10 stories and links I think are educative, informative, entertaining, or weird

Better late than never – should have been published 9ish this morning.

What Makes Online Dating Work (or Not)? via Big Think by Orion Jones
A new dating website run by the former president of the Onion wants to make online matchmaking more personal and less gimmicky. The site will take lessons from social media, allowing its users to interact in real time about things that interest them.
Read More

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
There's a disconnect between how the world works and how we perceive it. The result: The more we know, the less we understand... more

‘The Grammar of Ornament’, Owen Jones, 1910 via Retronaut by Amanda

This was one of the harder decisions of the week – which of these delightful images to use to give you a flavour. You can view them all here.
Thank you to the University of Wisconsin

A Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin


Boing Boing reader Kenneth is a weird-and-rare book lover who is painstakingly scanning and posting online some of his favorite obscurities. Among the Golden Guides he’s posted (dig the iconic visual style!) is the exceedingly hard-to-find and out of print Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants from 1976. I haven't seen it in the wild in ages; it’s as rare as an Amanita Muscaria in Siberia. Where, by the way, the native people once ritually drank each other’s pee so multiple people could trip off a single ’shroom.
Update: Pesco has blogged about the "Hallucinogenic Plants" one before.

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Gay marriage isn't a blow to the ancient tradition of marriage, says Justin E.H. Smith. That institution was long ago blown apart – by love and capitalism... more

London Transport Infographics, 1912-1969 via Retronaut by Chris

All images (you see the others here) from Painting by numbers – making sense of statistics at London Transport Museum Thank you to Creative Review
Don’t forget, when you are next looking for a venue in London, that The London Transport Museum is more than just a museum. There is also a lecture theatre, smaller meeting rooms and sumptuous dining facilities.

How Humans Evolved Large Brains (Science Up Front) via Britannica Blog by Kara Rogers
Since the mid-1990s, scientists have wondered whether our brain size was made possible by an evolutionary gut-brain trade off — the brain becoming larger while the gastrointestinal tract became smaller and more compact. But a study published recently in the journal Nature refutes that idea, proposing instead that the evolution of a large brain was the outcome of a substantial energy-saving development, most likely bipedalism, which would have changed energy and fat allocation in the body, ultimately providing additional energy to the brain.

Mammals that store fat usually have relatively small brains. Credit: Ana Navarrete, Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zürich. Animal Diversity Web (Photos Erinaceus europaeus, Felis silvestris, Didelphis virginiana, Sciurus vulgaris).
Read more here.

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Sure, left-handedness used to have immoral connotations. But is it really a conundrum worth tracing through the centuries?... more

Censoring Flu Research to Prevent a Pandemic via Big Think by Big Think Editors
The nation’s premier scientific journals, Nature and Science, have agreed to temporarily withhold publication of new research which government officials say could aid bioterrorists. The research in question reports on how a team of scientists were able to mutatethe H5N1 bird flu virus such that it became communicable through the air between humans. After researchers passed the virus ten times between ferrets (which are good simulations for humans), it mutated naturally to become communicable through the air.
The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, a government department created after 9/11, has asked that publication be withheld until a solution can be found where important scientific information can be shared confidentially between scientists. Knowledge about the new virus, “could well be essential for speeding the development of new treatments to combat this lethal form of influenza,” said Dr. Bruce Alberts, the editor of Science. Blunt censorship would be counterproductive.
Read it at the Economist


What is snot? And why do some people eat it? via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker


Image: BOOGER KING, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from aroundtheway's photostream
The Stranger’s “Ask Science” column offers a detailed explanation of just what, exactly, boogers are. It is simultaneously gross and mesmerising:

Mucus, chemically, is quite fascinating. Sugar chains are attached to a protein backbone in mucus cells, with the contraption released out into the open. These glycoprotein molecules rapidly and aggressively suck up water until they are plump, slick, and slimy. To an invader, this is a nightmare to navigate: tangled chains of protein and sugar, with every nook and cranny crammed with water molecules. (Boogers are when these chains become ever more tangled, finally resulting in a rubbery ball of partially dried-out snot. Neat!) The body adds antimicrobial enzymes to this mix, which digest the invading organisms as they slowly attempt to chew through this barrier and reach the thin underlying lining of cells.

Which reminds me: Over the years, I've stumbled across some interesting discussions about whether picking your nose and/or eating boogers is a psychological or biological phenomenon. That is, when people do this, does it reflect some kind of psychological or socio-cultural issue; or is there a biological reason why booger-eating could be beneficial?
The truth is, there’s not been a great deal of research done on this subject, at least from the biology angle. We know about booger-eating as a function of human behavioural development. There's been some research into it from the perspective of evolutionary psychology (i.e., why do people think this is gross?). But analysis of whether or not there is a biological reason people engage in booger eating has been lacking. Perhaps unsurprisingly. It would be interesting to see the responses you’d get if you tried to recruit volunteers for that study. Especially considering the fact that, as I think about it, you’d probably want your test subjects to eat both their own boogers, and those of other people, to see whether that had any impact on any presumed immune system response.
But I digress. If you are not totally grossed out yet, I’d recommend reading “Eating Snot – Socially Unacceptable but Common: Why?”, a chapter in the book Consuming the Inedible: Neglected Dimensions of Food Choice. You can read most of that chapter on Google Books. Author Maria Jesus Portalatin focuses mainly on the better documented socio-cultural implications, but gets into a bit of the biology. One thing she points out, nasal mucus is about 95% water, so there’s a possibility that you might expect more mucus eating in arid places. But nobody has ever done the studies necessary to test that hypothesis out. Her main hypothesis – also untested – is that eating mucus might help prime the body’s immune system, allowing it to have more contact with weakened forms of potential pathogens so it can better detect and destroy those pathogens later. In other words, she thinks that eating your boogers is sort of like self-immunization.
Blame Tim Lloyd for sending me down this train of thought.