Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-11-2008

[andrewducker]

• 8 really, really scary predictions about the economy
  (tags: economics 2008 depression predictions)
• The digested read: The Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling
  Very, very funny
  (tags: funny books harrypotter)
• Chinese girl gets 'kiss of deaf'
  The chorus of warnings was echoed by the Shanghai Daily, which wrote: "A strong kiss may cause an imbalance in the air pressure between two inner ears and lead to a broken ear drum."
  (tags: weird biology kissing)
• Man's genes 'key to baby's sex'
  Raar! My sperm have The Power!
  (tags: genetics gender)

Comments

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

I'm inclined to agree with your analysis of the stats on the face of it, but I think you may be forgetting the "Saving Private Ryan" factor - if somebody dies in the war and they have a brother who is still out there, they may be moved to a safer position; at the very least, they'll get a little bit of leave to attend the funeral, thus increasing their chances of survival at least a small amount.

However, a more useful point is possibly that somebody with more sons would have a higher chance of at least one of them being too young / too infirm / too short-sighted to fight (too young being the most likely), and thus a better chance of passing on their genes.

[andrewducker]

Not really - the proportion of boys who are age 1-15 who have this gene will be the same as the general proportion - so letting them off fighting won't increase the number of boys who have the gene.

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

I can sort of see what he means with the proportions; if, say, there are odds of 50% of returning alive, then if you've got two sons at war, there's a 75% chance that one or both will return alive (87.5% for three, etc.)