Apparently primatologists have evolved their research methodology

from field notes to “theory-driven, hypothesis-testing ethnology.”

Chimpanzees’ “tool kits” are now known to include 20 items, Dr. McGrew casually mentions that they’re used for “various functions in daily life, including subsistence, sociality, sex, and self-maintenance.”

Sex? Chimpanzees have tools for sex? No way. If ever there was an intrinsically human behavior, it had to be the manufacture of sex toys.

More ethnographies for us all to do!

Really!

Most casual observers believe that teenage girls share shopping information — especially about sales on cool clothes, music, etc. — with their friends online, and that they follow those tips with online purchases. But that belief is only about half right, according to a 2010 survey conducted by RSCG Worldwide.

The study found that girls are protective of information regarding their favorite brands, and they choose to share it via text message or phone rather than through more wide-reaching social media like Facebook or Twitter.

Some fun facts:

Only 5% alert friends of sales through Facebook, while 78% pass along those kinds of tip by phone and SMS.

Girls were also much more likely to shop in brick-and-mortar stores than online.

For example, the proposition “Peter said that Paul believed that Mary liked chocolate” is not too hard to follow. Add a fourth level, though, and it’s suddenly more difficult. And experiments have shown that at the fifth level understanding drops off by 60 percent, Ms. Zunshine said. Modernist authors like Virginia Woolf are especially challenging because she asks readers to keep up with six different mental states, or what the scholars call levels of intentionality.

Perhaps the human facility with three levels is related to the intrigues of sexual mating, Ms. Zunshine suggested. Do I think he is attracted to her or me? Whatever the root cause, Ms. Zunshine argues, people find the interaction of three minds compelling. “If I have some ideological agenda,” she said, “I would try to construct a narrative that involved a triangularization of minds, because that is something we find particularly satisfying.”

More lefty liberals writing about their friends from the New York Times.

Fascinating – read it here.

Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?

A look at what was cooking at the International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago this past week.

In the 1980s, the popcorn button on the microwave seemed like the last word in convenience. Now, ovens ranging from countertop convection to wall models come equipped with a chicken-nugget button.

On display at the annual exhibition that ended on Tuesday was an appliance that, with a touch, perfectly browns toast and, at the same time, poaches an egg. The 60,000 people at the show could also consider the advantages of a bread maker that allows a not-so-ambitious baker to press a button and bake a cake.

Fancy toaster ovens with convection heat have a one-touch “smart cookie” option so that store-bought dough can go from refrigerator to plate without a thought. Microwaves have graduated to buttons for pizzas, breakfast sausage and omelets.

That’s not to say that expensive knives, “Top Chef” cookbooks and home canning equipment aren’t popular in some circles. But the big money is made selling appliances designed on the assumption that cooking skill matters less than shopping skill.

Consider that in the $3.8 billion category called small kitchen electrics, sales were up almost 9 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to market research by the NPD Group. Meanwhile, sales of housewares — that includes knives, pots and pans — were down 11.5 percent.

As the economy drives more people home to eat, one-button cuisine offers ready answers for cooks with not much time to spend in the kitchen and not much of a clue about what to do once they get there.

Modern American marriage was the subject of this article in the Christian Science Monitor this week. Some interesting stats contained within:

Only 50 or 60 percent of Americans say that adultery would be an automatic deal breaker for their marriage, says Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington who has written many books on sex, love, and relationships; a decade ago that number was closer to 90 percent.

“Every study I know shows 85 percent of people or more saying that nonmonogamy is wrong in every instance,” Ms. Schwartz says. “But people also feel that you should eat three nutritious meals a day low in sugar and high in calcium.”

To this day, marriage is still intertwined with the country’s mores and laws. Everything from tax law to health insurance is affected by one’s marital status. Unlike in many European countries, where unmarried couples live and raise children together, marriage in the US is considered a more serious, valued, and adult relationship than other sorts of partnerships. Unlike in most developed countries, too, the US government has spent more than $100 million on promoting marriage.

Your daily street art fix

Graphic from the Onion

Buying less stuff but doing more things together…

Quietly but noticeably over the past year, Americans have rejiggered their lives to elevate experiences over things. Because of the Great Recession, a recent New York Times/CBS News poll has found, nearly half of Americans said they were spending less time buying nonessentials, and more than half are spending less money in stores and online.

But Americans are not just getting by with less. They are also doing more.

Some are working longer hours, but a larger proportion, the poll shows, are spending additional time with family and friends, gardening, cooking, reading, watching television and engaging in other hobbies.

The Department of Labor’s time-use surveys show a similar trend: compared with 2005, Americans spent less time in 2008 buying goods and services and more time cooking or taking part in “organizational, civic and religious activities.”

Just as tellingly, evidence can also be found in culture. While one new study shows that attendance at museums and cultural events dropped from 2002 to 2008, it has climbed in 2009 at many major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. Movie attendance was also up 5 percent in 2009, and in the world of the Walt Disney Company, product sales have declined as the company’s theme parks enjoyed a 3 percent increase in visitors last quarter.

Ten percent of adults younger than 35 told the Pew Research Center that they had moved back in with their parents because of the recession.

Among 18-24 year olds, the activity is most acute. 56 percent of men and 48 percent of women in that cohort were either still under the same roof as their parents or had moved back home.

In the Pew study, 13 percent of parents with grown children said one of their adult sons or daughters had moved back home in the past year.
- 20% were full-time students
- 25% were unemployed
- 33% said they had lived on their own before returning home

Those back under their parents roofs blamed the economy for other lifestyle decisions
- 12% had gotten a roommate to share expenses
- 15% said they had postponed getting married
- 14% said they had delayed having a baby