The expression “man-flu” has entered the Collins English Dictionary, according to the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme this morning. This seems a good cue to unveil my theory of man-flu, mentioned a few weeks ago.

As you may recall, the theory has received the full support of male evolutionary biologists in exchange for a round of beers. It gets a much more mixed reception from women (particularly academics), admittedly with no alcohol as an inducement, so not an accurate control.

But I think there is a serious evolutionary biological purpose to man-flu, or the exaggerated symptoms that the pair-bonded, male homo urbanis feels when infected by virus. It was designed to make him stay home from the hunt.

When I started attending the Bath University Sports Training Village for physio treatment, I noticed signs everywhere urging athletes to stay away if they had a virus. You would not see that in an office. While the purpose here is primarily competitive, elite athletes are arguably the closest we have to the hunters of our past. Viral infection is devastating to performance in lost training time and risk to health. Continue reading ‘man-flu conquers dictionary’

Nassim Taleb, author of the New York Times bestseller The Black Swan, was the first person ever to email me here at the Knackered Hack.

No, honestly, it’s true. In the annals of this blog, that was seen as something of a red-letter day (if not a black swan event). But its relative importance on the part of the sender was naturally quite insignificant. Let’s say, our relationship was perfectly asymmetrical. So, when I turned up to meet Taleb at his London hotel recently, without the more imposing affiliation of a national media title with which to introduce myself, it took a while for it to sink in just who in publicity hell I was.

Finally, after 10 minutes, the author exclaimed in his soft Levantine accent: “Ah, I remember! You’re the marathon guy with the picture!”

Rarely have I been so pleased to be recognised for so little. It was nice to know that I registered with Taleb less as a total “unknown, unknown” and more as just faintly forgettable. Taleb had been researching blogs with a view to publicising his latest book, and had hit on this humble site. “I saw you writing about my book Fooled by Randomness on a marathon blog. I said to myself, this guy’s interesting!”

Even better! It’s a rare journalist who gets an actual compliment from the The Black Swan author.

As we exchanged initial small talk about exercise, I explained that I was a bit annoyed by all this complexity stuff of his, because his work has devalued most of my post-graduate business studies. Moreover, after leaving business school I moved on to devote a lot of my spare time to marathon training. But lately, having suffered repeated illness and injury and read the blog of another student of complexity, Art De Vany, I’d been led to the conclusion that this marathon malarkey might be injurious to health as well.

At this point a jet-lagged, publicity-dazed Taleb came alive: Continue reading ‘Caveman lunch with taleb’

It’s a little uncanny, about an hour ago I did a Google Images search for romanescu, and then just a few minutes later, the Knackered Hackette opens a marketing email from the folks at Innocent — manufacturers of the smoothie drinks — with exactly the same idea. Talk about self-similar .

With all the discussion of Mandelbrot in Taleb’s book, I had the idea that we might post a fractal for your delight once a week. Perhaps we’d call it “Fractal Friday” — something to look forward to as we wind down for the weekend. Taleb suggests that fractal shapes are good to contemplate — they are restful in their variation, and may stimulate creativity (more on that soon). Our favourite in daily life has to be the vegetable romanescu, delivered from Riverford Farm in Devon, when in season.

Well, Innocent provides this link to a great site by John Walker with some wonderful images of a romanescu cauliflower/cabbage/broccoli (including the one above), and a more technical discussion of fractals than we are capable of.

In the Knackered House all brassicas go by the nickname “Roman Doctor”: somewhere I half-remember reading (this usually means I made it up) that the Romans did not need physicians because their diet was full of life-preserving cabbage. It does not matter whether it is true or not. In our self-experimenting home, unlike the Knackered Hack’s own childhood behaviour, the kids know not to argue when told to eat their greens.

So I went to London for a few days, then came home and went training. Not too arduous you’d think, but there was some background stress coming from one particular stakeholder. And with one child (aka Chip off the Old Hack) already down with a cold, it could not be long before man-flu symptoms started to manifest themselves at the head of the household.

Now, I think I have mentioned before that I have an evolutionary theory for man-flu, of which I’m sure Art de Vany would be proud. Man-flu is predominantly a British expression for a headcold requiring the male of the species to become totally inactive and self-pitying. One of the key symptoms of man-flu is a general lack of sympathy from the female of the species, who is genetically resistant to the strain (although not to the strain of having to take care of him).

My theory, which I’ll elaborate when I’ve next got time, has been accepted by three evolutionary biologists, so I feel confident that a paper would get approved and peer reviewed in some eminent journal, so long as the panel was all male. The only woman academic I’ve suggested it to just scoffed. But then I don’t think she fully appreciated the media value of the story, and got too hung up on the need for evidence.

Anyway, so apologies for those who keep coming back looking for more on Nassim Taleb.