Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

I found this article in Psychology Today to be a really interesting set of conclusions from specific behavioral studies. The ten truths listed are:

  1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
  2. Humans are naturally polygamous
  3. Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
  4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim
  5. Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
  6. Beautiful people have more daughters
  7. What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals
  8. The midlife crisis is a myth – sort of
  9. It’s natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they’re male)
  10. Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist

If you are pressed for time, read #1, #3 and #4 (they are related), and #8.
If you are really pressed for time, just read #1.

What the Geek Squad client doesn’t know won’t hurt them


Geek Squad, the lovable collection of nerds in every Best Buy, may see a shake-up shortly. The Consumerist ran a 3-month sting on their operations and captured video of Geek Squad agents stealing customers’ computers for porn, images, and music. Check out the link for a video of the agents at work. From the article:

This is not just an isolated incident, according to reports from Geek Squad insiders alleging that Geek Squad techs are stealing porn, images, and music from customer’s computers in California, Texas, New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere. Our sources say that some Geek Squad locations have a common computer set up where everyone dumps their plunder to share with the other technicians.

Can you blame them? Maybe this can be considered as the personal “tax” of having a strange man in white shirt and skinny black tie come into your home to fix your computer…

Rubber ducky, you’re the one!

After 15 years, the ducks will finally land.

29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago.

Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack.

And now they are heading straight for Britain. At some point this summer they are expected to be spotted on beaches in South-West England.

The ducks have traveled as far as Alaska and the Artic circle. In fact,

So precious to science are they that the US firm that made them is offering a £50 bounty for finding one.

See the map below for their path.

Kwik-E-Mart, live


The Simpons Movie will be released July 27 (I give the series one more season, tops, after the movie). 7-11 and Fox are engaged in a fascinating promotion.

Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of “The Simpsons” fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art.

Those stores and most of the 6,000-plus other 7-Elevens in North America will sell items that until now existed only on television: Buzz Cola, KrustyO’s cereal and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees.

An interesting photoset is here.

Tech Cocktail 5

I have signed up for Tech Cocktail 5, the 5th gathering of technology entrepreneurs and professionals in Chicago. Note that this is the 5th gathering in the past year of its kind. TC4 sold-out within 24 hours (although sold-out is not the right term – the event has free admission and free drinks).

If you are at all interested in web companies and other high-tech endeavors, I highly encourage you to attend.

(Note: for those of you who find this kind of event knee-knocking, I suggest you don’t attend…)

Disallowed interest

From the Becker-Posner blog (this one from Richard Posner):

Medieval Christianity forbade the charging of interest on the ground that it was unnatural for money to increase (as by lending $100 at a 10 percent interest rate so that at the end of the year the $100 has grown to $110), because unlike pregnancy there was no mechanism by which an inanimate object such as money could reproduce itself. Behind this superstition lay undoubtedly a hostility to commercial society, which persists today in some quarters of the Muslim world; Islam forbids charging interest although substitutes are tolerated. The concern with lending has persisted into modernity even in Western societies. Usury laws, which set a ceiling on interest rates, and the Truth in Lending Act, which requires detailed disclosure of annualized interest rates in consumer loans, are examples of this concern.

The Eldest Child Benefit

From the annals of Stupid Genetics, here’s a new one.

The child raised as the eldest in a family has a slightly higher intelligence quotient, on average, than younger siblings.

Found here (it’s all over the Internet, so your sources may vary).

Cows are bad for the environment


By one UN report, livestock accounts for 37% of all human-induced methane. What about the livestock is causing this? Gaseous releases. What can we do about it?

Wired has five ideas.

5 Ways to Cope With a Gassy Cow

1. New Bacteria
Large kangaroos eat like cows but produce less methane. The Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries in Australia posits that bacteria in marsupials’ intestines are key, so giving the organisms to bovines may cut methane production.

2. Gas Capture
California inventor Markus Herrema proposes a special pouch to be worn over a cow’s mouth. The bag captures exhaled methane, then microbes inside consume the gasses, growing into a biomass that can be used as a cleaner source of energy.

3. Supplements
Like Beano for bovines, feed additives (such as vegetable oils and fumaric acid) have been shown to cut cows’ methane production up to 20 percent. Chlorinated hydrocarbons could inhibit methane. Downside: They’re expensive and can cause cancer.

4. Vaccination
Drugs are being developed to eliminate the methane-producing bacteria inside a cow’s gut. Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and New Zealand’s AgResearch are among those working on a burp vaccine.

5. Taxes
If you can beat ’em, maybe you can tax ’em. In New Zealand, a proposed methane tax was defeated after farmers protested. A more politically palatable solution is proposed in Canada, where ranchers can qualify for carbon credits.

(Note: this entry assumes that global warming is “bad”, an assumption that some of you may take offense towards)