Daily Archives: July 8, 2017

At the heart of Richard O. Prum's new book The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World and Us is a bold idea:

"... that animals are not merely subject to the extrinsic forces of ecological competition, predation, climate, geography, and so on that create natural selection. Rather, animals can play a distinct and vital role in their own evolution through their sexual and social choices."

Actually, this is Charles Darwin's idea his other idea. It's an idea so revolutionary that, unlike natural selection itself, it has been systematically misunderstood, or outright repressed, since Darwin first developed it in his other book The Descent of Man first published in 1871, 12 years after The Origin of Species.

What's so dangerous about what Prum calls "aesthetic evolution by mate choice?" Precisely the idea that it acknowledges, supposedly, real agency in the nonhuman world and that it is an agency that doesn't bottom out in facts about fitness and adaptation. It does so, Prum argues, because it's good science.

Now, it isn't exactly news to be informed that Darwin grappled with the problem of the diversity, indeed the gorgeous magnificence, of ornament in the biological world. It is well-known that he once wrote in a letter to a friend: "the sight of the feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!" For the peacock's tail is, manifestly, of no adaptive value whatsoever. It is no aid to flight, no benefit in combat with another, no enhancement of the ability to secure food or provide concealment from predators. In short, it would seem to be one (of countless many) direct counterexamples to the proposition that biological traits are adaptations, that is, that they are selected to enhance survival value or the ability to bring offspring into the world.

The thing about the peacock's tail is that the peahen likes it. It's sexy. It's beautiful to her. It is attractive. And that's why peacocks who've got it, and are able to flaunt it, are in fact more likely to have offspring. So the trait is selected. Not for its adaptive value, but by the female of the species.

And that, Prum suggests, is a very radical idea, especially in Darwin's Victorian England, but even now in a world where patriarchy is still the order of the day.

This is why, Prum argues, evolutionists have tended either to downplay sexual selection or ground it in the logic of adaptation. Perhaps the best known strategy for doing this is to hold that the reason the peahen likes the peacock's tail is that the tail is actually a signal of the peacock's fitness: Only a peacock from a good family with disposable income is going to live long enough to afford the luxury of maladaptive ornamentation. Ornament is conspicuous consumption, on this view, and females like it, so the inevitable logic runs, because they are can't resist male power.

Oy vey! That is an ugly idea and not one that casts the men who are its proponents in a particularly nice light.

It also, according to Prum, completely misses Darwin's revolutionary idea: that the aesthetic delight animals take in each other in this case, that the female takes in the male of the species is arbitrary; it is grounded in nothing more than desire and its fulfillment. It is the conscious sensory experience of animals especially female animals and it is the choices they make as a result of these experiences that are one of the governing forces of natural evolution.

Now Prum is an ornithologist, not a polemicist, and this book is a delight to read also because of the knowledge and the love of learning and teaching that it puts on display. On one point, though, I am quite certain he goes too far. In the final pages of the book he proposes to take his account of aesthetic evolution and use it to show that what the animals are doing, and have been doing, and what Mozart, Manet, van Gogh and Czanne were doing, are all of a piece: art.

The basic problem with other attempts to biologize art by grounding it in natural selection is that they end up treating art, like the peacock's tail, as just another form of conspicuous consumption. And whatever else is true, Mozart, Manet and the rest are not bling, and even if part of why we like them is that there is social prestige attached to them, it's just wildly implausible that that is the basic source of their value.

But Prum's view, as we've already seen, is very different. As I have argued in a brief discussion of Prum in my book Strange Tools, according to Prum's view, beauty is the result of a co-evolutionary process: "Changes in mating preferences have transformed the tail and changes in the tail have transformed mating preferences." Prom extends this account to human art. According to Prum, the pleasures we take in art are directly and specifically bound up with art. Not because art generates a special sort of aesthetic feeling or sensation. But because our responses to art the pleasures we take in it are are bound up with art itself by processes of co-evolution. What we like shapes art and art, in turn, shapes and reshapes what we like. Art, like attractive ornament in the biological world, is the result of a co-evolutionary processes spanning evolutionary and cultural time scales. Art, as Prum puts it, is "a form of communication that co-evolves with its own evolution."

One of the strengths of this view is that it can do justice to radical change in aesthetic evaluation. The works of an artist think Andy Warhol, for example can become beautiful; for these works can contribute to the changing of the very criteria of evaluation by which we aesthetically assess this work itself. And Prum's account also does justice to fact that it is one thing to like something, and another to find it beautiful. Beauty finding something aesthetically pleasing isn't just a matter of liking it. For Prum can allow that our pleasures and preferences get refined through evolutionary recursion. Some pleasures like the pleasures we might take in an elegant mathematical proof, for example, or in the work of the late Beethoven are only available to those who stand on the scaffolding of past communication and agreements.

This is a very powerful proposal. It brings out the distinctively cognitive, that is to say, evaluative, character of the pleasures that art affords. We don't just respond to art, we judge it.

Now, I don't doubt for a minute that peahens take pleasure in what they see, when they see a handsome peacock. Indeed, the seeing itself gives them pleasure. And I have no objection to calling that pleasure aesthetic.

But is it really true that when we look at a work of art we enjoy pleasures of that kind? Not all art is "aesthetic" in this sense. And I don't just mean Warhol and Marcel Duchamp, or even Beethoven's late quartets. The experience of art is seldom tied, in the way the peahen's gaze is tied, to lust or desire for what you are looking at. I make take pleasure when I gaze upon a Poussin landscape, but it is a pleasure that depends, pretty obviously, on the fact that neither the painting, nor anyone or anything in it, is really there. Its importance to me only shows up through my detachment from it. And when Mozart's audiences delighted in the ways he foiled their expectations of how a piece of music was supposed to be organized, they were getting his joke, understand his thought, not just, as it were, languishing in pleasurable sounds.

But I also fear that Prum's theory, as a theory of art, ends up casting the net too wide: Every artifact or social activity or technology is constrained by what we like (evaluative response) even as it offers the opportunity for us to change and update those responses (co-evolution). But art is not merely a social activity or technology even if it masquerades as such. For art always disrupts business as normal and puts the fact that we find ourselves carrying out business as normal on display. Put bluntly: The value of art does not consist in a co-evolving fit or dialog between what we make and what like, but rather in the practice of investigating and questioning and challenging such processes.

I met Prum once, a few years before his book's publication. He heard me give a lecture and we sat next to each other discussing these questions at dinner afterwards. It was a delightful encounter. I fear, however, that he might have had me, or at least those like me, in mind when he writes:

"Some aesthetic philosophers, art historians, and artists may find the recognition of myriad new biotic art forms to be more of an annoyance, or even an outrage, than a contribution to their fields."

Maybe so. But, speaking for myself anyway, it would not be because I doubt the aesthetic richness of the natural world. Or because I see reason to deny the importance of the experience of pleasure and, indeed, of something like beauty, on the part of animals. Animals are truly, in Prum's sense, aesthetic agents.

The problem is not with Prum's insistence that we say "yes" to the aesthetic lives of animals I applaud that. The problem is that, as I read him, Prum ends up saying "no" to art.

Alva No is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe

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Aesthetic Evolution In The Animal World : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture ... - NPR

The Turkish Education Ministry has decided to remove evolution from biology textbooks and the curriculum of 9th graders. This backwards move has been received very poorly by many, and it is an example of a world that seems increasingly hostile to science and facts.

The Head of the Ministrys curriculum board, Alpaslan Durmu, announced last Wednesday that Evolution will be removed from the biology books of 14 and 15 year old student in Turkey. He claimed that these students were too young to understand controversial topics.

Labeling the foundation for the development of more complex life on Earth over time as a controversial topic is an example of science deniers latest strategy to ignore facts and spread ignorance. Claiming that it is controversial makes facts vulnerable to opinion. We see this same move with climate skeptics, who can overlook overwhelming factual evidence disproving their opinion. They then have the gall to saythat facts are subjective and are even given podiums to speak from to infect otherwise sane minds.

I want to be perfectly clear, facts are not subjective or relative to anyones opinions. This is why I, and many others, are outraged by the Turkish governments decision to pull one of the most enlightening theories -Evolution- from biology books. To call it controversial is just salt in the wound, but also fuel to the fire.

This comes as Turkey is working on embedding more religious rhetoric and policy in their government. Most classes will see an overhaul to reflect more religious undertones. The President of Turkey is also consolidating much of his power. Both of these things are out of the norm for Turkey, which has been a historically secular and modern state.

Denial of facts and science are the quickest way send a nation back in time, for the worst. However, many are not taking this without a fight. They are just as upset with this as I am, and have even more reason to be since it is their nation. Many of the points I have already made are echoed in the comments sections of news reports and on the forums of popular websites.

While the deed appears to already have been done, it is important that critics of this move remain vocal and outspoken. Democracy, science, and knowledge only die when we allow them to do so. It is the duty of every human to resist when governments, businesses, and anyone else tells you that facts are opinions or that science is controversial.

I am pleased to see so many standing up against this and making their voices heard. Science and facts will always be more important to humanity as a whole than the opinions of misinformed and powerful people. Never let anyone make you question scientific Truth. There are many things that are relative and culturally constructed, but the only place where Truth -with a capital T- lives is in sciences and math. Known Truth should never be considered an opinion and learning it should never be seen as controversial.

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Turkey To Remove Evolution from Biology Textbooks - The Merkle

If anyone still doubts the staying power of Kendall and Kylie Jenner, the two youngest members of the Kardashian-Jenner clan have hit a milestone that many other brands have struggled to reach amid the troubled retail climate.

We have a few years now under our belt and definitely feel like weve hit our stride, said Kylie, 19, who earned the distinction of being the youngest person on Forbes latest ranking of the highest-paid celebrities in the world, with earnings of $41 million. Kendall, 21, is currently one of the top-earning models, according to Forbes, with earnings of $10 million in 2016 included in her estimated $36 million net worth.

The contemporary line Kendall + Kylie was launched two years ago this month and wholesales to 390 doors in the U.S. and 975 worldwide, including Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, Shopbop, Revolve, Selfridges, Printemps, I.T. Hong Kong and Luisa Via Roma. Retail prices range from $50 to $495, with the majority of pieces selling for under $195.

Last year the sisters introduced an #OnlyatNM capsule collection and have also expanded into handbags and eyewear since their initial foray into apparel, swim and shoes.

Here, the Jenners share what theyve learned about the fashion business, where they get their design inspiration and how they like to shop. As for what categories are next for the K + K line, they wont say but jewelry, activewear or fragrance could be next.

WWD: How has the look of the collection evolved over the past two years?

Kylie: We have learned what the customer wants and what she gravitates towards through trial and error. We love to push the envelope with adding statement and novelty styles that in the past we would have shied away from and seeing how our customer has loved those items has been amazing. Now we love to offer our core basics and then sprinkle in the fun statement items.

Kendall: I agree with Kylie the foundation of the collection remains tried and true basics with a twist. We have fun reinventing these styles every season and learning what our customer is coming to us for. Creating the statement pieces and having our customers love them is like icing in the cake.

WWD: Who or what other style inspirations do you use for the collection?

Kylie: I love pulling from vintage shops and old design house books.

Kendall: I always have our mood boards, and love pulling from classic fashion photographers for color and print inspiration.

WWD: In what ways have you broadened or deepened the assortment? Or have you edited it down?

Kylie: In the beginning we didnt know what our customer would love from us so we kind of gave her a little bit of everything and then watched to see how she reacted. Seeing our bodysuits and dresses take off was amazing. Focusing our collection after that has been fun because our customer loves what we love.

Kendall: We have focused our rtw assortment on everyday basics and added a few covetable fashion pieces. Our accessories were created to complete the lifestyle and look and to create newness and novelty each season, giving our customer more options on how to pull looks together and keep them looking fresh and trend relevant.

WWD: What are your bestsellers?

Kylie: Our bodysuits, knit dresses and sneakers have been best sellers since we launched them.

Kendall: Yes! Our bodysuits, backpacks and more forward eyewear have been extremely successful.

WWD: How have your personal styles evolved over the last two years?

Kylie: I definitely feel more comfortable with who I am and where I am in my life, and love taking risks and putting unexpected styles and colors together to create my own look. I love being comfortable in everything I wear.

Kendall: I have been exposed to so many amazing design houses and brands, I have definitely learned how to pull pieces together to create a very polished look with everyday classics and statement pieces.

WWD: Are there things you wear now that you didnt before? Are there new looks or moods you are into? Or do you stay pretty consistent?

Kylie: I am not consistent and love mixing things up and pulling inspiration from different icons and eras.

Kendall: I started a mood board in my closet that I continually add to. Things that inspire me, looks that I love from different eras that I reference for inspiration. I take more risks and feel more comfortable putting styles together in an unexpected way.

WWD: In what ways have you incorporated that into the collection?

Kylie: Our focus has always been on creating comfortable basics with a twist. Putting unexpected details on an everyday top or dress, and styling it back to something fun. I pull inspiration from my closet to reference past favorite looks.

Kendall: Our names are on the label, and we strive to constantly create and design styles that we ourselves want to wear and pair with statement pieces and vintage from our own closets. We have been very consistent with our vision of creating wearable and fun everyday classics.

WWD: What is the most important thing youve learned, business-wise, from the experience?

Kylie: Creating a brand takes time and the key is listening to our customers and creating newness each season in categories she loves from us.

Kendall: Each category we introduce has its learning curve based on us taking the time to develop the line and then, most importantly, seeing what our customer gravitates towards. Then its back to the drawing board to tweak and perfect our brand formula.

WWD: What has it taught you about yourself, personally?

Kylie: To listen to my instincts.

Kendall: Trust that taking risks is worth it and if we love it, so will our fans.

WWD: What has been the biggest challenge in launching the line?

Kendall: When Kylie and I launched this line we were so young and also still figuring out our own personal style and what we loved so building a brand and trying to figure out who our K+K customer was and what she wanted on top of that was definitely a challenge. Now looking back on the other side and knowing what we personally love along with what our customer wants is amazing. Now we get to combine the two and create styles that she comes back to us for each season.

WWD: Whats been the most surprising thing about the business to you?

Kendall: We remind ourselves never to get comfortable! The fashion industry is changing now more than ever and the key is to have your eyes wide open and to have fun creating.

WWD: What differences do you see between the brick and mortar business and the e-comm business for your collection? Is one growing more quickly than the other

Kylie: E-comm is the future of how people in our generation shop. Creating experiences and covetable items online helps to create and build excitement and give customers a reason to continually shop.

Kendall: I completely agree. Dont get me wrong I love going in to stores to touch, feel and try on product, but there is something to be said about being able to test and try new ideas and strategies out online.

WWD: What are your favorite Instagram accounts to follow for style inspiration?

Kylie: Honestly, I find the most random accounts and pull for inspiration. Everyday beautiful people that I see and love their style become some of the most influential for me.

Kendall: Im more of a Pinterest mood board kind of girl so I pull most of our inspiration from there versus Instagram.

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Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner reflect on Kendall + Kylie line's evolution - Los Angeles Times

News item: A new Florida law allows any resident, regardless of whether he or she has children in the public school system, to instigate a formal challenge to any textbook, library book, novel, or other kind of instructional material used in a public school.

The state law channels the residents complaint to an unbiased and qualified hearing officer who is empowered to determine whether the material is accurate, objective, balanced, noninflammatory, current, and suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented.

***

Dear Unbiased and Qualified Hearing Officer:

So my cousins nephews best friends daughter tells me theres nothing about Noahs Ark in her public school textbook for Earth Science. How can this be?

Instead of filling these kids minds with nonsense about sedimentary rocks from billions of years ago (when we know the earth is only 6,000 years old!) they should be taught how theyre all here today because the 600-year-old Noah loaded all the animals two-by-two on his big ark, and thereby preserved life on Earth.

I believe without the ark, your explanation of the world fails being balanced and noninflammatory.

Which is why me and the others in the prayer circle are planning to show up for the public hearing we are entitled to under the new Instructional Materials Act passed by legislature.

Just say when.

***

Dear Unbiased and Qualified Hearing Officer:

It has come to my attention that some public school libraries in this district contain the novel Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, a well-known socialist who visited the Soviet Union in 1947 and espoused biased opinions about capitalism.

By allowing students to read Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath you are exposing them to a work of art that shines a harsh light on American history and its ideals.

This is shameful, and obviously part of the school boards liberal agenda. Which is why me and others in my morning Einsteins Bagels discussion group hereby demand that unless you balance Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath in school libraries with Sean Hannitys inspiring book, Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War over Liberalism we will be requesting a public hearing.

Were not putting up with the school districts Saul Alinsky tactics!

***

Dear Unbiased and Qualified Hearing Officer:

As the owner of a piece of property I maintain in Florida for tax purposes and the proud lobbyist of our nations most historically important source of energy generation, I am dismayed to learn that public school children are being brainwashed by Earth Day every year.

Through course materials and something called the Florida Green School Network, public school students are being taught to feel less than enthusiastic about harnessing the awesome power of coal. We find the constant praise for renewable energy to be subjective, not objective, as your teaching standards are required to be.

Pounding the importance of solar, wind and other renewables into impressionable young minds while ignoring the vital contributions of clean coal, extracted from dynamited mountain tops, is both un-American and unbalanced.

Which is why my friends and I in the coal industry, are hereby demanding that all course materials relating to Earth Day be suspended until and unless Floridas public schools start celebrating a yearly and counter-balancing Clean Coal Day.

Please schedule a public hearing on this, preferably not during Black Lung Awareness Month.

***

Dear Unbiased and Qualified Hearing Officer:

So my neighbor tells me that his childs middle school has morning announcements that do the weather. And that one day in May, the student weather-person remarked that it was really hot outside, and that maybe its the climate change.

As you know, climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese on America. (See enclosed presidential tweet.)

Me and my friends on the InfoWars chat group feel that children in Floridas public schools may be exposed to school materials that support the view that climate change is real, which is obviously designed to turn them into sheeple during a government false flag operation.

Please investigate this immediately and schedule a public hearing at a time when none of us are working which just so happens to be anytime right now.

See more here:

Florida's evolution to complainer's paradise for public schools - MyPalmBeachPost

Corporate team building, which for years brought co-workers together in disdain for activities such as trust falls and ropes courses, has elevated its game.

Escape rooms, "Survivor"-style competitions and improv training are bringing a new level of excitement and perhaps effectiveness to the once-dreaded outings, meant to bond employees and fortify roles outside the confines of their daily cubicle-farm existence.

A recent excursion to a Chicago escape room by a team of 15 United Airlines employees proved challenging, surprising and successful in shaking up the status quo, with an intern leading his managers to freedom and participants energized in the process.

Whether a simulated jail break transfers to an improved workplace, however, remains an open question.

"It's not clear yet what are the benefits of it, other than people love it because it's something outside of work," said Eduardo Salas, an organizational psychology professor at Rice University in Houston. "But when they go back, the same conditions are there, so the long-term effects of team building are unknown."

Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune

United Airlines employees, including Lizzie Cristobal, standing right, and Rhonda Crenshaw, seated right, take part in a corporate team-building exercise June 29, 2017, as they work together to try to free themselves from an escape room at a PanIQ Room in Chicagos Fulton Market district.

United Airlines employees, including Lizzie Cristobal, standing right, and Rhonda Crenshaw, seated right, take part in a corporate team-building exercise June 29, 2017, as they work together to try to free themselves from an escape room at a PanIQ Room in Chicagos Fulton Market district. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

A series of exercises meant to encourage cooperation, goodwill and, ultimately, increased productivity, team building has long been fodder for corporate satire. The quintessential team-building activity was the trust fall: closing your eyes and falling backward into the arms of your colleagues, secure in the knowledge that they have your back or not.

While team-building facilitators proliferated and business was brisk, the old-school outings rarely hit the mark, according to experts.

"It really didn't improve their performance," said Wendy Bedwell, an assistant professor of organizational psychology at the University of South Florida.

In recent years, team building has evolved in more creative and engaging ways, Bedwell said, amping up both the fun quotient and the potential benefits to the workplace. Activities include solving simulated crime scenes, building bicycles for charity and competing in "Survivor"-inspired challenges, among others.

Improv training is also popular as a corporate team-building activity, with Second City Works, the business consulting arm of the Chicago-based comedy troupe, a logical player in that arena.

"We've built a pretty significant business," Kelly Leonard, executive director of insights and applied improvisation at Second City Works, where a half-day team building workshop starts at about $12,000.

Escape rooms, however, have emerged as perhaps the go-to team-building activity. In a typical scenario, six teammates are locked in a themed room, where they must work together to find clues and solve puzzles to escape within 60 minutes.

The activity can be both intellectual and physical, and for those who are not claustrophobic, apparently a lot of fun. It also provides some actual team-building benefit, Bedwell said.

"Anything that really requires people to work together, think critically and solve a problem is going to have more of a benefit than just standing in a forest and falling backwards and having everyone catch you," Bedwell said.

PanIQ Room, a Hungarian company that opened a Chicago outlet in March 2016, is in the basement of an industrial three-story brick building in the Fulton Market district.

The facility consists of three rooms dubbed "Infection," "Prison" and, in homage to Chicago, "Mob," where participating groups generally pay between $129 and $189 for a one-hour escape.

Camille Wheeler, 36, of Mount Prospect, senior manager in contact center applications for United Airlines, recently funded a PanIQ Room outing for herself and 14 members of her team, who split into groups to tackle the three rooms simultaneously.

"I wanted to get the team out and do some team-building exercises in a new and different way," Wheeler said.

The groups dug into the task, connecting via walkie-talkies for occasional clues from the PanIQ Room managers, who monitored their respective efforts from a control room video screen.

Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune

United Airlines employees search for clues in a corporate team-building exercise June 29, 2017, as they work together to try to get out of an escape room at PanIQ Room in Chicagos Fulton Market district.

United Airlines employees search for clues in a corporate team-building exercise June 29, 2017, as they work together to try to get out of an escape room at PanIQ Room in Chicagos Fulton Market district. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

Only one group emerged within the allotted time, escaping from the Infection room in about 45 minutes to trade high-fives and war stories.

Leading the way was Justin Booms, 30, an intern from Bloomington, Ind., who took command from his more tenured co-workers, having previously navigated a different escape room.

"Given my previous experience and with everybody thrown into the same boat, there's no hierarchy whoever sees something first can kind of lead," said Booms, who now lives in the Lincoln Square neighborhood.

With no customers scheduled for the next hour, Heidi Blanc-Blum, unit manager for PanIQ Room Chicago, gave the other two teams some extra time to escape, with both eventually making their way to freedom.

"Prison is really hard," declared Pam Hannan, of Palatine, a 22-year veteran of the applications team, upon emerging from her cell and plopping down on the lobby couch for a drink of water.

rchannick@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @RobertChannick

Link:

From trust falls to escape rooms: The evolution of corporate team building - Chicago Tribune