Undead Astronauts

It looks like D&D was right after all: willpower is an attribute. John Tierney has a great article about decisions and how it takes literal willpower to exercise them. Making a decision has a mental cost that depletes a reserve that’s recharged temporarily by glucose. More difficult decisions have higher mental costs, and this can be used by merchants who can manipulate consumer choices with the order in which they present choices when making purchases. Consumers who have depleted their willpower reserve will tend to conserve what they have left by going with “default” options which merchants have priced higher than non-default options. Judges are not immune to decision fatigue either.

One of the most ironic and sad results is the difficulty of sticking to a diet. Sugar is the only thing that staves off decision fatigue. But every time the dieter denies himself food, his willpower decreases and his body will eventually demand sugar until it gets the real stuff as it isn’t fooled by artificial sweeteners. God must hate fat people too.

I find this result so compelling, that I’m going to be thinking about how to counter it in daily life. Avoid making important decisions late in the day or if it’s unavoidable, make it with some amount of sugar in your system. Try to reduce the number of decisions you have to make by forcing some of them on yourself. Working out with a friend at a scheduled time as a way of avoiding a daily decision is something I’ve done before without realizing exactly how the calculation worked.

The research again reminds me of the marshmallow test. Some people will naturally have stronger willpower than others and those people will be more likely to have positive life outcomes.

1. School-level genetic variation predicts school-level IQ
2. Finally, effective male birth control or just the next exaggerated flop?

“A woman walked into a Quiznos sandwich shop at lunchtime and ordered a ham and cheese sandwich, a bag of chips and a soft drink.  At checkout, the clerk said, ‘That will be $6.21, ma’am.’  The woman, already sipping the drink, replied, ‘Actually, I have insurance for this. My plan will reimburse you if you just send them the bill. Here’s my membership card.’ ”

Full article: Quiznos run like healthcare? (Uses Adobe AIR)

beautifulpeople.com is launching a sperm and egg bank. the site, is composed of members who must be voted in by other members. it has magnanimously decided to also allow ugly ppl to enjoy the fruits of their good genes.

“Initially, we hesitated to widen the offering to non-beautiful people. But everyone — including ugly people — would like to bring good looking children in to the world, and we can’t be selfish with our attractive gene pool,” company founder Robert Hintze said in a statement.

ah, if only the rest of the world were so generous, no? still, some ppl (ugly ones) have criticized it as possibly selling false hope, and turning children into “products.”

“This is genetics. It’s still a lottery when you’re picking somebody’s sperm,” he said. “The beauty may not come through in the genetics. … What are the parents supposed to do then? Turn it in?”

i have to give the creators props for shallow chutzpah tho. and certainly, it’s one way to increase the number of offspring from members of highly industrialized societies who are too full of themselves to reproduce. no one wants to imagine a world where the dominant groups are mormons, muslims, and africans who still don’t know how to use birth control.

Edit: pew research has released a report that says 1 in 5 american women go through their childbearing years with no children. being unmarried, educated, or white increased the chances of being childless. being married, unedumacated, or asian decreased the chances of being childless.

an ethnic specific gut bacteria has been found. japanese are better able to digest seaweed b/c they have a bacteria in their guts that breaks down algal cell walls. the only other place this ability is found is in marine bacteria.

According to the researchers, the enzyme helps Z. galactanivorans eat red algae, which westerners know best as the nori seaweed wrapping around sushi rolls. At some unknown points and in some unknown stomachs in the Japanese past, the enzyme-coding gene passed from Z. galactanivorans and into B. plebeius. That lucky microbe would have benefited from a newfound ability to process red algae, spreading through its stomach environment and eventually the human population, who in turn derived more nutrients from an algae-rich diet.

…

“Often the question comes, ‘I’ve been eating sushi for two years now. Do I have this enzyme?’ The answer is, these are very rare events,” said Czjzek. “In the early days, seaweed wasn’t sterilized. Nowadays, it’s cooked, roasted and prepared. The chance to have this type of transfer is much lower.”

That’s likely the case with most types of food, said Gewirtz. As for whether “that’s a good or a bad thing, it’s hard to say,” he said. But Justin Sonnenburg, a Stanford University microbiologist who wrote a commentary accompanying the findings, is concerned.

“Consumption of hyper-hygienic, mass-produced, highly-processed and calorie-dense foods is testing how rapidly the microbiota of individuals in industrialized countries can adapt while being deprived of the environmental reservoirs of microbial genes,” he wrote.

i didn’t know how gut bacteria was passed down, but thankfully wiki has that covered. infants inhale or ingest the bacteria from the mom’s feces at birth. wtf ?

this makes me wonder about the gut bacteria of world travelers. if they travel and eat exotic foods from all over the world, would that possibly make their stomachs super digesters?

ed yong has more on the topic.

as a gift to all the disabled veterans (and comic book fans), scientists have found a single gene that when disabled, allows for regen to occur in mice. where normally scar tissue forms, the cells become like embryonic stem cells and heal completely with no scar like salamanders that lose their tail.

there must be some evolutionary reason why this powerful trait was lost in most animals. if the reason is that cancer is more likely to develop, then this treatment might be limited in the future to the severely injured. most ppl wouldn’t want to trade a scar for cancer or other genetic anomaly.

but if it’s due to the high energy costs of rebuilding body parts as an adult, then this could change our way of life.  this could be the lazarus pit of our day. no scars, no lost limbs, being able to rebuild organs, grow new skin, etc.

the national sleep foundation polled ppl of different racial groups and found that there were both similarities and differences. all groups reported getting less sleep than they wanted, and the vast majority of every group knew that lack of sleep led to health disorders. with that said, here’s the interesting stuff.

While watching TV was the activity most often performed every night or almost every night for all ethnic groups within one hour of going to bed, Asians were less likely than their counterparts to report doing so (52% vs. 75% Blacks, 72% Hispanics and 64% Whites).

Asians were much more likely to have been on the computer or Internet every night or almost every night than the other ethnic groups in the hour before bed (51% vs. 22% Whites, 20% Blacks and 20% Hispanics).

Meanwhile, Blacks were much more likely to have reported praying or doing another religious activity during this time every night or almost every night than their counterparts (71% vs. 45% Hispanics, 32% Whites and 18% Asians).

Hispanics tended to complete household chores every night or almost every night more often in the hour before bed time than their counterparts (41% vs. 33% Blacks, 25% Whites and 24% Asians).

Blacks (10%) and Hispanics (10%) were both more likely to report having sex every night or almost every night in the one hour before they went to bed than Whites (4%) and Asians (1%). [尸zed: oh come on...]

Asians were the least likely ethnic group to have consumed alcohol within one hour of bed time every night or almost every night (1% vs. 7% Whites, 4% Blacks and 4% Hispanics).

Whites are most likely to sleep with their pets — as well as more likely to sleep with their spouse or significant others. Sixteen percent of white respondents say they sleep with a pet, and 72% say they sleep with their partners. In comparison, only 4% of Asians, 4% of Hispanics, and 2% of black people let the pet on the bed. But the space isn’t always saved for a spouse or partner, apparently. Only 48% of blacks and Asians sleep with a ”significant other,” and 54% of Hispanics.

Recession-related stresses affected sleep to different degrees, with Hispanics and blacks more affected than whites or Asians.

Overall, Asians were the most likely ethnic group to say they get a good night’s sleep at least a few nights a week (84% vs. 72% Hispanics, 68% Whites and 66% Blacks), and Asians were also the least likely to have been asked about or discussed sleep with a HCP or doctor (31% vs. 56% Whites, 48% Hispanics and 45% Blacks).

i the skimmed about half the report which is huge. answering all the questions must’ve been a big snore.