was chiselled off. Guess what the gravestone says now? First Nobel Laureate.

A lesser case can be thought of for Pamuk who was castigated and a criminal case launched against him. While you cannot say this was for strictly religious reasons, there is that strand in that nationalistic framework which got him into trouble. Zewail seems to be the only person who escaped this, perhaps because he never worked in a muslim country or perhaps the extremists did not understood his work :)

sighs, this argument is really silly. Think about ibn Rushd or our man Omar Khayyam who got into trouble. When luminaries of that ilk can get into trouble…

Screams of Vegetables when they are murdered

Vegetables feel the pain when they are exposed to bad stimuli. Just because you cannot measure it does not mean that they do not experience pain. Here's the definition from Encyclopedia Britannica.

a complex experience consisting of a physiological and emotional response to a noxious stimulus. Pain is a warning mechanism that protects an organism by influencing it to withdraw from harmful stimuli; it is primarily associated with injury or the threat of injury.

heat, lack of water, sunlight etc. are all necessary for a plant life and the suitable application or withdrawal of it will show responses in planets which can arguably be classified as pain. But before you get excited about this, remember the Black Swan Theory. Nobody thought that black swans existed till the 17th century....

So, have your meat and 2 veg, you cannot win :)

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