The Aggro Ego

Why is anger such a seductive emotion? We are in love with anger. Watch almost any of our movies, read a novel, hell - watch the news any night, and at some point you will encounter information intended to make you good and angry. We even have a whole entertainment genre dedicated to the airing of unpleasant emotions like anger and sadness - it's called "drama."

When you look at how anger actually affects the social fabric among people, you wonder why we put up with it being so prevalent. Anger shuts down communication, and it is designed to force an outcome, when working cooperatively to let one evolve often results in a solution that is both more appropriate and more robust. Still, getting your anger on just feels good. Giving in to our emotions and our impulses feels good. For that matter, eating a Twinkie feels good.

And yet, we exercise self-control in the face of that tempting Twinkie, in order that we have a healthier body. But does that self-denial come at a price? Studies have shown that people who exercise restraint in the face of one temptation are measurably more quick to anger right afterward. They call this effect "ego depletion." Psychologists David Gal and Wendy Liu, however, have been studying self-control and anger, and they have found evidence that not only does exercising self-control tend to make it harder for us to contain our anger later on, but that self-control may in fact be inherently aggravating.

Maybe this is why we love fictional drama and angry news so much - it gives us an outlet for all of that aggro ego.

Read more here: Where Do Bad Moods Come From? via Wired.com

Everything Evolves...

...even us. It's hard for us to really understand, because we experience things individually on a personal timescale, compared to which the development of our genetic inheritance goes on at a geological pace. But are we evolving? Yes. The gene for the "alcohol flush reaction" which is common among Asians arose around 10,000 years ago, and a set of genes to help cope with low oxygen levels (read: high altitudes) may have evolved among Tibetans as recently as 3,000 years ago.

Researchers are finding that the human genome is constantly changing, and that many traits are influenced by dozens of genes at a time, enabling those traits to be selected for more quickly in response to changing environmental pressures.

Read more here: Adventures in Very Recent Evolution via NYTimes.com

Signs of Intelligence?

Anthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger is constructing a database of our earliest signs and symbols - markings drawn or painted by humans on cave walls up to 60,000 years ago. The interesting thing about this work is that certain symbols recur at different caves, geographically distant, and across tens of thousands of years. What does all this mean? Petzinger has no solid answer, but she does have some interesting theories. Entoptic patterns very similar to these symbols are seen by shamans in altered states of consciousness, and it could be that these oddly common cave art symbols arose directly from the human brain, and were accessed via religious trance.

Read more here: Human Ingenuity: A 100,000-Year-Old Story via forbes.com

The Illusion of Coherence

Think you know how you think? Think again. Your memory is full of holes, and your memories might not even be real. Our sense of self (the ego) glosses over all of this stuff in the endeavor of fostering a sense of personal continuity, but if you look closely at your experience of the world, everything begins to come apart. Don't feel too bad about it. Cosmologists have noted that physical matter exhibits the same behavior, for what it's worth.

Read more here: 5 Mind Blowing Ways Your Memory Plays Tricks On You via Cracked.com

Civilization, Unleaded.

To what extent are we responsible for our actions? Civilizations over thousands of years have struggled with this question while formulating their laws and moral standards. In general, it has been assumed that if you have poor impulse control, that is your problem to solve, and therefore it is the action of a responsible society to put you in prison or execute you if you are aggressive and unable to integrate socially.

The more we learn about the human brain, though, the more evidence we are gathering that indicates that how we behave relies greatly upon the development and health of that piece of gray matter between our ears. Poor impulse control appears now to be less a conscious decision, and more a result of irregularities in the formation of the brain. In particular, lead exposure has been shown to cripple the prefrontal cortex of growing children, resulting in a permanent loss of volume in that area of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is directly involved with executive function and, you guessed it, impulse control. Kids - in particular, boys - who are exposed to lead grow up to be, on average, much more aggressive.

Researchers have been puzzling for years over the precipitous drop in the U.S. murder rate over the past few decades. Can it be that phasing out leaded gas and paint has helped our young men avoid becoming aggressive? There are many other factors to consider as well, but I think the most important point is this: in our effort to create a civil society, an ounce of prevention is worth several tons of cure.

Read more here: The Crime of Lead Exposure via Wired.com

Resourceful Reptiles

More on the brainy-nonhuman-species front: Anole lizards are proving to be smarter than some birds when faced with simple puzzles. Our assumptions that animal intelligence and problem-solving capabilities require large, mammalian-style brains are continuing to be eroded. I especially like the last paragraph:

"For decades researchers have discovered that the world's animals are often far more clever than society has given them credit for. Along with the great apes, crows and octopus have been shown to use tools. Bees can count. Hens experience empathy for their chicks. Paper wasps can other recognize wasp-faces. The more we learn about animal intelligence, the less distinct we are."

Read more here: Brainy lizards rival birds in intelligence via mongabay.com

Ivy League

Can we hear it for the University of Utah? They have recently begun an initiative to cover one of their buildings with "solar ivy" - a technology developed by New York-based Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology (SMIT). Each ivy "leaf" is a small photovoltaic panel, and the electricity generated by the array will go towards decreasing the University's reliance on the grid. About 2/3 of the project has been funded already, and the remaining funds are being raised by selling sponsorship of individual leaves.

Read more here: Leaf-shaped solar panels could coat buildings like ivy via Wired.co.uk

DONATE and buy your own leaf here: University of Utah Office of Sustainability, Solar Ivy Initiative

Go, Fish!

Photos have recently surfaced of a fish using tools- the first time this behavior has ever been documented photographically. A blackspot tuskfish in Australia's Great Barrier Reef has been captured breaking clamshells against a rock in order to get at the juicy meat inside. It can be argued that the fish isn't actually using a "tool" since it is bringing the clamshells to the rock, and not picking up a rock with which to crush the clamshells - but for an animal with no hands I think it's doing pretty well. The point is, a non-tool-using species would simply try to open the clam with its mouth and give up if it didn't have the strength. Bashing the clam against a rock is an example of meta-level thinking - something we used to think that only humans did.

Read more here: This is the first ever photo of a fish using tools via io9.com

Beautiful

Ocean Sky from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.

The first picture of the Earth seen from space is hailed as the moment when we began to understand our real situation in the universe. Now you don't have to be an astronaut to get a peek outside our ordinary world - photographers with time-lapse equipment have been making some really amazing nightscapes lately. Want to get the sense that we really are just little motes of life stuck to the surface of a spherical bit of rock hurtling through the vastnesses of space? Check it out.

Even Stevens

We know when we're being gypped, and we don't like it at all. Research has shown that we have an instinct to punish the unequitable - scientists devised a game where volunteers partnered up, and one partner was given some money to share with the other partner, any way he or she saw fit. The key to the game was, if the other partner rejected the split, nobody got any money. At around an 80% to 20% split, the responding partners tended to get angry at the inequity and make sure the unfair partner didn't get paid, even though logically this meant that both partners "lost." We would rather punish a greedy personality, it seems, than to make a little money ourselves.

The NYTimes posits that this sense of fairness is one of the roots of our humanity. We as a species have benefited because we as individuals learned to squelch behavior that would lead one of us to benefit at the cost of the many. I think it's evident this struggle is far from over, but it is becoming clear that to call us "selfish, greedy, and destructive" and to leave it at that is missing a large part of the picture.

Read more here: Thirst for Fairness May Have Helped Us Survive via NYTimes.com