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Passive Voice

The passive voice is a verb form in which the subject receives the action of the verb. For example, "I was born on a Saturday." Most of the time, users should avoid the passive voice, which can make the speaker or writer seem indirect and weak. Yet people have several reasons to choose passive voice over active voice.

The most common reason is when the actor is unknown or unimportant. The second reason is to avoid naming the person who performed an action, common in politics and law: at times, powerful people who want to admit to a mistake without blaming specific people often use the passive phrase "mistakes were made." The passive voice can be heard in a courtroom: lawyers, for legal reasons, sometimes have to use the passive voice to avoid directly blaming a suspect for a crime.

P.S. Overusing the passive voice is a major problem in writing. (There is much more to learn about the passive voice, including the stative passive and participle adjectives.)

Everyday Grammar: When Passive Is Better than Active

Most sentences in English follow the subject-verb-object pattern known as the active voice. For example, "I love you." In this example the subject is "I," the verb is "love" and the object is "you." The subject performs the action of the verb.

But sometimes the subject is acted upon, or receives the action of the verb. This is called the passive voice. Imagine that someone stole your wallet, but you do not know who did it. You could say, "My wallet was stolen." In this passive sentence, "my wallet" is the subject, "was stolen" is the verb. There is no direct object -- the wallet did not steal itself. The speaker does not know who stole the wallet.

To form the passive voice, use a form of the verb "be" followed by a past participle verb form. You can form the passive voice in several verb tenses, but the simple present and simple past are the most common.

Only transitive verbs can be passive voice. Intransitive verbs, or verbs that cannot take a direct object, cannot be passive voice. You cannot say "I was arrived by train" because the intransitive verb arrive cannot be followed by an object.

Most of the time, users should avoid the passive voice. The passive voice can make the speaker or writer seem indirect and weak. Which would you rather hear: "I love you" (active voice) or "You are loved by me" (passive voice)?

But there are several situations when you should use the passive.

The most common reason to use the passive is when the actor is unknown or unimportant. For example, "My visa was processed," and "My shoes were made in India" and "The car was imported from Germany." In these examples, it is not necessary to know exactly who performed the action.

Sometimes speakers use the passive even when they know the person who did the action. In this case, use the word by followed by the actor.

For example, "Great Expectations was written by Charles Dickens." You could also use the active voice: "Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations." Both are correct. The passive voice emphasizes the book; the active voice emphasizes the writer.

In informal speech, the verb "be" can be replaced with the verb "get." For example, instead of saying "I was hit by a car," you can say, "I got hit by a car." Listen to this famous song by the Eurythmics. You will hear two active and two passive sentences.

Some of them want to use you Some of them want to get used by you Some of them want to abuse you Some of them want to be abused

Notice how singer Annie Lennox used the passive with both "get" and "be."

Another reason to use the passive is to avoid naming the person who performed an action. This is common in politics and law.

At times, powerful people want to admit to a mistake without blaming specific people. In this case, they often use the passive phrase "mistakes were made." Listen to a TV interview with President Obama. A reporter asked the president about a report of abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency. Here is how President Obama replied:

"Any fair-minded person looking at this would say that some terrible mistakes were made."

And here is President George W. Bush using the same phrase. A reporter asked him about the firing of some prosecutors.

"And he's right, mistakes were made. And I’m frankly not happy about them."

You might hear the passive voice in a courtroom. For legal reasons, sometimes lawyers have to use the passive voice to avoid directly blaming a suspect for a crime. Listen to this courtroom dialog from a popular TV drama The Good Wife. A prosecutor is accusing a person of killing a man named Wagner.

Prosecutor: And how did he kill Wagner? Defense attorney: Objection! Prosecutor: Withdrawn. How was Wagner killed?

Did you notice how the prosecutor switched his question from the active to the passive voice?

At the beginning of the clip, the prosecutor asked, "How did he kill Wagner?" The defense attorney objected to the question. The prosecutor rephrased the question in the passive voice to avoid blaming the suspect. He asked, "How was Wagner killed?"

Overusing the passive voice is major problem in student writing, even for native speakers. Try to keep your passive sentences under 10 percent of your total. Try converting some of your long sentences into simple subject-verb-object sentences.

There is much more to learn about the passive, including the stative passive and participle adjectives. We'll address those topics in a future episode of Everyday Grammar. Until then, sweet dreams!

Sweet dreams are made of this Who would admire to disagree? I’ve traveled the world and the seven seas Everybody's looking for something…

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/everyday-grammar-when-passive-is-better-than-active/2825976.html

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與精神障礙者的對話

與精神障礙者的對話：從三個專業領域來談精神疾病   /主任林正鄆

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貳、是代名詞還是另類社會標籤？        現實生活中，我們常會對某些事情作直接的聯想，而且這種聯想是再自然不過的部分，如當人們聽到有人介紹自己是醫學系畢業的，就會爭相前去詢問有關身體疼痛的問題，又如當我們介紹自己是從事社會工作領域服務，通常所得到的答案就是：「你們一定很有愛心和耐心。」但大多數人並未意識到這樣的自然反應背後蘊藏著怎樣的危機？        人們一旦被冠上精神疾病的標籤後，其所有的思考與行為舉動都將會被解讀為「精神病患」的模式，也認定他∕她在這個社會中的位置缺席了。例如：當一位家長發現自己的孩子有過動症（Attention deficit hyperactivity disorders，ADHD），於是孩子任何的無理取鬧、亂跑亂跳都直接歸咎於過動症的原因。精神病患會出現行為舉止異常的原因很多，包括：遺傳、頭部受傷、生活壓力、藥物濫用、偏執狂熱、創傷壓力事件等等；某些重症的精神病患者其現��生活與語言行為明顯脫節，無法正常生活、學習與工作，多數輕症的精神病患者，只要在固定的就醫回診、規律服藥地控制下，其實可以和一般人一樣有正常的生活，而不是替他們貼上負面標籤，認為他們是社會依賴的一群，長期的負面社會觀感會造成精神病患有「習得的無助感」（learned helplessness）。    人群服務領域總習慣針對所服務的對象另取一個稱號，用來代替病症名稱，如：愛滋感染者取名為「帕提斯」（Positive）、精神病患者則取為「奇夢子」，另一方面，又極力向社會大眾倡導要接納關懷這些族群，把這些病患當作一般人看待，讓他們同樣擁有工作權與基本權益，但從另個角度去思考，這樣的稱呼究竟是否有其實質助益？抑或反倒是把他們從社會大眾區隔開來，為他們貼上一個牢不可破的標籤，即使外界沒有用異樣的眼光去看待他們，這些病患自己則會深深內化這些標籤意義，認定自己就是個生病的人。       現今社會步調匆忙，加以電子科技發達，人們已經習慣用部分特徵去概括整體，這樣的思考模式並沒有所謂的對錯，它的確能夠幫助人們節省時間、加速思考的速度，如此將會「刻板印象」（stereotype）和偏見「prejudice」扯上關聯，在日常生活雖可能會造成一些誤會，但若套用在診斷精神疾病患者時，將會產生難以想像的後果。在社會心理學有一個名詞叫做汙名化（Stigmatization），意即人們會將某些特定族群貼上標籤，概括地認為這些族群就是這樣的人們，進而減少去認識其他方面的可能性，或者也不再去瞭解同一族群內的差異性。

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捌、結論       面對精神疾病患者，我們必須保有「不排斥、不歧視、不恐懼」的態度，精神病患會罹病並非他們所能選擇，事實上他們也常處於徬徨無助的狀況；惟精神病患也是社會的一份子，有權利享有社會資源及設施，更有身為人的尊嚴與價值，早期去機構化的主要目的就是希望讓精神障礙者可以回歸社區，而社區復健已經成為一個重要的趨勢，尤其當他們成功康復後，不僅是能過著正常的生活，更能參與社區事務、貢獻社會，故以偏見與歧視的觀點去看待精神病患實為不公平的作法。另外，我們也期待不管是新聞媒體或社會大眾都能夠正向地看待精神疾病患者，社會上的特殊族群不僅是需要家人親友與專業人士的關懷支持，更是需要社會大眾的包容與接納，如此才能創造一個安定和諧與進步的社會。

https://www.1995.org.tw/published_detail_31.htm

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PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIAL MEDIA — WHY WE FEEL THE NEED TO SHARE

In an age where social media is part of our daily lives in almost every capacity, one must wonder the effects it has on our minds, both the unconscious and conscious parts. We know the research on the negative impact of social media and see this occur in the news daily, with many of us having experienced this firsthand as well.

Why are we so focused on social media? Why is there a need to post online, knowing all the reasons why it is so negative? What makes us feel the need to document our lives and post these things on social media? Why do we post the good things and not the bad? Our online behavior directly relates to our sense of worth offline. It also relates to psychological states, for example whether we have low self-esteem, narcissism, anxiety or depression can equate to the need for admiration, external validation or other traits leading us to post online.

Wilcox and Stephen (2012) found that social media sites increase self-esteem as people present themselves as socially desirable with a positive self-view to others when online. This, in turn, gives individuals a self-esteem boost, but decreases self-control. One must keep up appearances and paint a positive picture of what our lives look like, which may cover up our true personas. Obtaining our self-esteem and self-worth from social media is not sustainable. These superficial ways of receiving positive feedback do more harm than good and makes us more malleable to the comments we get and the number of likes we get, which can also lead to psychological addiction to social media usage. There is even research to back this up, psychological addiction can lead to degrading white matter in the brain and resembles the impact drug addiction has on an individual.

Social media should not be what one turns to, to boost self-esteem as one relies on external validation to achieve a sense of self-worth, rather than looking internally for validation. By gaining a positive view of ourselves on social media, we perpetuate a negative cycle where we take short-term satisfaction as the same as long-term, meaningful work we should be doing on our own to improve our own self-esteem. Again, when we post something online, we hide the negative parts of our life, thus leaving behind the shame we have of those negatives. We lose the ability to develop a healthy sense of self-worth through personal growth and moving forward from fears related to failure and other negative thoughts.

The key here is that our sense of self-worth is not and should not originate from social media. We must be cognizant of the reality that it is not possible to fully improve our self-esteem through posting online and receiving positive feedback. Rather, looking inward to ourselves is a sustainable and healthy way to develop positive emotional and cognitive self-appraisals that build up self-esteem and self-worth.

https://moderntherapy.online/blog-2/2019/12/9/psychology-of-social-media-why-we-feel-the-need-to-share

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Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. Nonetheless, he produced relatively few paintings and evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

"Almost all his paintings," Hans Koningsberger wrote, "are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women."

His modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him, although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Vermeer may have first executed his paintings tonally like most painters of his time, using either monochrome shades of grey ("grisaille") or a limited palette of browns and greys ("dead coloring"), over which he would apply more saturated colors (reds, yellows and blues) in the form of transparent glazes. No drawings have been positively attributed to Vermeer, and his paintings offer few clues to preparatory methods.

One aspect of his meticulous painting technique was Vermeer's choice of pigments. He is best known for his frequent use of the very expensive ultramarine (The Milkmaid), lead-tin-yellow (A Lady Writing a Letter), madder lake (Christ in the House of Martha and Mary), and vermilion. He also painted with ochres, bone black and azurite. The claim that he utilized Indian yellow in Woman Holding a Balance has been disproven by later pigment analysis.

There is no other 17th-century artist who employed the exorbitantly expensive pigment lapis lazuli (natural ultramarine) either so lavishly or so early in their career. Vermeer used this in not just elements that are naturally of this colour; the earth colours umber and ochre should be understood as warm light within a painting's strongly lit interior, which reflects its multiple colours onto the wall. In this way, he created a world more perfect than any he had witnessed. This working method most probably was inspired by Vermeer's understanding of Leonardo's observations that the surface of every object partakes of the colour of the adjacent object, meaning that no object is ever seen entirely in its natural colour.

A comparable but even more remarkable, yet effectual, use of natural ultramarine is in The Girl with the Wine Glass. The shadows of the red satin dress are underpainted in natural ultramarine, and, owing to this underlying blue paint layer, the red lake and vermilion mixture applied over it acquires a slightly purple, cool and crisp appearance that is most powerful.

Even after his supposed financial breakdown following the so-called rampjaar (year of disaster) in 1672, Vermeer continued to employ natural ultramarine generously, such as in Lady Seated at a Virginal, not only suggesting that Vermeer was supplied with materials by a collector but coinciding with John Michael Montias’ theory that Pieter van Ruijven was Vermeer's patron.

Vermeer's works are largely genre pieces and portraits, with the exception of two cityscapes and two allegories. His subjects offer a cross-section of seventeenth-century Dutch society, ranging from the portrayal of a simple milkmaid at work, to the luxury and splendour of rich notables and merchantmen in their roomy houses. Besides these subjects, religious, poetical, musical, and scientific comments can also be found in his work.

Vermeer produced a total of fewer than 50 paintings, of which 34 have survived. Only three Vermeer paintings were dated by the artist: The Procuress (1656; Gemäldegalerie, Dresden); The Astronomer (1668; Musée du Louvre, Paris); and The Geographer (1669; Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt).

Vermeer's mother-in-law Maria Thins owned Dirck van Baburen's 1622 oil-on-canvas The Procuress (or a copy of it), which appears in the background of two of Vermeer's paintings. The same subject was also painted by Vermeer. Almost all of Vermeer's paintings are of contemporary subjects in a smaller format, with a cooler palette dominated by blues, yellows, and grays. Practically all of his surviving works belong to this period, usually domestic interiors with one or two figures lit by a window on the left. They are characterized by a sense of compositional balance and spatial order, unified by a pearly light. Mundane domestic or recreational activities are imbued with a poetic timelessness (e.g., Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie). Vermeer's two townscapes have also been attributed to this period: View of Delft  and A street in Delft.

A few of his paintings show a certain hardening of manner and are generally thought to represent his late works. From this period come The Allegory of Faith (c. 1670; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and The Love Letter .

Originally, Vermeer's works were largely overlooked by art historians for two centuries after his death. A select number of connoisseurs in the Netherlands did appreciate his work, yet even so, many of his works were attributed to better-known artists such as Metsu or Mieris. The Delft master's modern rediscovery began about 1860, when German museum director Gustav Waagen saw The Art of Painting in the Czernin gallery in Vienna and recognized the work as a Vermeer, though it was attributed to Pieter de Hooch at that time. Research by Théophile Thoré-Bürger culminated in the publication of his catalogue raisonné of Vermeer's works in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1866. Thoré-Bürger's catalogue drew international attention to Vermeer and listed more than 70 works by him, including many that he regarded as uncertain. The accepted number of Vermeer's paintings today is 34.

Han van Meegeren was a 20th-century Dutch painter who worked in the classical tradition. He became a master forger, motivated by a blend of aesthetic and financial reasons, creating and selling many new "Vermeers" before turning himself in for forgery to avoid being charged with capital treason for collaboration with the Nazis, specifically, in selling what had been believed to be original artwork to the Nazis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer

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Winged Victory of Samothrace

The Winged Victory of Samothrace, also called the Nike of Samothrace, is a marble Hellenistic sculpture of Nike (the Greek goddess of victory), that was created in about the 2nd century BC. Since 1884, it has been prominently displayed at the Louvre and is one of the most celebrated sculptures in the world. H. W. Janson described it as "the greatest masterpiece of Hellenistic sculpture".

The sculpture is one of a small number of major Hellenistic statues surviving in the original, rather than Roman copies. Only Winged Victory's right wing isn't original, and was added by mirroring the left wing.

The statue is 244 centimetres (8.01 ft) high. It was created not only to honour the goddess, Nike, but probably also to commemorate a naval action. It conveys a sense of action and triumph as well as portraying artful flowing drapery, as though the goddess were descending to alight upon the prow of a ship.

Modern excavations suggest that the Victory occupied a niche above a theater and also suggest it accompanied an altar that was within view of the ship monument of Demetrius I Poliorcetes (337–283 BC). Rendered in grey and white Thasian and Parian marble, the figure originally formed part of the Samothrace temple complex dedicated to the Great gods, Megaloi Theoi. It stood on a rostral pedestal of gray marble from Lartos representing the prow of a ship (most likely a trihemiolia), and represents the goddess as she descends from the skies to the triumphant fleet. Before she lost her arms, which have never been recovered, Nike's right arm is believed to have been raised, cupped round her mouth to deliver the shout of Victory. The work is notable for its convincing rendering of a pose where violent motion and sudden stillness meet, for its graceful balance and for the rendering of the figure's draped garments, compellingly depicted as if rippling in a strong sea breeze. Similar traits can be seen in the Laocoön group, which is a reworked copy of a lost original that was likely close both in time and place of origin to Nike, but while Laocoön, vastly admired by Renaissance and classicist artists, has come to be seen as a more self-conscious and contrived work, Nike of Samothrace is seen as an iconic depiction of triumphant spirit and of the divine momentarily coming face to face with man.

The statue's outstretched right wing is a symmetric plaster version of the original left one. The stylistic portrayal of the wings is a source of scholarly discussion, as the feather pattern resembles neither the wings of birds in nature nor wings in Greek art. As with the arms, the figure's head has never been found, but various other fragments have since been found: in 1950, a team led by Karl Lehmann unearthed the missing right hand of the Louvre's Winged Victory. The fingerless hand had slid out of sight under a large rock, near where the statue had originally stood; on the return trip home, Phyllis Williams Lehmann identified the tip of the Goddess's ring finger and her thumb in a storage drawer at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, where the second Winged Victory is displayed; the fragments have been reunited with the hand, which is now in a glass case in the Louvre next to the podium on which the statue stands.

Despite its significant damage and incompleteness, the Victory is held to be one of the great surviving masterpieces of sculpture from the Hellenistic Period, and from the entire Greco-Roman era. The statue shows a mastery of form and movement which has impressed critics and artists since its discovery. It is considered one of the Louvre's greatest treasures, and since the late 19th century it has been displayed in the most dramatic fashion, at the head of the sweeping Daru staircase.

The art historian H. W. Janson has pointed out that unlike earlier Greek or Near Eastern sculptures, Nike creates a deliberate relationship to the imaginary space around the goddess. The wind that has carried her and which she is fighting off, straining to keep steady – as mentioned the original mounting had her standing on a ship's prow, just having landed – is the invisible complement of the figure, and the viewer is made to imagine it. At the same time, this expanded space heightens the symbolic force of the work; the wind and the sea are suggested as metaphors of struggle, destiny and divine help or grace. This kind of interplay between a statue and the space conjured up would become a common device in baroque and romantic art, about two thousand years later. It is present in Michelangelo's sculpture of David: David's gaze and pose shows where he is seeing his adversary Goliath and his awareness of the moment – but it is rare in ancient art.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Victory_of_Samothrace

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Existential Loneliness

By Michael Schreiner | August 14, 2014

Loneliness is an oppressive state. You know because you’ve been there, just like everybody else. We usually think of loneliness as meaning a lack of human connection, but in an existential sense it runs much deeper than that and is a fundamental part of modern human existence. Existential loneliness arises from not having a clear role carved out for you, and from not being able to rely on your instinctual apparatus or any other structure to tell you what you’re supposed to do and when you’re supposed to do it.

We tend to look at freedom through rose colored glasses, and so we miss the reality that with increasing personal freedom comes increasing personal responsibility to make your own choices, and that with this increasing personal responsibility comes increasing loneliness because you truly are alone in the choices you make.

Most organisms act off of their instincts, making them a part of and inseparable from nature, a state where existential loneliness is impossible. Only if you can see yourself as a separate entity can you experience loneliness. The more freedom you have to direct the course of your life, the more will this feeling of being separate gnaw away at you. Here we see the appeal of all caste systems. If your role is clearly defined for you and you are completely sure of your place within a society, then you feel like you are a part not apart.

The tradeoff of being an intelligent organism aware of itself as a separate entity, capable of making its own choices, and directing its own development, is loneliness. You might be able to deal with your loneliness better by deciding this tradeoff is worth it. You get to experience the world like no other type of organism on the planet does or ever has, you get to decide who you are, and this unique relationship to existence means feeling lonely sometimes.

https://evolutioncounseling.com/existential-loneliness/

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Dude-Sex, Bud-Sex, and Mostly Straight Sex

We’ve long assumed that a straight man might engage in same-sex sexual interactions under unusual circumstances, such as a display of power dynamics while in prison, a gang, or a fraternity. Or it could be an “accidental” act while he’s high or drunk, or a means to “get off” (orgasm), or to fulfill a dare or prank. More charitably, it might be a gift or a favor to a bisexual or gay friend.

Several years ago, psychologist Jane Ward introduced us to dude-sex: sex among white, masculine, straight men in urban or military contexts for the purpose of building and reinforcing their masculinity. Writer Graham Gremore elaborated:

“By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways…Ward argues that the real reason ‘straight’ men behave in these ways is to ‘reaffirm rather than challenge their gender and racial identity’ and ‘to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men.’ In other words: They do it to prove they’re not gay.”

What Ward doesn’t address is whether these straight men are actually straight or some other sexual orientation — such as mostly straight, bisexual, or gay-in-denial/hiding. She’s interested in culture, not biological realities.

In terms of bud-sex, Tony Silva — who's currently writing his dissertation about rural straight men who have sex with each other — proposed that both the goal and the consequence of bud-sex is to reinforce their masculinity and heterosexuality. He interviewed 19 rural men who have had bud-sex, and they gave several motives, including “helpin’ a buddy out,” relieving urges, relieving general sexual needs, and acting on their sexual attractions. Bud-sex cemented their rural masculinity and heterosexuality, and distinguished them from other men who have sex with men. To Silva, the results "demonstrate the flexibility of male heterosexuality and the centrality of heterosexuality to normative rural masculinity.” To these men, same-sex sex is compatible with heterosexuality: “It is not the sexual practices themselves but individuals’ interpretations of them that are central to sexual identity and gender.” For partners, the men preferred “secretive, nonromantic same-sex sex” and had both one-time meet-ups and regular male sexual friendships.

In an email exchange, I asked Tony Silva why he researches bud-sex. He explained: “I think bud-sex is interesting because it demonstrates that there are many different populations of men who have sex with men. These guys are different from men who identify as bisexual, gay, mostly gay, and mostly straight. They align themselves strongly with heterosexual identification and straight culture, and their complicated interpretations of their sexual practices reinforce this.” In addition, the research underlines a critical distinction that is too seldom recognized by sex researchers between sexual orientation and sexual identity: “My participants experience a wide variety of sexual desires, fantasies, and attractions, and different sexual histories, but all have sex with men and identify as straight. To them ‘straight’ refers more to their identification with mainstream heterosexual institutions, such as conventional marriage, and straight culture more broadly. Their narratives show how similar sexual practices carry different meanings across contexts and populations.”

I couldn’t agree more. The contrasts that Silva makes between identity and orientation and the various meanings the same behavior has for individuals was well illustrated by the mostly straight young men I interviewed. When he entertained or had sexual relations with a man, provided it was the right man or the right circumstance, it was not to solidify his masculinity or his heterosexuality — indeed, nearly the opposite on both counts — but rather an expression of his sexual orientation and, on occasion, his sexual identity. Mostly straight is less about dude-sex or bud-sex and more about who they are as sexual and romantic individuals.

The take-home message: Men are considerably more fluid and complex in their sexuality than we might believe.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/sex-sexuality-and-romance/201711/dude-sex-bud-sex-mostly-straight-sex

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Gay Men and Straight Men as Friends

Heterosexual and gay men can heal and grow as a result of their friendships.

I recently finished reading Dr. Robert Garfield’s terrific new book, Breaking the Male Code: Unlocking the Power of Friendship, and last week participated in a joint interview with him by Dr. Dan Gottlieb on WHYY (National Public Radio) in Philadelphia. This all got me thinking about my own friendships and those of my gay male clients. The bonds between gay men and straight women have been written about and featured in popular media (i.e. Sex in the City, Will and Grace), though a lot less has been said about how gay and straight men recognize and negotiate the distinct challenges, complications, and rewards of their friendships.

According to Garfield, among the many obstacles to male-male platonic intimacy, fear of homosexuality looms large. Straight men fret that if they get too close, others will see them as gay; which in their minds means feminine (horrors!), weak, and perverted.  Perhaps even scarier is that their emotional connections will somehow morph into sexual attraction. Interestingly, in the U.S., before there was such a thing as a gay identity, some straight men would, with little shame, engage in sexual contact with other men (usually allowing themselves to be fellated) when female partners were otherwise unavailable (see George Chauncey’s seminal book, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940) and there is good reason to believe this still occurs in other countries and cultures. But then, in the U.S. in the mid 20th century this behavior became associated with gay identity, new at the time and seen as criminal and then sick. As a result of this behavior-identity link, sexual congress between gay and straight men decreased considerably, or at least went underground.

Gay men have suffered physical, social, and psychological abuse at the hands of heterosexually identified males who, thanks to homophobia and heterosexism, felt fully justified in inflicting these terrors. Further, male sexuality has traditionally been viewed as predatory and uncontrollable, which some men have used to rationalize the sexual harassment and assault of women. Stories, both real and fictitious, about prison rape among male inmates further reinforce the myth that men are unable to rein in their aggressive sexual tendencies. So it's no wonder hetero men would fear homosexuality and gay men in particular.

This legacy of violence, both physical and psychological, inflicted by straight men toward those of us who are gay naturally fuels our caution and distrust at the thought of befriending them. In his book, Garfield describes the stiff hugs he would receive from a gay friend. Fortunately, Garfield is all about talking such things out—good medicine for those among us who are the strong, silent, swallow-your-feelings-until-you-die-of-a-heart-attack type of guys. As it turns out, the gay friend worried that if he hugged too closely his friend would think he was coming on to him. A straight friend of mine once complained that I don’t give him full body hugs, but instead grab his shoulders keeping my pelvis far from his, thus creating a posture that looks like the letter A. I realized I was doing everything I could to keep my genital area from touching his body. However, my partial embrace left my friend feeling as if I were withholding emotionally. After discussing this, we now fully hug. I am reassured he will not misinterpret any contact between our lower bodies, and he understands my need for this reassurance.

Few things can be a more soothing balm for us gay guys than a close friendship with a heterosexual man. Acceptance and, yes, love, from a guy who is not interested in us sexually but accepts our sexuality can begin to heal the abuse we have experienced from our fathers, bullying peers, and society at large. For the straight guy, friendship with a gay man offers the opportunity to learn important lessons about masculinity, male identity, sexual orientation, and diversity. Thus there is significant payoff for both parties.

But how do we deal with the possible sexual tensions that might come up? What if sexual feelings do emerge, or are already there? First, there is no need to panic. Part of being a mature adult is coming to the sad realization that we are not going to be able to have sexual relationships with everyone who floats our boat. Often these sexual feelings, when not acted upon, can actually fuel affection and intimacy. On the flip side, all adults—male, female, LGBT or otherwise—need to find polite but firm, unambiguous ways to respond to unwanted romantic and sexual invitations.

The trick is not to fear these attractions, or feel ashamed of them, even if they are unrequited. My first glimpse of my straight male friend (the one who complained about my hugging) was in the locker room at a local gym. He is  6’4”, handsome and muscular, and yes, I was physically attracted to him; in some ways, I still am. Now that we are good friends, he and I, along with his wife and my husband, can joke about his eye-candy status without anyone feeling anxious, fearful, or threatened. He is beautiful inside and out, which is why I like him so much.

Granted, if you fall deeply in love with a man who is sexually unavailable, straight or otherwise, and you can’t be around this person without your frustrated wishes for romance interfering with your enjoyment of his company, call it quits. However, it might be a good idea to hang in there, at least for a while, to see what develops. As the quote goes: You can never have too many friends—and friendships between gay and straight guys can be healing and uniquely satisfying for all involved.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/gay-and-lesbian-well-being/201506/gay-men-and-straight-men-friends

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肌肉增大：增生&肥大

BY  Vincent C.

房子能越蓋越高，是因堆疊上去的鋼筋、水泥、與磚頭越來越多。那肌肉越長越大，又是因什麼成分的增加所造成的呢？

我上一篇文章〈肌肉成長三大因素：機械張力、代謝壓力、肌肉損傷⋯⋯是什麼＆仍然成立嗎？〉解釋了能刺激肌肉成長的因素，但沒有詳細介紹肌肉成長到底是「長」了什麼東西。

已接觸健身一陣子的讀者應該都聽過一個說法：「健力式訓練使肌原纖維增大、健美式訓練使肌漿體積增大」。這算是有點 bro science 的講法，因為只要有阻力訓練，肌原纖維與肌漿就會同時增大。不過，bro science 也有它的價值在，經過長年的經驗累積，許多科學還沒有能力證明的東西，巨巨在健身房早就實踐過了。健美式、高代謝壓力的訓練，確實更能刺激肌漿增大。

不過，知道肌肉成長的細節有什麼用處呢？

它可以讓我們意識到，使肌肉成長是有許多方法的，不只是傳統的 8~12 下健美式訓練，更低次數或高次數的訓練都有價值。並且潛在性地，不同增肌方法有不同用處。

重點

肌肉增大的方法可以分為肌纖維增生&肌纖維肥大

肌纖維增生是肌纖維數量變多，雖然已在動物上證實，但人體研究較不完善，還不能完全確定

肌纖維肥大是肌纖維體積增大，是肌肉增大最主要的方法，可以分為肌原纖維肥大&肌漿肥大

肌原纖維肥大是「肌原纖維增大速率>=肌漿增大速率」；肌漿肥大是「肌原纖維增大速率<肌漿增大速率」

肌漿肥大的成因可能是很大的無氧代謝需求，所以較高次數比較低次數的訓練更能刺激肌漿肥大

組織增大：細胞增生＆細胞肥大

一個組織是由許多細胞所構成，當組織體積增大時，可能是細胞數量變多了、也可能是單一細胞的尺寸變大了。細胞數量增多稱為「增生 hyperplasia」，細胞尺寸增大則稱為「肥大 hypertrophy」。

雖然在健身領域上，肌肥大通常是指「肌肉維度增加」，但肥大和增生其實是肌肉維度增加的兩種獨立機制，因此當下文提到「肥大」時，就是使用生物學��定義「細胞尺寸變大」，而不是健身常用的定義。

肌纖維增生？

一塊肌肉是由許多肌纖維（肌肉細胞）組成，因此當一塊肌肉成長變大時，我們很容易就會認為這是肌纖維的數量增加所導致的，也就是「增生 hyperplasia」。確實，許多研究的證明了至少在動物模型中，阻力訓練能使肌纖維的數目增長，譬如這個用點心訓練貓咪用前腳舉重的研究，發現數個月的阻力訓練讓貓咪的前腳增長了 19.3％ 的肌肉細胞數目。

在人類上，沒有足夠的直接證據支持肌肉細胞會因阻力訓練而增生，因此肌纖維增生是否是肌肉成長的一種機制還有待確認。不過，有不少間接證據認為肌纖維是能夠增生的（如這個和這個），所以對於這個機制是可以保持樂觀態度的。

即使如此，大部分的肌肉成長應仍然是來自於肌纖維本身的增大，而非數量增加。並且，肌纖維是否會增生對於我們訓練的邏輯或方式並不會有顯著改變，因此肌纖維增生並不是大家需要特別在意的一種肌肉成長方式。

肌纖維肥大：肌原纖維＆肌漿增大

肌肉維度增加最重要的機制是肌纖維肥大，也就是肌肉細胞的尺寸增大。

一個肌肉細胞含有液體、數種胞器、與各式各樣的蛋白質，其中負責肌肉收縮的蛋白質是「肌原纖維」，也就是常聽到的粗肌絲和細肌絲。肌原纖維以外的所有東西，（在這裡為了方便起見）則稱為「肌漿」。阻力訓練能使：

肌原纖維變粗或變多：傳統上認為是機械張力造成

肌漿體積增大：傳統上認為是代謝壓力造成

肌肥大類型：肌原纖維肥大 vs 肌漿肥大

事實上，不管是著重於機械張力的訓練（較高阻力、低次數），還是著重於代謝壓力的訓練（較低阻力、高次數），都會造成肌原纖維與肌漿的增大，只是比例差異而已。而這個比例上的差異，就會產生兩種不同的肌肥大類型：肌原纖維肥大（myofibrillar hypertrophy）和肌漿肥大（sarcoplasmic hypertrophy）。

肌原纖維肥大（myofibrillar hypertrophy）：意指「肌原纖維增大速率＞＝肌漿增大速率」

肌漿肥大（sarcoplasmic hypertrophy）：意指「肌原纖維增大速率＜肌漿增大速率」

不過，既然重訓主要就是收縮蛋白（肌原纖維）在工作，那為何有時反倒是肌漿會長得更快呢？

在回答這個問題前，先來看看肌漿增大可能的原因：當能量代謝需求很大時，肌漿中與無氧代謝有關的蛋白質會增加，因此肌漿就撐大了。

而當能量需求特別高時，肌漿增大的速率就可能會超過肌原纖維，造成肌漿肥大 sarcoplasmic hypertrophy。

如何產生肌漿肥大？

肌漿肥大（肌漿長得比肌原纖維快）到底會不會發生，其實在科學上仍存在懷疑的聲音。不過，主要原因為相關研究不夠多、不夠完整，因此在這個主題上，我站在 bro science 這邊，並相信它確實會發生。

研究發現，較高次數與組數更能造成肌漿肥大，但多高才是最有效的則尚不曉得。此外，健身新手的肌肥大幾乎都是肌原纖維肥大，而肌漿肥大在進階者身上才較為常見。

這符合上述的肌漿增大原因：能量需求。

高次數（＞10 下）訓練確實比低次數（＜6 下）訓練有更高的整體能量負荷。而因為進階者肌肉較大塊，所以有氧代謝效果較差（粒線體密度降低），所以更依賴無氧代謝；且進階者舉的重量較重，因此同樣次數的情況下，能量消耗高非常多（看進階者 vs 新手深蹲高次數會多喘就知道）。

肌漿肥大長出的是「沒力」的肌肉？

理論上，同樣大小的肌肉來說，肌原纖維密度越高，則收縮的力量就越強，但就單純把健身當興趣的普通人而言，影響應該不大，因為：

影響力量的最重要因素是在「專項練習」，例如雖然健力選手花的深蹲、臥推、硬舉可以比健美選手中很多，但像後飛鳥可能健力選手就贏不了健美選手。

「肌漿肥大」仍然是「肌原纖維和肌漿同時成長」，因此有收縮功能的肌原纖維仍然佔了很大一部分。

實際應用

目標為增肌：既然不同的次數範圍會導致不同的肥大效果，那最好就是「都做」。不要只會做 5～8 下或8～12下，最好5～20+都要做，但至於怎麼安排課表，就又是另一個話題了。

目標為最大肌力：目前科學對於肌纖維肥大的了解不夠多，仍然不確定肌漿肥大後的肌漿是否是能進一步刺激肌原纖維成長的空間。如果是的話，那「交替鍛鍊肌漿肥大與肌原纖維肥大」對力量型運動員就非常有用；但如果不是的話，那力量型運動員就要盡量只做肌原纖維肥大的訓練，以減少對力量沒貢獻、但會影響比賽量級的肌漿。

https://vintraining.medium.com/給健身愛好者的肌肉生理學 2：增肌到底是增了什麼-d0f2a0671607

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Don't touch my junk

“Don’t touch my junk” is a phrase that became popular in the United States in 2010 as a criticism of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) patdowns. The word “junk” is American English slang for a man’s genitals. The phrase refers to the offense many people took to the November 2010 decision by TSA to begin full body patdowns of airline passengers in the U.S. who refused to go through a full body scanner.

Origin

The phrase was inadvertently coined in 2010 by passenger John Tyner, an Oceanside, California computer programmer who released an audio recording from San Diego International Airport in which he told TSA agents: “If you touch my junk, I’m going to have you arrested.” Tyner had initially chosen to undergo a pat-down rather than going through a full-body scan machine because of health concerns and the fact that he viewed the machines as a threat to privacy. The TSA refused to allow him to pass without this intimate search and so he declined to travel and got a refund on his ticket. An official then demanded that he submit to a search regardless. He declined and was threatened with prosecution, as well as a fine of $10,000.

In response to being asked by a reporter if he thought he looked like a terrorist, Tyner said “No, I’m a 6-foot-1 [1.85 m], white man". He subsequently uploaded a video onto YouTube based on his experience, which went viral and received 70,000 views by the end of the same day. Most of the comments posted on the video were supportive of Tyner.

Support and Criticism

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer subsequently wrote an editorial in which he expressed support for Dr. Tyner and described “Don’t Touch My Junk” as the “anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, and the midterm election voter” and even compared it to the American patriotic phrase “Don’t Tread On Me”. At least two “Don’t Touch My Junk” songs have since been released, one of which was written by Houston, Texas, musician Danny Kristensen and was based on a James Cotton song, “Cut You Loose”.

Michael Kinsley weighed in on Politico in a column entitled “Go ahead, touch my junk”, in which he defended the TSA against criticism from Dr. Tyner and others. A columnist for The Atlantic, Wendy Kaminer, argued that the intentions of those, such as Krauthammer, who were criticizing the indiscriminate screening of passengers, were actually promoting racial profiling. Kaminer described Krauthammer’s suggestion that screening should be conducted on the “profile of the airline attacker [which] is… universally known,” as more aptly summed up as “Don’t Touch My Junk, Touch His”.

In another variation, news anchor Brian Williams said on the Late Show with David Letterman, “I always get it at [Los Angeles International Airport]. I get nailed. They go, they go right in. This new thing, they go right after Dave and the twins.”

“Don’t touch my junk” was parodied, to the tune of Parliament’s “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)”, at the 2011 Gridiron Club dinner, with President Obama in attendance. Also in March 2011, two New Hampshire state representatives introduced proposed legislation, colloquially called the “don’t touch my junk bill”, that would criminalize as sexual assault invasive TSA patdowns made without probable cause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_touch_my_junk

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Sexual liberation: Whose sexuality is liberated, men's or women's?

Sexual revolution caters to men or women?

Sexual liberation means more sex outside marriage (pre-marital, extramarital), particularly for women. Today, most young women are sexually active outside marriage. Their grandmothers mostly reserved intercourse until after marriage. Such generational differences are referred to as the "sexual revolution," or "women's liberation" because women's behavior changed more than that of men. Women's liberation often strikes me as semantically troubling, implying that females are finally getting what they have long wanted. Who have been more sexually liberated men or women?

The evolutionary background Gender differences in sexual motivation are accepted among biologists who recognize that females are more discriminating in the choice of a mate because they invest more in the offspring from the outset because the egg is always much larger than the sperm. Among mammals, females also bear the huge energy costs of gestation and lactation. For these reasons, females are considered a resource over which males must compete. Compete they do.

Men's eagerness to mate is highlighted by the sex industries of pornography and prostitution that cater principally to males. In every country studied, men also want more partners in uncommitted relationships although a minority of women are more interested in casual sex than the average man.

Whereas men are generally more interested in casual sex, women look for greater emotional commitment in a relationship. This sensibility is reflected in romance novels read mainly by women and it would have helped our female ancestors to select faithful partners who stayed around to help them raise children.

The historical background As early as 1870, contraceptives (rubber condoms) were widely used in the U.S. and Europe (1). Before then, extramarital sexuality carried a huge risk of unwanted pregnancy and consequent abandonment. Most women were sexually active only after marriage, keeping the single parenthood ratio to below 5 percent over many centuries of English parish records.

A similar picture applied in the U.S. until the sexual revolution of the 1960s when many young women began having sex before marriage. Sex researchers also document increased interest in sexual pleasure, variety of sexual acts, time devoted to making love, number of sex manuals purchased, and so forth.

What caused the sexual revolution? Many factors may have been implicated, such as improved contraception (the pill which gave women more control), but effective condoms had been widely used for a century. Marriage prospects and careers were the key. Women's marriage prospects worsened steadily throughout the sixties and there were only 80 men of marriageable age for every 100 women (2 (link is external)) thanks to an echo effect of the baby boom a generation earlier. Women also postponed marriage as they developed careers.

The net result was a large and increasing population of women who were sexually active outside marriage. Facing stiffer competition for men, women upped the ante by offering increased levels of sexual intimacy outside marriage.

In addition to complying with the masculine desire for sex without strings, women today adopt a more masculine sensibility regarding issues of number of sexual partners, sexual variety, and sexual satisfaction.

Which gender is more pleased by those circumstances? Whose evolved psychological needs are being catered to? From an evolutionary perspective, the so-called sexual liberation of women looks more like sexual liberation for men. i.e., men get more sex and more sexual variety without making an emotional commitment.

Because they are over supplied, and less in demand, women enter into the spirit of men's penchant for recreational sex. This psychology is at an extreme on U.S. college campuses where there are only about 75 men per hundred women and hooking up (some level of physical intimacy that lasts for just one night) has largely replaced dating (3). As women's bargaining power declines, they must behave more like men if they wish to remain active in the romantic sphere. Women certainly gain in sexual freedom compared to their grandmothers but they lose out in emotional commitment.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/200904/sexual-liberation-whose-sexuality-is-liberated-mens-or-womens

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Your Lips Might Reveal Your Health

Scientists are studying subtle patterns in lips for clues to genetic traits.

By Catherine Zuckerman

This story appears in the September 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Fingerprints are so last century. The new frontier? Lip prints. Like the grooves on human fingertips, the grooves on human lips are formed at the embryonic stage and are thought to remain fixed throughout life. While lip prints aren’t typically used in forensics to nail criminals, they can offer clues to a person’s health—particularly his or her genetic predisposition to cleft lip or palate, some of the most common birth defects.

At University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Craniofacial and Dental Genetics, director Mary Marazita and geneticist Katherine Neiswanger have been studying the genetic underpinnings of cleft lip and cleft palate for more than 20 years. Recently they turned their attention to facial features, including lip patterns, to determine if certain physical traits might in some way be connected.

No single classification system exists, says Neiswanger, but lip prints tend to fall into a few categories: straight vertical lines, “branches” that spread across the lips like tree roots, crosshatches, and circular whorls. Of these, whorls—particularly when present on the lower lip—appear to be linked to a likelihood of carrying genes for clefts and other orofacial disorders, which make it difficult for babies to breastfeed and are often stigmatizing.

The field of studying lip patterns is still new, says Neiswanger, which is why a firm connection with orofacial disorders has yet to be made. But as technology improves, this research could one day lead to early diagnosis, possibly in utero. Marazita and Neiswanger believe that, in addition to lip prints, other traits—including the shape of a face or even speech characteristics—could indicate an underlying genetic vulnerability to certain disorders. “The picture is just starting to come together,” says Neiswanger, “and it’s very exciting.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/explore-health-lip-prints-cleft-palate/

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The Rorschach Test Is More Accurate Than You Think

100 years after the inkblots were created, studies show they reveal something about us.

By Nina Strochlic

This story appears in the September 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine.

In a small town in Switzerland in 1917, psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach began carefully splattering paint on cards to study how the mind works. Asking people what they saw, he observed a correlation in responses from patients with schizophrenia and theorized that mental health could be assessed by how someone processes visual information.

Rorschach’s original 10 images were published in 1921, the year before his death. After being brought to Chicago, they spread quickly across the United States as a popular personality test. In the second half of the century, trends like Freudian analysis fell out of favor, and the test became a synonym for pseudoscience. Critics called for a moratorium on its use. But a major 2013 study published by the American Psychological Association found it more effective than previously believed in diagnosing mental illness.

The Rorschach cards and the order in which they’re presented to patients have never changed. To preserve their utility as a diagnostic tool, psychologists don’t want them shown outside a clinical setting. That’s a challenge Damion Searls faced as he wrote The Inkblots, the first biography of Rorschach. He chose to publish a few, as we are doing here.

Regardless of the scientific debate, the Rorschach test has left its mark on American culture. The 10 blots are probably the “most analyzed paintings of the 20th century,” says Searls.

Spoiler alert: inkblot identities

Rorschach’s test is meant to reveal how a person processes information. There are no wrong answers, but responses that are very unusual are thought to reflect possible psychological issues. Common imagery seen in the blots:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/explore-health-rorschach-psychology-test/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fbp20170904ngm-rosarchtest&utm_campaign=Content&sf110751937=1

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How to Survive 50 Million Years Without Sex

Staying celibate can be a difficult task. How have these microscopic animals managed it?

By Carrie Arnold 

Staying celibate can be a difficult task, but bdelloid rotifers have managed to survive without sex for nearly 50 million years.

Scientists now think they have cracked the secret to these microscopic animals’ success: recombining their own genes in new ways and stealing genes from other organisms living nearby, thus keeping genetic diversity alive and well—even without the DNA from a mate.

“This animal has lost its sexuality,” said study co-author Olivier Jaillon of Genoscope, part of the Institut de Génomique du CEA in France.

Jaillon said the results of the study gave him one of the very rare moments in a career when you feel you’ve really “found something.”

Reproductive Mystery

Bdelloid rotifers are microscopic, multicellular animals that look and move a lot like leeches (“bdelloid” is from the Greek for “leech”). They generally live in freshwater, moist soil, and other damp environments. And these unassuming animals have some pretty cool superpowers: They can withstand long periods of being dried out, as well as massive doses of radiation that would kill pretty much every other living thing.

Despite these traits, bdelloid rotifers are mainly known in the research world for their 40-million-year-long dry spell in the sack. Although biologists long suspected that these microscopic animals never reproduced sexually—they generally reproduce via an asexual method known as parthenogenesis, in which the offspring is the clone of the parent—the assertion remained controversial for several reasons.

One of the key purposes of sexual reproduction is to provide an ongoing source of genetic diversity and not let harmful mutations accumulate. Since these rotifers were such an evolutionary success, scientists found it difficult to believe the animals weren’t reproducing sexually. (Get a genetics overview.)

Although sexual reproduction is extremely beneficial, it’s not without costs: Time spent finding a mate is time not spent finding food or hiding from predators. There’s also no guarantee that the offspring will be as well adapted to the environment as the parents.

Yet just because sexual reproduction in bdelloid rotifers had never been observed didn’t mean it never happened.

Dr. Ruth of Rotifers

To settle this issue, Jaillon, along with Jean-François Flot and Karine Van Doninck, at the University of Namur in Belgium, and colleagues focused their efforts on one particular species of bdelloid rotifer, Adineta vaga. This species is easy to raise in the lab, and previous work had indicated that it had one of the smallest genomes of any of the bdelloid rotifers, which would make it easier for the scientists to sequence.

The sequencing results weren’t quite what the researchers had anticipated. “We were all surprised by the genome structure, as nothing like this had been observed before,” said Flot, whose study appeared this week in the journal Nature.

The genome of A. vaga had an unusual array of characteristics that, together, made it basically impossible for the rotifer to reproduce sexually. (Also see “Wild Romance: Weird Animal Courtship and Mating Rituals.”)

A. vaga has modifications that made its chromosomes—or DNA molecules—nonidentical, which is also unusual in the animal kingdom. This meant that A. vaga‘s sex cells couldn’t complete a key phase of meiosis—or cell division—known as crossing over, in which each chromosome lines up next to its partner and they swap portions of DNA. The genes present on each chromosome have been shuffled across the genome, which means the rotifers’ chromosomes aren’t alike enough to line up for the crossing over.

In fact, Van Donink pointed out, the chromosomes of A. vaga had many of the same genetic characteristics of the human Y chromosome, which also does not undergo crossing over. This similarity helps confirm that this step does not happen and these bdelloid rotifers are not capable of sexual reproduction.

Mission to Mars?

Although A. vaga can’t use crossing over to get rid of harmful mutations, it does use a similar method to shuffle its genes. And, like all bdelloids, A. vaga is a notorious gene thief. Its genome sequence revealed that 8 percent of its genes had come from non-animals like prokaryotes and fungi. This, along with its ability to shuffle genes, will likely keep the rotifer alive and well for at least another 40 million years.

“Because of these incredible survival abilities and the fact that, being asexual, a single individual can start a whole population, I wouldn’t be surprised if bdelloid rotifers were able to survive space travel and colonize other planets such as Mars,” Flot said.

We will leave it up to NASA to find humans with these same capabilities to travel alongside rotifers to Mars.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/how-to-survive-50-million-years-without-sex-animals/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fbp20170831news-celibateanimalsvideo&utm_campaign=Content&sf102169106=1

[nonecared]

Opinion: We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us.

Scientists argue that friendly wolves sought out humans.

By Brian Hare, for National Geographic News and Vanessa Woods, for National Geographic News

In the story of how the dog came in from the cold and onto our sofas, we tend to give ourselves a little too much credit. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies and adopted them. Over time, these tamed wolves would have shown their prowess at hunting, so humans kept them around the campfire until they evolved into dogs. (See "How to Build a Dog.")

But when we look back at our relationship with wolves throughout history, this doesn't really make sense. For one thing, the wolf was domesticated at a time when modern humans were not very tolerant of carnivorous competitors. In fact, after modern humans arrived in Europe around 43,000 years ago, they pretty much wiped out every large carnivore that existed, including saber-toothed cats and giant hyenas. The fossil record doesn't reveal whether these large carnivores starved to death because modern humans took most of the meat or whether humans picked them off on purpose. Either way, most of the Ice Age bestiary went extinct.

The hunting hypothesis, that humans used wolves to hunt, doesn't hold up either. Humans were already successful hunters without wolves, more successful than every other large carnivore. Wolves eat a lot of meat, as much as one deer per ten wolves every day—a lot for humans to feed or compete against. And anyone who has seen wolves in a feeding frenzy knows that wolves don't like to share.

Humans have a long history of eradicating wolves, rather than trying to adopt them. Over the last few centuries, almost every culture has hunted wolves to extinction. The first written record of the wolf's persecution was in the sixth century B.C. when Solon of Athens offered a bounty for every wolf killed. The last wolf was killed in England in the 16th century under the order of Henry VII. In Scotland, the forested landscape made wolves more difficult to kill. In response, the Scots burned the forests. North American wolves were not much better off. By 1930, there was not a wolf left in the 48 contiguous states of America.  (See "Wolf Wars.")

If this is a snapshot of our behavior toward wolves over the centuries, it presents one of the most perplexing problems: How was this misunderstood creature tolerated by humans long enough to evolve into the domestic dog?

The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish. But essentially, far from the survival of the leanest and meanest, the success of dogs comes down to survival of the friendliest. (See "People and Dogs: A Genetic Love Story.")

Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around, probably while they were scavenging around garbage dumps on the edge of human settlements. The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated.

Friendliness caused strange things to happen in the wolves. They started to look different. Domestication gave them splotchy coats, floppy ears, wagging tails. In only several generations, these friendly wolves would have become very distinctive from their more aggressive relatives. But the changes did not just affect their looks. Changes also happened to their psychology. These protodogs evolved the ability to read human gestures.

As dog owners, we take for granted that we can point to a ball or toy and our dog will bound off to get it. But the ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable. Even our closest relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can. Dogs are remarkably similar to human infants in the way they pay attention to us. This ability accounts for the extraordinary communication we have with our dogs. Some dogs are so attuned to their owners that they can read a gesture as subtle as a change in eye direction.

With this new ability, these protodogs were worth knowing. People who had dogs during a hunt would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Even today, tribes in Nicaragua depend on dogs to detect prey. Moose hunters in alpine regions bring home 56 percent more prey when they are accompanied by dogs. In the Congo, hunters believe they would starve without their dogs.

Dogs would also have served as a warning system, barking at hostile strangers from neighboring tribes. They could have defended their humans from predators.

And finally, though this is not a pleasant thought, when times were tough, dogs could have served as an emergency food supply. Thousands of years before refrigeration and with no crops to store, hunter-gatherers had no food reserves until the domestication of dogs. In tough times, dogs that were the least efficient hunters might have been sacrificed to save the group or the best hunting dogs. Once humans realized the usefulness of keeping dogs as an emergency food supply, it was not a huge jump to realize plants could be used in a similar way.

So, far from a benign human adopting a wolf puppy, it is more likely that a population of wolves adopted us. As the advantages of dog ownership became clear, we were as strongly affected by our relationship with them as they have been by their relationship with us. Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/130302-dog-domestic-evolution-science-wolf-wolves-human/

[nonecared]

當你搭乘的電梯從半空中墜落時

昨天下午，我在辦公室裡收到法院的通知。一個從我開始當律師至今，陪伴超過10年的案件，因為最高法院短短一句話的通知，驟然畫上句點，全案定讞。然後我在辦公室裡激動大吼。

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如果你搭乘的電梯，在3樓左右的高度突然鋼纜斷裂、高速急墜而下，依據自由落體公式，大約只需要1.5秒的時間，你就會與電梯一起墜落到地下機坑。在這墜落的1.5秒鐘內，你的心裡會想到什麼呢？會像小說或電影一樣，過去的人生宛如走馬燈般一幕一幕上演？實際上當事人跟我說，1.5秒真的很短，你根本還不曉得發生什麼事，更別談嘗試保護自己，電梯就已經墜底，裡面的人非傷即殘。更荒謬的是，為了這1.5秒的悲劇，當事人花費了長達11年的時間，我們的法院才有能力告訴她：對，妳是無辜受傷的，妳可以拿到賠償金。然後法院再萬般諷刺地，只用一張薄薄的A4紙告訴她最後結果，仿若走過這11年的漫漫司法長路，就像郵差把明信片扔進信箱一樣稀鬆平常。短短一行判決主文「上訴均駁回」，讀不到當事人一家13年來的斑斑血淚。

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我們的當事人，案發時是一位四十多歲的媽媽，先生在電子公司上班，有3個未成年的小孩，她平時則在家裡僱雜貨店。就像驚悚小說的制式起頭一樣，這是個幸福美滿的小家庭。幸福的日子急轉而下，2004年某個平常的春日午後，她前往住家附近的農會接送母親。農會大樓的電梯載著她上5樓，鋼纜卻在3樓附近突然斷裂，應該立即煞住的剎車也完全沒有發揮作用。自由落體急墜而下，她倒在摔成破銅爛鐵般的電梯機廂裡，位置是大樓的B1。身體上的創傷是可以想像的。她摔成半身癱瘓，僅能勉強支撐雙腳站直，卻是寸步難行。家裡無故多了個殘障者，龐大的復健、醫療費用以驚人的速度累積；先生在工作與照顧太太之間疲於奔命，還要兼顧3個小孩，很快就丟了原來的工作；她雖然能繼續「坐著」顧店，但精神早已大受影響。我們代表被害人，對農會、電梯維修公司起訴請求損害賠償。可以預見地，大家都推說不是它的錯：農會主張他們早已委託維修公司定期維護檢查，不用負責；電梯維修公司認為：鋼纜斷裂的地方，不在維修契約的涵蓋範圍內，毋須賠償。妙的是最初承審本案的板橋地院法官，對於為何電梯會無故墜落的爭議，竟然委託由電梯檢查員組成的職業公會提出鑑定報告。可以預期，鑑定結論自然是電梯維修公司並無疏失，法院又認為農會不具有機械專業，也毋庸賠償。非常奇怪，不是嗎？有人搭電梯從3樓直直摔下B1，竟然沒有人要為如此重大的公安意外負責？

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讓人深感莫名的一審判決，不但對我們律師構成沉重壓力，相信當事人也必然大失所望，無法理解自己無辜摔成半身癱瘓，卻連一毛錢的賠償都拿不到？而我永遠記得我們代表當事人上訴到高等法院時，二審的受命法官當庭皺著眉頭、語重心長地表示：一個人好好地搭電梯摔成癱瘓，法院卻告訴她沒有人要賠償，這不是我們唸法律的目的！我當時走出法庭，好想去板橋對那位判決沒有人要賠償的一審法官說：妳聽到了嗎？妳還記得妳選擇唸法律、當法官的初衷嗎？苦難仍未結束，雖然二審法官改判農會與電梯維修公司都必須賠償，但一再上訴的結果，最高法院又無力讓案件確定，於是一拖又是8年。一樁電梯墜落案件如此上沖下洗，我們的司法體系似乎沒有能力定紛止爭，給無辜當事人一個她期盼多年的公道與正義。其實，這位當事人從未在我眼前掉過一滴眼淚，連電話裡的哽咽都不曾。與她通電話，仿若是一位極度開朗樂觀的當事人，在安慰、鼓勵已有些憂心喪志的律師。我實在很難想像，若今天是我搭個電梯無端摔成半身癱瘓，然而法院耗費超過11年，遲遲無法判決賠償，我有沒有辦法像她一樣堅強地等候那最後一絲正義的曙光？我更不知道她們全家是如何走過這11年：先生為了照顧太太，分身乏術之下被老闆逼退，離開原本非常穩定的工作，還要每天揹著太太上下樓梯；3個小孩在國小尚未畢業之際，媽媽突然摔成半身癱瘓，反而回過頭要幫忙照顧媽媽。曾經看似幸福的小家庭，因為無端的電梯意外被徹底粉碎，更因為11年來無人願意賠償，必須自己籌措驚人的復健、醫療費用。可以想見，在這樣永無盡頭、仿若消耗戰的訴訟程序中，有誰能撐到最後？經不起法院程序的反覆碾壓、沉重的經濟負擔，相信不少人會選擇壓低賠償請求、讓賠償金入袋為安，而放棄不知有無勝算可能的訴訟。這恐怕也是農會等企業經營者的訴訟策略：跟他拖、跟他耗，受不了就會放棄，反正我們有錢請律師拼18局延長賽。但面對這種不讓人意外的訴訟策略，我們的法院為何就配合上演長達11年的冗長大戲？最匪夷所思的，恐怕是某一次最高法院的發回更審判決，居然說：之前判決農會賠償900多萬元太多了，是不是應該減輕一些責任？我實在很難想像法院對於一個資本額數十億的農業金融機構，竟是如此的寬厚仁慈，要求存款所剩無幾的被害人再少拿一點賠償金！？我相信寫出這些文字的法官，沒有人是壞人(但有幾位也很難稱得上是好人)。只是他們進入審判體制後，念茲在茲的經常不再是當初選擇唸法律、作法官的那些初衷信念，而是判決架構是否符合上級法院的要求？論述理由有沒有偏離最高法院的固定見解？至於當事人間資力、階級、預防風險發生的實力差距等因素，似乎不是那麼重要。不過最後，這些一再上演、讓人對司法體制極端失望的判決理由，終究沒有摧毀當事人的鬥志，她與我們律師一起撐過來了。

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昨天拿到定讞的判決主文，我試著打電話給當事人。拿著話筒的手有些發抖，不曉得我即將說出口的，對她而言究竟是好還是壞。聽到結果，她只是淡淡地說：這樣整件事總算結束了。仿若上千萬元的賠償，對她灰敗陰暗的下半身/生、對11年來等候一個結果的一家人來說，已經沒有太大的意義。「遲來的正義不是正義」，對她們全家而言恐怕已是陳腔濫調。在判決終於定讞的這一天，我仍然認為：我們的司法，真的欠她們全家人一個道歉。

https://www.facebook.com/notes/geoffrey-weng/%E7%95%B6%E4%BD%A0%E6%90%AD%E4%B9%98%E7%9A%84%E9%9B%BB%E6%A2%AF%E5%BE%9E%E5%8D%8A%E7%A9%BA%E4%B8%AD%E5%A2%9C%E8%90%BD%E6%99%82/1473929089296149/

[nonecared]

為什麼搞懂大象怎麼睡覺是件重要的事

人類和動物得做幾件事以傳遞他們的基因：吃，避免被吃掉，繁殖和睡眠。缺少這些生物學上的必要條件導致死亡。但是當我們睡著了，就沒辦法執行其他的功能。因此現代科學的一個大謎題就是：為什麼我們得睡覺？

關於人類為何睡覺，科學家提出了許多答案。一個是廢物的清除，另一個是記憶整合。若想測試這些想法是否有效，有個方法是看這些想法如何適用於通常沒被研究的異國動物（如大型非洲哺乳動物）的睡眠。

過往研究表明，較大的哺乳動物睡眠往往少於較小的哺乳動物。 所以體重在3000到5000公斤之間的非洲成年大象，不應該睡得太多。記錄腦電波是證明動物是否睡著的一種可接受的方法：大腦全腦活動的特徵在大腦清醒 時，慢波睡眠或正在做夢（REM睡眠）時有所差異。但是，由於大部分顱骨為大額鼻竇組成，要在大象身上用外科手法幾乎是不可能的。

為了克服這一點，我們在威特沃特斯蘭德（Witwatersrand）大學的比較神經生物學小組，以及來自大象無國界和加州大學洛杉磯分校的同事，改造了一種用於人類睡眠研究的活動計量儀。這使我們能夠監測兩隻野生大象母親的睡眠模式和習慣。

而研究團隊在 PLoS ONE 期刊上發表的結果之所以重要，有兩個原因。通過了解動物的睡眠，我們可以深入了解如何提高人類睡眠和生活品質。但同樣關鍵的是，理解像大象這樣的動物睡眠，有助於我們更了解它們，並提高我們的能力，發展出有益的保育和管理策略。

調查結果

我們使用的設備會輸出每分鐘的加速事件次數。它可以輕易植入皮膚下，以測量大象何時移動或不移動。在野外觀察大象之後，我們發現牠們身體最活躍的部位是象鼻。我們推斷，如果象鼻靜止五分鐘，代表大象很可能已經睡著 – 所以我們將活動計量儀植入在象鼻皮膚下。

將設備與 GPS 項圈、陀螺儀相結合，測量 x，y 和 z 平面上的身體運動，我們得到四個非常有趣的觀察結果：

大象每天平均休息兩個小時;

他們大部分的睡眠發生在站立的時候，但每三至四天會躺下來睡覺一次;

有些晚上，他們沒有睡覺，而是行走了30公里

他們睡覺和醒來的時間的環境條件與日升日落無關。

大象睡眠的秘密，告訴我們……

針對囚禁環境中的大象，現有研究發現，他們每天平均睡眠 4 至 6 小時。這是因為他們有足夠的時間睡覺。他們不必外出，尋覓食物來維繫身體所需，他們有更高品質的飲食，也沒有被捕獵的風險。

一隻大象需要每天吃約300公斤低品質的食物，因此也沒有太多時間留給睡覺。大象腦中的特點之一是下丘腦的食慾素神經元。這些神經元控制飽腹感和覺醒之間的平衡：如果你已經吃飽了，神經元就會沉默，讓你睡覺。如果沒有，他們會讓你醒來。

這種平衡和飲食品質解釋了為何越大型的哺乳動物睡眠越少，或草食動物睡眠少於肉食動物和雜食動物（如人類）。大象的數據支持此一睡眠研究中的新興理念，並幫助解釋為什麼大象睡得如此之少。

在被囚禁的環境中，大象大部分睡著的時候是躺著睡，但是他們有時也站著睡。通過陀螺儀和活動計量儀的組合數據，我們發現野生大象大多站著睡。每隔三天或四天才會躺下睡覺，為時大約一個小時。

哺乳動物在快速眼動期(REM)睡眠期間無法控制骨骼肌張力。所以對於一隻大象來說，要進入REM睡眠，就得躺下，因為沒有任何肌肉張力將非常難以保持站立，除非他們靠在一棵樹或一塊大石頭旁。

有想法認為 REM 睡眠的功能是記憶整合 – 白天的經歷會在 REM 睡眠期間被轉化為長期記憶。大象具有良好的長期記憶，但卻只在每三至四天才進入一次短短的 REM 睡眠。這意味著記憶鞏固理論可能不是 REM 睡眠功能存在的答案。

環境線索

有些夜晚，大象沒有入睡。一頭象有三個晚上都沒睡，另一頭則是兩個晚上沒睡。在這些無法入睡的日子，日落後不久，大象就遭遇打擾，也許是遇上出來狩獵的獅群，盜獵者，或是進入情緒暴烈期(Musth)的公象。在一夜之間，大象遠行約 30 公里。這種大象的行為未曾被記錄。這表明大象確實需要很大的空間，這在大象保育方面是很重要的 – 似乎小規模的保育地無法提供他們足夠的空間。

最後，大象睡覺（睡眠開始）和醒來（睡眠結束）的時間與日落和日出無關。然而，兩者都與環境的「真實感受」密切相關：像是溫度，濕度，風速和太陽輻 射的混合。看來，要在對的時間入睡和醒來，環境線索是很重要的。如果我們更仔細研究，我們或許可以調整人類的睡眠環境，讓自己有更好的睡眠。

作者：威特沃特斯蘭大學比較和演化神經生物學教授保羅·馬格爾（Paul Manger） 本文最初發表在 The Conversation 上。 閱讀原文。

http://pansci.asia/archives/117041