Category Archives: Uncategorized

ANC gets nailed in the Western Cape

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The Economist has this article summarizing for the rest of the world what is going on with ANC and COPE. Specifically what kicked off the article was the ass-kicking handed to the ANC by COPE and DA in the Western Cape.

One of my point-form summaries:

  • 27 Western Cape seats were recently contested in the Western Cape
    • The ANC had held all of them, but lost all but 3
    • The ANC didn’t contest 12 of the seats (through incompetence) so they outright lost 12 of the 15 that they did contest
    • COPE won 10 of the seats and the DA won 9
  • The formation of COPE has much to do with “personal interests and ambitions”
    • It is observed that COPE was formed by those who were squeezed out of power when Zuma came in
    • These are the same people who thought the ANC was fine until they lost power
  • Either way, COPE should benefit South Africa by:
    1. Offering black voters more choice
    2. Weakening the hapless ANC

Hands-free: not so safe after all

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hands-freeThe Economist has an article outlining an experimental result that I found surprising: using a hands-free for chatting in the car significantly impairs driving ability.

What makes this surprising to me is that an earlier study had shown that chatting to a passenger in the car does not impact driving ability.

Why would chatting to someone in person be OK but chatting on a hands-free have a big impact on your reactions?

I think that this may have something to do with context. A passenger understands a break in conversation when the driver needs to concentrate on something. More experiments are needed…

Another experiment showed that listening to someone talking has no impact on driving ability – even when subjects knew they would later be tested. So the problem clearly arises when drivers must think of responses.

PS. The researchers found that having a passenger was safer because the passenger would comment on things happening on the road.

Cave of Crystals

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National Geographic has this article on the “Cave of Crystals” in Mexico. Very interesting and with the usual great photos.

Quick summary:

  • The cave which is about 280m underground was discovered in 2000 during mining operations.
  • It takes 20 minutes to get to the cave entrance driving a van along a winding mine shaft (see photo below)
  • The cave is above a magma intrusion (a spot where magma comes close to the surface) and temperatures are about 45 Celsius!
  • Because of the heat researchers must wear ice-cooled suits and use respirators blowing ice-cooled air. Even so they can only handle about 20 to 40 minutes.
  • The crystals have been growing for the last 600,000 years in the cave which was originally water filled. The miners lowered the water table by pumping out the water and halted that growth.

This photo gives an idea of the size of the cave and the enormous crystals in it. Awesome stuff.

Getting to the entrance of the cave involves a 20 minute drive along the mine shaft

It is so hot in the cave that researchers must wear special ‘ice-suits’ in order to operate in the cave. They breath ice-cooled air through breathing packs and even so can only spend short periods in the cave.

You can view the rest of the photos here.

PS. National Geographic Magazine is an awesome publication – their articles are often fascinating and the photography is stunning. Their subscriptions are cheap and easy – I recommend subscribing.

Feral hogs: not cute

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The Economist has an interesting article on feral hogs in the states. Apparently there are between 4 and 5 million formerly domestic pigs living wild in the States.

They are brutal, fertile, adaptable and intelligent so they spread quickly and leave a wake of destruction. Some get truly enormous – you may have heard of Hogzilla, a monumental individual weighing several hundred kilograms (pictured).

The problem started when the Spanish conquistadors released some of their herds while traveling across the Americas.

Since then problem has become so severe that many States have a shoot on site policy. Other States encourage trapping, poisoning specially trained “Hog dogs” and even hunting from helicopters!

Pheromones: unconscious messages

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New Scientist has this interesting article on human pheromones. It’s amazing to find that we are unconsciously able to detect information and messages about each other.

A mothWhat are pheromones?
Actually, there is quite a lot of debate about that. Basically, pheromones are chemical messages emitted by animals that trigger responses in receivers.

For example a female moth will release a sex pheromone to signal that she is fertile. Male moths can detect and will react to the pheromone message.

There are many types of pheromones (see the Wikipedia article) including alarm pheromones, sex pheromones and food trail pheromones. They are actually fairly common in the animal world.

Pheromones in humans
Humans are animals so it would make sense that we would also produce and react to pheromones. They are evolutionarily useful after all.

For a variety of reasons (discussed in the article) there has been controversy about the existence of human pheromones. To me it seems pretty obvious that something is going on in humans too, and that is what the article is about.

Human examples
There are several examples of the unconscious effects of human pheromones:

  • It has been shown that women living together will gradually synchronize their menstrual cycles. Later experiments showed that the sweat of women in different stages of their menstrual cycle could affect the cycles of other women. Sounds like pheromones.
  • Brain scans have shown the ‘sex centre’ of women’s brains lighting up when they were exposed to the smell of a male sex hormone (found in men’s sweat). Interestingly the effect was only reliable when there was a man in the room.
  • Alarm pheromones can also be subconsciously detected by humans. Test subjects were able to distinguish between the sweat of people who had watched scary movies and people who had watched funny movies. This was despite not being able to consciously tell the difference.
  • In a similar experiment brain scans showed the fear centre of the brain lighting up when subjects were exposed to the sweat of first time skydivers.

Very interesting stuff. Luckily the effects seem pretty weak because it could get crazy if we learned to reliably affect people’s behavior using chemicals!

The old ‘better than’ trick

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The old ‘better than’ trick is a favorite of mine. Whenever I find myself using a product/restaurant/program/website/etc I pop over to Google and search for

‘better than [product]’

Going through the results pages will often reveal that there is a better product out there.

For example I just bought a Garmin heart rate monitor/GPS. After using the default software (Training Center) that comes with the device for a while I was thoroughly unimpressed and figured there must be a better alternative.

So I searched for ‘better than training center’ . After going through a few results I found the superb SportTracks software which is MILES better than Training Center and is also free.

Obviously this trick works better for some kinds of products (e.g. software) than others – but it is normally worth a try.

The same kind of trick can be modified using things like:

  • reminds me of ‘lord of the rings’
  • sounds like nirvana
  • similar to cape town

NetFlorist – very useful

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Buy flowers and gifts online from NetFloristI love getting stuff done online. These days you can conveniently get quite a lot done online – pay traffic fines, tax returns, book holidays, etc, etc, etc.

NetFlorist is a very useful website that makes sending flowers (and other gifts) pretty easy to do. I use NetFlorist regularly to send flowers to family members and it’s always been a pleasure.

Their site is well organised and they have many sections, but I normally just use the specials on the front page. Delivery is R40 and they will deliver the flowers to the door on the right day.

Another cool feature is that they remember anniversaries/birthdays and will remind you again next year. Nice.

Swaziland – not ideal

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King Mswati IIIThe Economist has this short article on what a circus Swaziland is. The tiny country (population 1m) that we hardly ever even notice is badly run by King Mswati III who wields absolute power.

Here are some facts from the article:

  • All political parties are banned in Swaziland
  • The leader of the opposition (People’s United Democratic Movement) is behind bars
  • Most of the country is dirt poor and ravaged by AIDS but the King and his family live a fabulously lavish lifestyle

The place is an absolute dog show, but you won’t hear a peep of criticism from our leaders.

Stones in glass houses perhaps?

Confirming the broken windows effect

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The Economist has this article about a study confirming the ‘broken windows effect‘ Basically the idea is that “observing disorder can have a psychological effect on people”.

The “tendency for people to behave in a particular way can be strengthened or weakened depending on what they observe others to be doing.”

This makes intuitive sense to me. I even see it with dirty dishes. If a few dishes accumulate in the sink then we are more likely to let more accumulate there. Before you know it, leaving a couple of dirty dishes in the sink has lead to a sink full of dirty dishes.

When applied to policing, the idea is that by getting on top of petty crimes like graffiti, littering police can prevent other crimes. It makes intuitive sense but had not actually been proven – until now.

Read the article for details on the experiments (which were quite clever).

The first experiment involved observing people passing through an alley. Some littering was observed when the alley was freshly painted but littering was more than doubled in the same alley when the walls were tagged with graffiti.

Another experiment showed that letting off fireworks during a time when they are prohibited increased littering substantially.

In the final experiment people were twice as likely to steal €5 from a postbox if the postbox was covered in graffiti. The same increase was even observed when the postbox was clear but there was litter around it!

Amazing.