Study: Men's Biceps Predict Their Political Ideologies - Lindsay Abrams Positions on economic redistribution correlated with upper-body strength. Valentin Flauraud/Reuters PROBLEM: The pre-societal, animal model of conflict resolution is simple, brutal, and effective. Leaving aside political gambles, moral considerations, and the like, the strong are more willing to fight for their self-interest, while the weak find it more advantageous not to assert themselves. Extrapolated to a fairly simple conflict of interest -- wealth redistribution -- do modern humans operate under the same logic? METHODOLOGY: Researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark and UC Santa Barbara collected from several hundred men and women in Argentina, the U.S., and Denmark. RESULTS: Rich men, who would benefit least from redistribution, were more likely to be opposed to it -- but only when they also had large biceps. These associations remained significant even once the researchers controlled for political party.
Permaculture Voices Podcast | Permaculture Voices Conference: 4 Day Mega Event. March 13-16, 2014, Temecula, CA Formally The Permaculture Voices Podcast Honest, hard conversations about farming, business, and life with those trying to make a living doing something that they love and dealing with life in the process. You’ll hear from experts who are far down their respective paths and people just like you who are starting out and making a go of it and learning as they go. I’ll dive deep into each story, looking at the why and the how, leaving you with practical tools, tips, and techniques that you can put into use right away to be part of the change by doing your work. Remember… though you may not be able to change the world, you can change your world, so go for it.. Support via Patreon or PayPal DO THE WORK – The Daily Podcast Growing and Selling Microgreens with Chris Thoreau: Thinking About Growing Microgreens as a Business – The Tedious, Detail Oriented Reality of Growing Microgreens – Episode 3 How Chris Thoreau Started, Build, and Grew a Thriving Microgreens Business – Episode 1 Greens. The b Reels:
50 Astounding Facts About Rainforests (INFOGRAPHIC) Rainforests play a critical role in the maintenance of our planet's good health. Not only are they home to more than half of the world's species of flora and fauna, rainforests are also the source of about 40 percent of the planet's oxygen supply. They also help to maintain the Earth's fresh water levels, as well as regulate temperatures and weather patterns. Sadly, despite being so rich, diverse and life-giving, humans continue to wreck these priceless habitats through deforestation. "Every second, a slice of rainforest the size of a football field is mowed down. According to the National Geographic, rainforests could vanish from the planet completely within the next century if current deforestation rates continue. To learn how you can help save the rainforests, visit the websites of environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Nature Conservancy. Suggest a correction Contact Us Use this form to alert a HuffPost editor about a factual or typographical error in this story.
Change This - We're on a mission to spread important ideas and change minds. Why bankers are intellectually naked A definitive explanation of the industry’s economics warns the causes of the financial crisis have not gone away and will return The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do About It, by Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig, Princeton, RRP£19.95, RRP$29.95 The UK’s Independent Commission on Banking, of which I was a member, made a modest proposal: the proportion of the balance sheet of UK retail banks that has to be funded by equity, instead of debt, should be raised to 4 per cent. This would be just a percentage point above the figure suggested by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The government rejected this, because of lobbying by the banks. Why might even so tiny an increase in the equity-funded proportion of the balance sheet be objectionable? If you think that running banks with so little loss-absorbing equity is crazy, you are right. It makes no sense to build either bridges or banks sure to collapse in the first big storm.
Political Motivations May Have Evolutionary Links to Physical Strength Men’s upper-body strength predicts their political opinions on economic redistribution, according to new research published in Psychological Science , a journal of the Association for Psychological Science . The principal investigators of the research — psychological scientists Michael Bang Petersen of Aarhus University, Denmark and Daniel Sznycer of University of California, Santa Barbara — believe that the link may reflect psychological traits that evolved in response to our early ancestral environments and continue to influence behavior today. “While many think of politics as a modern phenomenon, it has — in a sense — always been with our species,” says Petersen. In the days of our early ancestors, decisions about the distribution of resources weren’t made in courthouses or legislative offices, but through shows of strength. Men with low upper-body strength, on the other hand, were less likely to support their own self-interest.
Elusive Entropy We’ve all heard it. We think we understand it: entropy is a measure of disorder. Combined with the Second Law of Thermodynamics—that the total entropy of a closed system may never decrease—it seems we have a profound statement that the Universe is destined to become less ordered. The consequences are unsettling. Sure, the application of energy can reverse entropy locally, but if our society enters an energy-scarce regime, how can we maintain order? It makes intuitive sense: an energy-neglected infrastructure will rust and crumble. A narrative has developed around this theme that we take in low entropy energy and emit a high entropy wake of waste. But wait just a minute! The Measure of Entropy From a thermodynamic standpoint, the total entropy of a system has a simple definition. This is very closely related to the heat capacity of a system or object. Where is the Disorder? Informational Entropy The fans went wild. Gee, von Neumann couldn’t have been more right. What’s the Difference?
DROM "That debt is neither inevitable nor ethical is one of the powerful assertions of Strike Debt, whose brilliant manual is both a practical handbook and a manifesto for a true debt jubilee: an economic rebirth in which the indebted are freed and financial institutions are reinvented. It's a stunning intersection of ferocity (against the debt industry) and compassion (for the people whose lives are broken by debt). In years to come, we may look back on it as a landmark in social transformation; right now it is both useful and exhilarating." —Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster and Wanderlust: A History of Walking "The impact of the neoliberal assault on the U.S. population in the past generation has rightly been designated a 'failure by design.' —Noam Chomsky, author of Hopes and Prospects and Making the Future: The Unipolar Imperial Moment "This manual is a practical guide that will aid anyone who is struggling with debt.
Wall of the Best Social Change Everything Just imagine what could become possible if an entire city had seen just one of the documentaries above. Just imagine what would be possible if everyone in the country was aware of how unhealthy the mainstream media was for our future and started turning to independent sources in droves. Creating a better world really does start with an informed citizenry, and there's lots of subject matter to cover. From all the documentaries above, it's evident that our society needs a new story to belong to. The old story of empire and dominion over the earth has to be looked at in the full light of day - all of our ambient cultural stories and values that we take for granted and which remain invisible must become visible. But most of all, we need to see the promise of the alternatives - we need to be able to imagine new exciting ways that people could live, better than anything that the old paradigm could ever dream of providing. So take this library of films and use it. Activism Animal Rights Big Ideas
Legal Forgery Introduction Red brain, blue brain: Republicans and Democrats process risk differently, research finds A team of political scientists and neuroscientists has shown that liberals and conservatives use different parts of the brain when they make risky decisions, and these regions can be used to predict which political party a person prefers. The new study suggests that while genetics or parental influence may play a significant role, being a Republican or Democrat changes how the brain functions. Dr. In a prior experiment, participants had their brain activity measured as they played a simple gambling game. Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, a region associated with social and self-awareness. In fact, brain activity in these two regions alone can be used to predict whether a person is a Democrat or Republican with 82.9% accuracy. The model also outperforms models based on differences in genes. These results may pave the way for new research on voter behaviour, yielding better understanding of the differences in how liberals and conservatives think.