The article describes “Boskop man”, who (the authors claim) had a much bigger brain than that of modern humans and was correspondingly more intelligent.
Much of the “science” of the article is debunked here:
Obviously, brain size can only tell us so much about intelligence. Otherwise, school examinations would be unnecessary. Instead, we could simply dunk a pupil’s head in a bathtub to measure the volume of water displaced by the skull and, from this, the child’s intelligence.
However, I think that much of the article was intended to be read a speculation rather than fact. It’s quite fun (and possibly not impossible) to think about how someone more intelligent thinks.
What hope for us modern humans, with our puny brains, is there? As a teacher, I am always searching for ways to improve the workings of my own brain and those of my students. A bit of searching on the internet for ways to improve your intelligence quickly brings you to addicting games like this:
Exciting, but cautious, claims are made about this game. There are probably lots of such games that can improve your brain. Unfortunately, I cannot see this game being a great deal of help in a foreign language classroom (my own area). Perhaps such toys will have an important role to play in education.
I’ve been very remiss with uploading my photographs to Picasa for the last few months. The fact that I am leaving South Korea on Tuesday has forced me to get up to date with everything.
An idea that has been working its way around my head for a few days is to do with paying people not to do bad things. We are generally confortable with the idea of punishing people who commit crimes. Rewarding people who do good deeds and are successful is also popular. However, rewarding people who are likely to commit a crime but choose not to is controversial. It is unfair to those who are not likely to commit the crime, as they receive no reward but are equally innocent.
One example of paying people not to commit a crime is a publicly subsidised taxi service intended to reduce drink driving. Somebody goes to a bar and drinks alcohol. They might decide to drive home or take a taxi. Their decision to drive, and commit a undoubtedly serious crime, might be based on the risk of having an accident (which many foolishly ignore), the risk of being stopped by the police and the price of a taxi fare.
The government can try to solve this issue by promoting awareness of the risks of drink driving, increasing the importance of the first consideration in the drinker’s mind. Many countries have gut-wrenching adverts showing the harrowing effects of accidents that have resulted from drink driving. This puts the dangers to the front of people’s minds and makes drink driving less socially acceptable. However, alcohol is a notorious judgement inhibitor. Putting aside the thought of danger and feeling contempt for do-gooders are all too easy when drunk.
With regard to the second consideration, the state can put more police on the roads and make the penalties more severe. Of these, more police might be more effective. In my opinion, a criminal commits a crime because he or she assumes that they will not be caught, rather than the assumption that the punishment will be bearable. I doubt that drinkers about to drive say to themselves “Oh well, it’ll only be a year without a driving license.” The ‘Bring back flogging and hanging’ brigade get a grim pleasure from seeing ne’er-do-wells being punished. Such braying for blood is mere sadism. However, a higher probability of being arrested might have an effect.
The third consideration could be to subsidise the taxi companies in an attempt to reduce the cost of fares. If the money comes from general taxation, teetotalers and stay-at-home drinkers might balk at paying for a service that they do not use. The money could also come from a tax levied on bars. Again, customers who stroll tipsily but harmlessly back home from a pub might begrudge having to pay for others. They should console themselves with the no doubt decreased likelihood of being run over.
Is the proverbial stick preferable to the carrot? Tax payers might broadly agree to their money being spent on schemes that reward others for not commiting crimes, which they themselves never intended to commit, because the benefits outweigh the costs. But what are the consequences? Does a subsidised taxi service not encourage people to drink more? Is it not more prudent to make drinkers fully take moral, legal and financial responsibility for getting themselves home?
Dr. Feynman is an engaging lecturer; it is perhaps regrettable that all lectures are not so entertaining.
At one point Dr. Feynman says that “It is impossible, when picking one particular example of anything, to avoid picking one that is atypical in some sense.” Of course, this is true by definition. If we were to find an example that was typical in every sense, it would be atypical in that it was not atypical in some sense, and so it would be atypical in some sense. Oh, the joy of school boy pedantry!
The video is rendered with a Silverlight player, which is perhaps not available on all platforms. It also used 100% of my CPU’s clock cycles and caused the laptop to crash three times. I guess that Silverlight has a long way to go before it can threateningly compete with Flash. On the one hand, it’s a good thing that Flash has some more competition (not that I am accusing the Adobe engineers of laziness, mind). On the other hand, the internet will not be as rich a place as it might be if a lot of content is only available to Microsoft’s customers. I thought that that war had been won a long time ago.
Such surveys are always a bit of fun. The “Happy Planet Index” apparently places Britain way down the list. I thought that this was a bit disappointing but not contrary to impression given to me by the many miserable gits that I have encountered over the years. However, the rankings seem especially spurious. It’s calculated using life expectancy (measurable), “happiness” (not sure about what units we use for that) and the environmental impact of the country.
What’s the last one got to do with anything? I once flew to Thailand for two weeks in the middle of winter. I’m sure that my carbon footprint must have rivalled Bono’s that January, but I was a lot happier that the S.A.D. sufferers that I left behind. I’m sure there are many people who feel a little bit guilty about not reusing their shopping bags and not unplugging their mobile phone chargers when not in use, but I don’t think that it makes them unhappier than the people of Burma. Nagging guilt about flying with Ryanair to Prague for a stag-do versus cyclones, war and oppression. Hmm? Which is more likely to make people unhappy?
the journalist reports that “Leaders of G8 nations are to set a target to cut greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050″. This seems like something that is difficult but possible. It is something that can be controlled by humans. I doubt that the leaders of the G8 actually have such power. They might represent the populations that emit the greatest amount of carbon dioxide, and measures that they take might reduce carbon dioxide emissions in their countries. However, their power does not extend to every other nation on the planet, which will probably produce a greater share of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions by the middle of the century. However, global carbon dioxide emissions are controllable by humans.
The article goes on to say that “[the G8 leaders] will also call for any human-induced temperature rise to be held below 2 degrees Celsius”. Is this going to be a legally binding limit? What sanctions will they take against the earth’s climate if it disobeys they proclamations? Xerxes once had the Hellespont whipped after a storm washed away a bridge, will future leaders resort to such tactics? King Canute order the tides to stop but ended up getting his feet wet.
I do not want to appear defeatist. I think that there are measures that we can take in order to reduce the impact of human activity. There are clearly much better ways of producing energy than burning coal and petrol. Governments have a role to play in moving to newer technologies. But politicians are no more able to ban global warming than they are able to set the ration the circumference of a circle to its diameter.
Earlier this evening, I went with my girlfriend to eat Samyeopsal, a barbecue pork dish. The traditional accompaniment for this pork dish is Soju, a type of sweet vodka from Korea. One normally drinks the liquor from a two ounce shot glass, so a 360 ml bottle will almost fill seven glasses. Traditionally, one fills the glass of one’s dining partner whenever their glass is empty. If two people drink one bottle, then one ends up drinking four glasses and the other drinks three. If three people drink one bottle, then one person drinks three glasses, but the other two just have two glasses. Because it is awkward for one person to drink alone, one often ends up buying a second bottle to keep the solitary drinker company. The only time that there would not be one shot left over is a table of one (how sad!) or a table of seven (who would certainly order more than one bottle, anyway). Choosing a size of bottle than is a prime multiple of the size of a standard glass is clearly a clever trick from a marketing point of view.
I’m reminded of the periodicity of cicada migrations that Daniel C Dennett writes about in “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”. Apparently, colonies of different species of cicadas return to different sites at different periods. However, the periods are always a prime number of years, sometimes as long as seventeen years. The explanation that he offers is that if there is a predator that returns to that site regularly (say once ever two years) then the cicadas will avoid that predator more often if the period of their return is a prime number. If they returned with a periodicity that was a composite, non-prime number of years, then one of the factors of that number of years might be the frequency that the predator returned, which would ensure that they met up regularly.
