Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

What Is This Monkey Business Called Father's Day!?

Father's Day is June 20th this year. In recognition of this, the New York Times published an interesting article that details recent insights into how and why male primates might favor publicly displaying their fatherhood this week. In a nutshell, the piece suggests that Men Behaving Dadly (to borrow a phrase) may provide important social cues that contribute greatly to the character and strength of the social fabric of some primate species. Examining these social connections is a complex science but there is no doubt that they exist for apes and humans alike and that fatherhood is a bond more robust (and subtle) than we usually admit. While the questions "How?" and "Why?" we father the way do may be inextricably connected from a social science perspective, a more nuts-and-bolts look at fatherhood is a great way to reflect on the value that competent parenting brings in our lives.

So, where does a father start when it comes to proper preening and cobbling together an impressive parental infrastructure? Today's dad might consider Be Prepared: a Handbook for New Dads by Gary Greenberg. Presented in the style of an old scout manual, Be Prepared provides copious examples of workarounds that benefit the child AND demonstrate a father's superior ingenuity such as how to construct a teether from a clean sock and frozen apples. This hysterical read is really an invaluable operating manual written with a structure that parallels the aging of your infant. This is handy since dad might not have enough free time to read more than a few pages at a time in those first few months. Armed with this book, a towel and duct tape, a dad should feel confident heading out in to the world in his new role as a father. [A favorite insight from Be Prepared- Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier" provides a 66 BPM tempo that works magic for rocking your baby!]

The aforementioned New York Times article stresses that fatherhood activities can be a display with high social value. Carrying a child can be a sort of "battle symbol", a display that the male is capable of enduring stress. This type of observation speaks to the varied and deep connections that define primates as social animals. Connected: the Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives demonstrates how these social networks can be modeled and what those models reveal about how emotions, ideas, obesity and viruses (just to mention a few examples) move across these networks. Written by Harvard professor and health care specialist Nicholas Christakis, Connected's essential message is that our interconnection may make us susceptible to influence from others in ways that are beyond our perception but recognizing this effect should embolden us to return that influence in the most altruistic fashion we are capable of.

It's a rare book that merits being included in more than one Furthmore... post. James and Other Apes (as presented by author James Mollison) is one such book. At the risk of taking a discussion about primates, parenting and connectivity in an utterly anthropomorphic direction it must be stated that the larger-than-life portraits included in James are, in some way, transcendent. Even if looking into the dozens of apes faces between these covers tells us nothing more than that we are capable of a powerful inter-species sympathy, we must acknowledge that there is an empathic impulse within us that drives much of our more positive behavior. Even an infant, held in their father's lap, will be struck by the power and familiarity of these portraits, a sense of connection that crosses innumerable divides.

Caster Semenya and the "Rules" of Gender

South African, middle-distance runner Caster Semenya has been embroiled in controversy these last few months. Last week Semenya withdrew from competition amid reports in the Australian media regarding leaked findings of a sex-determination test that implied Semenya, who had dominated the field running against women, has Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Indicators of AIS include elevated testosterone and the presence of undescended testes. Semenya's success as a runner brings to light surprising limitations in our culture's conception of gender but this is not the first time that an athlete has faced such scrutiny. Indian runner Santhi Soundararajan tested positive for possessing a Y chromosome and was stripped of her silver medal from the 2006 Doha Asian Games. Soundararajan attempted suicide the following year. The International Olympic Committee banned genetic testing in 1999 but during the 1996 games in Atlanta eight women athletes tested positive for having a Y chromosome. Of those eight, seven had AIS and all were allowed to compete.

Gender is, of course, a complicated issue and as a construct it is difficult to contextualize. Matt Ridley's The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature succeeds mightily in comparing/contrasting human expressions of gender and sexuality to those found elsewhere in the animal kingdom. The book's title refers to the Red Queen's race in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass during which the Queen remarks, "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Ridley uses this analogy in explaining the advantage of sexual reproduction for individuals within a species as well as the constant evolutionary arms race that exists between species competing for resources in their shared environment. By using frequent examples from throughout the animal kingdom Ridley illustrates that our cultural concepts of gender and sexual reproduction are frequently much narrower than those recognized by science and expands these insights into valuable reflections on the nature of our behavior as a species.

Then again, if professor of genetics at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University Bryan Sykes is correct, humans may not have to worry about gender issues in the future. In Adam's Curse: a Future Without Men he posits that within 125,000 years (not really that long by evolutionary standards) Homo sapiens may lose the Y chromosome entirely. Sykes describes the deterioration of the Y chromosome in dramatic terms and proposes that its diminishing stability may be responsible for increasing rates of infertility among men. Though the author has impressive academic credentials, this story of conflict and cooperation between mitochondrial DNA (which we all inherent from our mothers) and the Y chromosome (which males inherent from their fathers) is written in concise and entertaining prose. The central thesis of Adam's Curse may not come to fruition until well beyond our days but the science that Sykes describes in exploring this intriguing possibility has many applications in the present.

As much as the parent's genes may battle for expression in their child's body, sexual reproduction is still an altruistic (and very successful) process. How Sex Works: Why We Look, Smell, Taste, Feel, and Act the Way We Do by Dr. Sharon Moalem explores human sex from a practical, scientific vantage point and the results are a fascinating and revealing look at what makes us human using our sexuality as a lens. Moalem presents up to date research about human sexuality in a compelling and informative way and doesn't shy away from difficult issues (can twins have different fathers?) Competing theories are included in an effort to be as informative and honest as possible about the complexities of the issues at hand. Although How Sex Works enthralls with its detailing of the unseen machinations of our bodies, such as the development of the secondary sexual characteristics that we commonly use to distinguish the sexes, its greater import is to suggest how flexible our society may need to be if we are to acknowledge the gap between our cultural constructs of gender/sexuality and science's interpretation how and why we behave the way we do.

Altruism, Basketball and Competition

Jeremy Tyler, a talented basketball prospect from San Diego, CA has decided to forego his senior year of high school in order to play professional basketball in Europe. This is the latest development in a series of youth athlete's decisions that sidestep the NBA draft's age restrictions which call for players to be at least 19 and one year removed from high school at the time they are drafted. Some might see this as the latest assault on the innocence of youth by professional sport. Others might comment that Tyler's choice to play overseas is enabled by the economic power of his rare abilities and that if his dream is to play basketball professionally in the NBA, playing in the Euro-Leagues might be a better apprenticeship than playing college ball. Either way his choice says something about changes in our world as seen through the prism of sports.

Tyler's decision to play in Europe was guided by Sonny Vaccoro, the man who signed Michael Jordon to his first shoe contract with Nike, founded the Adidias ABDC basketball camp and a man who casts a long shadow over the Summer AAU basketball circuit that some blame for hastening the aforementioned loss of innocence in amateur basketball. Vaccoro's career provides the thread that Dan Wetzel and Don Yaeger follow in an effort to identify the major players in the growing corporate presence in amateur basketball in their book Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed, and the Corruption of America's Youth. Whether or not you agree with the premise of Influence, that the corporate race to find the next Michael Jordan has ruined youth basketball, Wetzel and Yaeger's book does a great job of illustrating the vicious competitive drive that has fueled profound changes in the world of amateur hoops.

Perhaps these ultra-competitive shoe company executives and AAU team coaches could perfect their craft with lessons learned from Richard Conniff's The Ape in the Corner Office: Understanding the Workplace Beast in All of Us. Conniff applies the questionable study of Evolutionary Psychology to the work place, a setting where many are looking for any edge that will help them get ahead. While animal driven metaphors are common place in the business environment (after all, it's better to be head of the pack than to be thrown to the dogs when they thin the herd) Conniff's witty and engaging style might make you reassess what you can do differently and/or better to get ahead or just not fall behind in these troubled economic times. Ape in the Corner is also set apart from other related books in that Conniff acknowledges the value of altruism, that is, the idea that helping others can be a way of helping yourself. This idea can be applied on any level of an organization, from individuals cooperating on a project to entire departments sharing resources. Come to think of it, this sort of cooperative competition might even be used to build better basketball teams!

Robert Wright takes the idea of examining and emphasizing the altruistic aspects of human nature to the extreme in his book Nonzero: the Logic of Human Destiny. The view he presents is that our increasingly interdependent global society is not just a positive expression of the benefits of an altruistic approach but is a more or less predictable result of the competitive advantages that altruism allows for participating parties. Further, Wright imagines that we may be soon arrive at a time when the complexities that intertwine our societies create an unprecedented moral stability. He proposes an unintentional but undeniable system of checks and balances that results in our collective experience of an unprecedented spiritual ballast. Nonzero's title is a reference to the game theory concept that not all exchanges can be characterized as one party losing while the other wins. For example, clearly Jeremy Tyler leaving the US to play professionally in Europe is a loss for college basketball here but if he has an enriching experience in Europe, represents his community well there and returns a better player and happier person then, in a sense, we all win.