March 1998 Notebook Entries

March 1998 Notebook Entries

Notebook entry, March 22, 1998

A Business Week News: Analysis & Commentary article titled: "CHEAP PCs: The Mass Market Goes Online" reported that the lower-end of the PC market has now begun to reach the masses. The article states that by the year 2002, the PC will have morphed into a true phenomenon -- "The Model Ts of the Digital Age." I update my essay, Evolutionary Psychology and the Apple once again. You may see the essay and its update at: http://www.evoyage.com/Apple.html

Notebook entry, March 12, 1998

A New York Times story by Natalie Angier today reported that scientists at the University of Chicago have offered solid evidence of a human pheromone in women that alters the length of other women's menstrual cycles. Dr. Martha McClintock, the senior researcher in the new study, was the researcher who originality confirmed menstrual synchrony in 1971 between women who lived together. What is still unknown is why the synchronicity occurs. Speculation has led to the theory that ancestral women might have benefited from group mothering by sharing in lactational duties, thus assuring emergency food for their child if one of the mothers was ill or injured. Since menstruation occurs at the same time, so too does ovulation. This gives rise to the speculation of mating competition amongst the males occurring at the same time which would deplete the able ape's ability to impregnate all the women at the same time, thus spreading the genetic pool.

Along with these explanations, I would like to offer my own. One of the most powerful pheromones to a predator is blood. The females synchronicity of the menstrual cycle in hunter-gatherer groups could have been a natural selection advantage as to surviving in a group, as opposed to being picked off one-by-one by any predators during their cycle. There is anecdotal evidence within the U.S. Postal Service of female letter-carriers being followed more frequently by domestic dogs during their menstrual cycle.

Notebook entry, March 3, 1998

A USA Today newswire reported on an eight-year study of domestic violence. The study co-author Neil Jacobson, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, Seattle broke husbands who use violence into two categories: "cobras," and "pit bulls." The study findings appear in When Men Batter Women (Simon & Schuster) just released. It is only a matter of time before we classify variants in the male and female gender behaviors as I suggested in my notebook entry of Nov. 4, 97. It will help with the construction of precise behavior patterns which hopefully will lead to programs that are laser focused in their prevention abilities. I am not sure that the book used a evolutionary perspective, but it sounds interesting, and I wanted to share the information about the study with you.

Notebook entry, March 1, 1998

A newswire report from Associated Press caught my eye this morning. The newswire carried the story of a teenage female in Kabul, Afghanistan who was given 100 lashes for walking with a man who was not her relative. The Taliban religious army, for religious reasons, carried out the punishment. I use the report to add strength to my arguments in the Gender Differences In the DSM-IV observation. You can read the update at: http://www.evoyage.com/genderdifferences.htm