February 28, 2019
Self-transcendence and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
The Missing Apex of Maslow’s Hierarchy: Maslow never got around to publishing the final tier of his pyramid: self-transcendence. American psychologist Abraham Maslow's (1908 – 1970) theory of the Hierarchy of Needs, a model of human motivation represented as a pyramid with self-actualization at the top, is fairly well known. Less well known is that in his later years, Maslow added another level which supplanted self-actualization at the apex: self-transcendence. "Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos." [more inside]
I knocked that guy over a fence with Hayseed’s mighty haunches.
Matpakke - Most Boring Lunch in the world - Ever?
It's not a sandwich, it's a matpakke! "It's not supposed to taste anything, it should be a disappointment when you open and eat it, and you are not supposed to look forward to your lunch." [more inside]
"Wow, I’m really close to the sidewalk and people can hear me peeing"
For the residents of Portland, Ore., taking a whiz in a public toilet is not just a matter of necessity. It’s an act of civic pride. That’s because the city is home to the Portland Loo, a unique, patented outdoor bathroom that inspires such worship in its fanbase you’d think that Steve Jobs himself had designed it. This adoration comes despite the fact that the 24-hour loo was built to be as inhospitable as possible. This toilet does not want to be loved, but in Portland, it is No. 1 (and, presumably, sometimes No. 2 as well).
All The Other Kids With The Pumped Up Kicks, You'd Better Run...
Thirteen year-old soccer prodigy Olivia Moultrie has declined her full scholarship to UNC (which she received at age 11), just turned pro, and signed a multiyear endorsement deal with Nike. [more inside]
You have come to show you go on
Brandie Course writes: The story of Joseph Laroche is one that has, until relatively recently, been largely forgotten in Titanic memory and discourse. The lingering question concerns why this is the case. You would think that seeing a black man walking the decks of the ship with a white woman and their offspring would make a lasting impression on Titanic’s passengers, particularly the first- and second-class passengers, but little mention is made of Laroche or his family. [more inside]
The Grandmother Hypothesis
Killer whales, Japanese aphids and Homo sapiens — they're among the few organisms whose females live on long past the age of reproduction. Since the name of the evolutionary game is survival and reproduction, the phenomenon begs explanation — why live longer than you can reproduce? In the 1960s, researchers came up with the "grandmother hypothesis" to explain the human side of things. The hypothesis is that the help of grandmothers enables mothers to have more children. So women who had the genetic makeup for longer living would ultimately have more grandchildren carrying their longevity genes. (Sorry, grandfathers, you're not included in this picture.) [more inside]
The Inevitable Outcome of the Behavior of Large Numbers of People
Complexity science explains why efforts to reject the mainstream merely result in a new conformity. The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
These Farmers Weren't Farmers
Not actually a B-movie title
Semi-Identical Twins Born from One Egg Fertilized by Two Sperm
Because an ultrasound taken early in the pregnancy showed both fetuses shared the same placenta, doctors assumed the fetuses were identical twins. But when an ultrasound eight weeks later revealed that one child was male and the other female, something considered impossible for identical twins, the Gabbett team knew something extraordinary had happened. [more inside]
Hitching a Ride to Europe
Dear White People
"Recognize and admit your power and privilege and the fact you are benefiting from racist systems." Originally a Facebook post intended for an audience of transient workers in the far north communities of Nunavut (Canada) and specifically addressing Inuit issues and concerns, this piece republished on the CBC's website has broad applicability through many intersectional spaces where people of privilege blithely wander unaware of the damage their presence and actions cause.
confronting him with the realities of her body
We've talked about early modern menstruation tech previously, but what did Classical women use? Some people say Roman women would make tampons out of cotton and bits of sticks, but that's not true; they actually probably used cloth pads, which the mathematician Hypatia once famously threw at an unwelcome suitor. There's even some evidence that these cloths might have been held in place via leather briefs.
Which came first, the asteroid or the Indian volcanoes?
Recent studies of the Deccan Traps (Wikipedia), a very large igneous province (Wiki) located on the Deccan Plateau of west-central India make it seem increasingly likely that an asteroid or comet impact 66 million years ago reignited massive volcanic eruptions in India, half a world away from the impact site in the Caribbean Sea (Science Daily). "The eruptive tempo of Deccan volcanism in relation to the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary" (UC Berkeley) and "U-Pb constraints on pulsed eruption of the Deccan Traps across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction" (Princeton; both published in Science, both abstracts only). [more inside]
Ross Lowell shuffles off this mortal coil.
There's an old saying favored by combat engineers, motorcyclists and technicians everywhere: If it doesn't move and it should, WD-40 it. If it moves and it shouldn't, gaffer-tape it. This week, Ross Lowell, Oscar-winning filmmaker and inventor of gaffer tape, met his demise. (Death of WD-40 inventor John Barry previously, h/t to SharQ for post format)
The History of the Fabulous $&#*ing Grawlix
Phil Edwards explains the early history of the grawlix, or the substitution of random characters for swear words in comic strips. SLYT, 4:28; via kottke.org
Shock And Rule
“From one vantage, these sentiments sound like a fussy obsession with sound money and real value. But critical scholars have also linked consumer price inflation and asset bubbles. According to Greta Krippner, “The result [of the Volcker regime] was to transfer inflation from the nonfinancial to the financial economy—where it was not visible (or conceptualized) as such.” A growing money supply (understood to include not just dollars but new credit instruments, which banks as well as governments can create) still causes prices to rise. But instead of causing a general inflation of all prices (including the price of labor), the new spiral affects only assets (from bonds to houses to Picassos), enriching the rentier class but also creating instability (as, for example, when the notional value of derivatives swells to several times the value of world GDP.) If this is the case, the troubles of the 1970s simply mutated, like so many other maladies of capitalism, into new forms.” Other People’s Blood. (N+1)
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