U.S. Savings rate (data from Department of Commerce, Graph from Wall Street Journal)

U.S. personal Bankruptcy filings (from Wall Street Journal)

Nut caching in European red squirrels, Wauters, L.A. and P. Casale. 1996. "Long-term scatterhoarding by Eurasian red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris)." J. Zool., Lond., 238: 195-207.

Red Squirrel

From the above paper, page 201: "In the deciduous woodland (of Belgium), 2200 cached food items were recovered of the 2800 estimated hoards (79%). Squirrels consumed 99% of cached cones, 62% of cached acorns and 92% of cached beechnuts."

A comprehensive review of animals that save via means other than body fat is, Vander Wall, S. B. 1990. Food Hoarding in Animals. University of Chicago Press.

See page 240, for instance: "Red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudonicus), common inhabitants of coniferous forests throughout much of North America, and the closely related Douglas squirrel (T. douglasii) of the Pacific Northwest are among the most thoroughly studied of food-hoarding mammals . . . Red squirrels begin collecting and storing cones in late July or early August and continue for 4-8 weeks … Clarke (1939) estimated that red squirrels can collect and store about 1,000 red pine (Pinus resinosa) cones in a day, but they clip and store the large cones of limber pine (P. flexilis) at rates of only about twenty-nine to thirty-two cones per day (Benkman, Balda, and Smith 1984). … Middens usually contain 2-4 bushels (70-141) of cones, but instances of 8-15 bushels (282-528 l) being taken by cone collectors have been reported (Cox 1911; Korstian and Baker 1925; Yeager 1937; Baldwin 1942). M.C. Smith (1968) estimated that red squirrels stored between 12,000 and 16,000 white spruce (Picea glauca) cones in a 6-week harvest period in interior Alaska. Gurnell (1984) found a mean of 2,187 lodgepole pine cones in nine middens (range = 280-4,360 cones per midden). . ."

"Besides cones, red squirrels store various nuts, seeds, fruits, and some meat. Nuts stored include walnuts, hickory nuts (Layne 1954), chestnuts (Audobon and Bachman 1846, cited by Hatt 1929), beechnuts (Klugh 1927), and hazelnuts (Mailliard 1931). … Burton (1930) attributed to red squirrels accumulations of boxelder (Acer negundo) samaras found at the bases of trees, in hollow trunks, and in the crotches of tree branches. One of these caches contained more than a bushel (35 l) of seeds."

The original story of the grasshopper and ant was written by Aesop. It reads,

In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

"Why not come and chat with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?"

"I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the Ant, "and recommend you to do the same."

"Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present." But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew:

It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

!Kung San life in the 1960's is described in, Lee, Richard. 1993, 2nd ed. The Dobe Ju/'hoansi. Harcourt Brace.

Elephant Seals eating, saving, and mating behavior from, LeBoeuf, B.J. and R.M Laws. 1994. Elephant Seals. University of California Press.

Page 162, table 9.4 "Standard length, measured growth rate, and relative growth rate."

Males are considered fully-adult when they're about 9 years old.

"Females fast while lactating [and lose up to 700 lbs], and the largest breeding males fast for more than one hundred days during the breeding season." -- p. xi

for males:

arrival [at beach] mean body mass: 1,430 - 2,265 kg

departure [at end of breeding season]: 895 - 1,500 kg

"Taking an extreme case, if a 3000-kg male loses 1000 kg while ashore. . ." -- p. 370, LeBoeuf and Laws, 1994.

LeBoeuf and Laws (cited above), Elephant Seals, Univ Cal Press, Berkeley LA London. 1994:

p. xi ". . . the largest breeding males fast for more than one hundred days during the breeding season."

Bobby Sands's diary: http://larkspirit.com/hungerstrikes/diary.html

10/27/80: 1st hunger strike by the IRA "blanketmen," lasted for 53 days. There were no deaths. (Bobby Sands did not participate).

3/1/81: 2nd IRA hunger strike: "Having consumed only water and salt for his last 66 days, Bobby Sands died at the door of the British government on 5 May 1981."

Discussion of the role of social security in alleviating poverty among the elderly, http://www.ssa.gov/history/early.html

"Following the outbreak of the Great Depression, poverty among the elderly grew dramatically. The best estimates are that in 1934 over half of the elderly in America lacked sufficient income to be self-supporting. Despite this, state welfare pensions for the elderly were practically non-existent before 1930. A spurt of pension legislation was passed in the years immediately prior to passage of the Social Security Act, so that 30 states had some form of old-age pension program by 1935. However, these programs were generally inadequate and ineffective. Only about 3% of the elderly were actually receiving benefits under these states plans, and the average benefit amount was about 65 cents a day."

Retirees in the U.S. have very little in the way of liquid financial assets, Poterba, James M. 1996. Personal Saving Behavior and Retirement Income Modeling: A research Assessment. in Eric A. Hanushek and Nancy L. Maritato, eds., Assessing Knowledge of Retirement Behavior: Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (CBSSE).

        Median Financial assets for U.S Household head age 55-64

        -------------------------------------------------------

          $8,300 Total financial assets

        $36,000 Home equity

          $8,200 Other property

Those famous Calvin Klein ads.

Our instinctual fears are discussed in, Kellert, Stephen and E. O. Wilson, Eds. 1995. The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press.

"The human inclination to fear and avoid threatening aspects of nature has been particularly associated with reptiles such as snakes and arthropods such as spiders and various biting and stinging invertebrates... This potential has been described by Ulrich et al. in a review of the scientific literature (1991:206): 'Conditioning studies have shown that nature settings containing snakes or spiders can elicit pronounced autonomic responses... even when presented subliminally.' Schneirla (1965) further notes that the occurrence of 'ugly, slimy, erratic' moving animals, such as certain snakes and invertebrates, provokes withdrawal responses among vertebrate neonates in the absence of overt or obvious threat." --p. 57

"Ohman and Dimberg, using classical conditioning paradigms, were able to elicit and maintain fear responses to spiders, snakes, and hostile human faces but not to "neutral" stimuli such as flowers or to such modern hazards as guns." -- p. 167

Lapland and the use of cheese in, Einzig, Paul. 1966. Primitive money in its ethnological, historical, and economic aspects. 2nd ed. Pergamon Press. "In Lapland, cheese served as a currency up to the 19th century." -- p. 310

More on precursors to coin and paper money in, Einzig, Paul. 1966. Primitive money in its ethnological, historical, and economic aspects. 2nd ed. Pergamon Press.

In Norway, "butter was used for valuation in many commercial documents, the unit being a basket. Rents were often payable wholly or partly in butter. In 1309, ten baskets of butter bought a horse worth three cows." -- p. 275

Japan's problems with oversaving were described in The Wall Street Journal on May 17, 2000

Japan is the first major developed country since World War II to confront the 'paradox of thrift,' the condition John Maynard Keynes worried about, where bad times lead individuals to save more, suppressing overall demand and making a country even worse off.

So the Japanese government nudges its citizens to live it up. The Finance Ministry, concerned that families would simply tuck away a recent $500-a-household income-tax cut, launched a media blitz to advise people on how to spend the money.

A cartoon in a magazine ad shows a father excitedly reading about the cuts in the newspaper, inspiring his two young kids to dream of cake and candy and his blushing wife to ask for a blouse. A poster plastered in subway stations pictures an aerial shot of a crammed neighborhood with words emanating from the homes. "I'll drink a toast with fine wine," says one. "I'll finally buy those golf clubs," says another. One implores: "Let's spend it all at once!"

An excellent source of information about orangutans can be found at: http://www.zoomwhales.com/subjects/apes/orangutan/.

An important article laying out the role of ancestral environments in the shaping of our genetic human nature is, Tooby, John and Leda Cosmides. 1990. "The Past Explains the Present: Emotional Adaptations and the Structure of Ancestral Environments." Ethology & Sociobiology, 11: 375-424.

Obesity is a clinical term that is revised from time to time. According to the Centers for Disease Control, an individual is "overweight" if they have a Body Mass Index (BMI) greater than or equal to 25. This means that 54.6 % of Americans are overweight. A BMI greater than or equal to 30 is considered obese. This means that 22.6 % of the population are obese.

An excellent resource for more information is the American Heart Association. See, for instance: http://www.americanheart.org/Whats_News/AHA_News_Releases/obesityq&a.html.

The Socrates quote comes from Plato's Apology of Socrates. On trial for his life, Socrates says (as written by Plato),

"I have no wisdom, small or great. What then can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men? … So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: conceit of Man, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is, for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know."

There are many versions of the Apology of Socrates still in print. One inexpensive and easy to find version is the Penguin classic - The Last Days of Socrates.

A short article containing the highlights of the Peter Maher story is available online at: http://www.coolrunning.com/olympic/aap6042.htm.

Maher ran his Personal best of 2:11 in the 1991 London marathon. He is listed among the fastest marathon runners of all time at: http://w1.196.telia.com/~u19603668/atb-m24.htm

Some online data on olestra:

http://www.cspinet.org/olestra/
http://www.fritolay.com/olestra.html, and
http://ace.orst.edu/info/extoxnet/faqs/additive/olestra.htm

The corporate website from the producer of nutrasweet:

http://www.nutrasweet.com/infocenter/index.asp

Recent studies of diet drugs and heart disease include:

Jick, H., C. Vasilakis, L. Weinrich, C. Meier, et al. 1998. "A population-based study of appetite-suppressant drugs and the risk of cardiac-valve regurgitation." New England Journal of Medicine 339(11): 719-24.

Kancherla, M., T. Mulderink, M. Parker, R. Bonow, et al. 1999. "Echocardiographic prevalence of mitral and/or aortic regurgitation in patients exposed to either fenfluramine-phentermine combination or to dexfenfluramine." American Journal of Cardiology. 84(11): 1335-8.

Fen-Phen usage rates and discussion of disease implications available online from the American Medical Association at: http://www.americanheart.org/Whats_News/AHA_Science_Advisories/fenphen.html

A study of Xenical/Orlistat in combination with traditional dieting, concludes that,

"The use of orlistat during periods of attempted weight maintenance minimizes weight readjustment and facilitates long-term improvement in obesity-related disease risk factors."

Hill, J. , J. Hauptman, J. Anderson, K. Fujioka, et al. 1999. "Orlistat, a lipase inhibitor, for weight maintenance after conventional dieting: a 1-y study." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 69(6): 1061-3.

Are dopamine receptor levels related to alcoholism? This is still a pretty controversial question. Examination of DNA samples from the brains of corpses of thirty-five alcoholics and thirty-five non-alcoholics revealed that a variant of the gene for a specific type of dopamine receptor (D2) was present in 69% of the alcoholics but only 20% of the non-alcoholics. These date are from: Noble, E.P., P.J. Sheridan, A. Montgomery, T. Ritchie, P. Jagadeeswaran, H. Nogami, A.H. Briggs, and J.B. Cohn. 1990. "Allelic association of the D2 dopamine receptor gene in alcoholism." Journal of the American Medical Association 263:2055-60; and also discussed in: Noble, E.P. and K. Blum. 1991. "The dopamine D2 receptor gene and alcoholism" (letter to the editor). Journal of the American Medical Association 265:2667.

Their claim is that this variant, called the A1 allele, results in fewer D2 receptors in the brain (See Noble, E.P., K. Blum, T. Ritchie, A. Montgomery, and P.J. Sheridan, P.J. 1991. "Allelic association of the D2 dopamine receptor gene with receptor binding characteristics in alcoholism." Archives of General Psychiatry 48:648-654.) In this paper, the second section of table 3, page 652, clearly shows that the number of binding sites is significantly correlated with which allele a person carries.

On the front page of the New York Times, however, a team from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism announced that it did not find any difference between alcoholics and non-alcoholics in the frequency of the A1 allele. Both sides are continuing to explore this issue.

Also controversial is the question of the link between having a gene for dopamine receptors and smoking addiction. But see: Lerman, C., N.E. Caporaso, J. Audrain, D. Main, E.D. Bowman, B. Lockshin, N.R. Boyd, and P.G. Shields. 1999. "Evidence suggesting the role of specific genetic factors in cigarette smoking." Health Psychology 18:14-20. This was a twin study showing evidence that the SLC6A3 (dopamine receptor) gene influenced smoking initiation and nicotine dependence.

Another study then proposed that that individuals with a particular type of dopamine receptor gene have altered dopamine transmission, reducing their need for novelty and reward by external stimuli (such as cigarettes). See: Sabol, S.Z., M.L. Nelson, C. Fisher, L. Gunzerath, C.L. Brody, S. Hu, L.A. Sirota, S.E. Marcus, B.D. Greenberg, F.R. Lucas, J. Benjamin, D.L. Murphy, and D.H. Hamer. 1999. "A genetic association for cigarette smoking behavior." Health Psychology 18:7-13.

Thomas Covington featured in New York Times, September 19, 1999. Excerpts,

CRACK'S LEGACY: A SPECIAL REPORT
A Drug Ran Its Course, Then Hid With Its Users


"I don't think anything the police did changed my behavior," said Thomas Covington, who was arrested 31 times, mostly for crack possession, and served two prison terms before voluntarily entering drug treatment. "Sometimes it was a little more challenging to buy. But once that compulsion is there, it doesn't matter what the penalty or the threat is."

Covington is a big, sharp-witted Brooklyn native who has used crack on and off for 15 years. He made it through the explosive violence that came with crack's introduction. He was homeless, and sick, and twice felt the steel tip of a handgun pressed to his temple by hot-tempered dealers.

He dodged the police offensives of three mayors.

But starting in the early 90's, Covington said, he noticed a shift in the attitudes of young drug dealers. "They didn't use crack," he said. "And they didn't respect people who did. To me, being a 34- or 35-year-old guy, standing on line and handing my money to a 15-year-old, that was humiliating."

California lottery rules: http://www.calottery.com/games/superlotto.html
What is SuperLottoTM? SuperLotto is your chance to win millions of dollars! The jackpot ranges from $4 million to $50 million or more. The jackpot rolls over and grows whenever there is no winner. All you have to do is pick six numbers from 1 to 51 and match them to the six numbers drawn by the Lottery every Wednesday and Saturday.

In the lottery, there are 51 balls, each with a different number painted on. They go from 1 to 51. Six balls are going to be pulled out of a bin. In order to win the jackpot, you must choose all six numbers.

Yanomamö unokais data from, Chagnon, Napolean. 1988. "Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a Tribal Population." Science 239: 985-992. General discussion of the Yanomamö in, Chagnon, Napoleon. 1992. Yanomamö, 4th edition. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Unokais -- 137 men in this study were Unokai (had killed another man)

Average number of living offspring = 4.91
Average number of wives = 1.63

Non-unokais -- 243 men in this study were not Unokai (had not killed another man)

Average number of living offspring = 1.59
Average number of wives = 0.63

Dopamine receptors (the "novelty gene") and risky behavior, Benjamin, J., L. Li, C. Patterson, B.D. Greenberg, et al. 1996. "Population and Familial Association Between the D4 Dopamine Receptor Gene and Measures of Novelty Seeking." Nature Genetics 12: 81-4. The last author of this study is Dean Hamer, who wrote, Hamer, Dean. 1998. Living with our Genes. Doubleday. In it he discussed the relationship between the novelty gene and sex:

"Straight [heterosexual] men with the long gene, the high novelty seekers, were six time more likely to have slept with another man than those [heterosexual men] with a short gene... Those [gay men] with the long, high novelty-seeking form of the gene had sex with more than five times as many women as did those with the shor, low novelty-seeking form." -- p. 179-180.

The definitive source for U.S. Stock market data is, Siegel, Jeremy J. 1998. Stocks for the Long Run, 2nd edition. McGraw-Hill.

"over the last century, accumulations in stocks have always outperformed other financial assets for the patient investor. Even such calamitous events such as the Great 1929 Stock Crash did not negate the superiority of stocks as long-term investments." --p. 5

Iceman museum online

The Iceman after a risky career change

Life among the Yanomamo (before their civilization was destroyed) is discussed in, Chagnon, Napoleon. 1992. Yanomamo, 4th edition. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

"I would be bitterly disappointed that my erstwhile friend thought no more of me than to finesse our personal relationship exclusively with the intention of getting at my locked up possessions, and my depression would hit new lows every time I discovered this. ... The hardest thing to learn to live with was the incessant, passioned, and often aggressive demands they would make." --p 16

"by then, a species of insect has laid its eggs in the pith and the eggs have developed into large grubs, some the size of mice! This grub looks like a housefly maggot, but a very large one. ...An experienced missionary who tried them said they taste to him like very fat bacon"-- p 62

Jim Clark stories from, Lewis, Michael. 1999. The New New Thing. Norton.

I reminded Clark that he had said that once he became a real, after-tax billionaire he'd retire. He now said, without missing a beat: "I just want to make more money than Larry Ellison. Then I'll stop." This was news. I pointed out that he'd never before mentioned this ambition. "I just want to have more money than Larry Ellison," he said again. "I don't know why. But once I have more money than Larry Ellison I'll be satisfied."

Larry Ellison, the C.E.O. of Oracle, the biggest software company in the valley, was worth about $9 billion; Clark was, just then, worth a bit more than $3 billion. On the other hand, Ellison's wealth was completely tied up in Oracle stock, which had mostly missed out on the Internet boom. At the rate Clark's wealth was growing he'd pass Ellison within six months. I pointed this out and asked the obvious question:

"What happens after you have more than Larry Ellison? Would you want to have more money than, say, Bill Gates?... Oh, no," Clark said, waving my question to the side of the room where the ridiculous ideas gather to commiserate with one another. "That'll never happen." A few minutes later, after the conversation had turned to other matters, he came clean. "You know," he said, "just for one moment, I would kind of like to have the most. Just for one tiny moment."

Charlie Brown chasing elusive goals:

Birth amnesia is described in, McKay, S. and T.L. Barrows. 1992. "Reliving birth: maternal responses to viewing videotape of their second stage labors." The Journal of Nursing Scholarship, Spring 24(1): 27-31.

"Often women found the videotape viewing to be intensely emotional, especially when they heard noises they made. Women frequently commented upon details they hadn't remembered, their reactivated memory for labor pain, and the 'weird' experience of watching themselves in labor."

An excellent discussion on the evolution of greed is contained within, Hill, Kim and Magdelena Hurtado. 1996. Ache Life History: The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People. Aline De Gruyter.

"The Ache eat better than almost any other group of foragers ever studied and they weigh considerably more than well-known groups such as the !Kung, yet data clearly indicate that they do not get 'enough food to meet their needs.' More food is shown to impact positively on fertility of both sexes and may also increase child survival (though the evidence is weak)." --p 319

Hemingway, Ernest. 1984. Ernest Hemingway on Writing. Simon and Schuster.

"How much should you write a day? The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck." --p 42

The master of happiness discusses flow in, Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1990. Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.

"Thus we have the paradoxical situation: On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied, In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they like to work less and spend more time in leisure." -- p 159

Twilight Zone episode "A NICE PLACE TO VISIT" avaiable online: http://www.scifi.com/twizone/season1.html

While committing a crime, a cheap hood (Blyden) gets killed and finds an afterlife in which all wishes are granted.

Seahorses as Mr. Moms.

Many books suggest that seahorses display sex role reversals similar to that of moorhens; recent data suggest that this may not be true, at least for some species. Note: seahorses are fish complete with fins and gills.

The story until recently focused on the high level of male seahorse investment in offspring. The seahorse mating system has females produce the eggs then transfer them to a pouch in the male. The male carries the offspring inside of him in a form of prenancy and eventually gives birth. The link has some interesting photos of seahorses and contains a review of the literature.

http://www.sciencenews.org/20000311/bob1.asp

There is also a nice National Geographic article (with great photos) on seahorses:
The improbable seahorse. 1994 National Geographic 186 (October) :126

Recent data suggest that male seahorses do not invest more in offspring than do female seahorses. In this new view, the male investment in offspring is still considered high, but females invest significant resources in egg production and females (at least of some species) visit males during the males "pregnancy".

If male seahorse investment in offspring is lower than female investment in offspring, then the prediction is that seahorses will display the more common sex differences in behavior. Specifically, if females invest more, the females should be more choosy in picking mates than males, and males will be more competitive. Several papers find that male-female relationships are, in the author's words, "conventional".

Vincent, A.C. 1994. "Seahorses exhibit conventional sex roles in mating competition, despite male pregnancy." Behaviour : 128-135.

As summarized in the science news Vincent finds:

sex-role reversal "had been tacitly and explicitly assumed" by researchers, she notes. Yet her lab tests in the late 1980s dashed that expectation.

When she watched various combinations of males and females sharing an aquarium tank, she found that only the males tail-wrestled. She has seen males snap their heads toward each other but hesitates to call this competition. Putting underwater microphones into tanks revealed that the fish make a noise like fingers snapping.

In competitive behaviors that males and females shared, Vincent rated the males as more intense. The male rival that triumphed in a contest for a mate typically turned out to be the heavier one. Contrary to old expectations, it looked to Vincent as if males were putting more effort into getting pregnant than females were exerting to impregnate them.

The intense male competition has raised questions about where to fit seahorses into the spectrum of animal mating systems.

More recent work confirms this conventional view of seahorse sex roles; female seahorses (species Hippocampus zosterae) have lower potential reproductive rates than males, and females are more reluctant to mate than males:

Citation: Masonjones, Heather D. and Sara M. Lewis. 2000. "Differences in potential reproductive rates of male and female seahorses in courtship roles." Animal Behaviour 59(1): 11-20. Available as a read-only pdf file at:

http://ase.tufts.edu/BIOLOGY/faculty/bios/M&L2000.pdf

 

A good non-technical article about elephant seals is: LeBoeuf, B.J. 1974. "The hectic life of the alpha bull: elephant seal as fighter and lover." Psychology Today 8:104-108; and there are some good pictures at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jaap/elepseal.htm.

A more technical description of their sexual behavior and dramatic sexual dimorphism in reproductive strategies is: LeBoeuf, B.J. 1974. "Male-male competition and reproductive success in elephant seals." American Zoologist 14:163-176.

The British study of cuckoldry was reported widely in the media (see, for instance, the Sunday London Times excerpt below.) It should be noted that these data come from individuals that came to a laboratory that does paternity testing and, consequently, must be assumed to have more reason than average to suspect cuckoldry.

The Times (Britain)
23 January 2000

At least one in 10 children was not sired by the man who believes he is their father, according to scientists in paternity testing laboratories.

Some laboratories have reported the level of "unexpected" paternity to be as high as one in seven when they perform DNA genetic tests on blood samples from supposed parent and offspring. There are now seven government-approved laboratories doing paternity testing. Cellmark Diagnostics in Abingdon is the largest and receives more than 10,000 requests a year. One in five of them is "private" and has not been ordered as a result of a court or Child Support Agency dispute.

David Hartshorne, spokesman for Cellmark, said that in about one case in seven, the presumed father turns out to be the wrong man. "It is surprising how often the mother is wrong about the person she thinks is the father," he said. Marriage breakdown and more births outside marriage have increased disputes about paternity and the desire for testing, he added.

In addition to DNA evidence, other studies of mass blood samples suggest that increasing numbers of women are unsure if their husbands are the fathers of their children. This phenomenon of misattributed fatherhood has been investigated in a newly published study by social scientists at the London School of Economics (LSE). Oliver Curry, the principal researcher, said long working hours and commuting by fathers could contribute to uncertainty about whether children have been fathered by the man who is bringing them up.

"It can have major consequences for the way men treat their supposed children and the amount of time, money and emotion they invest in them," Curry said. "It can range through the entire spectrum from serious abuse to deciding not to pay for their education, or not buying them the latest expensive trainers."

The team from the LSE is calling for investigations to be set up by the government's new National Family and Parenting Institute. They believe that mistrust over paternity may be an overlooked factor in family breakdown. Women are driven by primitive urges to seek the optimum genes for their children, which can lead to them sleeping with a "high social-status Casanova" as well as their regular partner during the fertile period around ovulation, researchers claim.

David Buss, a psychologist from the University of Texas who is about to publish a new study on the subject, said: "A proportion of these misattributed fathers will believe that the child is genuinely theirs, and often the mother tries to foster that belief." He also estimates that the tendency for women to shop around for the best genes leads to them making mistakes about who has fathered their child.

Soraya Khashoggi, 57, former wife of arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, has revealed how DNA tests established her 18-year-old daughter, Petrina, to be the child of Jonathan Aitken, the disgraced former Conservative minister. Khashoggi said her ex-husband had completely accepted Petrina: "He gave her his name without ever asking who her true father was," she said.

Paula Yates, the television personality, discovered at 37 that her real father was Hughie Green, the Opportunity Knocks star.

For !Kung San norms with respect to conversation see, Lee, Richard. 1993, 2nd ed. The Dobe Ju/'hoansi. Harcourt Brace.

"A person's behavior is very different toward joking kin compared with avoidance kin. With a joking relative one acts in a relaxed fashion and speaks on familiar terms... The most heavily weighted avoidance relations occur between a man and his mother-in-law and between a woman and her father-in-law. Here even direct speech is not to occur. (In practice it frequently does, however.)" --p 70.

Yanomamö marriage and suaböya are discussed in, Chagnon, Napoleon. 1992. Yanomamo, 4th edition. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

"Men marry women they call suaböya. Their kinship system literally defines who is and who is not marriageable, and there are no terms for what we would call 'in-laws'. In a word, everyone in Yanomamo society is called by some kinship term that can be translated into what we would call blood kin." p 139.

The mother-fetus battle over nutrient flow is discussed in, Haig, David. 1993. "Genetic Conflicts in Human Preganancy." The Quarterly Review of Biology, 68(4): 495-532. It says,

"hPL is proposed to act on maternal prolactin receptors to increase maternal resistance to [her own] insulin. If unopposed, the effect of hPL would be to maintain higher blood glucose levels for longer periods after meals. This action, however, is countered by increased maternal production of insulin. Gestational diabetes develops if the mother is unable to mount an adequate response to fetal manipulation." --p 495

Chimpanzee aggression and its implications for human society are explored in, Wrangham, Richard and Dale Peterson. 1996. Demonic Males. Houghton Mifflin.

"Defense of territory is widespread among many species, but the Kasekela chimpanzees were doing more than defending. They didn't wait to be alerted to the presence of intruders. Sometimes they moved right through border zones and penetrated half a mile or more into neighboring land. They did no feeding on these ventures. And three times I saw them attack lone neighbors. So they seemed to be looking for encounters in the neighboring range. These expeditions were different from mere defense, or even border patrols. These were raids." --p 13

The peaceful and aggressive Polynesian societies are described in, Diamond, Jared. 1998. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. pp 53 -- 57.

"The Moriori were a small, isolated population of hunter gatherers, equipped with only the simplest technology and weapons, entirely inexperienced at war and lacking strong leadership and organization. The Maori invaders (from New Zealand's North Island) came from a dense population of farmers chronically engaged in ferocious wars, equipped with more-advanced technology and weapons, and operating under strong leadership." --p 54

A good review article on the effects of race on reaction time is, Banaji, Mahzarin R. and Nilanjana Dasgupta. 1998. The Consciousness of Social Beliefs: A Program of Research on Stereotyping and Prejudice. in Vincent Y. Yzerbyt, Guy Lories and Benoit Dardenne, eds., Metacognition: Cognitive and social dimensions: Sage Publications 157-170.

Professor Mahzarin R. Banaji is a leader in this research; you can visit her webpage and you can also take test yourself online for unconsicious biases using the tasks ("IAT" - Implicit Association Test) used in this research. Take an IAT online

· prefer the larger of two eggs of the same colour

· prefer the speckled egg over an unspeckled egg of the same colour

prefer natural coloured (brown speckled) eggs over brown unspeckled eggs

prefer green speckled eggs over green unspeckled eggs

· prefer green eggs over brown eggs.

An important finding of theirs is that the preference for larger eggs remains the same when other features like shape and colour are changed. This means that each feature (colour and speckling) adds a specific contribution that is independent of the contribution of the other features. In other words the features are additive in their effect on the gulls' behaviour.

The story of one group of the !Kung San and their boreholes is told in, Tanaka, J. 1987. The Recent Changes in the Life and Society of the Central Kalahari San. in African Study Monographs 37-51.

In 1962, under George Silberbauer, 5 test holes were bored in a 50 x 50km area. They were improved in 1979, leading to a stable water supply.

"…stable water supply from boreholes was the greatest factor to attract people. … Thus a great number of people came around !Koi!kom borehole. As a result, an extraordinarily large settlement suddenly sprang up. … The number increased to 520 at the end of 1982 owing to the severe drought and free food distribution by the government. … Wild plants which they relied [on for] 80% of their food disappeared rapidly, and the people of Kade were forced to depend on aid food. … Shortage of wood around !Koi!kom has become serious year after year, and now they are forced to go out as far as 3km to collect wood. Besides firewood, they need materials to build fences to protect their gardens from animals and to build their own huts. Thus the trees near the settlement have been completely cut down, and desertification is rapid in progress. … If the sedentary life continues, a large-scale destruction of nature will be inevitable."

Sugar content of natural and manufactured foods was observed in, Kugel, Allan. 1999. Evolution and the Utility Self-Subversion Effect. Manuscript. Kugel's manuscript online.

The key diagram is on page 7 in this paper. It it, sugar content is listed by percent weight.

Bananas can be seen as the highest of the natural foods listed, with about 14% sugar content by weight (reading from a graph).

Oranges are just under 10%.

Among manufactured foods listed we have granola cereal at 30%, Sugar Smacks cereal at over 55%, candy "(typical)" also at over 50% and jam-filled sponge cake at 50%.

One caveat to these numbers: the lower water content of the manufactured products listed may be exaggerating the differences

The reference for the sugar content is: Home Economics Research Report No. 48, Sugar Content of Selected Foods: Individual and Total. U.S.D.A., 1987: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/

A 16 oz. box of Cap'n Crunch contains almost 7 ounces of sugar.

Product Information: Quaker Captain Crunch Cereal Size: 16 oz. box.

Nutrition Facts

Servings Per Container: 17

Amount Per Serving Calories 150

Total Carbohydrate 23.0 g, Sugars 12.0 g

In the whole box we have 17 servings * 12 grams/serving = 204 grams of sugar * 1 oz/ 28.35 grams = 45.0% sugar

Gordon Gekko's speech in Oliver Stone's movie Wall Street -

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all its forms, greed for life, greed for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A."

Walter Mischel conducted dozens of experiments on deferral of gratification including the marshmallow studies. A nice review of this work is, Mischel, Walter, Yuichi Shoda and Monica Rodriguez. 1989. "Delay of Gratification in Children." Science, 244: 933-938. Professor Mischel's web site

Mischel et al. report: "After children understand the contingency, they are left on their own during the delay period while their behavior is observed unobtrusively, and the duration of their delay is recorded until they terminate or the experimenter returns (typically after 15 minutes).

They also state that: "A recent follow-up study of a sample of these children found that those who had waited longer in this situation at 4 years of age were described more than 10 years later by their parents as adolescents who were more academically and socially comptent than their peers and more able to copy with frustration and resist tempation."

And finally: "seconds of delay time in preschool also were significantly related to their Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores when they applied to college."

Additional experimental investigations of delayed gratification in children are reported in Loewenstein, G. and J. Elster, Eds. (1992). Choice over Time. New York, Russell Sage Foundation.

For detailed descriptions of the methods used in the deferred gratification studies, see also: Shoda, Y., Mischel, W. and Peake, P.K. (1990) Predicting Adolescent Cognitive and Self-Regulatory Competencies from Preschool Delay of Gratification: Identifying Diagnostic Conditions. Developmental Psych 26(6): 978-986.

In this study, children (mean age 4 years and 4 months) were tested with marshmallows, pretzel sticks, or poker chips, depending on which the child picked. They were told that the researcher would leave the room, and when he returned the kid could have two marshmallows (or pretzels, or poker chips). The child could ring a bell at any time to bring the researcher back, but if s/he rang the bell s/he could only have one marshmallow. Their mean waiting time was 512.8 sec, with a standard deviation of 368.7 seconds (with no difference according to sex).

The researchers also varied whether the reward was exposed, and whether a tactic of self-distraction was suggested. They would say, for instance: "why don't you think about something fun we could do afterwards while you wait." The unsuggested condition was described as "spontaneous ideation" while a suggested distraction was "suggested ideation" Altogether, they had four possible experimental conditions:

Exposed/Spontaneous

Exposed/Suggested

Unexposed/Spontaneous

Unexposed/Suggested

Of these: only the Exposed/Spontaneous differences in delay time in preschoolers was predictive of later traits. The follow up was done around age 18, via parental questionnaires and SAT scores. Questions they asked included: How likely is your child to be sidetracked by minor setbacks? When motivated, how capable is your child of exhibiting self-control in tempting situations? Is planful, thinks ahead? 12 out of 14 were significantly correlated with delay times in these children as preschoolers, but again only under Exp/Spont conditions. SAT Verbal and SAT Math were both correlated as well (correlation = 0.42, p<.05 and .57, p<.001, respectively).

The researchers hypothesized that the exposed/spontaneous ideation conditions are more predictive because intelligent, patient, motivated kids are more likely to develop their own strategies for self-distraction while they wait. When this strategy is suggested/facilitated, or when the rewards are unexposed (presumably providing less of a temptation) the difference in abilities of kids to self-distract is obscured.

A recent paper reported several studies investigating chimpanzee learning:

Study 1 used food: One hand has three raisins, while the other has 5. The researchers tried to train the chimpanzees to chose the smaller of the two quantities in order to receive the largest. After hundreds and hundreds of trials, there was no improvement!

Study 2, on the other hand, used "symbols." Chimpazneess were taught that one pebble represented one raisin. Then chimpanzees were then shown different amounts in different hands with the same rule: pick the smallest number of rocks in order to receive the larger number. Under these condistions the chimpanzees can learn (and relatively quickly).

In Study 3, the researchers used arabic numbers since several of these same chimpanzees know the arabic numerals through about 9. Again, different amounts of food were represented by numbers, with the champanzees having to pick smaller number in order to get the larger payoffg. Again the chimps quickly learn to perform well.

For more information, see: Chimpanzees and their inability to override food passions, Boysen, Sarah T., Kimberly L. Mukobi and Gary G. Berntson. 1999. "Overcoming response bias using symbolic representations of number by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)." Animal Learning & Behavior, 27(2): 229-235.

For the full text of The Odyssey by Homer (translation by Samuel Butler) with a summary and analysis, see: http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html

See also: http://classics.mit.edu//Homer/odyssey.html

Tzu, Sun. 1984. The Art of War. Oxford University Press.

"Generally, he who occupies the field of battle first and awaits his enemy is at ease, and he who comes later to the scene and rushes into the fight is weary. And, therefore, those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him. One able to make the enemy come of his own accord does so by offering him some advantage. And one able to stop him from coming does so by preventing him. Thus, when the enemy is at ease, be able to tire him, when well fed, to starve him, when at rest to make him move." --p. 96, chapter 6.