Risk

People are harmed from time to time by sky diving.


They also get killed.


People have also been harmed by driving.


They also get killed.


People get harmed by swimming


They also get killed


Surfing can harm you


It can also kill you


Taking showers and jogging can also harm you.


But I'll keep doing those activities as well.


It would be really nice to know how the risk compares with, for example, taking a shower or other activities considered low-risk but not no-risk.
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But then the statistics do not tell me the real story
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The story of human stupidity
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The lack of attention
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The casual approach to potentially dangerous activities.
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Risk is usually something we accept or reject.
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Sometimes it is thrust upon us.
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But most of the time we put ourselves at risk.
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That being the case we are talking about judgement not risk per se.
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Judgement is usually a function of knowledge and experience
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So again if you have no experience then you increase the risk
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Likewise if your knowledge is limited then the risk increases.
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Which is why we tend to act with care when taking risks

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For important risks we take even more care.

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Then how in God's name have we allowed so many idiots to run the planet?
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That is a far greater risk than all the others put together!
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Now we have to suffer the consequences. 
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And that as we shall find out is much the biggest risk that we have ever encountered.

No comment

Kissing

Philematologists – people who study kissing – record that the earliest reference to kissing-like behaviour is found in the 1500BC Vedic Sanskrit texts from India. 
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Although there was no word for 'kiss' back then, the Hindu documents refer to the act of 'smelling with the mouth'. Kissing was big in India. 
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Another Hindu text describes lovers 'setting mouth to mouth' and in the fourth century BC, the epic Indian poem Mahabharata describes affectionate mouth kissing. 
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The act is also referenced in seventh century BC Babylonian stone tablets and in ancient Greek in the works of Homer. 
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Several centuries later the lip kiss was well on its way to global dominance thanks to invading Roman soldiers who introduced the practice to the nations they conquered.
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Over the years kissing has challenged great thinkers from Jonathan Swift to Charles Darwin, who believed that puckering up was an innate human act encoded in our genes.
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Modern thinking is that kissing is both nature and nurture, and has evolved over human history. 
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One theory suggests that cavemen licked each other's cheeks as a way of obtaining salt and another theorises that, in the days before light bulbs, people had to get close and sniff each other to recognise family members. 
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This brush of the face with the nose is thought by some to have evolved into the European-style social kiss.
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According to Rutgers University Anthropologist Helen Fisher, kissing evolved to facilitate three essential needs: sex drive, romantic need and attachment. 
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Each is a component of human reproduction and kissing bolsters all three. 
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In this theory, kissing helps people find a partner, commit to them and stay with them long enough to have a child.
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Sheril Kirshenbaum is the scientific queen of kissing. 
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She is a biologist from the University of Texas and author of The Science of Kissing. 
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She says: "The truth is we don't know exactly when and where kissing began but it is probably something that arose and disappeared throughout human history for a variety of reasons. 
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Humans seem to have an instinctive drive to connect with each other in this way but the style and shape of it is informed by culture and experience.
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When an infant is born, his or her first experiences of love and comfort and security usually involve some kind of kissing, so from a neuroscience perspective we are hard-wired at an early age to associate these positive emotions with lip contact.

Before formula milk, the most sustained contact a baby had with its mother was usually through nursing and in many cultures, before baby food was widely available, parents pre-chewed food and passed it into their infant's mouth by tongue.
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As an individual grows, kissing develops to fulfil a range of functions. 
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In children it is used playfully as a way to bond with peers. 
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Research by Goldsmiths College found that five-year-old boys used playful hugging and kissing in the same way that adolescent boys play-fight to reinforce masculinity. 
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The study, carried out on reception classes in two schools, found that boys were far more likely than girls to make physical contact.
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In adulthood, kissing also has multifaceted purposes. 
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When a woman kisses a man, the contact enables her to gauge his suitability as a mate by picking up on his hormonal markers.
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Kirshenbaum explains: Our sense of smell tells us a lot about other people and whether they may be a potential partner and even a genetic match. 
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It happens on a subconscious level and kissing puts us in the closest proximity possible to get a sample. 
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Women have a stronger sense of smell and taste and when we are kissing we use the information we get from our senses. 
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It is nature's ultimate litmus test.
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Endocrinologists have found that through kissing, women can sample a section of a potential partner's genome called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). 
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The MHC are codes for the immune system and women are attracted to the scent of men with a different MHC to themselves.
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The advantage is that if you pair up with someone who has a diverse MHC, your children will be healthier and more likely to survive. 
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It is also believed that kissing allows partners to smell each other's pheromones.
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Kissing styles vary from culture to culture – Inuits prefer a sucking motion – but the open-mouthed French kiss has distinct advantages for men. 
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Saliva contains small amounts of testosterone and it is thought that if a man kisses a partner repeatedly with an open mouth, over time he will pass on a quantity of the hormone. 
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Women are more sensitive to testosterone than men and over weeks and months this raised level of testosterone will increase her libido and make her more sexually receptive.
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Results of a psychological study on student's attitudes towards kissing at Albany University in New York, led by Gordon Gallup, reinforce these biological theories. 
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The men surveyed overwhelmingly described kissing as a means to a sexual end whereas women reported that kissing allowed them to gauge how a prospective partner felt about them and whether the relationship was worth pursuing.
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So why does the act of kissing feel so good? 
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Biologically, when we lock lips, our bodies erupt with a cocktail of feel-good neurotransmitters such as endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline and oxytocin; also known as the love hormone. 
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It is also an activity which engages all the senses.
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Kirshenbaum says: People remember their first kiss more than their first sexual experience probably because kissing is such an active process. 
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Our brains are totally engaged during kissing. 
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The amount of neuro real estate associated with our lips is disproportionately enormous and when we have those really important kisses we are most likely coding them so we can remember the experience later.
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Although there's no formula for the perfect kiss, Kirshenbaum explains that the best kisses rely on the right frame of mind. "Stress and kissing don't mix". 
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There needs to be anticipation and an understanding of the desires between partners.

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Kissing is an evolving act and 22nd-century kisses may look very different than the smackers we give each other today, relying more on technology than on human touch. 
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Scientists in Japan (where else?) have already invented a kissing machine.
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Earlier this year inventors at the Kajimoto Laboratory in the University of Electro-communications in Tokyo unveiled a prototype machine designed to mimic the feeling of a French kiss. 
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The 'Kiss Transmission Device' recorded the movement of a kisser's tongue using a straw-like device and mimicked this movement in the mouth of a recipient using another machine. 
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The 'kiss information' recorded by the device for different individuals can be freely replayed.
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For example, if a popular entertainer uses this device and records it, that could be hugely popular if you offer it to fans, says researcher Nobuhiro Takashi. 
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The elements of a kiss include the sense of taste, the manner of breathing, and the moistness of the tongue. 
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If we can recreate all of those I think it will be a really powerful device.
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At present our clunky technological attempts to recreate kissing are about as romantic as a clinch with Wall E.
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But perhaps in the not-too-distant future we could all own an electronic mouth, download a Britney kiss from iTunes and snog each other via Skype.11

Internet matchmakers

Today, though, there is a new matchmaker in the village: the internet. 
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It differs from the old ones in two ways. 
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First, its motive is purely profit. 
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Second, single wannabe lovers are queuing up to use it, rather than resenting its nagging. 
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For internet dating sites promise two things that neither traditional matchmakers nor chance encounters at bars, bus-stops and bar mitzvahs offer. 
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One is a vastly greater choice of potential partners. 
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The other is a scientifically proven way of matching suitable people together, enhancing the chance of “happily ever after"
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The greater choice is unarguable. 
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But does it lead to better outcomes? 
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And do the “scientifically tested algorithms” actually work, and deliver the goods in ways that traditional courtship (or, at least, flirtation) cannot manage? 
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These are the questions asked by a team of psychologists led by Eli Finkel of Northwestern University, in Illinois, in a paper released—probably not coincidentally—a few days before St Valentine’s day. 
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This paper, published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, reviews studies carried out by many groups of psychologists since the earliest internet dating site, Match.com, opened for business in 1995. 
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In it, Dr Finkel and his colleagues cast a sceptical eye over the whole multi-billion-dollar online dating industry, and they are deeply unconvinced.
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For as long as humans have romanced each other, others have wanted to meddle. 
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Whether those others were parents, priests, friends or bureaucrats, their motive was largely the same: they thought they knew what it took to pair people off better than those people knew themselves.

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The researchers’ first observation is not so much what the studies they examined have shown, but what they have been unable to show, namely how any of the much-vaunted partner-matching algorithms actually work.
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Commercially, that is fair enough. 
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Many firms preserve their intellectual property as trade secrets, rather than making it public by patenting it, and there is no reason why internet dating sites should not be among them.
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But this makes claims of efficacy impossible to test objectively. 
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There is thus no independent scientific evidence that any internet dating site’s algorithm for matching people together actually does enhance the chance of their hitting it off when they meet. 
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What papers have been published on the matter have been written by company insiders who do not reveal how the crucial computer programs do their stuff.
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It is, though, possible to test the value of a claim often made for these algorithms: 
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That they match people with compatible personality traits. 
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No doubt they do, given the number of questions on such matters on the average application form. 
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What is assumed, but not tested, however, is that this is a good thing.
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That those with compatible personalities make more successful couples than those without. 
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To examine this proposition, Dr Finkel draws on a study published in 2010 by Portia Dyrenforth of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in Geneva, New York.
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Dr Dyrenforth asked more than 20,000 people about their relationships, and also assessed their personalities. 
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Members of couples with similar personalities were indeed happier than those whose partners were dissimilar. 
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But the difference was not exactly huge. 
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It was 0.5%. 
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As Dr Finkel puts it, “I wouldn’t have a problem with companies claiming that their matching algorithm could increase the chances of developing a lasting relationship by a tiny amount. 
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I get concerned, though, when companies claim they can find your soul mate for you.
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Surely, however, the chances of finding that magic other are increased by the second thing internet dating brings: oodles of choice? 
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But here, too, things are not as simple as they might seem.
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Some dating-site algorithms do not take the high-handed “we know best” approach but, rather, let the punter decide what he or she is looking for and then offer as many matches to those criteria as are on the website’s books.
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The crucial assumption here, of course, is that what people think they want is what they actually need. 
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That, it is true, is an assumption behind all consumer decisions. 
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But changing your mind about a book or a washing machine chosen over the internet is not as emotionally fraught as changing your mind about a potential sexual partner. 
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And here, too, the data suggest people are not good at knowing what they want. 
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One of Dr Finkel’s own studies, for example, showed that when they are engaged in internet dating’s cousin, speed dating, people’s stated preferences at the beginning of the process do not well match the characters of the individuals they actually like.
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Indeed, even the very volume of alternatives may be a problem. 
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Studies on consumer choice, from boxes of chocolates to restaurant wine lists, have shown that less is more. 
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Half a dozen bonbons, or a dozen bottles, are easier to pick between than 30 or 40. 
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And an internet dating site may come up with not just a few dozen, but thousands of allegedly suitable matches.
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The supermarket of love.
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Not surprisingly, the difficulty of choosing from abundance seems to apply to choice of people, too. 
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Dr Finkel could find no study which addressed the question directly, in the context of internet dating. 
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But speed-dating once again provided an answer. 
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Here, he found studies which showed that when faced with abundant choice, people pay less attention to characteristics that require thinking and conversation to evaluate (occupational status and level of education, for example) and more to matters physical. 
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Choice, in other words, dulls the critical faculties.
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The upshot of Dr Finkel’s review is thus that love is as hard to find on the internet as elsewhere. 
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That is not a reason not to use it. 
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But you may be just as likely to luck out in the local café.
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Or by acting on the impulse to stop and talk to that stranger on the street whose glance you caught, as you are by clicking away with a mouse and hoping that, one day, Cupid’s arrow will strike.
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Economist

New ways of stealing

    

This is a new one.
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People certainly keep busy trying to cheat us.
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Scene 1
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A friend went to the  local gym and placed his belongings in the locker. 
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After the workout and a shower, he came out, saw the locker open, and thought to himself. 
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Funny, I thought I locked the  locker............
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Hmm, He dressed and  just flipped the wallet to make sure all was in order.
Everything looked okay -  all his cards were in place...
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A few weeks later his credit card bill came - a whooping bill of  $14,000.
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He called the credit card company and started yelling at them, saying that he did not make the  transactions.
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Customer care personnel verified that there was no mistake in the system and asked if his card had been  stolen.
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'No,' he said, but then  took out his wallet, pulled out the credit card, and yes - you guessed it - a  switch had been made.
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An expired similar credit card from the same bank was in the  wallet.
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The thief broke into his locker at the gym and switched cards.
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Verdict:  The credit card  issuer said since he did not report the card missing earlier, he would have to pay the amount owed to them.
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How much did he have to pay for items he did not buy?
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$9,000!  Why were there no calls made to verify the amount swiped?
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Small amounts rarely trigger a 'warning bell' with some credit card companies.
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It just so happens that all the small amounts added up to a big one!
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Scene  2 .
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A man at a local restaurant paid for his meal with his credit  card.
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The bill for the meal came, he signed it and the waitress folded the receipt and passed the  credit card along.
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Usually, he would just take it and place it in his wallet or pocket. 
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Funny enough, though, he actually took a look at the card and, lo and  behold, it was the expired card of another person.
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He called the waitress and she looked perplexed.
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She took it back, apologized and hurried back to the counter under the watchful eye of the man.
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All the waitress did while walking to the counter was wave the wrong expired card to the counter cashier, and the counter cashier immediately looked down and took out the real card.
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No exchange of words --- nothing!  
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She took it and came back to the man with an apology..
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This scenario actually happened to someone I know at a local restaurant - between the waitress and the front desk cashier.
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Verdict: Make sure the credit cards in your wallet are yours.
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Check the name on the card every time you sign for something and/or the card is taken away for even a short period of time.
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Many people just take back the credit card without even looking at it, 'assuming' that it has to be theirs.
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Scene 3:
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Yesterday I went into a pizza restaurant to pick up an order that I had called in.
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I paid by using my Visa Check Card which, of course, is linked directly to my checking account.
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The young man behind the counter took my card, swiped it, then laid it on the counter as he
waited for the approval, which is pretty standard procedure.
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While he waited, he picked up his cell phone and started dialing.
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I noticed the phone because it is the same model I have, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
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Then I heard a click that sounded like my phone sounds when I take a picture.
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He then gave me back my card but kept the phone in his hand as if he was still pressing buttons.
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Meanwhile, I'm thinking: I wonder what he is taking a picture of, oblivious to what was really going on.
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It then dawned on me: the only thing there was my credit card, so now I'm paying close attention to what he is doing..
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He set his phone on the counter, leaving it open.
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About five seconds later, I heard the chime that tells you that the picture has been saved.
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Now I'm standing there struggling with the fact that this boy just took a picture of my credit  card.
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Yes, he played it off well, because had we not had the same kind of phone, I probably would never have known what happened.
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Needless to say, I immediately canceled that card as I was walking out of the pizza parlour.
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All I am saying is, be aware of your surroundings at all times.
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Whenever you are using your credit card take caution and don't be careless.
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Notice who is standing near you and what they are doing when you use your card.
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Be aware of phones, because many have a camera phone these days.
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Today these are some of the new ways of stealing.
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Be aware please any time you pull your card out of your pocket.

Interview with a Little Green Man

Man

What surprises you most about humankind?

Little Green Man

That they get bored with childhood

They rush to grow up

Then long to be children again.

That they lose their health to make money

Then they lose their money to restore their health

That by thinking anxiously about the future

They forget the present

Such that they live neither in the future nor the present

That they live as if they will never die

And die as though they had never lived

Clariss/Tumblr

Academic publishing

Sometimes it takes but a single pebble to start an avalanche. 

On January 21st Timothy Gowers, a mathematician at Cambridge University, wrote a blog post outlining the reasons for his long standing boycott of research journals published by Elsevier.

This firm, which is based in the Netherlands, owns more than 2,000 journals, including such top-ranking titles as Cell and the Lancet. 

However Dr Gowers, who won the Fields medal, mathematics’s equivalent of a Nobel prize, in 1998, is not happy with it, and he hoped his post might embolden others to do something similar.

It did. 

More than 2,700 researchers from around the world have so far signed an online pledge set up by Tyler Neylon, a fellow-mathematician who was inspired by Dr Gowers’s post, promising not to submit their work to Elsevier’s journals, or to referee or edit papers appearing in them. 

That number seems, to borrow a mathematical term, to be growing exponentially. 

If it really takes off, established academic publishers might find they have a revolution on their hands.

A bundle of trouble

Elsevier insists it is being misrepresented

The firm is certainly in rude financial health. 

In 2010 it made a £724m ($1.16 billion) profit on revenues of £2 billion, a margin of 36%. 

But it charges average industry prices for its products, according to Nick Fowler, its director of global academic relations, and its price rises have been lower than those imposed by other publishers over the past few years. 

Elsevier’s enviable margins, Dr Fowler says, are simply a consequence of the firm’s efficient operation.

Dr Gowers’s immediate gripes are threefold. 

First, that Elsevier charges too much for its products. 

Second, that its practice of “bundling” journals forces libraries which wish to subscribe to a particular publication to buy it as part of a set that includes several others they may not want. 

And third, that it supports legislation such as the Research Works Act, a bill now before America’s Congress that would forbid the government requiring that free access be given to taxpayer-funded research.

Dr Neylon’s petition, though, is symptomatic of a wider conflict between academics and their publishers—a conflict that is being thrown into sharp relief by the rise of online publishing. 

Academics, who live in a culture which values the free and easy movement of information (and who edit and referee papers for nothing) have long been uncomfortable bedfellows with commercial publishing companies, which want to maximise profits by charging for access to that information, and who control many (although not all) of the most prestigious scientific journals.

This situation has been simmering for years. 

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In 2006, for example, the entire editorial board of Topology, a mathematics journal published by Elsevier, resigned, citing similar worries about high prices choking off access. 

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And the board of K-theory, a maths journal owned by Springer, a German publishing firm, quit in 2007.

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To many, it is surprising things have taken so long to boil over. 

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Academics were the internet’s earliest adopters, with all the possibilities for cutting publishers out of the loop which that offers. 

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And there have indeed been attempts to create alternatives to commercial publishing. 

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Cornell University’s arXiv website (pronounced “archive”, the X standing in for the Greek letter “chi”) was set up in 1991. 

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Researchers can upload maths and physics papers that have not (yet) been published in journals. 

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Thousands are added every day. 

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The Public Library of Science (PLoS) was founded in 2000. 

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It publishes seven free journals which cover biology and medicine

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But despite the enthusiasm for such operations, there are reasons for the continued dominance of traditional publishers. 

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ArXiv’s papers, though subject to merciless post-publication commentary, are not formally peer-reviewed before they are posted. 

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Their quality is thus rather uneven. 

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PLoS relies partly on donations, but also charges publication fees of up to $2,900 per paper. 

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These must be paid by the authors, a significant expense for cash-strapped university departments. 

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And there is also a lingering prejudice against electronic-only publishing. 

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Web-based alternatives often seem less respectable than their dead-tree counterparts

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That matters, because university departments (and individual researchers within them) are rated both by the number of papers they publish and the reputation of the journals those papers appear in. 

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Youngsters, who might be expected to embrace new ways of doing things, must therefore publish in existing, reputable journals if they want recognition and promotion. 

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And the definition of “reputable” changes slowly, since journals with the best reputation get the pick of new papers

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Commercial publishers have begun to experiment with open-access ideas, such as charging authors for publication rather than readers for reading. 

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But if the boycott continues to grow, things could become more urgent. 

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After all, publishers need academics more than academics need publishers. 

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And incumbents often look invulnerable until they suddenly fall. 

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Beware, then, the Academic spring.