Link Banana

That’s the theory being offered by Harvard’s Richard Wrangham.

And with Homo sapiens, what makes the species unique in Dr Wrangham’s opinion is that its food is so often cooked.

Cooking is a human universal. No society is without it. No one other than a few faddists tries to survive on raw food alone. And the consumption of a cooked meal in the evening, usually in the company of family and friends, is normal in every known society. Moreover, without cooking, the human brain (which consumes 20-25% of the body’s energy) could not keep running. Dr Wrangham thus believes that cooking and humanity are coeval.

(via The Meaningfulness of Little Things)

I really like Mike Dresser’s idea.

I link to this mainly to pointlessly say: I thought of this first. Like, when I was 14. That is not to say, I should note, that I think the idea’s completely correct. In any case, the idea:

“In ancient times half our children would have died by the age of twenty. Now, in the Western world, 98 per cent of them are surviving to the age of 21. Our life expectancy is now so good that eliminating all accidents and infectious diseases would only raise it by a further two years. Natural selection no longer has death as a handy tool.”

(via Ideas)

Apparently the heat of chili pepper is determined primarily by it’s risk of infestation. The pepper pods of plants in climates where seed-destroying fungi grow well will be hotter where such fungi are rare.

For some reason, I’ve watched this video every time it’s shown up in my feedreader (which has been a lot). There’s something great about it.

(originally via Kottke)