"So I got my cappuccino to go and I'm heading for the hills again"

Still saying BYEEE to sparkly London (part II)

for 14 years you were mine, and I was yours

I know, I know, it's not "the end", I'll go here on vacation, fabulous, fantastic vacations with lots of wine and lots of sparkles, but I won't have a home here and I won't be able to flee here whenever Sweden feels like a giant trap and the colors drain out of everything and the big, bad boredom rolls over me.

And yes, I try to list the cons as well as the pros, I do, because, man, does living in London have some pretty huge cons. But somehow in the state I'm in everything just keep coming up pros; it's the sweet 60-year-old male cashier in the grocery store who calls me "love", it's the smell of marijuana that, like clockwork, encases the twin's building from sometime thursday afternoon until monday morning, it's the fact that that my local M&S offers me wine in a plastic glass with a lid on top in their "food to go" section.

Of course, my stay this time has been completely and utterly taken over by the NOTW phone hacking scandal. We update ourselves everyday, and then we check the news again because there's just so much going on at the same time, and then we go to wine bars and meet up with others and compare stories. And there's been some truly bizarre moments, such as watching former notw-editor/national idiot Paul McMullan on TV wearing the same suit he's had on for the last five days since he hasn't been able to go home on account of trying to stay away from the police, because: "I don't think I've done anything wrong" (uh, it's not really up to you), prompting the interviewer to after the commercial break announce that "Paul McMullan has left the studio...and the building", possibly to prevent any oncoming swarm of scotland yarders into the studio.

Though last night we watched this totally fascinating BBC show about the big bang. I learnt a lot of stuff (though particle physics admittedly not the easiest field of science to explain to a person like me with no prior knowledge or understanding in an hour). Like for example about how important the doppler effect was for the big bang theory, and that the scientists first mistook the sound that turned out to be remnants from the big bang for pigeon poo on the antenna, and so spent a lot of time cleaning the antenna from pigeon poo before, you know, going on to win the Nobel Prize.

"Remember when I moved in you"

Seeing how I've been in London for one and a half weeks and has spent an obscene amount of daytime curled up on the twin's sofa with the NOTW scandal playing on BBC in the backround, while reading all the blogs I haven't had time to before, this post will be a link-post, not a post-post.

Greg Laden, Harvard PhD in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology, is one of my favourite Sciencebloggers, and not just because he once said "Remember Evolutionary Psychology? The theory? It's over."

(He also said: "I've carried out research in this area, and I was even present, somewhat admiringly, at the very birth of Evolutionary Psychology, in Room 14A in the Peabody Museum at Harvard, in the 1980s. So, if anyone is going to be a supporter of evolutionary psychology, it's me. But I'm not.")

Two of Greg Laden's recent posts that's of a feminist interest on sexuality, gender and genetics (and braaainz!), a discussion that's always fascinating whether you agree or not ("the demonic male" admittedly bit makes every feminist warning bell I have start to chime, even though I get it's not what he's implying) and usually continue in the comments:


How Do You Get Sexual Orientation and Gender in Humans?

The interesting thing about this is that a cursory examination of potential human gender diversity from a purely biological point of view suggests that there are at least dozens of "genders" but the vast majority of cultures define (or even allow) only a few. Perhaps culture, in this case, is more restrictive than biology. Which, to a behavioral biologist, is not much of a shock, though it might be if considered from a broader social science perspective.

Driving The Patriarchy: Demonic Males, Feminism, and Genetic Determinism

So, is it really true that behaviors are not "caused by genes" if there are these drives? Yes, and I say this because the average person who is thinking that behaviors are caused by genes is not thinking at all about intermediate mechanisms, and if they are, they are assuming that the intermediate mechanisms are little more than a transparent ether through which genes operate on the behavioral phenotypes we observe. Also, "genetic determinism" is not about whether or not one or more genes are involved in a trait, but rather (and this is very important so if you've got a yellow highlighter uncap it now) "genetic determinism" is about the close correspondence between variation across individuals in the genetic code they carry and the ensuing variation across individuals in the phenotype they express. Moreover, "genetic determinism" as usually conceived is presumed to average out within categories such as "race" or "sex" with very little variation within, but enough variation between these categories to be measurable. Which is why the concept is almost always racist or sexist or both.

But in reality, variation in the way limbic and other brain functions as well as closely related endocrine systems are manifest in humans and probably many other mammals is only to a small extent a function of genes, and is otherwise a function of what we may loosely call development. This relationship is not a post-hoc observation, or a liberal excuse, or a politically motivated bit of rhetoric. It is, rather, the explanation for why we have large brains that mostly develop, in detail, on the basis of experience rather than genetic coding for how they are hooked up.

"Till rytmen av en regnig natt rev vi alla murar runt falska myter"

for 14 years you were mine and I was yours

Vi föll för synd och sång och skratt
/Sleepless