science

There are 28 posts filed in science (this is page 3 of 4).

The Deterioration of the Institution of Marriage

Sorry the updates have been sparse all week. I’ve spent the past five days at an intense photography seminar with the amazing Jerry Ghionis. I have a TON to say about this that will definitely go into a blog post about the entire experience early next week. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share this interesting opinion piece I came upon by eHarmony founder Neil Clark Warren (via Kevin):

[I]nspiring marriages don’t happen by accident. They require highly informed and carefully reasoned choices. Commitment and hard work are factors too. But after decades of working with a few thousand well-intended and hardworking married people, I’ve become convinced that 75 percent of what culminates in a disappointing marriage — or a great marriage — has far less to do with hard work and far more to do with partner selection based on “broad-based compatibility.” It became clear to me that signs which were predictive of the huge differences between eventually disappointing and ultimately great marriages were obvious during the premarital phase of relationships.

Browbeating Your Partner Will Not Make Them Love You

Tracy Clark-Flory, on a new scientific study that may or may not change how you treat your significant other in common social situations:

It turns out that trying to punish a significant other when his or her eyes wander might actually backfire and encourage infidelity, according to a study published in this month’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Researchers subjected a bunch of undergrad guinea pigs to a computer game involving photos of strangers, followed by a questionnaire. When their attention to photos of attractive members of the opposite sex was “subtly limited” in the game, it “reduced relationship satisfaction and commitment and increased positive attitudes toward infidelity.” The study explains, “Being told simply not to look is probably not an effective strategy for boosting satisfaction and commitment or reducing interest in alternatives” — and it’s for the same reason that telling a kid to keep his hands off the cookie jar doesn’t reduce his interest in sweets.

100,000 Years

From Curt Stager (via Jason) comes a sobering report on humanity’s lasting impact on planet Earth:

If we switch to carbon-free fuels quickly, our greenhouse gas emissions will keep the world slightly warmer than today for as long as 100,000 years. As unsettling as that may be, the alternative is even more severe. If we burn all remaining fossil fuels, including our huge coal reserves, the warming will be five to ten times more extreme and last five to ten times longer.

In short, we’ve become a shockingly powerful force of nature. I liken this revelation to the first NASA photos of Earth, from which we learned that we ride a delicate blue bubble through deep space. This equally transformative view of our place in deep time shows that we are also incredibly important. We’re now so numerous and our technology so powerful that the effects of our collective actions in coming decades will echo on down through the ages.

Eating Animals Is Wrong Under Most Circumstances

B.R. Myers writes (with incredibly florid language) about the disturbing hypocrisy and amorality of foodies such as Michael Pollan and Anthony Bourdain:

Even if gourmets’ rejection of factory farms and fast food is largely motivated by their traditional elitism, it has left them, for the first time in the history of their community, feeling more moral, spiritual even, than the man on the street. Food writing reflects the change. Since the late 1990s, the guilty smirkiness that once marked its default style has been losing ever more ground to pomposity and sermonizing. References to cooks as “gods,” to restaurants as “temples,” to biting into “heaven,” etc., used to be meant as jokes, even if the compulsive recourse to religious language always betrayed a certain guilt about the stomach-driven life. Now the equation of eating with worship is often made with a straight face.

Some good responses to this piece in Time magazine and in The Atlantic itself.