I really love the idea that Titan has seas of sand. It’s so ‘pulp science fiction’. You can totally imagine some John Carter analogue, riding some kind of beast adapted to the thicker atmosphere and lower gravity (not to mention temperature!) across the dunes of Titan’s Sea of Shifting Sands. Yay also for the fact that Titan’s winds are apparently tidal winds–that’s a pulp title itself: The Tidal Winds of Titan.
And maybe the natives would look like this.
There’s an interesting research paper on some things women can tell about men just by looking–specifically that women can tell both the relative serum testosterone level just by looking at a guy, and that they can also tell how child-friendly a man is even when the man is actively trying to hide this.
You can check out the paper itself, or you can read a very accessible summary at the New Scientist.
Here’s a snippet:
In addition, the female volunteers were told to rate the men’s faces in terms of masculinity. The men selected as most masculine by the women were confirmed by their saliva tests to be the ones with the highest testosterone levels.
The photos of men who appeared masculine in the eyes of the female volunteers were more likely to be picked by the women when they were asked who they would most want to have a short-term relationship with.
Apparently women like butch guys for short-term relationships, but rate other factors (including child-friendliness) for long term relationships. I’m glad I have a large jaw and prominent brows, anyway.
Oh, and this: “Men who had preferred the infant photos to adult photos were perceived as happier” just plays right into my continued transformation into Goofy Dad.
Men, on the other hand, seem to utterly lose their minds when they are faced with images of women. Well, pretty women anyway. And how badly they lose it is correlated to their testosterone level. That’s the results of a study at the University of Leuven, reported on the BBC’s site.
The men’s performance in the tests showed those who had been exposed to the “sexual cues” were more likely to accept an unfair offer than those who were not. […]
The researchers found that men in the study who had the highest levels performed worst in the test, and suggest that is because they are particularly sensitive to sexual images.
(According to the “finger test” outlined in the study I have a high level of testosterone. How did I avoid becoming a thug with all this man hormone running around in me? Can I blame this for my MPB?)
So that’s men and women, but what about babies?
Well, science tells us that they are just trying to help.
Psychology researcher Felix Warneken performed a series of ordinary tasks in front of toddlers, such as hanging towels with clothespins or stacking books. Sometimes he “struggled” with the tasks; sometimes he deliberately messed up.
Over and over, whether Warneken dropped clothespins or knocked over his books, each of 24 toddlers offered help within seconds but only if he appeared to need it.
I have anecdotal evidence to support this, but I think he’s ignoring the whole flip side of the experiment where he gives bunch of objects to a child and then watches as the child throws them on the floor in order to make him pick them up.
