The Power of Red

by Anna Luerssen

Like most teenagers in suburbia I took a driver’s education class shortly after I earned my learner’s permit. Though I picked up critical driving tips, and got plenty of practice in the driver’s seat, one of the most interesting facts I learned concerned car insurance and the color red. According to my teacher, drivers with red cars had to pay higher insurance rates. Apparently this was due to the fact that people in red cars were more likely to speed. I’ve since learned that the relationship between red and speeding is actually a pervasive urban legend. Nevertheless, it piqued my interest in the association between color and behavior. Though red might not be associated with speeding, it has been found to relate to a variety of psychological processes and outcomes in both humans and non-human primates including dominance, competitive sports outcomes, achievement, and sexual attraction.

Dominance, Aggression, and Sports

There is a large body of animal research showing that red coloration is related to testosterone levels and by extension to dominance and aggressive behavior – a signal that members of the species use to guide their actions. In one recent study, for example, researchers evaluated whether wild male rhesus macaques (monkeys) would be less likely to steal food from a human researcher if the researcher was wearing red. According to their hypothesis, red clothing signals that the human is dominant and aggressive, and therefore the monkey would be more hesitant to steal from or challenge them. The study was conducted on Cayo Santiago – a small island in Puerto Rico that is home to a large population of free-ranging rhesus macaques. Two experimenters would locate a male monkey, approach him together, take out a plate with a slice of apple on it, and then step away once it was clear the monkey saw them. The monkey could then approach and steal the apple from one of the experimenters. One experimenter wore a red shirt, and the other wore either a green or blue shirt. Across conditions the monkeys disproportionately stole from the experimenter NOT wearing red – even if the “red” experimenter was female (~70% of the time).

This research followed from a wildly publicized study in 2005 evaluating a somewhat similar process in humans. The researchers followed contestants in combative sports, including boxing, tae kwon do, and two types of wrestling, in the 2004 Olympics. These contestants were randomly assigned to either wear red or blue uniforms during the games. The researchers found that contestants wearing red were significantly more likely to win their matches. This was especially the case when the two competitors were relatively equal in ability (red gave them an extra nudge). Similar results were found with teams assigned to wear red in an international soccer tournament in 2005. The researchers argued these results are due to an evolutionary history – in which red coloration was related to testosterone levels and by extension dominance. In this way, it became a cue regarding which male would win a competition – a cue still used by humans today. How exactly this process operates, however, is still unclear. Is the competitor wearing red more confident or their opponent more intimidated? Other researchers have argued that the effect has to do with the referees’ biases. For example, referees were found to give more points to tae kwon do competitors wearing red than to those wearing blue, even when the performances were identical. Whatever the reason, the effect is there, and should be considered in high stakes competitive sports. 

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Deep Intellect

[ed. Excellent article on one of the most fascinating creatures on the planet.  Inside the mind of the octopus.]

by Sy Montgomery, Orion

Octopuses are classified within the invertebrates in the mollusk family, and many mollusks, like clams, have no brain.

Only recently have scientists accorded chimpanzees, so closely related to humans we can share blood transfusions, the dignity of having a mind. But now, increasingly, researchers who study octopuses are convinced that these boneless, alien animals—creatures whose ancestors diverged from the lineage that would lead to ours roughly 500 to 700 million years ago—have developed intelligence, emotions, and individual personalities. Their findings are challenging our understanding of consciousness itself. (…)

Another measure of intelligence: you can count neurons. The common octopus has about 130 million of them in its brain. A human has 100 billion. But this is where things get weird. Three-fifths of an octopus’s neurons are not in the brain; they’re in its arms.

“It is as if each arm has a mind of its own,” says Peter Godfrey-Smith, a diver, professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and an admirer of octopuses. For example, researchers who cut off an octopus’s arm (which the octopus can regrow) discovered that not only does the arm crawl away on its own, but if the arm meets a food item, it seizes it—and tries to pass it to where the mouth would be if the arm were still connected to its body.

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Artwork: Hokusai, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, 1814
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DIY Minimal Business Cards on the Go

The ever-clever Mikey Burton has come up with a fun idea that I just may try out. He was asked to participate in the “Designer Challenge” for the October issue of Computer Arts Projects and was tasked to put a new spin on traditional business cards. So his idea was to pare down a card to the absolute essentials: name, website and possibly a stylized bear illustration, and print it in a unique way.

What’s really neat about the cards that Burton made was the tool he used: a 3/4″ inspection stamp. Not exactly a paragon of style and modern design, but it works great for this purpose. Plus, it’s self-inking and it’s small enough to carry around in your pocket or on a keyring, so you can turn any scrap of paper into a minimal DIY business card.

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Emotions

Million Dollar Divers

by Michael Behar, Wired

Not long ago, the toy of choice for the nautically inclined with a few million dollars to spare was an opulent megayacht. Today, it’s a personal submarine.

The dive to the deep is a thrill in itself, but subs also have another advantage over above-water crafts: the ability to just duck out of sight. “Nobody knows where you are or what you are doing,” says Bruce Jones, founder of both US Submarines and Triton Submarines. “You come into port, register with customs, and then disappear.”

The newest subs can go deeper, faster, and farther than their predecessors, thanks to advances in microprocessor design, composite materials, and communications technology. “Electronics and batteries are being adapted for submersibles from more rapidly developing and better-funded communities,” says marine consultant and undersea explorer Don Walsh, an oceanographer who has been plumbing the depths since the days when private submarines were just a figment of the future.

Perhaps the greatest leap forward has been in the glass: Precision molding systems can now fashion massive, flawless spheres thick enough to withstand 16,000 pounds of pressure per square inch—the crushing weight of water at 35,000 feet deep. “Glass gives you an incredible immersive experience,” Jones says. “The refractive index closely approximates seawater, so when you’re inside the sub the boundaries disappear.” And what you’ll encounter below trumps anything you’ll see from the deck of your yacht.

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Cashing In on Your Hit YouTube Video

by Claire Cain Miller, NY Times

Katie Clem posted a video on YouTube this month of her daughter Lily’s poignant and funny reaction to her sixth birthday present, a trip to Disneyland, for her friends and family. Then it went viral.

In three weeks it has been watched more than five million times, and Lily has become a minor Internet celebrity. Of far more importance, at least to Lily’s parents, the video is poised to make enough money from advertisements to send Lily to college.

Creating a video that attracts millions of viewers and becomes a pop culture phenomenon involves an unpredictable cocktail of luck and timing. A dash of cute babies or people acting like idiots can only help. But once a video goes viral, making some cold cash depends on quick action.

Here is some advice on how to take advantage of your 15 minutes of Internet fame from people who did just that.

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Triticum Fever

by Dr. William Davis, Boing Boing

Quick: Name a common food, consumed every day by most people, that:

• Increases overall calorie consumption by 400 calories per day
• Affects the human brain in much the same way as morphine
• Has a greater impact on blood sugar levels than a candy bar
• Is consumed at the rate of 133 pounds per person per year
• Has been associated with increased Type 1 Diabetes
• Increases both insulin resistance and leptin resistance, conditions that lead to obesity
• Is the only common food with its own mortality rate

If you guessed sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, you're on the right track, but, no, that's not the correct answer.

The true culprit: Triticum aestivum, or modern wheat.

Note that I said "modern" wheat, because I would argue that what we are being sold today in the form of whole grain bread, raisin bagels, blueberry muffins, pizza, ciabatta, bruschetta, and so on is not the same grain our grandparents grew up on. It's not even close.

Modern wheat is the altered offspring of thousands of genetic manipulations, crude and sometimes bizarre techniques that pre-date the age of genetic modification. The result: a high-yield, 2-foot tall "semi-dwarf" plant that no more resembles the wheat consumed by our ancestors than a chimpanzee (which shares 99% of the same genes that we do) resembles a human. I trust that you can tell the difference that 1% makes.

The obvious outward differences are accompanied by biochemical differences. The gluten proteins in modern wheat, for instance, differ from the gluten proteins found in wheat as recently as 1960. This likely explains why the incidence of celiac disease, the devastating intestinal condition caused by gluten, has quadrupled in the past 40 years. Furthermore, a whole range of inflammatory diseases, from rheumatoid arthritis to inflammatory bowel disease, are also on the rise. Humans haven't changed -- but the wheat we consume has changed considerably.

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[ed. Cute.  But I suspect many might think the location of the perforation is a bit more fluid than this - unless you're talking about attorney fees, of course.]

h/t: TYWKIWDBI via snuh

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Lawren Harris: Clouds, Lake Superior, 1923 - Oil on canvas (Winnipeg Art Gallery)
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One Google Books To Rule Them All?

by Maria Bustillos, The Awl

Hellzapoppin' in the world of intellectual property rights these days. Lawsuits, corporate flim-flamming, the claims of far-sighted academics and developers, furious authors and artists and the conflicting demands of a sprawling Internet culture have created a gargantuan, multi-directional tug-of-war that will inevitably affect what and how we will be able to read online in the future. Recent developments indicate, amazingly, that there are grounds for hope that the public will in time benefit from the results of this epic tussle.

In 2002, Google began scanning the world's 130 million or so books in preparation for the "secret 'books' project" that eventually became Google Books. In 2004, they began offering access to these scans, displaying the irritatingly-named "snippets" of books in their search results. And in no time at all, they were getting sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers for copyright infringement. These lawsuits, plus two more that were filed subsequently against Google, resulted in a six-year rollercoaster ride that, like all good roller coasters, exhilarated, terrified and rattled all the participants, and ended by thumping their quaking bods to a halt, last March, in very nearly the same place from which they'd started out. But during that time the world had changed, and an altogether new way of bringing printed books into the digital commons had emerged. Enter the nonprofit alternative for bringing the world's books online for all readers: the newly-funded Digital Public Library of America.

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The Civil Wars

[ed.  I don't think a cover song could be any more unrecognizable than this.  I like this version better.]

Happy Birthday, Patriot Act

From:  Patriot Act Turns 10, With No Signs of Retirement (Wired)

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How Symphonies Grew Strong Audiences By Killing The Myth Of The Average Consumer

by Adrian Slywotzky, Fast Company

Marketing managers for major orchestras had always assumed that convincing people to give the symphony a try was the key to gaining subscribers. "Get people through the doors!" was their mantra, assuming that the sheer beauty of the music would lure them back.

But when they actually studied the numbers, they discovered that getting new people wasn't the problem. They weren't passing the audition. Customer churn was killing these orchestras.

It turns out the secret to unlocking demand for classical music--as for most products--is discarding the Myth of the Average Customer. Designing a product offer to appeal to one archetypal customer is always wasteful--one size fits few, not all. Instead, demand creators have to constantly focus on demand variation, asking how customers differ from one another and how those differences impact demand. This process of "de-averaging" can be complex, but it offers huge opportunities.

In 2007, several orchestra managers joined forces to analyze their collective marketing challenge. A pro bono third-party study by Oliver Wyman (Audience Growth Initiative) found that on average, symphonies lost 55% of their customers each year; churn among first-time concert-goers was 91%! The study also confirmed that the solution to churn was to move beyond "averages" and to begin looking at the wide variations between starkly different customer groups.

The symphony audience was divided into a core audience, trialists (first-time concert-goers), non-committed (a few concerts a year), special occasion attendees, snackers (people who purchase small subscriptions for years), and high potentials (frequent attendees who haven't bought a subscription). In Boston, for example, members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) core audience represented just 26% of the customer base but bought 56% of the tickets. Trialists composed 37% of the base, but bought only 11% of the tickets. In monetary terms, core audience members had a 5-year value close to $5,000; trialists, just $199. With that data, the orchestras' new mission became more targeted. The goal wasn't broadly to reduce churn but to convert trialists into steady customers.

The symphonies compiled a list of 78 attributes of the classical music experience, from the architecture of the hall to the service at the bar to the availability of information on the Internet. Using online surveys and other techniques, the list was whittled down to 16 factors with the greatest impact on attendance.

Horns and strings! It turns out the quality of the orchestra, magnificence of the hall, and virtuosity of the conductor were not particularly important attributes. What was? Drum roll!  It was...

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Image: Flickr user trp0

Care and Dignity

[ed.  With the demise of the Community Living Assistance Services and Support program (Class Act) from the 2010 Health Care law, American families still face a daunting problem in caring for the elderly.  Another issue involves the dignity of dying patients and their ability to influence how their final time (and suffering) is managed (below). These are two sides to the same coin - searching for solutions that better address the needs of the aging. Advances in medical technologies have extended our physical lives but may have also deepened the moral, emotional and economic uncertainties that surround prolonged care.]

by Paula Span, NY Times

Most fall weekends, you can find Randee Laikind buttonholing people at the Shelburne Falls Market in western Massachusetts, or wielding her clipboard on the town common in nearby Greenfield or Amherst.

“I try to be very polite,” she told me. “I say, ‘Would you consider signing this petition to put the Death With Dignity Act on the ballot, so Massachusetts citizens can vote on it?’”

Ms. Laikind, who’s 63 and no stranger to activism, has been a bit surprised by the response, or lack thereof. “I’ve never had anyone say no,” she said. “They don’t even ask me questions; they just say, ‘Where do I sign?’”

One Greenfield woman started crying. “She said, ‘If only this had been around last year when my father was dying.’” She added her signature, Ms. Laikind said. So did Ms. Laikind’s former internist, whom she ran into in a restaurant.

Since mid-September, a small cadre of similar volunteers has gathered about 70,000 voters’ signatures, aiming to make Massachusetts the fourth state where terminally ill patients may legally seek physicians’ help to end their lives. The organizers, who call their campaign Dignity 2012, need only 70,000 to put the question on the state ballot in November 2012, but to be sure they have enough to pass scrutiny, they’re aiming for 100,000. The signatures must be submitted by the end of November.

The proposed statute, closely modeled on an initiative that Washington State voters passed in 2008, would allow a patient who’s expected to die within six months to self-administer lethal medication.

It includes a long list of precautions and protections: a lot of physician counseling and information; two doctors verifying that the patient is mentally competent and acting voluntarily; a 15-day waiting period between a first and second request, and another 48 hours before the prescription can be filled. At least one of the two witnesses to the written request can’t be a relative or an heir. And of course, the patient can always change his or her mind.

“Thousands and thousands of people have personal experience that leads them to support this,” said Steve Crawford, a spokesman for Dignity 2012. “They understand that as advanced as our medical technology is, we can’t relieve everyone’s suffering. Those end-of-life decisions belong to the individual.”  (...)

We don’t know how things will play out in Massachusetts more than a year from now. But we do know, from Oregon’s long experience and Washington’s shorter one, what happens after all the furor, the ads, the charges and countercharges when a so-called death-with-dignity law actually takes effect.

What happens is less than one might expect.

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Desire (2010)  by  Harutyun Gulamir Khachatryan
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Knit a Sweater, Help a Penguin

[ed.  This is cute and I can appreciate the sentiment, but I was at the Exxon Valdez command center and here's what birds need:  Dawn dishwashing detergent, blow dryers, lots of towels, and, sometimes, forced feedings. By the time birds arrive they've usually consumed a considerable amount of oil just from excessive preening, their systems are in shock, no one waits around until they're 'warm'.]

A recent oil spill on New Zealand’s coast has left the environment and wildlife in shambles — including the local blue penguin population. While volunteers are working hard to rescue and clean the animals in the region, they require a little bit of crafty help: tiny sweaters, or penguin pajamas, for the rescued birds. These woolen sweaters keep oil-soaked birds warm until they’re well enough to be cleaned and prevent them from ingesting oil from their feathers.

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