HCR-Free Link Salad
Irradiated by LabRat
I am sick of talking and reading about health care in general and Obamacare in particular. Unfortunately, nobody else is, at least at my usual sources of inspiration. Therefore, News Of Other.
- More “science journalism as a game of Telephone”: you may have heard that anthropologists have recently discovered a novel species of hominid based on genetic analysis alone. You were lied to. The actual Nature journal article goes well out of its way to avoid using the term “species”, and for excellent reason; there are a lot of ways to get the genetic results they did without its needing to be a new species or even to determine which existing species of hominid it is. John Hawks, Actual Anthropologist, explains why in greater detail. For those of you worried that scientists are in the habit of “discovering” new species based solely on small bits of bone- and both the media and creationists depict it as such- anthropologists still do not actually consider a lone pinkie finger bone with interesting mitochondrial DNA to be evidence of a previously unknown species.
- Sometimes large carnivores exist to slaughter little furry animals. Sometimes they exist to eat shit. While the giant pitcher plant of Borneo is not technically a carnivore, it IS the largest species of carnivorous plant known. It was previously believed to feed primarily on small rodents, until one researcher noted that dead rodents are only very rarely found in the pitchers. (All carnivorous plants take a VERY long time to digest their prey and rodents should be even more of a chore than insects in this department.) As it turns out, tree shrew crap IS found reasonably often in the pitchers- and the pitchers are rimmed with rich nectar glands. The pitchers are also nearly perfectly proportioned to both support an interested shrew and be just about right in radius to catch anything it might leave. Given that nitrogen is the resource a carnivorous plant is actually after and there’s plenty of that in poop, it solves the plant’s resource issue quite neatly without it having to go through the massive hassle of digesting something that has *not* already been mostly processed.
- Title of article: Cat-calling Men Give All Men A Bad Name?. Premise of article: women who feel harassed by men on the street yelling derogatory things at them generalize their anxiety and anger to all men to at least some degree. Title of Hot Air link to said article: Beta Males Punished For Alpha Male Behavior.
I know Allahpundit’s being (mostly) tongue in cheek with his alpha-male/beta-male stuff, however grounded in pop science fantasy rather than reality it may be but seriously? Yelling asshole comments to random women is “alpha male” behavior for which “beta males” who presumably do not engage in broadcast misogyny are somehow disproportionately punished? I thought being treated poorly by random men was something that all women tend to resent regardless of status.
March 24th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Thank you for reminding me that I have to write a post sometime on how completely fucked in the head self-identified “beta males” are. It’s such a weird combination of enough self-hatred to think no woman is accessible to you, and enough self-importance to rule out all accessible women as prospects.
And wow, the comments on that post, wow. Apparently the correct response to “OOO, SHAKE THEM TITTIES FOR ME” is profuse gratitude and immediate sexual availability, and anything else is sexism against men.
March 24th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Real alpha males don’t need to scream and posture. Only low-level betas and liberal TV pundits stoop to that level.
March 24th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
LR, have you read any of Marc MacYoung’s writings on the alpha/beta metaphor for human behaviour? He’s riffing off of pop psychology but (I gather) based on a few decades of life on the wrong side of the wrong side of the tracks. I’m sure he’s wrong in a number of technical ways (much like how I write about economics), but I’m curious about how close he gets to “right”, and where.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Only in what’s available on No-Nonsense Self-Defense, and even then probably not all.
Based on that, what I’d say is that he’s right in how social carnivores (very broadly speaking) tend to act when thrown together in ad-hoc groupings of non-related individuals- David Mech’s original studies in which he coined the terminology, for example, turned out to be representative of how unrelated wolves behave when forced together, not remotely how wild wolf packs actually function. Likewise social primates in “the wild” have either relatedness or long familiarity underpinning their social interactions; they are much more violent when simply shoved together in captivity as strangers.
If you have specific recommended reading, it’d be interesting.
March 25th, 2010 at 9:31 am
My first thought when reading of the pitcher plant was that it is the original organic flush toilet. Can’t you just picture someone sitting on a large version of that reading a newspaper?
Are people still going on about “alpha males”? I still think most of the stuff written about that is total bullshit.
And as to catcalls, it is one thing to give an admiring glance or a whistle at a woman; it is another to grab your crotch and yell obscenities.
Just my opinion.
March 25th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Holly: I also really “liked” how many of them were men going “Some women generalized the actions of some to all men? Man, women suck!”
March 25th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
BobG: I’m an Alpha Male.
Women are hopelessly drawn to me. It’s a burden I have to live with.
March 25th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
LR: I was thinking of the chapters he has in Cheap Shots, Ambushes, and Other Lessons — that’s his first book, so the stuff on NNSD is probably better thought-out. Thanks.
March 26th, 2010 at 9:47 am
According to a tenured friend of mine, Sex Roles isn’t that high of an impact journal; not top of the heap.
March 26th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Wrote my beta male post.
Wordy, fulminating Eurosabra comments in 10… 9… 8…
April 3rd, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Thanks for the link!