Some Science Selections

All right, this article is posted as a new result, but I've seen the same idea at least twice before. One of them was probably a precursor to the study mentioned in the article. The other source, though, was my Native American Philosophy teacher, several years ago. She claimed that when food was scarce, the tribes would limit the amount of food available to children to delay the onset of puberty. The article, of course, is discussing the opposite effect: obese young girls tend to have earlier onset of puberty. It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Not much food around? You don't want early puberty creating more children to feed, not soon anyway. Lots of resources? Sure, get ready to have babies. Yet the article suggests this is a radical new insight. So...do scientists not talk to native Americans? Or just not believe them?

Apparently a few researchers think schizophrenia is linked to abuse, but most disagree. I can tell you for a fact that schizotypal disorders and schizophrenia run in my family. My dad will explain to you that his mother and sisters, probably brothers and cousins, too, all conspired to destroy his personality. Here's my opinion, based on my own family. A tendency towards schizotypal behavior is inherited. Depending on the environment, it may or may not lead to full-blown schizophrenia. My dad's sister has one kid with some of the same personality features of my dad, and her daughter has one kid who shows signs as well. The older one has has lots of social problems (and was in prison for a while). I'm hoping that the younger one manages to avoid the worst of it.

Then there's torture. Apparently psychological torture is just as mentally damaging as physical torture. One caution: their psychological torture sample was only 20. It's not like they could ethically increase that, though. The thing to keep in mind is that torture is not a reliable means of gathering intelligence. At some point, the person will just try desperately to figure out what the torturer wants to hear and tell them that, to make the torture stop. The article mentions a specific example of Al Qaeda intelligence gathered through torture that turned out to be bogus.

Some good news about global warming: the CFC ban is believed to have had an enormous impact. I'd like to see how, exactly, they modeled things, though.