Medieval Metallurgy, the Evolution of Decoration, and the Shangri-La Diet
A new BBC series Metalworks! is about the history of British metal working. My theory of human evolution says that decoration — more precisely, our enjoyment of it — evolved because it helped the most...
View ArticleHow I Will Teach Next Semester: Human Evolution and College Teaching
I have wondered for a long time how to apply my ideas about human evolution to teaching. My theory of human evolution says that specialization and trading are central to human evolution and includes a...
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Did Jules Hoffman deserve the 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology? “Jules again, in his very subtle manner, described the Toll story as a team-work. I sat there, nauseated.” Babies given...
View ArticleThe Power of the Willat Effect: Rinsed versus Unrinsed Tea
During my last visit to New York I bought a new black tea. I started drinking it a few weeks ago. I brewed it various ways (different amounts of tea, different steeping times, etc.) but had a hard time...
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Olive oil and the Willat Effect. “You can read about great olive oils, and their vast superiority over bad oils, all you want. . . . But until you try first-rate olive oil for yourself – actually put...
View ArticleTaobao’s Double Eleven: World’s Biggest eHoliday
Do the heads of eBay and Amazon know about the Chinese shopping site Taobao (like eBay without auctions)? If so, why don’t they imitate it? Maybe they can’t match its bigger selection (e.g., food,...
View ArticleNo More Antixoxidants
This fascinating blog post by Josh Mittledorf points out that antioxidants, once believed to reduce aging by reducing oxidative damage, have turned out to have the opposite effect. By reducing a...
View ArticleConsistent- versus Inconsistent-Handed Predicts Better than Right- versus...
At Berkeley, Andrew Gelman and I taught a freshman seminar about left-handedness. Half the students were left-handed. We did two fascinating studies with them that found that left-handers tend to have...
View ArticleAquatic Ape Theory Revised
I became interested in the aquatic ape theory of evolution because it pointed me in a fruitful direction — testing omega-3 fatty acids (e.g., flaxseed oil), which turned out to have easy-to-detect...
View ArticleOccupational Specialization as Far Back as the Bronze Age
Linear B is an ancient form of Greek, used around 1500 BC (the Bronze Age) in Mycenean Greece. Stuff written in Linear B gives us one of our oldest views of human life and can reveal things that other...
View ArticleHobbyist Science vs. Professional Science vs. Personal Science
In a TED talk, Paula Scher, a graphic designer, told how a hobby of painting maps turned into something like a job. I was up in my country house, and for some reason, I began painting these very big,...
View ArticleThe Willat Effect With Gin
The Willat Effect — named for Carl Willat, whose limoncello comparison tasting made me notice it — may happen when you experience two similar versions of one thing close together. (For example, sip one...
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Psychology and neuroscience research fraud at Washington University. Puzzling scientific fraud. Someone made up a paper and put fictitious names on it. Why? On the face of it, the goal was to hurt...
View ArticleMy Theory of Human Evolution: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
From Entertainment Weekly: EW: Are you religious? Jodie Foster: No. I’m an atheist. But I absolutely love religions and the rituals. Perhaps everyone enjoys rituals. (Even scientists.) It’s a curious...
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Mo Ibrahim: How I Became a Teacher
I met Mo Ibrahim, a high school teacher in New York, because of his Behind the Approval Matrix blog, which I admired. I interviewed him about his I Got Uggs! blog. Recently he has become interested in...
View ArticleWhy Fashion Evolved
My theory of human evolution says that fashion (changing preferences for well-made goods) evolved so that artisans — the innovators of long ago — would not do the same thing over and over. In an...
View ArticleElegant Variation, Fashion and Employee Free Time: What Do They Have in Common?
I am learning Chinese by studying a Chinese version of The Three Little Pigs. The story contains a phrase that irritated me: “Three’s home” (in Chinese). Although I did know the Chinese for “home”, the...
View ArticleNick Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto, the Inventor of Bitcoin
There were many funny things about Leah Goodman’s claim in Newsweek that a California engineer invented bitcoin. One was her observation that he put two spaces after a period — just like the inventor...
View Article“Why Fuss About Paleo Life?”
dearime asks: Why do people fuss so much about paleo life? The population has grown so much since that it’s easy to believe that we’ve evolved a long way from then. Jared Diamond wrote a paper about...
View ArticleWhat is Teaching?
Russ Roberts says: Great teaching is more than passing on information. For that you can read a book or watch a video. A great teacher provokes and takes you on a journey of understanding. That requires...
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