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Ten Things We Still Don't Understand About Humans
ParticleGirl writes "New Scientist has an article examining 10 human features (bugs?) that we still don't understand, like blushing, laughing, and nose-picking. There are some interesting, speculative evolutionary explanations listed for each. '[Psychologist Robert R. Provine] thinks laughing began in our pre-human ancestors as a physiological response to tickling. Modern apes maintain the ancestral 'pant-pant' laugh when they are tickled during play, and this evolved into the human 'ha-ha.' Then, he argues, as our brains got bigger, laughter acquired a powerful social function — to bond people. Indeed, Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford has found that laughing increases levels of endorphins, our body's natural opiates, which he believes helps to strengthen social relationships.'"
The Underground History of American Education is relevent here, if you're interested in one former teacher's account of how forced schooling came to be in the U.S. and where the new concept of "adolescence" came from. Highly depressing; I thoroughly recommend it. It's free to read online. (Not affiliated with it in any way, I just happened to have read it recently.)
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And it dislodges whatever blowing your nose couldn't.
This one morning... I had one of those hard, pointy bits of dried mucus in my nose, I had to pull it out, the poking was painful. It was firmly glued to the side of my nose, and I ended up pulling out a long strand that felt like it had been filling up a sinus cavity all the way across my cheekbone. It felt like my head was 5 pounds lighter after that! It was magical, I tell you.