Front Ears of Science
1. WIRED FOR CHEERFUL OR TEARFUL
Being healthy, that’s something to be happy about. And being happy tends to keep you healthy. It’s a positive feedback loop – and if you don’t happen to be in the loop, who’s fault is that?
For as long as any of us can remember, the market has been flooded with self-help books and articles and therapists promising to reform our self-inflicted defeatism. Norman Vincent Peale’s irrepressible grin kept broadening for 60 years as he piled up many millions from his “Power of Positive Thinking.” (Happy makes money makes happy)
Now some of the experts are changing their tune.
If you’re just naturally gloomy and maybe depression-prone, it may be in your genes, and researchers at the University of Essex in Britain think they know which gene it is.The story is in the Feb. 28 Economist, and the Proceedings of the Royal Society has the whole study.
The gene in question has to do with governing the flow of serotonin – which isn’t too surprising because the leading anti-depressant drugs are serotonin re-uptake inhibitors
There’s a long version of the gene and a short version.
You inherit one from each parent, and if they both happen to be long, you’re in luck and you tend to look on the sunny side of life. If one or both are short, you’re more likely to be pessimistic and subject to mood disorders. Rotten deal – who wouldn’t be pissed?
But having seen many such “breakthroughs,” we can be sure that these findings will be elaborated into three genes and then nine, or they’ll be overthrown entirely.
See? A little dash of pessimism about research gives us something to cheer about.
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2. BACKWARD BABY TALK
A breakthrough in counterintuitive parenting!
Developmental psychologist M. Suzanne Seedyk writes in the New York Times that baby strollers should face backwards, not forward, so the baby can see Mom or Dad or whoever is pushing.
After a study of 2,700 families, she concluded that backward-facing babies are more likely to interact, to talk and be talked to, and thus to develop language and social skills.
The rule doesn’t apply to driving a car — except for males listening to Limbaugh or O’Reilly on XM talk radio, who are used to looking backwards and whose development has already been arrested.
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3. EAT YOUR MUSHROOMS, YOU CANNIBAL
It’s hard enough for us hamburger eaters to look a cow in the eye. Now they’re deciphering the genome of a mushroom and, yes, just ask Richard Dawkins – we and the fungi have a common ancestor somewhere back there.
Vegetarians, take note – your guilt-free days are over.
True, this is not just any mushroom. It’s a truffle, and a handful of the right kind of truffles – the kind that looks like horse droppings — might cost you $300 or $400. But enough of that. Money cannot measure the soul of a fungus, nor can genetics – though they’re certainly trying.
French and Italian scientists have just sequenced the full genome of the black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) and they’re working on the white truffle, which grows wild and has to be found by truffle-sniffing pigs.
Or dogs, sure, but we prefer pigs. We think they should sequence the genome of these virtuoso pigs and clone them to be used like bomb-sniffing dogs by shoppers in Whole Foods to find the best tasting delicacies. On the other hand, who cares what we think?
What the researchers care about is the use of molecular biology to catch counterfeiters.
Croatian and Chinese truffles are being mislabeled as the choicest, most expensive varieties from Perigord in France or Alba in Italy. Wholesalers can’t always tell the difference, but pigs can; and, before long, geneticists will be able to emulate the pigs.
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4. THE HARRUMPHER-IN-CHIEF
Presidents have advisors, and a modern president has to have a science advisor.
A story on this indispensable function in Science (the AAAS journal) mentioned the somewhat surprising fact that James Killian, the first to occupy that post in 1957, was not a scientist but rather an electrical engineer.
Not so fast, replied Roger Pielke in a letter in the Feb. 20 issue. Killian wasn’t an engineer, either, nor a PhD in anything. His training was in management and administration.
So he was qualified to be, say, the Harrumpher in Chief, like one of the blithering incompetents so cherished in the Bush administration.
But Killian had somehow become president of MIT – not bad for a non-technical nonacademic – which must have impressed the Eisenhower team. And in fact he’s credited with having been a first rate presidential science advisor in the post-Sputnik era when politicians first realized that – hey – science can get you power! And big, fat contracts!
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5. THE SCIENCES
Psychology is all neurology,
which is just biology
(which is destiny)
and biology is all chemistry,
a subset, really, of physics,
which is part of astronomy
since all those forces trace back
to the way the big bang banged
– either a tirade or a tantrum,
we’re not sure which,
but when we find out,
finally,
we’ll know the gender of god,
thus what to expect next
. . .which is psychology
– from Alan Van Dine’s latest book, If Instead of Apes we had come from grapes, we wouldn’t just yet be wine (Towers Maguire Publishing)
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re: 3. EAT YOUR MUSHROOMS, YOU CANNIBAL
– They are the fungus amungus.
Comment by Lynn — March 4, 2009 @ 1:02 pm
Makes creationism seem quaint, doesn’t it — people spooked by the thought of being descended from apes when the fact is they also share ancestors with slime mold and athlete’s foot.
Comment by Al — March 4, 2009 @ 7:47 pm