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Basics: Skipping Spouse to Spouse Isn’t Just a Man’s Game
By NATALIE ANGIER, The New York Times, September 1, 2009
In the United States and much of the Western world, when a couple divorces, the average income of the woman and her dependent children often plunges by 20 percent or more, while that of her now unfettered ex, who had been the family’s primary breadwinner but who rarely ends up paying in child support what he had contributed to the household till, climbs accordingly. The born-again bachelor is therefore perfectly positioned to attract a new, younger wife and begin building another family.
Small wonder that many Darwinian-minded observers of human mating customs have long contended that serial monogamy is really just a socially sanctioned version of harem-building. By this conventional evolutionary psychology script, the man who skips from one nubile spouse to another over time is, like the sultan who hoards the local maidenry in a single convenient location, simply seeking to “maximize his reproductive fitness,” to sire as many children as possible with as many wives as possible. It is the preferred male strategy, especially for powerful men, right? Sequentially or synchronously, he-men consort polygynously.
( Or is it... )
First Trace of Color Found in Fossil Bird Feathers
By CARL ZIMMER, The New York Times, September 1, 2009
Birds, more than any other group of animals, are a celebration of color. They have evolved to every extreme of the spectrum, from the hot pink of flamingos to the shimmering blue of a peacock’s neck. Yet, for decades, paleontologists who study extinct birds have had to use their imaginations to see the colors in the fossils. Several feather fossils have been unearthed over the years, but they have always been assumed to be colorless vestiges.
Now a team of scientists has discovered color-producing molecules that have survived for 47 million years in the fossil of a feather. By analyzing those molecules, the researchers have shown that they would have given a bird the kind of dark, iridescent sheen found on starlings and other living birds.
( Read More... )
Essay: Finding a Scapegoat When Epidemics Strike
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr., The New York Times, September 1, 2009
Whose fault was the Black Death?
In medieval Europe, Jews were blamed so often, and so viciously, that it is surprising it was not called the Jewish Death. During the pandemic’s peak in Europe, from 1348 to 1351, more than 200 Jewish communities were wiped out, their inhabitants accused of spreading contagion or poisoning wells.
The swine flu outbreak of 2009 has been nowhere near as virulent, and neither has the reaction. But, as in pandemics throughout history, someone got the blame — at first Mexico, with attacks on Mexicans in other countries and calls from American politicians to close the border.
In May, a Mexican soccer player who said he was called a “leper” by a Chilean opponent spat on his tormentor; Chilean news media accused him of germ warfare. In June, Argentines stoned Chilean buses, saying they were importing disease. When Argentina’s caseload soared, European countries warned their citizens against visiting it.
“When disease strikes and humans suffer,” said Dr. Liise-anne Pirofski, chief of infectious diseases at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and an expert on the history of epidemics, “the need to understand why is very powerful. And, unfortunately, identification of a scapegoat is sometimes inevitable.”
( Read More... )
By NATALIE ANGIER, The New York Times, September 1, 2009
In the United States and much of the Western world, when a couple divorces, the average income of the woman and her dependent children often plunges by 20 percent or more, while that of her now unfettered ex, who had been the family’s primary breadwinner but who rarely ends up paying in child support what he had contributed to the household till, climbs accordingly. The born-again bachelor is therefore perfectly positioned to attract a new, younger wife and begin building another family.
Small wonder that many Darwinian-minded observers of human mating customs have long contended that serial monogamy is really just a socially sanctioned version of harem-building. By this conventional evolutionary psychology script, the man who skips from one nubile spouse to another over time is, like the sultan who hoards the local maidenry in a single convenient location, simply seeking to “maximize his reproductive fitness,” to sire as many children as possible with as many wives as possible. It is the preferred male strategy, especially for powerful men, right? Sequentially or synchronously, he-men consort polygynously.
( Or is it... )
First Trace of Color Found in Fossil Bird Feathers
By CARL ZIMMER, The New York Times, September 1, 2009
Birds, more than any other group of animals, are a celebration of color. They have evolved to every extreme of the spectrum, from the hot pink of flamingos to the shimmering blue of a peacock’s neck. Yet, for decades, paleontologists who study extinct birds have had to use their imaginations to see the colors in the fossils. Several feather fossils have been unearthed over the years, but they have always been assumed to be colorless vestiges.
Now a team of scientists has discovered color-producing molecules that have survived for 47 million years in the fossil of a feather. By analyzing those molecules, the researchers have shown that they would have given a bird the kind of dark, iridescent sheen found on starlings and other living birds.
( Read More... )
Essay: Finding a Scapegoat When Epidemics Strike
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr., The New York Times, September 1, 2009
Whose fault was the Black Death?
In medieval Europe, Jews were blamed so often, and so viciously, that it is surprising it was not called the Jewish Death. During the pandemic’s peak in Europe, from 1348 to 1351, more than 200 Jewish communities were wiped out, their inhabitants accused of spreading contagion or poisoning wells.
The swine flu outbreak of 2009 has been nowhere near as virulent, and neither has the reaction. But, as in pandemics throughout history, someone got the blame — at first Mexico, with attacks on Mexicans in other countries and calls from American politicians to close the border.
In May, a Mexican soccer player who said he was called a “leper” by a Chilean opponent spat on his tormentor; Chilean news media accused him of germ warfare. In June, Argentines stoned Chilean buses, saying they were importing disease. When Argentina’s caseload soared, European countries warned their citizens against visiting it.
“When disease strikes and humans suffer,” said Dr. Liise-anne Pirofski, chief of infectious diseases at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and an expert on the history of epidemics, “the need to understand why is very powerful. And, unfortunately, identification of a scapegoat is sometimes inevitable.”
( Read More... )
