Plus… Tubular Bells

I have been astounded over the past week that many of my friends are as ignorant unaware of Mike Oldfield’s Grammy-winning Tubular Bells as they are of capybaras (see below). Tubular Bells was released on May 25, 1973. The opening was used in The Exorcist; it’s sold some 15 million copies worldwide. It was the first album from Virgin Records, and helped create the Virgin group (Virgin Air et al).

Here is a link to a YouTube audio. Side 1 (the famous part) is 25 minutes 25 seconds. Treat yourself to the experience! More information at Wikipedia.

Mike oldfield tubular bells album cover.jpg

News of the WEIRD

A growing body of research suggests that populations around the globe vary substantially along several important psychological dimensions and that populations characterized as Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) are particularly unusual. People from these societies tend to be more individualistic, independent, and impersonally prosocial (e.g., trusting of strangers) while revealing less conformity and in-group loyalty. Although these patterns are now well documented, few efforts have sought to explain them. Here, we propose that the Western Church (i.e., the branch of Christianity that evolved into the Roman Catholic Church) transformed European kinship structures during the Middle Ages and that this transformation was a key factor behind a shift towards a WEIRDer psychology.A new study traces the origins of contemporary individualism to the powerful influence of the Catholic Church in Europe more than 1,000 years ago, during the Middle Ages…

Scientific American article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/western-individualism-arose-from-incest-taboo/.

Original article in Science (quite readable): https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6466/eaau5141.

Another review in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/joseph-henrich-weird-people/615496/.

If this individualism and nonconformity led to the Scientific Revolution, then… the Catholic Church caused modern science.

God does work in mysterious ways.

Good news on crime

Mostly good news: https://www.newsweek.com/rates-most-violent-crimes-2018-fell-while-rape-increased-according-annual-fbi-report-1462110.

According to an FBI press release published today, there were an estimated 1,206,836 violent crimes committed in the United States in 2018—368.9 crimes per 100,000 residents. This was down four percent from the same statistic in last year’s annual report for crimes committed in 2017, which said that there were 382.9 offenses per 100,000 people.

The report broke down violent crime into four broad distinctions: robbery, aggravated assault, “murder and nonnegligent manslaughter” and rape. Each of these, except rape, had decreased since 2018, according to the FBI. On the contrary, the report said that there were 7.7 reported rapes per 100,000 people, which corresponded to a 2.7 percent increase from 2017 and an 18.1 percent increase from 2014.

In particular, note the trends (my bolding):

The Pew Research Center stated that the rate of violent crime dropped 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to previous FBI reports. The report released today said the rate of robbery fell by 12 percent, murder decreased by 6.2 percent and aggravated assault dropped by 0.4 percent.

So why do people think that crime is increasing? Because they see it on the news all the time, without considering the purpose of the news.

(1) Journalists want to tell you what’s new — and small improvements are not big news, even if they add up to something remarkable after several years. Remember, it’s not called the olds.

(2) People are generally more interested in news that directly affects them, especially news about dangerous things. They’re not so interested in things that don’t directly affect them or aren’t a threat of some kind. And journalists give this to their readers.

(3) Journalists did cover this. They do every year. But only one day a year, when the new numbers are released. If you missed it, you missed the good news.

The size of our planet

Just how big is Earth? Let’s make some reasonable assumptions to get a rough estimate. Suppose that you could walk all the way around the world, approximately 25,000 miles, and that there are no oceans, mountains, etc. blocking your way.

Not to scale.

A moderate walking speed is three miles per hour. If you walk eight hours a day, seven days a week, that’s 3 × 8 × 7 = 168 miles a week. Times 52 weeks per year is 8,736 miles a week. 25,000 / 8,736 is 2.8 years. (If you take off weekends, it’s about 4 years. If you skip sleeping and walk 24 hours a day, it’s just under one year.)

Our planet seems so huge. But only about three years to walk all the way around it? It’s not nearly as big as we think… in fact, it’s pretty small. That’s why it’s pretty easy for seven billion people to pollute it or damage it.

Just three years around at walking speed.

Reversing biological age?

This study is based on nine subjects for one year, with no control group, so it’s hardly definitive. But it could be very important.

A small clinical study in California has suggested for the first time that it might be possible to reverse the body’s epigenetic clock, which measures a person’s biological age.

For one year, nine healthy volunteers took a cocktail of three common drugs — growth hormone and two diabetes medications — and on average shed 2.5 years of their biological ages, measured by analysing marks on a person’s genomes. The participants’ immune systems also showed signs of rejuvenation.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02638-w

Gas cap

I found out a friend of mine didn’t know this simple clue about which side of a car the gas cap is on (especially useful if you borrow someone else’s car or are using a rental): In newer cars, the dashboard has a symbol of a gas pump, with a triangle pointing to the side of the car where the gas cap is.

Some searching of the Internet suggests that the charging port for electric cars depends on the manufacturer, and I did not find any indicator for these.

2025: I found this note in This is True:

Automotive engineer Jim Moylan in 1986 suggested to his bosses at Ford that fuel gauges should indicate what side the filler was on to help drivers. Ford didn’t patent the idea, presumably on purpose, and it spread across the industry. The indicator is now called the Moylan Arrow.