The Ed's Up #126
The Evolution of Shaming
"So why bother? Why censure someone who hasn’t harmed us directly? Some scientists have suggested that it helps to cement human societies together by enforcing social norms and discouraging selfishness or bad behavior. That may be true, but collective benefits don’t explain why individuals choose to incur the cost of punishment. Why doesn’t any one person just sit back and let others punish? In online shaming, Jordan saw a clue. “I started thinking about friends I knew who were involved in social justice,” she says. “There was a lot of moralistic speech that seemed like it was focused on communicating one’s own position.” In other words, maybe third-party punishment is primarily a signal that tells onlookers that you are trustworthy, in the same way that a peacock’s tail or stag’s antlers signal its genetic quality." (Image: Dan Chung)
Nothing to Fear Except Fear Itself—Also Wolves and Bears
"Predators kill, obviously. But even without baring a tooth or lifting a claw, they can affect their prey. Their very presence, manifesting through tracks, smells, growls and glimpses, produces a state of vigilance, apprehension, and stress. From their prey’s point of view, there will be safe areas where lines of sight are long, and danger zones where hiding places are more common and escape is trickier. The result is a landscape of fear—a psychological topography that exists in the minds of prey, complete with mountains of danger and valleys of safety." (Image: Shanna Baker) 
How Evolution’s Innovations Can Help Scientists Yank Water Out of the Air
If you learned that scientists have blended a darkling beetle, a cactus, and a carnivorous pitcher plant, you might imagine some unholy creation that’s all spines and scuttling legs and digestive enzymes. Instead, what Kyoo-Chul Park has made looks like … nothing at all. It’s not even alive—just a non-descript material covered in microscopic bumps. But this seemingly unremarkable surface has a remarkable ability—it excels at yanking water out of the air. (Image: Steve Crisp)
Green Mint Sauce Worms May Be Social Sunbathers
"If you find yourself walking along the beaches of the English Channel, you might come across a mat of green goo, as if someone had tipped a jar of mint sauce onto the beach. But if you get down on your hands and knees, and stare at the goo with a magnifying glass, you’d see its true nature. Worms. Little green worms, each just a few millimetres long, writhing together in their millions." (Image: FLPA / Alamy)
The Origin of Left and Right
"On the surface, people are more or less symmetrical. Aside from small differences, our right sides mirror our left. The same isn’t true for our innards. The heart, stomach, and spleen typically sit slightly to the left, while the liver and gall bladder sit to the right. That’s the usual set-up, but it’s mirrored in one in every 10,000 people, who have a condition called situs inversus. Donny Osmond has it. So did James Bond’s adversary Dr. No, who once survived a murder attempt because his would-be assassin stabbed the left side of his chest and missed his heart. Whether standard or inverted, there is asymmetry, which raises the obvious question: What creates it? We begin life as a single fertilised cell, which divides again and again into the trillions of the adult form. At what point in that process does left begin to differ from right?" (Mario Anzuoni)
More good reads
- "How undercover agents infiltrated the global black market for cacti.” Yes, INTERNATIONAL CACTUS SMUGGLERS! By J. Weston Phippen
- The STAP stem cell scandal ended careers and one life. Dana Goodyear tells its tragic story.
- Julie Beck meets the people who are studying and categorising coincidences.
- On stopping ageing. By Zach Weinersmith
- Should you edit your children's genome? Erika Check Hayden talks to parents.
- We are more rational than those who nudge us. By Steven Poole
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And that's it! Thanks for reading.
-Ed