Month: January 2008

Sex, Food, Drug, Aggression

Yeah, we all thought it was “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll” but it turns out that you can replace Rock and Roll in that classic formulation with food and aggression[*1] :

ScienceDaily (Jan. 15, 2008) — New research from Vanderbilt University shows for the first time that the brain processes aggression as a reward – much like sex, food and drugs – offering insights into our propensity to fight and our fascination with violent sports like boxing and football.

“Aggression occurs among virtually all vertebrates and is necessary to get and keep important resources such as mates, territory and food,” Craig Kennedy, professor of special education and pediatrics, said. “We have found that the ‘reward pathway’ in the brain becomes engaged in response to an aggressive event and that dopamine is involved.”

That explains both hip-hop and, strangely enough, the Creepy Burger King.

MST3K Returns!

Well, almost.

Joel Hodgson has gotten the band back together and formed Cinematictitanic.com[*1] , where Joel, Josh, Trace, Frank, and Mary Jo come together to do what they do naturally–riff on really, really bad movies.

No, as far as I know there’s no Gizmonic Institute, no Crow T. Robot, no Tom Servo, but hey!  You can’t have everything.

Meanwhile, the “other guy,” Mike Nelson, is still going strong with his Rifftrax[*2] .

Double the pleasure, double the fun.  Buy!  Buy!  Consume!  Consume!

Moody’s says U.S. credit rating at risk

Why is that, you ask?

Because we’re mindlessly pouring money down the trough of entitlement programs, according to the report in Financial Times[*1] :

In its annual report on the US, Moody’s signalled increased concern that rapid rises in Medicare and Medicaid – the government-funded healthcare programmes for the old and the poor – would “cause major fiscal pressures” in years to come.

Unlike Moody’s previous assessment of US government debt in 2005, Thursday’s report specifically links rises in healthcare and social security spending to the credit rating.

“The combination of the medical programmes and social security is the most important threat to the triple-A rating over the long term,” it said.

Steven Hess, Moody’s lead analyst for the US, told the Financial Times that in order to protect the country’s top rating, future administrations would have to rein in healthcare and social security costs.

“If no policy changes are made, in 10 years from now we would have to look very seriously at whether the US is still a triple-A credit,” he said.

The quagmire in Iraq is sooooo bad . . .

That we’re going to turn Anbar Province over to the Iraqis in March[*1] .

In a telephone interview from Iraq, Marine Maj. Gen. Walter E. Gaskin, commander of the roughly 35,000 Marine and Army forces in Anbar, said levels of violence have dropped so significantly—coupled with the growth and development of Iraqi security forces in the province—that Anbar is ready to be handed back to the Iraqis.

Thus far, nine of 18 Iraqi provinces have reverted to Iraqi control, most recently the southern province of Basra in December. The process has gone substantially slower than the Bush Administration once hoped, mainly because of obstacles to developing sufficient Iraqi police and army forces. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that he expects the process to continue.

This, to some people, constitutes “losing in Iraq.”  You know who you are . . .

Poll Dancing

Culture-jamming[*1] for our generation[*2] :

My goal as a political opinion poll dancer[*3] is to take up as much of his time as possible by giving misleading, long-winded and totally inaccurate answers to survey questions in hopes of one day producing an outcome — not a Hillary Clinton victory, per se, just a result that defies the pollsters — like the one produced last night in the “Live Free or Die” state. And, while I would like to take sole credit for the results in New Hampshire, I know I must share credit with others like me.

Not sure I approve.  Pretty sure I don’t disapprove.

The $2500 Car

In India, that is, from Tata Motors, the big dog in India for carmaking.
Yahoo News[*1] :

Tata planned the car years ago as a safer and more affordable alternative for the millions who often ferry families of four, plus baggage, on motorbikes and scooters.

“It’s a dream come true,” Ashok Singh, a constable with the Delhi Police, said at the show. “I look forward to buying that car. My wife will be really happy.”

New cars are preferable to buyers in India, where the absence of an organized market for second-hand cars makes buying them a tedious and sometimes risky process.

Cholesterol necessary for normal muscle gain?

Hmm.

From ScienceDaily[*1] :

“One possible explanation is through cholesterol’s important role in the inflammation process,” he noted.

“As you exercise, your muscles can become sore because they are rebuilding muscle mass. More cholesterol may result in a more robust inflammatory response. We know that inflammation in some areas, such as near the heart, is not good, but for building muscles it may be beneficial, and cholesterol appears to aid in this process.”

Riechman said that subjects who were taking cholesterol-lowering drugs while participating in the study showed lower muscle gain totals than those who were not.

“Needless to say, these findings caught us totally off guard,” he explains.

It appears that we know about as much as the human body’s actual biochemistry as we do about the Earth’s climate.

Simian-blogging: chimps build cultures like humans do

ScienceDaily[*1] :

By looking at how chimpanzees prepare their food, the research team discovered that one colony used stone tools to crack nuts, whereas another colony used wooden tools as well as stone. They found these methods of preparing food have spread 4000km from East to West Africa over the more than 100,000 years. The team also found this true of other techniques, such as grooming. The research suggests that behavioural variety is due to how chimpanzees socialise rather than genetics as previously thought.

Hmm.  Culture is not determined by biology.  What could it possibly mean?