Tuesday, April 7, 2015

If I may put forward a slice of personal philosophy, I feel that Man has ruled this world as a stumbling, demented child-king long enough! And as his empire crumbles, my precious Black Widow shall rise as his most fitting successor!

"It's Monday night," said Evangeline van Holsterin, head barmaid at the Old Entomologist, "so the Com-post [Wellington's paper of record] will have reprinted a press-release from some university,written with one sentence per paragraph, assuring people that whatever they thought all along is now validated by SCIENCE."

"Monday?" I said, shaking my watch. "I could have sworn it was only half-past Sunday. How time flies -- ow!"

"Don't mention the Time Fly project," Another Kiwi reminded me in a whisper. "People don't need to know. They just ask awkward questions."

"Is this about the bar tab?" I asked.

"Just saying," said E.v.H., "that it will soon be Tuesday, and some of us have homes to go to, and those who don't should probably hie themselves to the Riddled office and write a post assuring people that whatever they thought all along about the laziness of churnalists and the intellectual timidity of their confirmation-bias-addicted readership is now validated by SCIENCE."
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So this is the paper being currently pimped from "Evolutionary Psychology for Dummies", a.k.a. Evolution & Human Behavior:
As the journal's name suggests, it is devoted to the principle that any cultural norm experienced by researchers becomes an immutable, evolutionary-hard-wired fact of human nature if it can also be found in a subject group of college students from the same culture. Another E&HB paper recently made it to the big time Pharyngula for proving that a specific spinal conformation in human female buttocks, if prefered by human male college students, must therefore be optimal for reproduction.

Anyway -- "Spiders at the Cocktail Party" singles out Latrodectus spiders as being sufficiently deadly, or at least (because they are not actually very deadly) as sufficiently annoying to our ancestors to explain arachnophobia as the evo-psych hardwiring du jour. The authors gloss over the absence of Latrodectus species from East Africa (where humans evolved) by referring us to a paleontology paper which does not mention spiders.
Now there is evidence from toothmarks in fossil skulls -- not to mention common sense -- that our prehuman ancestors were more preyed upon by members of the Felidae such as leopards. Causing Evolution to give us dedicated neural mechanisms for detecting, and an instinctual terrified response to...
OOOHH LOOK A KITTY

"Spiders at the cocktail party are not my idea of a horse doover," AK vouchsafed.

"It is bad enough," I agreed, "when they give you bits of cheese and pineapple on a toothpick and they fall off in the akvavit martini."

"Perhaps they are part of the gut macrobiome we keep hearing about."

"It is the thin edge of the slippery slope of the white elephant," I said. "I read a case study about arachnophagy in older females. The introduced species disrupted the patient's intestinal ecology and she was forced to swallow a succession of larger animals in ultimately futile attempts at biological control."

16 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Jennifer has been HALPED like never before!
~

Anonymous said...

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/04/watch-this-is-why-humans-have-larger-penises/
Now, Curnoe asks, ”Why is ours the longest?’ he believes the size of the human male penis can be partially explained by the upright posture. Walking on two feet makes leaves the penis out in the open with the possibility of attracting females…
Since human females don’t make themselves readily available like female chimpanzees, the human male penis must advertise itself, making it large and appealing.

Curnoe has been asked to elaborate his theory in court, stemming from a pantsless appearance at the Salon de Refusees Neuroscience Convention in Buckhead, Atlanta Ga.

Jennifer said...

I blame my woes on the large, black, fake speedra that Grandma put by her plants... it looked too much like the one I would later see in the garden. That one didn't like being played with as much. I've never touched them again no matter how much the liked the angle of my spine.

JP said...

Now, Curnoe asks, ”Why is ours the longest?’

Um, it's not. I have seen an orca with a hard-on and that is an impressive sight.

Since human females don’t make themselves readily available like female chimpanzees, the human male penis must advertise itself, making it large and appealing.

Ah yes, because penis size and prominence is clearly the main way that women select their mates. "My goodness, my good sir, what a large and impressive penis! Let us retire to the boudoir and make babies posthaste!"

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An evo-psych paper with no mention of ladybrainz? I am disappoint. They really could have worked it in, because, as any fule kno, large penises are actually meant to scare away spiders and protect the wimmenz, and the larger, the better.

Jennifer said...

JP may have a point about large penises... notice the lack of speedras on this street.

JP said...

Spider vs. penis.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

In other beesness: the BioBlog Blues.
~

Smut Clyde said...

Did someone mention Brazillion Wandering Spiders? The priapism aspect was popular a few years ago.

Smut Clyde said...

Curnoe has been asked to elaborate his theory in court, stemming from a pantsless appearance at the Salon de Refusees Neuroscience Convention in Buckhead, Atlanta Ga.

Probably the Ignobel Prize team have a handicapping system to make sure that Evo-Psych doesn't scoop all the prizes every year.

JP said...

Penis vs. Cat.

Smut Clyde said...

"Pickup artistry is like waggling your penis in front of a cat"

"I know, I'll stick little cloth ears on it as well for greater realism," thought Smut, absolutely never.

rhwombat said...

...it's not just spiders or cats...

JP said...

^ The best part of that is the "related citations" over to the right.

Smut Clyde said...

JINX
Herr doktor bimler says:
March 20, 2015 at 7:44 am
AHEM.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1713722/

rhwombat said...

I warn't follering ya Davy, Honest Injun! I'se jes alus thinkin abaht them vackyoom cleaner thingies, ever sin one chased me, an bit me on the bum whan I was but a liddlun.

Smut Clyde said...

I finally read rurritable's link to Rawstory (thx!) and OMG the Stupid is strong there.
Whether you’re a couple of inches more or less than the average penis size, chances are you’re a lot larger than your primate cousins.
Apparently women do not read Rawstory.

The environment in which humans live in also factors in penis size. Early humans had to endure freezing temperatures that were more tolerable due to large penises, which release heat. The human penis helped regulate body temperature keeping it warm and cool.
The Penis is magic! Not having penes to regulate body temperature is why women did not survive the freezing temperatures of our African origins, which is why there are no women reading Rawstory.