Wiring the brain

This story is some kind of awesome:

For those who don’t want to watch the whole thing, the observation in brief is that color perception is affected by color language. The investigators compare Westerners with our familiar language categories for color (red, blue, green, yellow, etc.) to the people of the Himba tribe in Africa who have very different categories: they use “zoozu”, for instance, for dark colors, which includes reds, greens, blues, and purples, “vapa” for white and some yellows, “borou” for specific shades of green and blue. Linguistically, they lump together some colors for which we have distinct names, and they also discriminate other colors that we lump together as one.

The cool thing about it all is that when they give adults a color discrimination test, there are differences in how readily we process and recognize different colors that corresponds well to our language categories. Perception in the brain is colored (see what I did there?) by our experiences while growing up.

The study is still missing one part, though. It’s presented as an example of plasticity in wiring the brain, where language modulates color perception…but we don’t know whether people of the Himba tribe might also have subtle genetic differences that effect color processing. The next cool experiment would be to raise a European/American child in a Himba home, or a Himba child in a Western home (this latter experiment is more likely to occur than the former, admittedly) and see if the differences are due entirely to language, or whether there are some actual inherited differences. It would also be interesting to see if adults who learned to be bilingual late experience any shifts in color perception.

(Also on FtB)

Happy Birthday, Mary!

Today is my wife’s birthday, and unfortunately, we’ve had so many of them together (like, maybe 4 or 5 or a dozen or so) that we sort of take them for granted and just let them slide past any more. So there’s a few things you could do to help out. You could just give her your best wishes, or you could also make a suggestion about what we could do to celebrate. I offered to take her out to dinner tonight; she said we should do that some evening when we’re overworked and short of time instead. I thought about taking her out to a movie…but Cowboys & Aliens is playing, and seriously, that’s not her kind of movie. We’re rather limited by small town opportunities, you know.

She does read the comments around here, so maybe one of you will say something that makes her eyes light up.

Don’t ask how old she is. It’s enough for you to know that she’s much, much younger than I am, and she looks it.

Wiring the brain

This story is some kind of awesome:

For those who don’t want to watch the whole thing, the observation in brief is that color perception is affected by color language. The investigators compare Westerners with our familiar language categories for color (red, blue, green, yellow, etc.) to the people of the Himba tribe in Africa who have very different categories: they use “zoozu”, for instance, for dark colors, which includes reds, greens, blues, and purples, “vapa” for white and some yellows, “borou” for specific shades of green and blue. Linguistically, they lump together some colors for which we have distinct names, and they also discriminate other colors that we lump together as one.

The cool thing about it all is that when they give adults a color discrimination test, there are differences in how readily we process and recognize different colors that corresponds well to our language categories. Perception in the brain is colored (see what I did there?) by our experiences while growing up.

The study is still missing one part, though. It’s presented as an example of plasticity in wiring the brain, where language modulates color perception…but we don’t know whether people of the Himba tribe might also have subtle genetic differences that effect color processing. The next cool experiment would be to raise a European/American child in a Himba home, or a Himba child in a Western home (this latter experiment is more likely to occur than the former, admittedly) and see if the differences are due entirely to language, or whether there are some actual inherited differences. It would also be interesting to see if adults who learned to be bilingual late experience any shifts in color perception.

(Also on Sb)

It made my skin crawl

Ophelia has posted the creepiest explanation of Biblical marriage ever. This is apparently an explanation from some devout Baptist man about his absolute dominance over the woman he is poking with his penis; she has no say at all in anything, by this account.

As Bible-believing Baptists who hold to reformed theology, X and I believe that God is sovereign in choosing who will or will not believe in him, having chosen his people before the foundation of the world (see Ephesians 1), and that his selection is unbreakable and irresistible. If marriage is to mirror this principle, we believe that a woman has no right to select a husband for herself, but that she is to be chosen by a man and marriage is to be an unbreakable arrangement between the man and her father. Based on this reasoning, we have shunned a standard proposal and wedding ceremony, because if I had asked her to marry me (which I did not) then I would have given her the decision to marry me rather than selecting her and taking her myself. Furthermore, if we had exchanged conventional marriage vows, our union would have been based on X’s will and consent, which are not Biblical factors for marriage or salvation. Instead, I asked X’s father for his blessing in taking her hand in marriage. When he gave his blessing, X and I considered ourselves to be unbreakably betrothed in the sight of God. While we had initially intended to consummate our marriage after today’s symbolic ceremony, we instead did so secretly after private scripture reading, prayer, and mutual foot-washing.

Why does he even bother to say “we”, as in “we believe that a woman has no right to select a husband for herself”? It doesn’t matter what she thinks.

Prodding the feral otaku

The Skeptic Lawyer has discovered the dirty little secret of nerd boys…only it’s not really a secret. This has been a problem for a long time.

While doing the research for this post, I found that the largest gaming convention in North America has to remind attendees to wash daily and use deodorant in its program. I’ve seen a man who a woman rejected on the basis of his online gaming hobby tell her she ‘needed a good raping’. And there was worse than that in some places, which had to be closed down on the basis that they had reached the incitement stage. Incitement, in case you didn’t know, is a crime, and I’m afraid saying ‘it was only on the internet’ will not impress any judge of my acquaintance.

I am amused that she’s just discovered this. Every SF convention I’ve attended posts hygiene warnings: it’s not just in the program, but they’ll mention it in the opening program and drop frequent hints during the day. It is a significant concern — try attending a panel or a screening, only to have some guy (it’s always a guy, sorry) sit down next to you who hasn’t bathed or brushed his teeth in a few days, hasn’t changed his clothes, and has been subsisting on a diet of cheetos, peanut butter sandwiches, and beer. And don’t you dare to point out that he’s not fit to be in human company — normal people would sheepishly admit that you’re right and go slink off to the showers, but these are self-righteous nerds who will shriek at you indignantly that they must not miss this essential discussion of the Thundercats or zombie survival or the Doc Savage canon.

It is not a purely male problem: I attend science conferences that are bigger, and unfortunately sometimes even more male-skewed in the attendees, and yes, professionals can manage to take a shower every single day. It is not a purely nerd problem: the majority of attendees at these events are perfectly capable of civil behavior and basic hygiene. This is a problem of a a small subset, the feral otaku or savage nerd, and it’s going to emerge in every subculture that attracts privileged and obsessive males and rises above a certain level of popularity: comic book and science fiction conventions have been there for a long time, and skeptic and atheist groups are just rising above that critical mass that brings in these people.

I don’t think atheism/skepticism has a special problem with nasty sexist nerds — but it’s a real problem that has just begun to rear its unkempt, unwashed head, and it’s good to see that major organizations are taking preemptive steps to deal with it. And then, of course, there are these deeper problems that need wider cultural responses to address. Yeah, we’ve got to occasionally talk back to those oblivious nerds who will reply with the indignant shrieks.

However, of late I have started to encounter ‘geeky’ men (I’m sorry for this appallingly inexact term, but that’s all there is, alas) who demand–even when others find their geek-activity completely boredom-inducing or otherwise irritating–that women date them. This is like women who demand that their large dogs complete with muddy paws be allowed to take up residence on sundry boyfriends’ beds. It is rudeness, pure and simple. Just as the woman in question needs to find a dog-loving boyfriend who doesn’t mind muddy paw-prints, the geek needs to find a girlfriend who shares his interest in whatever geekiness happens to be his passion. And if he finds that men outnumber women in his particular geek environment, then I suggest he learn a little bit about the law of one price and modify his behaviour accordingly.

In an efficient market, all identical goods must have the same price; however, when there are fewer women than men in a given market (and assuming that most people in that market would like either sex or a relationship), then their relative scarcity presents women with an arbitrage opportunity. In financial markets, if the price of a security, commodity or asset is different in two different markets, then an arbitrageur will purchase the asset in the cheaper market and sell it where prices are higher. Women, when they have scarcity value in a given market, do not have to tolerate bad manners. Similarly, the male who shows that he is not ‘an identical good’ by exhibiting courtesy and charm will be able to make the most of the market in which he finds himself, always acknowledging however that arbitrage profits will persist until the price converges across markets (something that may never happen; it is often argued that perfect competition and efficient markets only exist in economics textbooks).

In other words, geek boys, smarten up your act. I mean, really smarten it up.

In related news, John Scalzi is about to get widely reviled by the ferals: he’s written a post titled Shut Up and Listen. Sound familiar? I’ve still got angry people protesting my insensitivity to men’s needs.

Episode CCLII: No way

Rev. Big Dumb Chimp gets a big thumbs down from me for this one: he posted this video in a comment, and then once I started playing it I wasn’t able to turn it off because I was clinging white-knuckled to my chair and desk, and kind of moaning and gibbering. I managed to make it to the end without throwing up, but I think this would be my nightmare job.

(Last edition of TET)