The 2012 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: Anita Eerland and Rolf Zwaan [THE NETHERLANDS] and Tulio Guadalupe [PERU, RUSSIA, and THE NETHERLANDS] for their study “Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller.”

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PEACE PRIZE: The SKN Company [RUSSIA], for converting old Russian ammunition into new diamonds.

NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE: Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford [USA], for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon.

{ Improbable Research | Continue reading }

{ How to get Google Maps on iOS 6 }

{ Depressed Copywriter }

Facebook is planning on using Instagram to roll out a radical new advertising platform which is capable of following users’ emotions in real time and target advertisements based on how they are feeling. The platform - internally codenamed the Tom Parsons Project (TPP) - will “combine Instagram’s vast user base and high daily use rate with advancements in facial recognition technology to connect users with products which most fit their immediate needs.”

In the new TPP-enabled Instagram whilst you are taking a photo with your smartphone’s rear-facing camera the TPP software will discreetly activate the front facing camera and lock onto the image of your face. The app’s facial recognition function will then record the precise positioning of your facial features and send them to Facebook’s database where the firm will assign an emotion to the facial pattern and log your emotional state.

The company will then use a highly advanced algorithm which combines this new emotional data with the demographic data Facebook already has to create a near perfect ad targeting system. […]

“If you’re a woman with cyclical mood issues due to the harshness of your menstrual cycle, the new Instagram should be able to accurately predict when your cycle is peaking and connect you to valuable products and services which may reduce your discomfort before your moods become a burden on others.”

Privacy advocates are expected to protest the new technology, but legal experts say the method is legal in the United States so long as it’s disclosed in Instagram’s new Terms of Service Agreement.

{ The Daily Currant | Continue reading }

{ Julius von Bismarck, July, 6 2012 | More: Whipping Nature and Monuments }

{ Unhappy customer smashed up a city centre mobile phone shop during an apparent row over a refund for a mobile phone contract. }

Look at this fucking article:

Harry, 15, and his 18-year-old brother are the well-spoken product of cross-pollination of the Übermenschen.

I want to take this sentence, drag it out into the backyard, and beat it to death with a shovel. […]

“Everybody loves celebrity children,” said Stephanie Trong, the editorial director of The Cut.

No, they don’t. That’s wrong. Just last week, I prayed to Jesus that Jaden and Willow Smith would each get hit by a milk truck. No one loves celebrity children. Even Tom Hanks couldn’t be stopped from siring obnoxious offspring. What fucking galaxy did this lady emerge from? […]

Why would the New York Times […] tell us about these fuckfaces?

{ Drew Magary | Continue reading }

Editors’ Note: Portions of this post appeared in similar form in an April, 2011, post by Jonah Lehrer for Wired.com. We regret the duplication of material.

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Editors’ Note: The introductory paragraphs of this post appeared in similar form in an October, 2011, column by Jonah Lehrer for the Wall Street Journal. We regret the duplication of material.

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Editors’ Note: Portions of this post appeared in similar form in a December, 2009, piece by Jonah Lehrer for Wired magazine. We regret the duplication of material.

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Editors’ Note: Portions of this post appeared in similar form in an April, 2010, column by Jonah Lehrer for the Wall Street Journal and in a July, 2009, article for the Guardian, which was an excerpt of Lehrer’s book “How We Decide.” We regret the duplication of material.

[…]

Editors’ Note: Portions of this post appeared in similar form in an October, 2011, post by Jonah Lehrer for Wired.com and in an August, 2008, column by Lehrer for the Boston Globe. We regret the duplication of material.

{ The New Yorker | Jonah Lehrer just landed a job at the New Yorker and plagiarized the shit out of himself }

Real Rock Drummer for NON-pussy band (L.A.)
Date: 2012-05-25, 12:28AM PDT

I do NOT play to a click track or backing tracks and GO SCREW if you think I’m gonna “tone it down a little, bro” so you can piddle away on your stringed sissy box. I WILL NOT play hotel cafe and don’t take direction from ninnies who live in their fucking parents basement and whack off to dreams of hanging with Jack Johnson and rapping about his “process”, you piece of shit. I am a real mother fucker with balls of steel and have a drumset that loves to be ass fucked mercilessly from behind and I need to join a band who understands that stage-sex is part of the fucking game, dude. So when I’m fucking the shit outta the kit, you can’t be the guy in the corner beating your limp, taffy dick wishing that you could stick your dick in too, NO! You get that dick hard and fuck the stage with me, pussy boy. I’m so sick of stealing the show and would really love to meet some real sons of fucking bitches who aren’t afraid to use a sweat band for its intended purpose: wiping off fucking sweat, cum, groupies, pussy juice, blood, etc.

Do not write me for reasons of sass because I will FIND YOU and shred your fucking face with my SHIT-STORMING DRUM GODLINESS!

{ craigslist | via copyranter }

{ History Will Revere Bill Gates, Forget Steve Jobs }

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table.

{ Colin Nissan | Continue reading | Thanks Rachel }

unrelated { Is drinking through your nose dangerous? }

photo { Thomas Mailaender }

{ Fucked in Park Slope | more }

The last time I saw paintings as deluded as Damien Hirst’s latest works, the artist’s name was Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. A decade ago the son of Libya’s then still very much alive dictator showed sentimental paintings of desert scenes in an exhibition sponsored by fawning business allies. Searching for some kind of parallel to the arrogance and stupidity of Hirst’s still life paintings, I find myself remembering that strange, sad spectacle.

There is a pathos about Two Weeks One Summer, in which Hirst shows paintings of parrots and lemons, shark’s jaws and foetuses in jars in a vast space in White Cube Bermondsey. It is the same kind of pathos that clings to dictators’ art. This is the kind of kitsch that is foisted on helpless peoples by Neros and Hitlers and such tyrants so beyond normal restraint or criticism they believe they are artists.

{ Jonathan Jones/Guardian | Continue reading }

photo { James Friedman }

Not only is it accurate enough to compensate for the tiny aberrations in the optics, but it’s so accurate that we don’t know how accurate it is because we don’t yet have instruments accurate enough to measure the level of its accuracy.

The point is it’s pretty accurate.

{ Gizmodo | Continue reading }

{ Awful Library Books }

{ Roy Lichtenstein’s estate claims copyright over the images he appropriated, 2010 }