Apes that share their food

by King Chimp (Soon to be Riley Bobs)

Bonobos opt to share their food
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature]

One of our closest primate relatives, the bonobo, prefers to share its food rather than dine alone, scientists report.

[More]

Pretty cool demonstration that other primates show what can only be described as altruistic behavior. These apes would unlock a door with other bonobos so that they could all eat the meal also.

I think it is likely that in some highly social animals there is a selective advantage to sharing food amongst the group. It is also likely that it is done with the expectation that the ‘kindness’ will be paid back later.

Do bonobos have a concept of social debt? Does a social group built on favors, barter, etc. have selective advantages over a group of selfish apes?

I would certainly make the suggestion that a human community purely built on its own social selfishness would not be very stable. We shall see where this research leads us.

The difference between the creative and the commonplace

Crossposted at SpreadingScience]

by BruceTurner

Edward Tufte Presidential Appointment
[Via Daring Fireball]

President Obama has appointed Edward Tufte to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, “whose job is to track and explain $787 billion in recovery stimulus funds”. Outstanding.

[More]

This is pretty cool. Tufte is one of my favorite people, not only for his highly original books on data presentation but also for his sheer force of personality. He is one of the most entertaining, enlightening speakers I have ever heard.

I attended one of his workshops in Seattle probably close to 20 years ago. There was an interchange that has stuck with me ever since, because it so succinctly illustrates the divide between truly original, innovative change and the typical corporate response.

Tufte was discussing the different interfaces between the Mac OS and Windows. After going through a lot of the pluses he saw in the Mac and a lot of the minuses in Windows, he stated that the Mac looked like it had been created by one or a small group of people with a single purpose, a single view of how the information should be presented, while Windows looked like it had been done by a committee.

He then said that all the best presentations were this way – a single point of view forcefully pushed onto everyone. Someone in the audience then asked but what happens if your single point of view turns out to be wrong, to not work.

Tufte replied, simply, “You should be fired.” You could almost audibly hear the intake of everyone’s breath. That is exactly what they feared and why they would always want to retreat into committee decisions – they can’t be fired if the committee made the decision. FUD is what drives most people.

The creative, the innovative do not really fear failure, often because they are adaptable enough to ‘route around the damage’ quickly enough. They do not usually doubt the mission they are on and are certainly not uncertain about the effects. Read about the development of the Mac. They were going to change the world, no doubt about it. While you can see that there really was a focus of vision, there are also lots of ‘failures’ that had to be fixed. The key was to fail quickly, leaving time to find success.

And permitting committed individuals to find their own way to success rather than rely on committees to fix them.

Committees very seldom fail quickly, since failure is the thing they fear the most. They would rather succeed carefully than perhaps fail spectacularly. And they very seldom produce revolutionary change.

Single viewpoint, change the world, rapidly overcome obstacles, adaptable. All characteristics of successful change. They do not fear spectacular failure because the fruits of success will be so sweet.

Updated: Insect vs. bird

Praying mantis vs. hummingbird
[Via Boing Boing]

A rivalry I never knew about, captured in glorious slow motion. Science blogger GrrlScientist says the hummingbird involved lived to fight another day.

[More]

Wow, spunky little praying mantis. It completely took that hummer down.

And, there are some links at Boing Boing to some photos showing that sometimes the praying mantis wins! (The photos were taken by a very scientifically astute boy but may be upsetting to some.) The photos certainly demonstrate that the praying mantis is perfectly happy getting its food from animals other than insects.

Live is pretty incredible.

[UPDATE: And the video sure makes this movie much scarier than previously. Well, maybe only a little but the possibilities are more interesting.]

Appleology – More fun than the Cold War

by ˙Cаvin 〄

iPad ad shows book prices from $8 to $15, Steve Jobs at Oscars
[Via AppleInsider]

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was in attendance at the Oscars Sunday night, and during the telecast the first iPad ad revealed, upon closer look, prices for some titles in the new iBookstore.

[More]

Back in the day, people who tried to read between the lines of Soviet policy were called Kremlinologists. They would look for the removal of portraits and such as signs of the inner workings of the Soviet central government.

Similarly, Appleologists try to examine an opaque organization by looking for little bits of information that fall through the cracks. Like this ad, which people have been examining in slow motion in order to identify what the prices will be for iBooks. Based on an ad mockup.

Well, it is better than nothing. And less threatening to the world than old style, Cold War Krmelinology.

Yet it gets warmer

by Mikael Miettinen  

Global Update
[Via Open Mind]

I’ve finished processing the southern hemisphere GHCN data, and computed the temperature according to the simple procedure for the entire globe. The results will probably be no surprise, since several others have replicated my results already, with the same outcome. Here’s the temperature history (annual averages) for pre-cutoff stations only, compared to that for post-cutoff [...]

[More]

For those ‘skeptics’ who claim they need someone else’s code before they can determine whether the data is any good, we have this great set of work. Using the data that is available to anyone, he examined what effect on the warming trend one would see with certain measuring stations dropped out or not.

Some ‘skeptics’ have suggested that these stations were purposefully dropped in order to increase the global temperatures. But, as can be seen by actually examining the data, there was very little difference in the warming trends sen with the two types of stations and the little difference that was observed actually suggested a warmer trend with the stations that were dropped.

I expect the denialists to ignore this. Even though similar results have been described by others who examined the data independently.To paraphrase Galileo: Eppure diventa più caldo!

[Listening to: Surf Hammer (Live) from the album "War Of The Surf Guitars!" by Big Ray And The Futuras]