damnedifIknow
damnedifIknow's JournalCaveman Instincts' May Favor Deep-Voiced Politicians
Deep voices, which are tied to higher levels of testosterone, may trigger our “caveman instincts,” according to the authors of the study, which is published in PLOS ONE. These instincts associate leadership ability with physical prowess, as opposed to wisdom and experience.
“Modern-day political leadership is more about competing ideologies than brute force,” co-author Casey Klofstad of the University of Miami said in a press release. “But at some earlier time in human history it probably paid off to have a literally strong leader.”
Building on earlier research regarding CEO’s, Klofstad and biologists Rindy Anderson and Steve Nowicki of Duke University first surveyed 800 volunteers. Participants completed an online questionnaire with information about the age and sex of two hypothetical candidates, and indicated whom they would vote for in an election. The candidates ranged in age from 30 to 70.
Those who were surveyed overwhelmingly supported candidates in their 40s and 50s.
“That’s when leaders are not so young that they’re too inexperienced, but not so old that their health is starting to decline or they’re no longer capable of active leadership,” Klofstad said.
“Low and behold, it also happens to be the time in life when people’s voices reach their lowest pitch,” he added.
For the second part of the study, the researchers asked another group of volunteers, consisting of 400 men and 403 women, to listen to pairs of male and female recorded voices saying, “I urge you to vote for me this November.” Each paired recording was based on one person whose voice pitch had been altered up and down with computer software.
Once again, the volunteers were asked to select their favorite candidates. They were also asked which voice seemed stronger to them.
The deeper-voiced candidates won 60 to 76 percent of the votes, but when the researchers analyzed the voters’ perceptions of the candidates, they were surprised to find that strength and competence mattered more than age.
Finally, Klofstad and his colleagues calculated the mean voice pitch of the actual candidates from the 2012 U.S. House of Representatives elections. As predicted, they found that candidates with lower-pitched voices were more likely to win."
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/caveman-instincts-may-favor-deep-voiced-politicians-150807.htm
Why ‘Do What You Love’ Is Pernicious Advice
Miya Tokumitsu, a contributing editor at Jacobin magazine and author of the new book Do What You Love And Other Lies About Success and Happiness, criticizes the pervasiveness of this idea in American work culture. She argues that “doing what you love” has been co-opted by corporate interests, giving employers more power to exploit their workers.
I’ve noticed in other mainstream outlets that there’s been a lot more writing about work and work culture, particularly professional work. I think there really had been a kind of simmering widespread frustration with the state of work. American wages have been pretty flat since the 1970s, Americans are working longer, they’re more productive than ever, and they don’t seem to be getting much more in return for all of that.
At the same time there are these cultural icons that project these pictures of work through media and social media as this blissful thing. In the old-media case it’s Oprah, and in newer media it’s Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop.
* I think this idea that work somehow makes you a good person is something that is very American to me. There’s this idea that it has something to do with your character as a person. I feel that it’s very ingrained and I don’t completely disavow it, too. Work is held up as something that is more revelatory about your character than the interests you have or the way you care about other people or care for other people. I feel like it comes from people who are earnest in their striving and want to do good things and want to be good people, but it leads to this culture where people are just working all the time.
*I think work is where we spend a lot of our lives. And we wed our identities so tightly to our job titles in the U.S. You don't want your identity to be someone who just puts in eight hours and checks out.
I’ve tried this little experiment when I meet people in non-work situations and try to see how long I can talk to them without asking about their work or have them ask me about my work. It's actually really hard to last longer than four minutes. "
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/do-what-you-love-work-myth-culture/399599/
The harrowing story of the Nagasaki bombing mission
For nearly eight hours, the crew sped toward mainland Japan, each man hunkered in a cramped workspace with no access to external radio communication. Outside, monsoon winds, rain, and lightning lashed at them. Inside, they experienced moments of terror, such as when the bomb began to arm itself—a red light blinking with increasing rapidity—midway to their destination. One of them, bearing the newly minted title “weaponeer,” grabbed the Bomb’s blueprints and raced to figure out what was wrong.
The story of what transpired inside the plane carrying Fat Man to Nagasaki, Japan, has not really been told in detail to this extent, although some excellent overall renditions have been written of the atomic bomb program as a whole. Bits and pieces of the story have appeared in the diaries of the men who flew the mission—although sometimes the diaries appeared years after the event, or were based on hurriedly scribbled, hand-written notes jotted down during the flight.
It is a story of astonishing screw-ups that easily could have plunged the plane, the men, and the bomb into the Pacific Ocean. That the mission succeeded is genuinely miraculous. New, in-depth particulars of what went wrong, recounted here in a single narrative for what may be the first time, matter a great deal."
http://thebulletin.org/harrowing-story-nagasaki-bombing-mission8592
Cecil's Death Is Great for Rage, and Turns Out He's Also Great for Raising Cash
Cecil the lion’s death last month has resulted in donations of more than $780,000 to the team at Oxford University that was studying him.
Researchers at Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit said Tuesday the money would help them study lions not only in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, where Cecil lived, but also in adjoining countries.
* The outrage over the lion's death has also pressured airlines, including Delta and American, to announce they will stop transporting hunting trophies.
David McDonald, the head of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, said Tuesday the global response to Cecil’s story “transcends the tragic fate of one lion, and sends a signal that people care about conservation and want it to be reflected in how humanity lives alongside Nature in the 21st Century.”
The $780,000 in donations was aided by a $100,000 matching pledge from American philanthropists Tom and Daphne Kaplan."
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/cecil-supporters-donations/400436/
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