Late Night Laugh: The Taliban Opera And Philharmonic
July 13, 2008
Give A Little, Get A Little
July 13, 2008
Showing Off in Humans: Male Generosity as a Mating Signal
We examined people’s charity contributions while in the presence of an observer of the same sex, opposite sex, or no observer. Inspired by costly signaling theory, we hypothesized that men would be more generous in the presence of a potential mate. Men and women played a number of experimental games in which they could earn money. On completion of these games participants were asked what percentage of their earned money they would be willing to donate to charity. Our results show that men contribute more to charity when observed by a member of the opposite sex than by a member of the same sex or no observer. Conversely, female charity donations did not significantly vary across the three observer conditions. Findings support the notion that men’s generosity might have evolved as a mating signal…
There are important sex differences in human generosity. Whereas women’s helping is more often directed towards kin and friends, men are more generous in interactions with strangers, for instance, in bystander helping, acts of public charity, and public good provision… Men’s generosity is difficult to explain with traditional evolutionary theories such as kin selection and reciprocal altruism… Here we investigate the possibility that men’s generosity serves as a signal to attract mates..
Home, At Last
July 13, 2008
Scientists ID World War II dead
Soil in Europe helps preserve skeletons.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) – For more than six decades, the family of U.S. Army 1st Lt. Archibald Kelly had no way of being certain he was killed when his bomber smashed into a rocky cliff in Croatia in World War II.
They did not know his bones lay under a makeshift cairn cobbled together by villagers. Without a body or a proper burial, they could never completely convince themselves he was dead.
“We didn’t have anything confirmed,” the navigator’s brother, Samuel Kelly, 85, recalled. “My mother always thought he got knocked in the head and had amnesia and was wandering around Europe somewhere. She never gave up thinking that he would come home. My dad was the same way.”
Last year, Kelly was finally buried back home in Michigan in a ceremony with full military honors after his remains were located and identified by U.S. investigators – the latest success in a renewed push to recover the bones of missing World War II servicemen in Eastern Europe.
The work comes as families of missing soldiers have increased pressure on the U.S. government to find their remains and as eastern Europe has become more accessible and receptive to U.S. researchers.
Countries such as Croatia, Albania and Poland were isolated behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. And though communism ended nearly 20 years ago, it took several more years for the United States to establish a relationship with local authorities that would allow real progress.
“It took a while for it to get ramped up,” said Master Sgt. Cory Damm, a U.S. Army analyst investigating cases in eastern Europe. “The mid- to late 1990s is when it started building, and now we’ve gotten to the point where family groups are crying out, ‘Yes, we are interested, we want you to look!’ So now the government is devoting more resources to this.”
He and another field researcher from the U.S. Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office arrived in Poland this week to chase leads in cases where they believe there is hope of finding remains – an effort under way since 2006 in Poland, where 109 Americans are believed missing.
For the next three weeks, they will investigate the memories of villagers, pore through town and church records, and search crash sites for plane wreckage or other clues that could lead to the recovery of remains.
One case involves a search for four Army Air Forces officers whose B-17 went down near Wroclaw, a city now in western Poland. After the war, American officials located the crash site and found the plane but could never locate its crew.
There is great urgency to the work because witnesses are quickly dying off. But there also are factors working in the investigators’ favor.
One is the soil in Europe, which is much less acidic than places such as Southeast Asia, where thousands of American soldiers and airmen died.
“That type of soil is going to eat away the bone,” Damm explained. “But the soil in Europe preserves the remains much better, so even after 60 years, you can find much more of the skeleton intact than in other parts of the world.”
Also, World War II did not yet have the high-speed jet crashes of later conflicts such as Vietnam, which tended to destroy human remains beyond recognition. As a result, it is possible to find skeletons and teeth still intact, greatly helping in the identification work.
There still are 78,000 Americans missing from World War II – far more than from any other subsequent conflict. By contrast, there are 8,100 people missing from the Korean War and 1,757 from Vietnam, according to figures provided by the Pentagon.
Another figure underscores the difficulties of making an identification: The military’s Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, the forensic lab which identifies war dead, has identified only 453 World War II servicemen since 1978.
For most families, the truth might never be known. “In some cases, you just run out of witnesses, you run out of documents,” Damm said. “You get to a certain point where you’re close, but you still can’t go and say ‘X marks the spot.’ “
From The Cape Code Times- naturally:
Pavlovian fish experiment opens a Pandora’s box
A national consumer advocacy group is suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over a Pavlovian underwater experiment in Buzzards Bay.
Food & Water Watch, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group, has filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Boston. The group wants to stop the Marine Biological Laboratory from continuing an experiment that houses 5,000 juvenile black sea bass in a dome-shaped structure at the bottom of Buzzards Bay, for the purpose of feeding them after playing a 280 Hz tone.
The study is being led by Scott Lindell, director of MBL’s Scientific Aquaculture Program, to determine whether the caged fish — once accustomed to the tone then released into the wild — will return to the dome for recapture when the tone is played.
The hope is to create a less harmful way to fish or better replenish natural fish stock, project officials told the Times in March.
Although the Army Corps permitted the project on May 30 after performing an environmental assessment, Food & Water Watch contends that the agency violated the law when it failed to hold a public hearing and complete an adequate environmental review.
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rushed through the permitting process, ignoring over 1,000 citizen requests for a public hearing and disregarding a wide range of public concerns about the experiment,” said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch executive director, in a prepared statement.
“There are serious questions that have yet to be answered about the project’s impacts on the environment and communities surrounding Buzzards Bay,” the statement said.
Specifically, the suit claims nothing in the permitting documents ensures MBL will monitor environmental impacts. Also, the suit claims the health and genetic diversity of the other wild fish populations may be impacted by coming into contact with farm-raised fish.
But fish aren’t the only animals in danger, said Zach Corrigan, staff attorney for the environmental watchdog group.
Corrigan said both the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife expressed concerns about double-crested cormorants diving to catch sea bass and becoming entangled in the dome.
The letter states there are nearly 1,500 nesting pairs in the area, and the Aquadome housing the fish could cause “significant cormorant mortality by entrapment and drowning.”
MBL said they would put a screen over the cage to prevent the birds from entering, but Corrigan said there’s no way of knowing if that will work.
Tim Dugan, a Corps spokesman, said it is not the agency’s policy to comment on pending litigation. Gina Hebert, MBL spokeswoman, and Lindell also declined to comment.
But the Corps’ Environmental Assessment and Statement of Findings on the project, issued the same day as the permit, said the proper procedures were followed.
The National Marine Fisheries Service determined the impacts will be minimal as the project occupies a mere 80-square-foot spot on the seafloor for no more than six months.
Also, the report states a Public Hearing Need Determination was performed, but it found “there is sufficient information available to evaluate the proposed project; and a public hearing would not result in new information that is not already available.”
However, the environmental assessment does note that water quality may be negatively affected due to the amount of concentrated fish waste in the area.
The project is part of a $270,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Beach Fashions 2008
July 13, 2008
Hollywood comic Jim Carrey gave American sunbathers a glimpse of his own beach bum when he swapped costumes with long-time girlfriend Jenny McCarthy.
The couple were spotted strolling hand in hand down a beach in Malibu, California, with Carrey, 46, wearing a more normal costume for his gender of beige knee-length board shorts.
However they then disappeared into their beach hut and re-emerged some minutes later with McCarthy in an ankle-length strapless blue dress and Carrey sporting her fetching halterneck swimsuit.
In scenes reminiscent of the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, he wandered down the beach in his “mankini”, to the amazement of onlookers.
Carrey – star of films such as The Mask, The Truman Show, Me Myself And Irene and Dumb And Dumber – has been dating comedienne, actress and former Playboy Playmate of the Month McCarthy since December 2005.
The Canadian-American comic, known for his madcap, slapstick antics and rubber-faced high-energy style, is a three-time winner of the Golden Globe award. He began his career on the Toronto comedy circuit, with his breakthrough into movies coming in 1994’s Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
Dean Screams Again
July 13, 2008
MHNN (Ann Arbor, MI)- Pat M Santy author of Carnival Of The Insanities (COTI) was called Saturday afternoon by Democrat National Committee chair Howard Dean, who requested an immediate meeting with the former NASA psychiatrist.
Dean was concerned that the death of former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was eliciting the same kind of response from the party base as did the death of Tim Russert. He told Dr Santy that it was inconceivable that so many kind words and wishes were sent to the Snow and Russert family and friends, even as the left wing wing blogosphere were excoriating them.
The DNC chair is concerned that the message the party is trying to send out is falling on deaf ears.
Where is the passion? Where is the hate? Why can’t we reach past the bloggers? What will it take to make everyone in America hate the Republicans, every single one of them?
What follows is a transcript of the meeting that took place between Howard Dean (HD) and Dr Pat M Santy (PMS).
PMS- Good afternoon, Mr Dean.
HD- What’s so good about it? First Russert dies and the nation mourns and now Tony Snow dies and people from all walks of life are mourning him. This isn’t what we stand for.
PMS- Why is that so bad? It is perfectly natural for people to want to express their thoughts and feelings at a time like this. There are people who may have had different politics than Russert or Snow but admired them anyway.
HD- Don’t you think I know that? Look, Russert was a liberal is almost every sense of the word- but he betrayed his ideology by being fair. Screw Russert, Big Russ and Little Russ. This isn’t how we play the game.
PMS- Seems to me most of America is saying ’screw you’ right back. They are clearly reluctant to adopt the rules of your political game.
HD- Well screw them right back! Do those dumb ass bastards really believe we care about what they think? Doc, they are cattle- we need their hoof prints on ballots. We have an important political agenda to impose on America and no dumb ass hicks are going to get in our way.
PMS- What exactly is that political agenda?
HD- That’s easy. Our agenda is whatever it needs to be at the time. Leftists are populists. Do you know what a populist is?
PMS- Of course I do! I read the same three dead shrinks blog that you do. They are brilliant.
HD- Look, we Democrats can’t get elected with a populist agenda- and we’ve developed an American populist ideology. We will do whatever it takes to convince people that they need us to take care of them from cradle to grave. We need to convince them them that they have been victimized by a certain political group or agenda, religious agenda, moral and ethical beliefs, psychological disorders or the idea that merit and initiative are actually ideas that enslave people.
PMS- Forgive me- but that seems to be pretty ridiculous-
HD- Do you have any idea how hard it is to dumb down an entire nation? Do you think this can be done with only one Bill Ayers? Look, we have a whole class of people who believe in God, fair play and the notion that eliminating inequality is a good thing.
PMS- Eliminating inequality is a bad thing?
HD- Of course it it is! Once inequalities are addressed and rectified, people will start having expectations of one another.
PMS- What’s wrong with that?
HD- One word- competition. And that means equal rules and opportunity for everyone.
PMS- And what’s wrong with that?
HD- You don’t get it. We do not want equal rules and opportunity for everyone. That’s why Tim Russert was so hated by the leftists! Sure he was a liberal but he wasn’t liberal enough- he insisted on fairness, as best he could. He had his own ideas and he refused to ridicule anyone who differed from his- or more importantly, own own- ideas. We cannot and will not tolerate that. Same thing with Tony Snow- were were all OK when he criticized Bush but then he criticized us as well! C’mon, we can’t tolerate equal opportunity criticism. Next thing you know people will be demanding equal application of the law- no taking into account politics or ideology. People will start believing that America stands for the rights of the individual to say and believe whatever he chooses.
PMS- But isn’t that exactly what America stands for?
HD- You haven’t read Mein Kampf, have you?
PMS- No, I haven’t.
HD- Well, we want to Aryanize America.
PMS- What???
HD- You heard me. We want to make sure race, class, religion and political ideologies are well defined and kept in a certain pecking order.
PMS- That isn’t the America I know.
HD- Too bad. You know, we may have to examine your license to practice medicine in view of your political beliefs and incorrect ideologies. You might be perceived as having a bad influence on some group or individual.
PMS- Are you for real?
HD- Was my scream for real? Dr Sanity, we aren’t the Democrats that you grew up with. We don’t give a damn about anything or anybody but ourselves.
PMS- You know, there isn’t a single example of a leftist regime or ideology that has succeeded in the long run.
HD- Doc, you are a psychiatrist. Do you think we really care about the success of the herd? Grow up.
PMS- You are one sick bastard.
HD- So what? All I have to is convince the world that my inability to persecute you is unfair- you know, like that Arabs and Jews. They believe that because the Jews are successful and civilized and they are not, they are downtrodden and oppressed and therefore deserve the opportunity to persecute the Jews.
PMS- I get it.
HD- Right. As long as free and democratic nations and ideologies thrive we leftists have every right to persecute them in any way we see fit, no matter how vile or oppressive. We don’t ever have to play by the rules- and pigs like Russert and Snow set a bad example, one that we will not tolerate.
PMS- You are one sick bastard.
HD- Well, I’m going to read Carnival Of The Insanities now. I don’t know how much longer you’ll be allowed to blog.
PMS- What??
HD- Mein Kampf, baby, think Mein Kampf.
