The Case For Why We All Need A Vacation

Financial Times: The case for rest

Is there an optimum amount of vacation and idea-incubating time?

At four in the morning, snug in a cottage nestled on a hillside deep in tiger country, I nudge my partner: “You’re snoring really loudly!” I say. “That’s not me,” he says equally sleepily, and I doze off before jerking wide-awake when I realise what he’s said.

Behind our cottage, high up on the crest of the hill, a leopard saws into the night. It’s New Year’s Day. I listen to the big cat for a while, alert but deeply content. When I go back to sleep, my dreams are filled with forests, trails and all the large and small creatures that belong to the jungle.

We come back home not just refreshed but rebooted by our short holiday in Gwehri, above an Indian national park. My mind feels on fire; all of last year’s tiredness is blown away like clouds driven by the high mountain winds.

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CSN Editor: Sighhh .... I need a vacation.

Finding A 'Sugar-Daddy': A New High-Tech Social Trend In Paying ONe's University Fees?

SeekingArrangement.com has seen a major influx of students joining - and even offers such new members special benefits

Students Join Controversial Sugar Daddy Dating Site In Their Droves - As Founder Says Soaring British University Fees Are To Blame -- Daily Mail

Female students are flocking to 'sugar daddy' dating sites to meet rich older boyfriends as they struggle with debts which will average £53,000 for those starting degrees this year.

Faced with £9,000 annual tuition fees, increasing numbers of girls are using the sites to form relationships with rich older men who they hope will fund their studies.

Dating site SeekingArrangement.com has released figures showing the 20 British universities with the highest number of students joining the controversial site - and the numbers of girls who have signed up in the last year.

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My Comment: Older men and younger women being together is nothing new .... it's just that it has now gone high-tech.

Six Traits Of Human Behavior

Human Nature: Six Things We All Do -- New Scientist

WHAT sort of creature is the human? The obvious answer is a smart, talkative, upright ape with a penchant for material possessions.

But what about the more subtle concept of human nature? That is more controversial. Some deny it exists, preferring to believe that we can be anything we want to be. They cannot be right.

Although we exhibit lots of individual and cultural variations, humans are animals, and like all animals we have idiosyncrasies, quirks and characteristics that distinguish us as a species. An invading alien would have no trouble categorising us but, being so close to our subject matter, we struggle to pin down the essence of humanness.

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My Comment: I am guilty of doing all six traits.

How Mass Migration Might Have Evolved

From Wired Science:

Just a few small changes in the social behaviors of even solitary animals may set in motion an evolutionary cascade ending in massive, globe-spanning migrations, suggests a study of migration’s origins.

Such migrations — caribou across the Arctic and wildebeest across the Serengeti, birds and butterflies over oceans — are among nature’s most beautiful and mystifying phenomena. Many models suggest how migration works now, in terms of individual actions producing collective behavior; but how it could have started in the first place is far harder to explain.

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Roots of Gamblers' Fallacies and Other Superstitions: Causes of Seemingly Irrational Human Decision-Making

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2010) — Gamblers who think they have a "hot hand," only to end up walking away with a loss, may nonetheless be making "rational" decisions, according to new research from University of Minnesota psychologists. The study finds that because humans are making decisions based on how we think the world works, if erroneous beliefs are held, it can result in behavior that looks distinctly irrational.

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My Comment: I guess saying 'the Devil made me do it' is not going to fly.

Violence Follows Common Patterns

Photo: Armed conflicts show striking statistical similarities.

From The BBC:

Researchers have uncovered common patterns in the scale and timings of attacks across a variety of different violent conflicts.

A total of 54,679 violent events spanning several decades were analysed.

The team searched for statistical similarities across nine historic and ongoing insurgencies including those of Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

The results, published in Nature journal, may offer the hope of reducing casualties in future conflicts.

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Yawning Is Part Of What Makes Us Human

Chimps do it, dogs do it, lions do it, even babies in the womb do it Photo: AFP

From The Telegraph:

Far from being bad manners, yawning is a sign of our deep humanity, says Steve Jones.

What may become 2010's Conference of the Year has just been announced. The International Congress of Chasmology will take place in June in Paris, and papers are solicited now. Anyone bored by that statement should read further, for the topic to be discussed is not diving but yawning ('chasmology' deriving from the Greek word for the pastime).

Why do we yawn? Dogs do it, lions do it, even babies in the womb do it - but nobody really knows why. Theories abound. We open wide when we are tired, bored, or hungry. Some have suggested that a sudden drop in blood oxygen, or a surge of carbon dioxide pumped out by a tired body, sparks it off – but no, breathing air rich in that gas, or with extra oxygen, makes no difference.

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The 10 Mysteries Of Human Behaviour That Science Can't Explain

Mood-improving endorphins are released when we laugh. Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Scientists have split the atom, put men on the moon and discovered the DNA of which we are made, but there are 10 key mysteries of human behaviour which they have failed to fully explain.

The New Scientist magazine compiled a list of the everyday aspects of life which continue to confound the world's greatest brains, including the reasons behind kissing, blushing and even picking your nose.

An editorial in the publication said: "There is nothing more fascinating to most of us than ourselves.

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Scientists Trace Laughter Back 16million Years... By Tickling Apes

Amusing research: By analysing the reactions produced by gently tickling ape feet, palms, necks and armpits, Dr Davila Ross has concluded that laughter can be traced back 16million years

From The Daily Mail:

As science experiments go, it was real hoot.

Researchers mapping the evolution of laughter gently tickled the feet, palms, necks and armpits of baby humans and apes.

By analysing the sounds the animals made - giggles, hoots, grunts and pants - they concluded that laughter can be traced back some 16million years, and that it evolved along the same pathway as our evolution.

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