Vein geometry is just as unique as irises and fingerprints. The serpentine network of your vascular system is determined by many factors, including random influences in the womb. The result is a chaotic, singular print. Even twins have different vein structure in their hands. Vein patterns don’t change much as you age, so a scan of your palm can serve as biometric identification for the rest of your life.
The average person misplaces up to nine items a day, and one-third of respondents in a poll said they spend an average of 15 minutes each day searching for items—cellphones, keys and paperwork top the list, according to an online survey of 3,000 people published in 2012 by a British insurance company. […]
In a recent study, researchers in Germany found that the majority of people surveyed about forgetfulness and distraction had a variation in the so-called dopamine D2 receptor gene (DRD2), leading to a higher incidence of forgetfulness. According to the study, 75% of people carry a variation that makes them more prone to forgetfulness.
related { Processing new information during sleep compromises memory }
photo { Daniel Bejar, The Visual Topography of a Generation Gap (Brooklyn, NY, #1), 2011 }
A British ice cream maker has created a flavor that includes 25 mg of Viagra per scoop. The flavor, titled “The Arousal,” also includes champagne as a key ingredient.
The Italian Tourist Board spends 98 percent of its budget on salaries, with basically nothing left for its actual job of tourism promotion. [Physicists have confirmed the existence of an exotic particle that cannot be explained by current theories.
How CERN’s discovery of exotic particles may affect astrophysics
How Neuroscientists in the 1800s Studied Blood Flow in the Brain
Humans can learn new information during sleep (associations between tones and odors)
How to Detect Criminal Gangs Using Mobile Phone Data
How Social Media Users Avoid Getting Turned Into Big Data
Blogger Pulls Off $30,000 Sting to Get Her Stolen Site Back
Writing revealing stories based on unreliable sources
Cindy Sherman on James Franco’s New Show: ‘I Don’t Know That I Can Say It’s Art’
The first emoticon may have appeared in 1648
The Insider Vocabulary of the Art World
Suicides & churches in Seattle, 1928
A 2008 study found that women showed signs of arousal watching pretty much anything: masturbation, straight sex, girl-on-girl, guy-on-guy, bonobo chimps, everything—except pictures of naked men, which did not float a woman’s boat.
Uncontacted Tribes Die Instantly After We Meet Them
Australia rules homeopathic remedies useless for human health
New research reveals that lifespan could be affected by how people deal with stress. People who forgive themselves for mistakes are physically healthier than those who obsess over them.
People That Think Social Media Helps Their Work Are Probably Wrong
Too many ‘friends’, too few likes? Evolutionary Psychology and Facebook Depression and Understanding Factors Influencing Users’ Retweeting Behavior [via Bookforum]
44% of Twitter accounts have never sent a tweet
Quora raised $80 million so it can avoid monetization forever… or at least the next two years
Of all the words in the English language, which one has the most meanings? Run.
The Remarkable Self-Organization of Ants
Wassily Kandinsky, Dance Curves: On the Dances of Palucca, 1926
Eli Broad: I Would Not Hire Jeffrey Deitch Again
Robert Mapplethorpe having his nipple pierced
‘I want to prove that you can make art with nothing,” Abramovic explained to BBC
He decided to live inside a bear carcass for thirteen days and thirteen nights.
Lets Get Social 2014 [Thanks Tim]
Partnerships are situations in which two or more persons join to pursue a common project. Being together increases the chances of success of the project, whether the project aims at raising children, establishing a business or writing a scientific article. Much has been written about the issue of free riding in such situations: one of the partners may rely on the others to do most of the work while keeping on enjoying its benefits. This issue can lead to inefficient situations where both partners contribute very little. A comparatively small part of the academic literature deals with the dissolution of partnerships and why partners decide to stop working together. Both low contribution levels and dissolution indicate failure in a partnership, but the distinction between those two types of failures is important; it is akin to the distinction between a dysfunctional marriage that keeps on going, and a marriage that ends in a divorce.
This paper deals with the inner dynamics of partnerships, in particular with how success and failure determine the probability a common project will break down. […]
Subjects underestimated the pay-off from staying, in large part because they had an exaggerated fear of being left alone in the collaborative project. This led to lower overall welfare when exit was easy.
Spinoza is quoted approvingly […] to the effect that the free man is the one who thinks about, or fears, death the least. Such fear he considers to be a passive emotion, or affection, which is a bondage to pain, symptomatic of our impotence and servitude. Spinoza writes,
Hope is nothing else but an inconstant pleasure, arising from the image of something future or past, whereof we do not yet know the issue. Fear, on the other hand, is an inconstant pain also arising from the image of something concerning which we are in doubt. If the element of doubt be removed from these emotions, hope becomes Confidence and fear become Despair. In other words, Pleasure or Pain arising from the image of something concerning which we have hoped or feared.
The free man, in this light, is one who has not only cultivated the stronger active emotion of acquiescence to the univocal chorus of necessity, but has also learned to disengage external factors which are coincident with such passive emotions.
Young, sexually mature humans Homo sapiens sapiens of both sexes commonly congregate into particular but arbitrary physical locations and dance. These may be areas of traditional use, such as nightclubs, discotheques or dance-halls or areas that are temporarily commissioned for the same purpose such as at house parties or rock festivals etc.
This type of behaviour is seen in a variety of animals although there are no apparent attempts to monopolize particular areas within these locations as is often seen in species that lek.
The present studies were conducted in order to investigate this phenomenon in a commercial nightclub environment. Data revealed that more than 80% of people entering the nightclub did so without a partner and so were potentially sexually available. There was also an approx. 50% increase in the number of couples leaving the nightclub as compared to those entering it seen on each occasion this was measured, indicating that these congregations are for sexual purposes.
Within the nightclub itself more than 80% of bouts of mixed sex dancing were initiated by a male approaching a female, demonstrating that males are stimulated to approach females rather than vice versa. In consequence, females are placed in competition with each other to attract these approaches.
Various female display tactics were measured and these showed that whilst only 20% of females wore tight fitting clothing that revealed more than 40% of their flesh/50% of their breast area and danced in a sexually suggestive manner, these attracted close to half (49%) of all male approaches seen. These data reveal the effectiveness of clothing and dance displays in attracting male attention and strongly indicate that nightclubs are human display grounds, organised around females competing for the attention of males. Females with the most successful displays gain the advantage of being able to choose from amongst a range of males showing interest in them.
photo { Camilla Åkrans }
A computer has solved the longstanding Erdős discrepancy problem. Trouble is, we have no idea what it’s talking about — because the solution, which is as long as all of Wikipedia’s pages combined, is far too voluminous for us puny humans to confirm.
A few years ago, the mathematician Steven Strogatz predicted that it wouldn’t be too much longer before computer-assisted solutions to math problems will be beyond human comprehension.
photo { Taryn Simon }
French organic winegrower fined for refusing to spray grapes with pesticide
French scientists are working on an acoustic earthquake shield
A fugitive managed to become the finance chief of a Czech Museum, subsequently stole $500,000.
The less Americans know about Ukraine’s location, the more they want U.S. to intervene
Regenerative medicine: For the first time, a mammalian organ has been persuaded to renew itself
Caffeine has a positive effect on tau deposits in Alzheimer’s disease
Online skim reading is taking over the human brain
Research suggests that the way people think and act is affected by ceiling height.
Dark Matter May Be Destroying Itself in Milky Way’s Core
GPS Shoes Will Lead You Home, Just Click Your Heels Three Times [Thanks Tim]
Five Reasons Not To Raise Venture Capital
Smart cars targeted for ‘tipping’ in San Francisco
Twitter’s strategy to fix itself is to become more and more like Facebook
Damien Hirst’s ghostwritten biography promises to reveal criminal past and to expose the “filthy money business” of the art world. Plus: Florida Pastor on Trial for Selling Fake Damien Hirst Paintings
TIFF’s first major original exhibition: David Cronenberg: Evolution
Tobias Frere-Jones on type foundries in New York, 1828-1909
Barbarian Group’s Superdesk and Barton F. Graf’s continuous floor [Thanks Tim]
leaked picture from that space ship that crashed into the sun
If you’re like most people, you spend a great deal of your time remembering past events and planning or imagining events that may happen in the future. While these activities have their uses, they also make it terribly hard to keep track of what you have and haven’t actually seen, heard, or done. Distinguishing between memories of real experiences and memories of imagined or dreamt experiences is called reality monitoring and it’s something we do (or struggle to do) all of the time. […]
Perhaps you’ve left the house and headed to work, only to wonder en route if you’d locked the door. Even if you thought you did, it can be hard to tell whether you remember actually doing it or just thinking about doing it. […]
The study’s authors also found greater activation in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex when they compared reality monitoring for actions participants performed with those they only imagined performing.
When you really focus your attention on something, you’re said to be “in the present moment.” But a new piece of research suggests that the “present moment” is actually […] a sort of composite—a product mostly of what we’re seeing now, but also influenced by what we’ve been seeing for the previous 15 seconds or so. They call this ephemeral boundary the “continuity field.”
photo { Richard Sandler }
Nine-month-old boy accused of planning murder
China’s corporate debt has hit record levels
Growing up poor is bad for your DNA
A team of researcher have identified a new way of treating cancer.
While antibiotics have saved countless lives, they’re an assault on our microbiome.
Results suggest that a perceiver can accurately gauge the real intelligence of men, but not women, by viewing their faces in photographs More: Want people to think you’re smarter? Smile more.
Which couples who meet on social networking sites are most likely to marry?
Women do not apply to ‘male-sounding’ job postings
Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. [PDF]
There are clear differences between how our brains respond to genuine and fake laughter
Does the unconscious know when you’re being lied to?
Levels of psychopathic traits among Mafia members who have been convicted of a criminal offense
The Empathetic Capacity of Psychopaths and its Neurological Implications
Selfies Linked to Narcissism, Addiction and Mental Illness, Say Scientists [Thanks Tim]
How does stress affect your public speaking skills?
‘Homo’ is the only primate whose tooth size decreases as its brain size increases
The idea that flies don’t like stripes dates back at least to 1930.
You Can Now Search Yelp Using Emojis
The inexplicable prices in hotel minibars around the world
Six humans are in Hawaii, testing the psychological effects of life on another planet.
Could Noah’s Ark Float? In Theory, Yes Previously: The Impossible Voyage of Noah’s Ark
How Many People Does It Take to Colonize Another Star System?
Norwegian Skydiver Almost Gets Hit by Falling Meteor — and Captures it on Film
Hacker holds key to free flights
Researchers have created a wearable device that is as thin as a temporary tattoo and can store and transmit data about a person’s movements, receive diagnostic information and release drugs into skin. [more]
The Steve Jobs email that outlined Apple’s strategy a year before his death
Is This the Modern Woman’s Perfect Bikini Wax?
New Kurt Cobain death scene photos released by Seattle P.D.
Crap Taxidermy [Thanks Tim]
