j.p. rushton of the university of western ontario has found that genetics play a major role in social responsibility. using identical and non-identical twins' responses to a social attitude scale, rushton calculated that genes account for 42% of socially responsible attitudes, with home environment only accounting for 23% of differences. the remaining 35% falls to outside environmental factors. i think the article is forthcoming from proceedings of the royal society b. rushton published similar results in the mid-eighties, where he attributed 50% of personality measures to genetics.

does this mean we get less credit for being "good" people?

(rushton's highly controversial book race, evolution, and behavior used demographic data to suggest that races have more differences than just skin color, including athletic ability and even brain size and intelligence.)

Labels: social

it wasn't thanksgiving dinner.

apparently there's a mountain lion (cougar) loose in my ohio neighborhood, which i learned only after returning from a two mile run on deserted country roads, lined by woods, in the area. perhaps i should run with a shotgun next time.

some reading in case you make a trip to newark, ohio any time soon.


nice kitty...

there's been some controversy over whether to shoot or tranquilize the cat. county animal control director jon luzio says the animal may have to be shot, because it's just too hard to figure out how to tranquilize it. although they've tentatively found a home for the animal, luzio says it would be difficult to handle it.

that should be the last from the "strange ohio news" category for a while.

update: as of january, the lion is still supposedly roaming about.
update2: just adding a label.

Labels: personal

or, so a new study says. in this experiment, people rated dead people higher on moral values than the living. psychologist jesse bering gives this explanation:

“It’s like we want to remind these people who’ve died how good and nice they are, so they won’t hurt us,” Bering said. “None of this is conscious, of course, but it doesn’t have to be, so long as it works in nature.”

the article also details an experiment in which subjects are more honest when they're told the ghost of the graduate student who created the test was spotted in the room before. this presumably leads back to the earlier conclusion that humans are concerned with the ramifications of offending the dead.

so, according to the results of these experiments, we have a subconscious belief in the supernatural, even when we avow that we do not. we believe the dead can come back from beyond and punish us, or at least witness and disapprove of our behaviors, which sounds pretty far out. although this may be the case, it doesn't seem like the only explanation available. bering is missing the more nostalgic aspects of human nature. in the first experiment, it could be we're also more inclined to view the dearly departed favorably because we're no longer competing with them for resources. contra to the above hypothesis, we may actually no longer see them as a threat as rivals, and are therefore free to be less hostile and critical.

in the latter experiment, the mention of the graduate student's ghost could keep thoughts of the good, honest, wonderful, etc. graduate student at the forefront of participants' minds more often and just guilt them into being more honest...

a local man broke into the home of my ohio neighbor, dicky inscho, attempting to steal his money and marijuana. the man later returned, at which point dicky has gotten his shotgun and fired, killing the thief.

he called the police immediately. when the police arrived, they promptly hauled dicky, who is in a wheelchair and suffers from cerebral palsy, to jail for possession of marijuana. although marijuana is used to treat cerebral palsy, it's of course not legal.

the legality of his medicine seems to have already played a part in the media's treatment of the shooting. recent news reports have not painted dicky in a positive light, even insinuating that he was a drug dealer. had his medicine been legal, perhaps the reports would have skewed differently. i know this kind of thing probably happens all the time, it's just disturbing to be so close to it.

all your friends are thinking of you, dicky!

on a related note, good luck monday!

(vacuous) update: he's only been charged with one misdemeanor charge of drug possession, so far... officials were supposed to decide on additional charges yesterday, and we haven't heard anything else, which i guess is good news?

Labels: drugs

a good day for:
the blind
thumbing your nose at copyright law
changing your mind
hypochondriacs
phillips-magnavox

a bad day for:
neurotic women who aren't saudi princesses
cell phone users
faking it

i've always had a big problem with grocery store bonus cards - it's just one more hassle, and doesn't really save any money in the end. although it gives me the creeps that marketers analyze my food choices, i can't stand that the police and other agencies can subpoena the records. i usually break down and get one, though, but give fake information.

however, yesterday i came to like my giant bonus card a little bit.

back in july i lost my keys. i've pinned it down to one of several places, but those places include seattle proper and one of several commercial airplanes. i was fairly sure i'd never see them again. however, last week amy from giant foods called my home in ohio (the number i'd apparently given), saying they'd found my keys and were mailing them to me once i called to confirm my address. apparently someone had dropped my keys in a mailbox, and they'd been sent to the giant foods headquarters in maryland.

so yesterday i received, via certified mail, my old keys.

for now, i'm going to use my card a little less grudgingly, and think of it as a working-woman's version of the tiffany key ring (until, of course, the police come to question me about that suspicious asparagus purchase).

obesity and a high trans-fat diet are all now linked to permanent neuron atrophy. in the former study, loss occurs in areas that regulate satiation, perhaps creating a cycle - but it's not clear which comes first.

pain is also linked to cell loss in recent studies, although the article doesn't make clear whether researchers controlled for possible painkiller effects. what's clear is that loss occurs in areas with less activity, giving credence to the phrase "use it or lose it." either way, scientists say loss may be permanent too, and in the grey matter (which is a big deal). (thanks to alina for the pain link)

new research may be of help.

Labels: neuroscience

remember your elementary school bully? maybe she didn't get enough protein.

emaciated babies are antisocial kids, apparently, according to a new study (via yahoo news). how can scientists separate effects of physical and psychological neglect and poverty in this study? although it's possible that malnutrition and antisocial behavior could occur simultaneously, both symptoms of neglect, it's more likely that it's neurological. this has already been proven in rats anyway, with malnutrition even making ssri antidepressants ineffective (well, they rats were still aggressive at least. they may have been very happy).

the wsj this morning had an interesting article about the racism debate – is it an inevitable human attribute? some evolutionary psychologists claim it is hardwired - ancestors wary of outside tribes weren’t killed as often, so the “us vs. them” response was passed on to descendants. this may or may not be true, and is nearly impossible to prove. the more interesting question addressed in the article is about the “true you”

in implicit studies, where participants must react before they are able to control their innate responses, we’re all supposedly racist and sexist. however, in a new study when participants were able to look at faces for 500 miliseconds longer than in other studies, no such implicit reaction occurred, and the brain response is even different, utilizing newer and more cognitively complex brain areas (frontal cortex as opposed to amygdala). since in life, we rarely have to make 30 millisecond decisions, i’m not sure it matters that these responses do occur. and who’s to say those 30 millisecond responses are really more “us” than the frontal cortex and anterior cingulate responses?

Prof. Cunningham demurs: “It’s silly to say that these automatic reactions are the true you.” or that they are any more “you” than thoughtful reactions that reflect consciousness and beliefs”

of note, i recall that when one's frontal cortex is damaged, the person becomes "soulless," losing his/her personality altogether... so perhaps the frontal cortex is more "you" than those more primitive areas.

look for cunningham's article in the upcoming issue of psychological science. i've begun the in-press article and must say it's fascinating.

as an aside, earlier i tested my own implicit reactions, and they do exist. somehow i'm not too worried.

reference: "Racism Studies Find Rational Part of Brain Can Override Prejudice" by Sharon Begley, WSJ, 11/19/2004, B1

Labels: decision making, neuroscience

if your car is "garaged" in arlington county, you owe the county a 4.4% tax, unless you can prove you’ve paid a similar tax elsewhere. you also owe a decal fee of $24 for the honor of proudly displaying proof of your good citizenship. due to something called the personal property tax relief act of 1998 (pptra), the tax is reduced by 70% if the car is used largely for personal transportation.

however, as with most things, all is not as it appears. arlington county is not having to make due with less because of the pptra. on the back of my personal property tax bill:

Your tax bill has been reduced by 70% on the first $20,000 of the value for qualifying vehicles. Alrington County will be reimbursed by the Commonwealth for this amount, once you have paid the balance due shown on your tax bill.

from my understanding of this statement, virginia state taxes are used to subsidize arlington county taxes, which seems like quite a strange thing to do, especially for a county actively encouraging its citizens to be car-less. basically, people out in lee county are paying part of my tax bill (an aside: when looking at a map to choose a county to reference here – yes i’m that big of a nerd – i noticed there are two counties next to each other, one called patrick, the other called henry. cool).

i'm not sure of the origins of this arrangement. this is all i could get out of the office of commissioner of revenue (vehicle@arlingtonva.us):

If a vehicle is used for personal use then the state pays 70% of the taxand the taxpayer pays the remaining 30%.

i doubt if one or two emails count as investigative journalism, but what do you expect for free?!

wired.com reports that electronic voting booths may have registered between 130,000 and 260,000 more votes for dubya than voters really cast. as bush won by a little more than that (350,000), the article is concerned that florida's electoral college cast their ballots for the wrong guy.

what i found incredibly interesting when reading this article is the methodology used to determine that a potentially crucial number votes were waged for the wrong candidate:

The researchers [berkeley grad students] examined numerous variables that might have affected the vote outcome. These included the number of voters, their median income, racial and age makeup and the change in voter turnout between the 2000 and 2004 elections. Using this information, they examined election results for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in the state in 1996, 2000 and 2004 to see how support for those candidates and parties measured over eight years in Florida's 67 counties.

They discovered that in the 15 counties using touch-screen voting systems, the number of votes granted to Bush exceeded the number of votes Bush should have received -- given all of the other variables -- while the number of votes that Bush received in counties using other types of voting equipment lined up perfectly with what the variables would have predicted for those counties.

the article admits that the technique "hasn't been formally peer-reviewed," but it has been backed up by seven professors, although they never claim these professors were nonpartisan or unbiased - or even good scientists. it sounds like quite shaky science to ground such serious allegations. instead of making sure their facts add up, they went straight to the press, which is both unprofessional and not academic.

based on previous voting behavior and personal characteristics, researchers made some sort of algorithm to determine how many votes would be cast this time around. age, race, and income were all factors in their determination of how each individual would vote. to make such assumptions about someone's voting behavior based on those factors electorate is disturbing and probably inaccurate.

towards the end of the article we get activists touting interesting conspiracy theories, such as, "it’s relatively easy to program something into the system so that only every 50th vote would automatically go to Bush." the allegations may be true, and there are significant flaws with the evoting system to be sure. i certainly can't understand why so many people would vote for such a turkey. however, just because i can't understand it doesn't mean it didn't happen, and you need a little more than this to make a convincing case.

on another note, the study was prompted after the grad students read about voting controversies in the blogosphere.

after reading an article on ultimatum games, i wondered whether perception of desert had anything to do with the outcome. since subjects' positions (of giving or accepting money) were known to be random, both subjects felt neither deserved the cash more than the other. they were therefore inclined to split it equally. the book i'm (slowly) reading now, the wisdom of crowds, speaks of studies that do manipulate this variable, distributing money based on a the results of a test, or so the participants believe.

In those experiments, proposers offered significantly less money, yet not a single offer was rejected. People apparently thought that a proposer who merited his position deserved to keep more of the wealth.

the point, you ask? well, it just confirms the idea that humans have a strong intuitive sense of desert. although my personal experience says that most people also have a strong sense of entitlement, this evidence points to the contrary, at least when confronted one-on-one.

for a long time, scientists thought that central nervous system cells could not regenerate as peripheral nervous system cells could. this theory was useful in explaining a great deal about brain damage’s effects. however, a short while ago scientists discovered chemicals the brain produced to actually inhibit the regeneration (repair) of neurons, and even before that they discovered that dying neurons released chemicals to kill the cells around them (sort of like shutting off one flooding cell of a ship). these discoveries gave great hope to researchers trying to create drugs to prevent brain damage due to stroke and injury. if scientists found a way to suppress these chemicals, what progress could be made for brain therapy!

scientists are still working hard on these issues (there've been some bumps in the road), but a big problem is that this is great for preventing damage, but just don’t do much for those who already have incurred severe brain damage in the distant past. it seems that now scientists have discovered a new phenomenon that could produce the same kind of shift in thinking about the brain as those studies. researchers have discovered how to create stem cells inside a rat’s brain. these multipotent cells could of course then develop into anything their neighboring cells told them to – e.g., neurons.

if only growing neurons were a better spectator sport, it’d make a great x-prize.

Labels: neuroscience

we can come up with a million reasons why bush won. his win came as a shock to many, esp. as fervent as the opposition was. the democrats really did try every trick in the book, and with good reason: the stakes were high, and they foresaw the impending apocalypse with bush’s reelection. in traveling to several cities, i saw hundreds of kerry and dnc folks on street corners. celebrities told us we’d die if we didn’t vote [for kerry]. documentary filmmakers crafted propaganda films to sway. a record amount was spent on campaigning. although it’s purely anecdotal, i for one didn’t see this push from the conservative side.

how could have all of this money – and not just money, but honest, grassroots effort - fail? reasons abound, including that bush’s expenditures were also significant, and comprable. the polity typically favors the incumbent. it could be as simple (and unbelievable) as: the american people just preferred his policies, esp. his appeal to morality.

i’d say the campaigning method liberals used may have had some small effect as well. earlier i linked to this article:

The weakness of persuasive messages is they tend to give incomplete information…. [W]hen people realize the facts have been tweaked, they may end up distrusting all the information provided.

the general phenomenon may be the same here. celebrity chants and filmmakers spin could have made americans more skeptical of the liberal message, producing the exact opposite affect they desired. although it rallied the core liberal constituency and made some leaning democrat lean more heavily, it also may have turned off many slightly sympathetic to bush or even some who liked neither (such as myself). i doubt if the phenomenon is powerful enough to have to turned the polity off to the democratic message altogether, but instead of convincing the undecided of bush’s evils, it put them on their guard about the liberal messenger.

also, liberal efforts may have convinced them that bush was a bad choice, but they did little to convince us that kerry was a good one. and, when unsure, many people tend to stick with the default, the incumbent.

so, in summary: don’t ask p. diddy to campaign for you, and if you tell us one person is bad, at least give us a viable alternative.

update: speaking of p. diddy, nice shirt! (thanks for the tip, mark!)

Labels: ideology

today a friend emailed me and said:

On another note, John has been lecturing me on the importance of voting (even though I DID vote) because I said that I think everyone has a right to vote or not to vote. He couldn't grasp the idea and we've been going around in circles.

that prompted my rant below, which i fully acknowledge may be influenced partially because i cannot vote this year...

Importance of voting: what a crock. Myths abound. I awoke this morning to some lady from a women's rights organization on the radio screeching, "If you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain, remember," which is one of the most dangerous statements I've ever heard.

Voting a very pathetic and ineffectual expression of one's civic duty. To really enact change you should donate to or volunteer for lobbying organizations. Today on NPR they were saying that the governor of PN has given expatriates an extra 8 days to get their ballots in - how much more obvious does it have to be that those ballots will have little, if any, sway on the outcome?

It's the system that's the problem, not the person in office. The incentive structure of government offices is to increase encroachment into our personal lives, no matter how well-intentioned the politician is. The size of gov't has increased each year since the office was created, even under Reagan. And you can't vote out a system.

Even if voting were meaningful, usually the options are ridiculous. As the boys from Southpark say, it's basically like choosing between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich. I refuse to add to the legitimacy of a candidate whose policies are antithetical to the majority of the ideals I hold. I refuse to put support, no matter how ineffectual, behind someone I think will do a bad job. I can't think of anyone running this year I would put support behind.

I do believe in voting in some ways, though. It increases an electorate's awareness about issues, which is important to some degree. However, its negatives may outweigh its benefits. Again, you're giving legitimacy to someone who you don't always agree with, and they'll take that "vote of confidence" and run, thinking they have the backing of "the people." What voting has done to our conception of government is also bad in some ways. As Hayek warned in the Constitution of Liberty, only under democracies did people begin to think it was unnecessary to limit the government's reach into our economic and personal lives. To me, that's a bad, bad, thing.

marginal revolution has a good post on reasons to vote.

Labels: political, social