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The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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7 September 2010 Last updated at 23:06 GMT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11223473
Good dancing may be sign of male health, scientists say
By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News
Dr Nick Neave looks at the difference between "good" and "bad" dancing
(video on url above)
Scientists say they've carried out the first rigorous analysis of
dance moves that make men attractive to women.
The researchers say that movements associated with good dancing may be
indicative of good health and reproductive potential.
Their findings are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
"When you go out to clubs people have an intuitive understanding of
what makes a good and bad dancer," said co-author Dr Nick Neave, an
evolutionary psychologist at Northumbria University, UK.
"What we've done for the very first time is put those things together
with a biometric analysis so we can actually calculate very precisely
the kinds of movements people focus on and associate them with women's
ratings of male dancers."
Dr Neave asked young men who were not professional dancers, to dance
in a laboratory to a very basic drum rhythm and their movements with
12 cameras.
These movements were then converted into a computer-generated cartoon
- an avatar - which women rated on a scale of one to seven. He was
surprised by the results.
"We thought that people's arms and legs would be really important. The
kind of expressive gestures the hands [make], for example. But in fact
this was not the case," he said.
"We found that (women paid more attention to) the core body region:
the torso, the neck, the head. It was not just the speed of the
movements, it was also the variability of the movement. So someone who
is twisting, bending, moving, nodding."
Movements that went down terribly were twitchy and repetitive - so
called "Dad dancing".
Dr Neave's aim was to establish whether young men exhibited the same
courtship movement rituals in night clubs as animals do in the wild.
In the case of animals, these movements give information about their
health, age, their reproductive potential and their hormone status.
"People go to night clubs to show off and attract the opposite sex so
I think it's a valid way of doing this," Dr Neave explained.
"In animals, the male has to be in good physical quality to carry out
these movements. We think the same is happening in humans and
certainly the guys that can put these movements together are going to
be young and fit and healthy."
Dr Neave also took blood samples from the volunteers. Early
indications from biochemical tests suggest that the men who were
better dancers were also more healthy.
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WARNING FROM RAEL: For those who don't use their intelligence at its full
capacity, the label "selected by RAEL" on some articles does not mean that I
agree with their content or support it. "Selected by RAEL" means that I believe
it is important for the people of this planet to know about what people think or
do, even when what they think or do is completely stupid and against our
philosophy. When I selected articles in the past about stupid Christian
fundamentalists in America praying for rain, I am sure no Rael-Science reader
was stupid enough to believe that I was supporting praying to change the
weather. So, when I select articles which are in favor of drugs, anti-semitic,
anti-Jewish, racist, revisionist, or inciting hatred against any group or
religion, or any other stupid article, it does not mean that I support them. It
just means that it is important for all human beings to know about them. Common
sense, which is usually very good among our readers, is good enough to
understand that. When, like in the recent articles on drug decriminalization, it
is necessary to make it clearer, I add a comment, which in this case was very
clear: I support decriminalizing all drugs, as it is stupid to throw depressed
and sad people (as only depressed and sad people use drugs) in prison and ruin
their life with a criminal record. That does not mean that there is any change
to the Message which says clearly that we must not use any drug except for
medical purposes. The same applies to the freedom of expression which must be
absolute. That does not mean again of course that I agree with anti-Jews,
antisemites, racists of any kind or anti-Raelians. But by knowing your enemies
or the enemies of your values, you are better equipped to fight them. With love
and respect of course, and with the wonderful sentence of the French philosopher
Voltaire in mind: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it".
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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