The radioactivity of Brazil nuts

Another rather amazing factoid: Brazil nuts are about 1000 times more radioactive than other foods! See: http://www.orau.org/PTP/collection/consumer%20products/brazilnuts.htm

Antimatter from bananas

Did you know that bananas emit antimatter? It's true!  See http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/07/23/antimatter-from-bananas/ 

How to live: community or individual?

I usually live alone, and I have just spent one month living with my parents, plus a vacation with the extended family. I think this is a good time to reflect on which of the two lifestyle is better for me. Abstracting from my personal case, I wonder: what's the setting that gives the highest chance of happiness in life, sharing the roof with a family or being alone?  Well, here are some preliminary thoughts.

Advantages of living with family:

1. more emotional support. Loneliness is a major disease of our times. Living with others prevents or relieves it in many cases.
2. more material and financial support. Living in a family gets you more help in many practical matters that, altogether, improve one's lifestyle. Think for example of how your family members can give you a ride, lend you money, etc. 
3. easier connection with the community. Family connections often lead to social connections. It could be through the schooling of children, through a spouse's colleagues, etc.
4. better healthcare and therefore better health. More material support often means more care when you are sick at home and therefore better health and longer life. Think of all the elders who die just because nobody is with them when they fall at home. A family member that nurses you when in need has no substitute and is priceless. Seniors know that very well.
5. more satisfactory sex life. If you are an adult and live with your family, most likely you are married. Well, it seems that married people have more and better sex than single ones, in spite of the myths about how fun dating is. Dating becomes less and less fun when you are not in your early 20's anymore.
6. more wealth. Statistics show that living with family makes you richer. You may choose higher paying jobs to meet the higher needs of the family, of you may just be saving money by sharing costs.  You can also marry someone rich, of course!
7. better chances of having children. As I said, if you are an adult and life with your family, most likely you are married. Married people have more children. So this statement about better chances of having kids just follows logically.
8. better chance of parenting happy children. Studies show that children living only with their single parent are more likely to suffer from poverty, school failures, neglect, etc. 
9. higher social status. The better social and material support of a family often results in higher social status, difficult to acquire with one's own effort alone. 
10. less individual responsibility.  A family allows the luxury of sharing duties. You balance the checkbook and I cook. Isn't that a great arrangement?

Advantages of living alone:

1. more flexibility in decisions. Living alone you can do whatever you want most of the times. It feels great, I have to admit.
2. more opportunities for travel and other diversions. There are many activities that living with a family makes impractical. People who live alone can travel more. Also, have you noticed how most people at social, sports and cultural events are singles living alone?
3. more privacy. Not sharing spaces means more privacy, that's obvious.
4. more opportunities of personal growth. Living with others often quenches personal initiatives. Probably because less time is left for them. Also, in a group you need to compromise a lot for the sake of peace, and this often means giving up the rebellious or more independent side of yourself.
5. less stress. When I live alone I am stressed from work, but when I am on vacation and stay with my family I get awfully stressed from handling the complex family dynamics. It's highly personal, but I tend to think that, on average, the stress is lower living alone, since you have more control on your living conditions.
6. more financial power. Above I wrote that living in a family makes you richer. True, but the wealth is shared, and the needs of a family a much larger (especially if there are kids to send to college). So, many single person households have lower income but enjoy higher power for it.
7. more time for professional enterprises or life passions. There are certain activities that are simply incompatible with a family. For married women, it may be having a career. For men, it might be a job with a lot of travel. Other examples: becoming a catholic priest, or a buddhist monk, doing a 10 year trip to Mars, etc. 
8. less personal conflict. To live with others inevitably means conflict. It happens in the happiest families. Of course, the advantages of a family can more than compensate for it, but not always.  Certainly, living alone is better than living with a dysfunctional family.

Human nature

Lately I have been struck by how so many, if not all, human behaviors and circumstances ultimately trace back to the basic traits of human nature. The strongest of them is the instinctual drive to seek health, wealth, love, and status, all of them with the common goal of reproductive success. 

While browsing magazines at a store, I tried to look at them with the eyes of a non-human visitor, and I saw how easy it was to recognize the same theme over and over again... every single magazine cover contained at least one - but usually many more - of the basic messages, in the form of female bodies ("get more reproductive success!"), muscular men ("become a desirable reproductive partner!"), items of actual or perceived high value ("here's how to get wealth") and people of actual or perceived success ("here is how to get status"). 

Even messages of less material tone contain these themes, even though perhaps more indirectly: it is not by chance that so many of them are about the joy of parenthood and family (reproductive success),   or healthy living (health) or achievement in sports, arts or careers (status). 

What about messages that speak about contentment, acceptance, letting go, etc., that are nowadays so much in fashion?  Same thing: the idea is "less is more".... giving up something to ultimately get more of the really big stuff: health, wealth, love and status.  

Have you ever read a magazine on how to get less wealth? Or how to decrease your status? I haven't.

An italian divorce

It was exciting to hear that finally Ms. Veronica Berlusconi, wife of Italy's prime minister, has decided to file divorce. This comes on the wave of the recent scandals over Mr. Berlusconi's promoting young starlettes in his political program, and over his suspected involvement with an underage girl (who, now of age, comes out and calls him "daddy"... some people interpret it in one sense, while others notice the girl's resemblance with Berlusconi's daughters.... mah... ).

I think Ms. Berlusconi is doing the right thing, for many reasons:

now she can finally move on in her personal life, after many offenses swallowed in silence.

probably she has realized that to initiate a divorce rather than waiting for one (which was probably coming anyway) might be to her advantage.

she is doing a favor to the country: it is hoped that, in a still family-centric Italy, her exposing Berlusconi as a bad husband might damage his public image (I think it's unlikely, but I would like to see this).

She is sending a powerful message of political dissent that I hope will spread.

She is sending a message in defense of women's dignity.

I never especially liked her, especially because her complaint about her husband's not-so-saintly behavior sounds a little hypocritical, considering that he was married when she first met him... But now I admire her for finally standing up for herself.

IT and Asperger syndrome

I have read an interesting article (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html) on the alarming surge of autism and Asperger's syndrome in silicon valley, leading to the hypothesis of a correlation with the influx of IT workers in the area over the past decades. The hypothesis is that the genes that lead people to excel in scientific and technical professions might produce autism or Asperger's under certain circumstances, like a reinforcement due to mating between individuals that have similar genetic predisposition to the syndrome.

Out of curiosity, I took the autism test online (I have no idea of how reliable it is). The result? 26 points, compared to an average of 16 for a sample of normal people as claimed by the website, and to 32 as the minimum of a sample of individual with autism. Mmh.....

Nothing better to do, really....

My poor mother (she is not dead... just poor) used to say that "some people have nothing better to occupy themselves with".  Nothing could be more true, in my opinion, of those who litter the news sites with totally irrelevant stuff...

Let me say it high and loud here... with all the poverty, wars and injustice in the world, 

I could not care less about who, why, what, when, and whatever else of Obama's dog.

 

Weird law?

Today Yahoo travel has an article on the weirdest laws around the world.  According to the author, one of them is the code of behavior imposed on tourists by the italian law in Venice: 

".. officials don’t appreciate tourists adding to the crowd and mess in St. Marks Square by feeding said pigeons. They also don’t want visitors sitting around shirtless, climbing into fountains, or even sitting on the sidewalk eating a sandwich."

well, why is this weird, again? There are people for whom Venice is home: they live there, work there, spend their everyday lives there just like we do in Tulsa, Kingston, Portland, etc., etc.. So, would you like to go out of your home every single day and find yourself elbowing your way to work in a crowd of happy campers eating sandwiches in the street, and feeding birds whose poop you have to clean up?  Every single day?