So, I put this comic up on Monday. Here we are, two days later, and still no hits from Papua New Guinea.
Let me hear you holla, Port Moseby!
And remember, sharing is caring.
[Port Moseby? Really?]
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So, I had previously linked to the story about how Texans are statistically more likely to be executed than to die in a plane crash. It kept rolling around in my mind, though, so here’s this.
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For the record, I’m not actually personally opposed to the death penalty. What I am opposed to is the unequal treatment people receive under the justice system based on factors like race and wealth. Also, when the government is perfectly willing to execute someone whom they know to have been falsely accused in the name of not looking weak on crime.
The numbers I used were based on the 2009 Texas population and a generic American 1 in 11 million per year plane crash death rate, which I got from here.
Duane Edward Buck (whose guilt in a double homicide is not in question) is scheduled to be executed on September 15. Apparently in Texas, likelihood of committing future crimes is an important factor in applying the death penalty. The dubious part was that Buck’s race was explicitly cited as a factor in his future dangerousness. You can read more here.
The Galileo bit is in reference to Perry’s idiotic statement about Galileo and climate change, about which you should read this.
So, today is Labor Day here in the US. Todd and Eleonora are celebrating with story-time:
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Santa Fe Institute colleague Sam Bowles has pointed out (via Ronda Butler-Villa) that:
“Labor Day” was promulgated (in 1892) to distance America from the worldwide May Day celebrations of workers in all countries. It is a working class holiday that was initiated to commemorate a general strike in Chicago in 1886, and the anarchists who were hanged (after a highly political show trial) shortly thereafter, allegedly for their involvement in the Haymarket affair.
Another successful instance of the “hey, look at this shiny thing” strategy working perfectly.
So, I’ve posted the new Darwin Eats Cake, which is about genomic imprinting. I tried to do some explaining in the comic, but I suspect that there is not enough information there for the thing to make sense unless you already have at least a passing familiarity with the phenomenon.
If you’re actually interested, I’ve got a set of primers on imprinting that I’ve been working on here. You can find links to them here.
Or you can just forge ahead:
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So, perhaps inspired by Darwin Eats Cake, Todd, the potted bamboo plant from Darwin Eats Cake, has begun writing his own webcomic. He debuted his work in today’s strip:
For reasons that are lost to the recesses of time, I’ve been using Adobe’s InDesign to make Darwin Eats Cake. Todd decided to make The Avengner! using Illustrator, which seems the more sensible and obvious choice. I may try it myself in the future.
Hat tip to Tasey (rhymes with “spacey”) and Cim (alliterates with “cantankerous”) for Evolötion.
So, here’s the latest Darwin Eats Cake. Once again, Guillaume is gracing us with his adaptationist explanations. This time, he is answering a question from Bastian Greshake (@gedankenstuecke), champion of evolution, creative commons, and all sorts of other good stuff.
If you’re not familiar with Creative Commons, it is an alternative to traditional copyrights. It’s a great option if you’re committed to an open culture, where creations can be shared, but want to protect yourself against having your creations exploited.
For instance, all of the Darwin Eats Cake strips are published under a creative commons license explicitly stating that you are free to share them. You can e-mail them, copy them into your own blog, print them out, pretty much anything you want, just so long as you provide attribution. The only thing you can’t do is sell them.
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So, Guillaume’s Mailbag has continued on its mission to provide an adaptive explanation for every existing trait. The most recent trait Guillaume has been tackling was submitted by John Wilkins, who asked, “Why do we make odd faces when we orgasm?”
In case you missed when I’ve plugged him before, JoHn Wilkins (no recent relation) is a philosopher of science in Australia. His most recent book is Species: A History of the Idea, and he runs an excellent blog called Evolving Thoughts. He recently concluded an excellent series of posts on “Atheism, agnosticism and theism” in which he discusses, among other things, what it means to have a belief. You can find the start of that series here.
But back to the face of orgasm. Guillaume took three full strips to answer this one, so I’ve waited until he was done to post them here. I think I’ve finally figured out how to make these full-page versions more readable on the blog, but it involved lowering the resolution of the JPEG, so, for higher-res versions of these three comics, head on over to Darwin Eats Cake. The first of the series of three can be found here.
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Ross HE, Cole CD, Smith Y, Neumann ID, Landgraf R, Murphy AZ, & Young LJ (2009). Characterization of the oxytocin system regulating affiliative behavior in female prairie voles. Neuroscience, 162 (4), 892-903 PMID: 19482070
Carmichael MS, Warburton VL, Dixen J, & Davidson JM (1994). Relationships among cardiovascular, muscular, and oxytocin responses during human sexual activity. Archives of sexual behavior, 23 (1), 59-79 PMID: 8135652
Although at least one study suggests that, in men, prolactin is actually more strongly correlated with orgasm than oxytocin is:
Krüger TH, Haake P, Chereath D, Knapp W, Janssen OE, Exton MS, Schedlowski M, & Hartmann U (2003). Specificity of the neuroendocrine response to orgasm during sexual arousal in men. The Journal of endocrinology, 177 (1), 57-64 PMID: 12697037
So, Guillaume has answered his second letter for Guillaume’s Mailbag. As usual, this will be much more readable at the Darwin Eats Cake site:
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Hat-tips go to Alejandro Weinstein for his question, and to Lizzie Foley, for consulting with Guillaume on the answer.
Guillaume also wanted to point out that if armpit hair were not adaptive, then why would Kevin Grennan have included it in this artificial armpit?
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| The robotic armpit releases “Japanese standard artificial sweat,” which is apparently a thing. Image via CNET. |
We leave you now with this music video, which, if Pop Up Video is to be believed, was referred to by its director as a “celebration of the armpit.” Enjoy.
So, as always, these full-page ones are hard to read on the blog. For a better image, go here.
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Thanks to Willemien Kets and Elais Kadeem Player, a.k.a. crashgroove for their excellent questions.
So, here’s my latest thing:
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