The Oyster’s Garter

Greetings from Monterey, former land of the mighty sardine, current land of Stanford’s  Hopkins Marine Station. Hopkins is my home for the next two weeks as I find out how fast I can learn tunicate mariculture and population genetics. (I really hope the answer is “in two weeks, of course!” But I doubt it.) Updates might be somewhat spotty since I fear my brain will not have room for anything unless it is related to tunicates. However, I still need to eat (particularly squid tacos) and would love to meet up with any readers in the area. Anyone from MBARI out there?

The hot toy to have this year is a Nintendo Wii – so hot you can’t find them – mostly because the Wii isn’t just for kids and gamers any more. Peruse, if you will, this quote:

Wii is the must-have gift for anyone with a kid between five and ten years old,” he says. But it’s not just kids who crave Wii. Grown-ups also want to get their hands on the console, which uses a motion-sensing controller to make gameplay much more realistic than standard joysticks, so they can play Wii’s tennis and bowling games. (The latter is an especially big hit at retirement homes.)

Retirement homes? Yup. The link above points to an article and video of  Wii bowling tournament for seniors. The teams are surrounded by a crowd of cheering fans, you can tell this is a big thing for them. But what I really like is the woman who bowls from a chair – no need for strong legs in Wii bowling. The whole video is a tad surreal (and try to ignore the somewhat mocking tone) but I’m totally down with this. Forget golf and knitting. I’ll take up the Wii in my old age.

Researchers perpetually search for ways to break down human interactions into components, but even when their results are obvious,  they can be interesting. In a recent paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, researchers in Aberdeen, Scotland showed that people find other people who smile and look directly at them both more likable and more sexually attractive. Try the same experiment on the woman pictured right (from newscientist.com). Despite the subtlety of the variation – the aversion of the woman’s gaze – the photo on the left really does make her seem more likable.

In another goofy experiment, McGill University researchers had office workers spend 5 minutes every morning playing a computer game in which they had to find a photo of a smiling person  amongst a group of 15 frowny faces. Playing this game reduced the hormone cortisol, which causes  symptoms related to stress, by 17%. Why? There’s some flummery in the New Scientist article, but it seems the researchers don’t actually know.