Human behaviour

2017-07-16 (Sunday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

This is post # 150 of my blog. So let us celebrate with a good piece of grilled meat!

Carne para churrasco

Dalolio, a popular store meat store in Paranavaí, PR, Brazil. People line up to buy meat for the weekend, either raw for them to grill it themselves or already grilled meat, from one of the big smokers to the left. Photo taken on 2017-04-23.

The photo above shows people lining up to buy the main ingredient for their Sunday lunch, the meat. During the week, this popular store sells only raw meat, but on Sundays there are also the big smokers you can see on the left side of the photo, so that its patrons can enjoy their lunch without the need for grilling the meat themselves. It was taken on 2017-04-23 in Paranavaí, PR, Brazil.

But people do not live only off food, the soul needs its take, as well. However, another store in the same city, which main activity is to sell religious articles, also offers grilled food, true to their motto ‘Burger and Bibles’. See for yourselves below:

Body and soul

Lunch is being prepared outside the store for religious articles. Photo taken on 2017-07-14.

Maybe you remember my post in the beginning of this year, 2017-01-29 ?  In it I showed that there is a movement in the US state of California which aims to break away from the US federation. Since I had not heard so much about it afterwards, I decided to take the opportunity and ask the former correspondent for Radio Sweden in New York, Agneta Furvik, during her radio program last Thursday, when her listeners could call in (or send a message) and ask about anything they want to know about USA. By her side, Agneta had other experts in American matters: American political scientist, Katherine Angelo Hanly; Professor of North American studies at Uppsala University, Dag Blanck; and her former colleague as correspondent in Washington DC, Inger Arenander. You can see them and hear their opinions (in Swedish) in reference # 1 below.

For those of you who do not understand Swedish, I can summarise that neither of them believes that there is any major risk of a Calexit in 2019.

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:
1: Lyssnarfråga: Kan Kalifornien lämna USA?

*: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-09 (Wednesday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

Already yesterday, I could watch in real time a streaming video of the total solar eclipse, which was happening at the same time next day in the Pacific Ocean. It was a webcast arranged by NASA (North American Space Administration) transmitting live from one of the Micronesian islands, where the eclipse was total during 4 minutes, from 22:38 to 22:42 yesterday my time. Below, I show two screen shots that I took during the totality.

totaleclipse

Two photos from NASAs webcast from Micronesia, showing the totality of the solar eclipse. The left photo, from the first seconds of totality, shows the Sun’s corona and the second one is the exact moment when the Sun starts to get out of the Moon’s obstruction, creating a so-called Diamond Ring.

And while we are at it, here comes another update to my post from 2016-02-15, when AIK celebrated its 125th anniversary:

After an exciting sudden death, AIK beat Tingsryd with 4-3 and won the Swedish Icehockey’s 2nd division, aka Allsvenskan. Now AIK will dispute a series of best of 7 against Karlskrona, where the winner is qualified for SHL next year.

And of course, we must not forget that the Swedish female national football team today qualified for the Olympic Games after a draw (1-1) with the Netherlands.

To continue in the name of sports, here are two other interesting facts:

According to a podcast from Scientific American (reference #2 below), a researcher who wanted to measure perception went to a softball game and after the game, she showed the players a poster with different sized softballs, asking them to point out the correct one. People who hit better selected a larger circle, meaning the batters who were hitting better saw the ball as bigger. Which means not everyone sees the ball the same way. And it also means that what we see is affected by our ability to act. Performance impacts vision.

In other studies she found that golfers who putted better saw the hole as bigger than did poor putters. Faster swimmers saw targets underwater as being closer than did slower swimmers. And she had athletes who were not placekickers try to make field goals in American football. The ones who did better saw the space between the uprights as wider.

Bottom line:
“You don’t see the world the same the others. You see the world in a way that’s unique to you, and it’s unique to your abilities.”

Finally, do you know what a golden set is? In volleyball, if after the last play-off match, two teams are still tied, a sixth set (“golden set”) decides which team wins the play-off series. This means, that one team wins by a 3-3 set draw! See reference #3 below, if you do not believe me!

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: The total solar eclipse 2016-03-09 over Micronesia

2: Ball Really Looks Bigger to Better Hitters

3: Golden set to decide a volleyball game

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-01-30 (Lördag)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Idag har jag lärt mig, att:

Snart kan man tjäna pengar utan att behöva jobba. I Finland diskuterar man sedan ett tag tillbaka att inrätta ett system med garanterad minimilön till sina innevånare. Det rör sig inte om så mycket pengar, men om man inte är statusjägare kanske det är tillräckligt.

Exempel på liknande, men mycket mer begränsade, system finns i Holland och Tyskland.

Allt detta kan ni höra mer om på SR P4 Världen idag. Där finns bl.a. också ett reportage från Colombia om hur man har börjat ännu ett krig, denna gång inte mot FARC-gerillan, utan Aedes aegypti, zika-myggan jag berättade om i torsdags, 2016-01-28.

Se en länk till programmet nedan.

… Tack för idag, slut för idag!

(This post in Swedish deals with getting paid without having to do anything in return.)

Refs.:

1: Få en lön utan att jobba

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-01-29 (Friday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

There exists one more evidence of the negative consequencies of the American obsession to defend having a firearm for “personal protection”, instigated by the National Rifle Association. Here are excerpts from a podcast by Scientific American early this morning, stated by David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center:

hemenway

David Hemenway, photo by Harvard School of Public Health

“One of the things we know for sure in the United States is that a gun in the home increases the likelihood that someone in the home will die a violent death—from gun accidents, from a woman being murdered by a man in an intimate partner violence situation and particularly by suicide.

The gun violence discussion often seems to give short shrift to suicide, even though more than 60 percent of the approximately 32,000 annual U.S. firearms deaths are suicides.

The evidence is overwhelming, from case control studies and ecological studies. For example, why do we have very different suicide rates across cities, across states, across regions in the United States. To explain the differences in suicide rates across states, turns out it’s not well explained at all by differences in mental health, it’s not well explained at all by differences in the number of psychiatrists, it’s not even explained by differences in suicide ideation among the population or even suicide attempts. What really explains the difference in the United States across the populations is the number of guns. Because it’s gun suicide which is so different.

And someone who commits suicide with a gun very likely would not have either attempted or succeeded if the gun were not available. For example, a 2013 Swiss study tracked men after the size of the army was cut in half, effectively removing guns from half that group. The overall suicide rate went down, and the researchers estimated that only 22 percent of all the men who would have killed themselves with a gun if it had been available wound up committing the act by other means. The presence of the gun just makes it significantly easier to take your own life impulsively.”

Please see references below for complete coverage.

… That’s what I learned in school!

Refs.:

1: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/suicide-differences-by-region-related-to-gun-availability/

2: https://theforum.sph.harvard.edu/events/preventing-gun-violence/

+: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VucczIg98Gw