Supernormal Stimuli Quotes

“Television is the first truly democratic culture—the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want. —Clive Barnes”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“As former senator Peter Fitzgerald noted, putting the USDA in charge of our nutritional guidelines is “like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.” USDA subsidies to farmers for growing specific crops total $19 billion annually.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“Siberia was not the uniformly bleak prison that western­ers, or even other Russians, often imagined. It indeed was cold, and some parts had forced labor camps, but largely it served as an isolation chamber for the generation’s most interesting intellectuals, artists, and liberal political activ­ists, to protect the Russian masses from their influence. As a friend who grew up there told me, “In Siberia, the government didn’t try to enforce rules. There weren’t even that many officials there. Siberia was one of the most liberal societies on the planet.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“Back in Leiden, Tinbergen continued these explorations, now grounded in Lorenz’s theoretical concepts. He studied butterflies and found that marks on the torso of the female and its vibratory movements were the sole mating releasers—he
could construct dummy butterfly torsos with brighter stripes and more regular movements. Males would ignore a live female to mount cardboard cylinders that didn’t even need wings!”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“Pachisi, now Anglicized in America as the familiar “Parcheesi,” was created in India around 500 BC and utilized similar strategies combined with a larger dose of chance by letting dice determine some options.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“Games have a similarly long history with our species. The board game Go originated in China about 500 BC and called for a subtle balance of offensive and defensive strategies.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“In 1913, English journalist Arthur Wynne published a “word-cross” puzzle in the New York World. The rectangular grid with squares to be filled in with cued words became wildly popular and its name was altered a few years later to “crossword.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“Our “pseudospecies” are those who look like us, believe the same things, or speak our language. Erikson said the pseudospecies provides people with a positive sense of identity but also obliterates our sense of other humans as our kin.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“Through most of human history female puberty took place at around 171/2 to 18. By 1900, it had fallen to 151/2 in the developed world. Over the last few decades, the drop has accelerated until 11 is now the average and many girls reach it at 9 or 10.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“Many other European countries and Canada set 14 as the age of consent.30 Great Britain is presently considering lowering its age of consent from 16 to 14. After the BBC broad-cast a program: “Sex Before 16: Why the Law is Failing,”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“Holland has a legal code that recognizes sexual consent from the age of 12, but has special provisions for children or parents to bring charges if they can prove adults have used “coercion” on those aged 12 to 16.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“DNA studies across a wide variety of cultures find about 10 percent of children are not biologically the offspring of their socially identified father.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“And human males? .08 percent of body weight—four times that of gorillas but one-fourth that of chimps—again suggesting an intermediate pattern.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“Bonobo chimpanzees which enjoy an orgiastic variety of sexual partners have testes .3 percent of their body weight. Gorillas, whose females mate only with the dominant “gray-back” of their group, have modest testes only .02 percent of their weight.”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

“Saying that pornography creates a desire for…trashy sex is like saying McDonald’s creates a desire for salty, greasy meat. Hugh Hefner did not invent the American fetish for women with large breasts; his Playmate of the month merely exploited a taste already well-established. —Joseph Slade, Pornography in America”
― Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose