insomniac thoughts

[juldea]

Money is weird. Like, the theory of it all. I go to work, and when I leave, they don't give me Wealth. They give me a piece of paper that says that their bank is going to transfer a balance to my bank. But the balance doesn't mean anything either... it's numbers on a sheet of paper, in a computer, nothing I can hold. Someone could theoretically just up and say that the computer says zero now, and there it all goes... But that's not weird, that's the thing, it's what we've all come to deal with as normal. We don't hold our wealth anymore, we don't have it tangible... We let our possessions be taken from us and spread around and used by others, and then we wonder why we don't ever feel in control of our lives...

Segue.

Hypothesis: the American (Western?) emphasis on breast size rather than hip size for attractiveness of a (female) mate is indicative that our society is no longer worried about perpetuating itself through breeding, but instead worried about feeding those that we've bred. In other words, it's an evolutionary response to overpopulation. Discuss.

I feel like I'm on the edge of an ephiphany tonight, rolling around bed in my insomnia, plagued with newfound knowledge of humanity's dark sides (thank you Uris)... It's probably just the ramen and ice cream I had for dinner.

Comments

[goldbug.livejournal.com]

do bigger breasts produce more milk?

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I didn't really think it was, but in the same vein, does hip size really mean more fertile?

[tlluria.livejournal.com]

i thought it always meant easier birthing

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know that. But a skinny-hipped woman who keeps getting pregnant and loses half her children could still outproduce a large-hipped woman who isn't so fertile... *shrug* I'm splitting hairs now, I know. ;)

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Just like breast size doesn't mean more milk. Doesn't mean we don't THINK so, though. :)

My personal hodgepodge of theories on breasts and hips

[withlyn.livejournal.com]

Once upon a proto-human time, breasts and hips were both utilitarian things: if women had bigger hips than men, it was because they had big pelvic girdles, and if they had bigger breasts, it was because they had bigger mammary glands. Both of these things are super-handy for the female side of reproduction: a large pelvic girdle doesn't just mean "easier birth" in terms of losing fewer of your babies: it means "easier birth" in terms of being less likely to die in your first childbirth. Bigger mammary glands (than men have) can actually produce milk faster than smaller ones, though of course the seize of a woman's mammary glands when she's not pregnant yet are not really indicative of how big they will be when she is actually nursing.

So a number of things happen: First off, sexually mature women can be distinguished from men or large children by their comparitively larger hips and breasts, and so men's brains become keyed to looking for those attributes in prospective mates. That is probably enough to explain why men prefer big hips and big breasts in a mate: the bigger the hips and the bigger the breasts, the more the "good prospective mate" areas of the brain get triggered. In addition, having even bigger hips and even bigger breasts are useful modifications in their own rights.

So, in a world where men have started to key in on those two things (as well as some others) to identify good mates, the women who exemplify those characteristics best are the ones who end up with the best chances at getting a mate, and futhermore with the best "bargaining power" towards getting a good mate. (If they set their standards low enough and just want to get pregnant, women are virtually assured of finding a man to have sex with them. The same is not true for men.) Bones and mammary glands are relatively hard tissues to grow/maintain, so once past the point where those changes are actually making childbirth and nursing easier, it's easier to just augment the size with fat deposits. That seems like some sort of genetic deception, but, in the harsher world where essentially everything about human physiology developed, fat deposits mean that one has been getting enough to eat, and that is very indicative of one's reproductive desirability. Women with lots of fat deposits both have been successful at gathering food in the past, and already have some stored up towards the pregnancy and feeding the baby.

To conclude, I personally find that the biggest purely geometric factor towards the sexual attractiveness of a woman is not breast size or even hip size per se, but waist-hip ratio, which I'm pretty sure that I specifically identify via the slope of the sides of the abdomen between the waist and hips. Furthermore, I think that women with a bigger chest size than hip size look a bit awkward and unbalanced. That's a rough statement; I have never made a practice of actually knowing anyone's measurements.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

see above (http://www.livejournal.com/users/juldea/786759.html?thread=4186439#t4186439) (same comment made by two people) :)

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I don't think so, but I can see how it could be thought so...

[belladonna1015.livejournal.com]

Money in my opinion is an idea. It has value based on how much value our collective conscious percieves it to have. It is not even backed by gold. So really the whole thing represents an idea. This has always bothered me.

If breast size was all it took for women to be attractive, I would not be single.

[oakleaf-mirror.livejournal.com]

Money in my opinion is an idea.

Exactly! It's a consensual medium of exchange that we've agreed upon.

It is not even backed by gold.

But why is gold better? We've collectively decided that gold has a high value, yet it's useless for directly satisfying the needs of living. We can't eat it, wearing it provides no warmth or protection, and it's a poor building material. It's only the collective idea of its value that allows us to exchange it for other things.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I once asked londo, who know quite a bit about economics actually, why gold is the standard for money. Sadly, I don't remember exactly what he said.. but Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard) says: "...it is believed by historians that gold's high value for its utility, density, resistance to corrosion, uniformity, and easy divisibility made it useful both as a store of value and as a unit of account for stored value of other kinds."

Just for the practical answer to this problem, but not the psychological one. Gold is just as 'Worth'-less as pieces of paper, when you get down to it...

[tlluria.livejournal.com]

except that it's much prettier around your finger (neck, wrist, etc)

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Ick! Silver for me. :)

[tlluria.livejournal.com]

on a more serious note, doesn't the wording on the bills have something to do with this entire discussion? my brain is too snotted up to actually do more than reference it, but does anyone remember the wording and can somebody draw a better connection from it to this discussion than i can right now?

%P

[juldea.livejournal.com]

not quite sure what you're referring to...

this

[tlluria.livejournal.com]

"FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE"

and this

"THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE"

and this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender) though for the life of me I can't remember what the argument/theory was.

more proof that I shouldn't try to intellectualize when sick ...

Re: this

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Oh! I get you now.

Yeah, but those are just words on the paper. I don't have the power to make them true if someone else, with power, says they're not. *shrug*

[belladonna1015.livejournal.com]

I totally agree.

[idonotlikepeas]

Well, Wealth was always like that. The only reason that any of our previous media of exchange meant anything was that the particular society in which they were exchanged had arbitrarily decided that they had value. And if society changed its mind, you could easily be left with a pile of worthless materials. In fact, value itself in this sense is only a human construct; it's just intended to simplify and anonymize barter, since in a society as complex as ours working out our transactions by barter would be too insanely complicated. The work that we do has no inherent value aside from the benefits it produces for other people; the fact that we get paid for it is simply an artifact of our society - the method we've selected for exchanging labor and keeping ourselves alive.

So what we've got now is really the essence of wealth; not a bunch of useless trash to haul around, but a counter indicating how much bartering power you have. It's money in its purest form.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong... these are not new thoughts to me. ;) I was just re-struck with the weirdness of it all, last night.

*tries frantically to save intellectual face with the person she just met*

The paragraphs that got me thinking (slightly edited to keep it concise)...

   "Aye, but a machine doing men's work. Maybe I'll be leaving this world in the nick of time. What does it really mean?"
   "Surely, I don't know the answer to that."
   "I think I know. It will be the end of us in time. ... If a machine does the work of twenty, then nineteen must give up their farms and move into the city. Those who move to the city will not be making their own cloth as we do or building their own homes or growing their own food. They will have to buy everything, and in order to do so they will have to work in factories or other machines which make the things they have to buy. ... And the cities will grow bigger and uglier and dirtier."

Biased quote, yes, by a fictional character, but it lubricated my mental juices for a while. ;)

[idonotlikepeas]

Sure. :)

That quote, on the other hand, would probably get me talking about how overproduction is the primary crisis of capitalism, which may not be a discussion we want to have in random journal comments. :D

(And don't worry about trying to save intellectual face. What, like I have all the answers?)

[juldea.livejournal.com]

... which may not be a discussion we want to have in random journal comments.

Why not? :) Bring it on! I'll probably learn something.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

It's probably just the ramen and ice cream I had for dinner.

Next time try the chicken :-)

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I was GOING to make some chicken soup, but I didn't have time...

Money

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

I often let myself forget the input side, which makes ATMs magic money machines which give you money when you ask nicely. A weird conceit, but fun.

No, you shouldn't worry about this from someone who wrote code to control the flow of vast amounts of 'money' in the world monetary system... honest.

Cree saying:
"Only when the last tree has died and
The last river has been poisoned and
The last fish has been caught,
Will we realise that
We cannot eat money"