It's the reason humans do anything.

Did Early Humans Start Walking for Sex?

The big news in the journal Science tomorrow is the discovery of the oldest human skeleton—a small-brained, 110-pound female of the species Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed “Ardi.” She lived in what is now Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago, which makes her over a million years older than the famous “Lucy” fossil, found in the same region thirty-five years ago.

Buried among the slew of papers about the new find is one about the creature’s sex life. It makes fascinating reading, especially if you like learning why human females don’t know when they are ovulating, and men lack the clacker-sized testicles and bristly penises sported by chimpanzees.

Starbucks Kills Communities

The article.

"People immediately create their own little private, gated communities. You come in, set up your laptop and put on your headphones," he said yesterday. "You couldn’t be more alone in public if you wanted to be."

Also:

Prof Simon concluded that Starbucks’s success had little to do with the coffee and everything to do with image and identity. "Time and again customers told me they would look at someone carrying a Starbucks cup and assume they were successful and moderately hip," he said.

Seems like people who have worked there have been saying these sorts of things for years.

And one more:

A spokesman for Starbucks said it welcomed all customer feedback.

Department of Duh: Focus on Money Makes People Assholes

A study in Science makes the case that just getting people to focus on money makes them less cooperative and more individualistic. As Bob Sutton of Work Matters summarizes:

Compared to control subjects, those primed to focus on money:

1. Were less likely to ask others for help
2. Less likely to give others help
3. Preferred to work alone
4. Preferred to play alone
5. Put more physical distance between themselves as a new acquaintance

I wonder if this sets money-centric people to fail in collective action type problems: A situation in which everyone (in a given group) has a choice between two alternatives and where, if everyone involved chooses the alternative act that is Individualistically Rational (IR), the outcome will be worse for everyone involved, in their own estimation, than it would be if they were all to choose the other alternative (i.e., than it would be if they were all to choose the alternative that is not IR). This is a real problem libertarian friends of mine have never seemed capable of absorbing. Hmmm.