Continuous Productivity

The Various Forms of Civilization

One of the more fascinating articles that I have read recently reminded me that there are still numerous "indigenous" tribes that don't quite live a life like ours:

The photos were taken during several flights over one of the most remote parts of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil's Acre region.

They show tribe members outside thatched huts, surrounded by the dense jungle, pointing bows and arrows up at the camera.

Check out the pictures!

The Earth is Still Flat

Despite a court-ordered ban on the teaching of creationism in US schools, about one in eight high-school biology teachers still teach it as valid science, a survey reveals. And, although almost all teachers also taught evolution, those with less training in science – and especially evolutionary biology – tend to devote less class time to Darwinian principles.

Unbelievable as it seems, it does not surprise me.  It's a shame that 16% of the educators that are responsible for teaching our children scientific fact don't believe it themselves. 

Gee Really? Sex and Money are Related?

A new brain-scan study may help explain what's going on in the minds of financial titans when they take risky monetary gambles _ sex. When young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler, university researchers reported.

The arousing pictures lit up the same part of the brain that lights up when financial risks are taken.

"You have a need in an evolutionary sense for both money and women. They trigger the same brain area," said Camelia Kuhnen, a Northwestern University finance professor who conducted the study with a Stanford University psychologist.

I find these sort of studies very interesting.  They sort of try to confirm what many of us could have guessed intuitively.

Darwin on the Internet

Very cool news coming out of Cambridge University: all of Charles Darwin's papers are now available online.  I don't profess to be a Darwin scholar, but am more fascinated with the disintermediation of knowledge.  What used to require a visit to Cambridge for examination is now available instantly.