Rotundus.com

Ancient Rain Forests Found Upside in Heat Stress

Maybe increasing climate change won't lead to species extinction: "Analyzing pollen in rock cores, the geologist and botanist Carlos Jaramillo focused on a period called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which occurred about 56 million years ago. It was an age in which temperatures suddenly jumped by three to five degrees and carbon dioxide levels doubled. Faced with those temperature and atmospheric stresses, the rain forests of the time actually thrived, the scientists found, with a rapid increase in plant diversity and the emergence of new species."

Going Dutch: Women in the Netherlands work less, have lesser titles and a big gender pay gap, and they love it.

Versus American women who average happiness is going downhill...

The food-mood connection

Apparently sugar doesn't really make kids hyperactive... it's the events surrounding such consumption.

'Smart' vending machines triple sales

I was a bit amused by this note in this story on using biometrics in vending machines to provide recommendations: "Quite how customers react to being recommended three diet beverages based on the vending machine’s judgemental leer is unclear, but the idea of a catty, bitchy machine is certainly intriguing."

According to Malcolm Gladwell the opposite is the case for police officers out on standard patrols:

An officer with a partner is no safer than an officer on his own. Just as important, two-officer teams are more likely to have complaints filed against them. With two officers, encounters with citizens are far more likely to end in an arrest or an injury to whomever they are arresting or a charge of assaulting a police officer. Why? Because when police officers are by themselves, they slow things down, and when they are with someone else, they speed things up. "All cops want two-man cars," says de Becker. "You have a buddy, someone to talk to. But one-man cars get into less trouble because you reduce bravado. A cup by himself makes an approach that is entirely different. He is not as prone to ambush. He doesn't charge in. He says, 'I'm going to wait for the other cops to arrive.' He acts more kindly. He allows more time."

- Blink, p. 234

Once you've encountered a situation in which you need to call for backup, it would seem that you're no longer on a standard patrol.

Should You Be Snuggling With Your Cellphone?

"But the legal departments of cellphone manufacturers slip a warning about holding the phone against your head or body into the fine print of the little slip that you toss aside when unpacking your phone. Apple, for example, doesn’t want iPhones to come closer than 5/8 of an inch; Research In Motion, BlackBerry’s manufacturer, is still more cautious: keep a distance of about an inch."

Mathematical Equation Calculates Cost of Walking for First Time

Height and mass are the key. I've heard rumours that there might be an area of study maybe called "physics" that might address this sort of thing

Parasitic worms could offer relief for allergy sufferers

"'Once medical practitioners and therapists actually try the therapy, they are our biggest supporters,' said Ronald Sherman, a former infectious disease specialist at the University of California, Irvine."

Translating Plato

How important is accessibility in this or other works? To quote Fred Sanders: "Why would you take a fascinating, sophisticated, bizarrely foreign, ancient text like the Republic, and turn it into 'the kind of sentence one finds in newspaper editorials?'"

Ky. Man Forced To Eat Own Beard: Fight Over Tractor Sale Led To Odd Meal

Kinda clashes with Movember...

Here's what they have to say:

3.5. Friendship: The Remedy for Loneliness

Lest I overstate my case, it is worth digressing for a moment to agree that human beings are deeply relational, that in the absence of relationships we do experience loneliness, and that the Bible fully recognizes this. My point is not to deny our need for companionship, but to deny that sexual intimacy is the only or the necessary way in which loneliness may be alleviated. The Bible has a great deal to say about the longings of the human heart, but it is very striking to see how very rarely sex has anything to do with these longings being met. Almost all the Bible passages that speak warmly about human love do so in contexts where sexual intimacy is absent. God's remedy for human loneliness, according to the Bible, is not necessarily sexual intimacy, but friendship and fellowship.

Part of the problem in western societies may be that adults who are unmarried are very likely to live on their own rather than share accommodation either with other unmarried people or with a married couple. Loneliness is epitomized by coming back at the end of the day to an empty house or apartment. It is not so much the empty bed as the empty living space that deepens loneliness. We want sexual intimacy, but we forget that much if not all of our human desire for companionship can be met by shared meals, conversation, laughter, activities enjoyed together, and relaxation in the company of others we trust.