{ Mata Hari in 1906 | Mata Hari was a Dutch-born erotic dancer and courtesan living in Paris who was executed by firing squad for espionage during World War I. | Wikipedia | Continue reading | More double agents }
Woman charged after biting ER nurse, throwing vomit.
Scientists stop burying live pigs in snow. Growing media pressure generated by activists called it cruel and pointless.
Call it pork in a petri dish - a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon.
Shanghai man lands on lover, survives suicide jump.
Chaos at Phoenix strip club ends with man dead.
Weight Watchers clinic floor collapses under slimmers’ weight.
Man accused of spraying protesters with fox urine.
Tourist killed by ‘dinosaur-sized’ shark off South African beach. Zimbabwean holidaymaker eaten by shark described by onlookers as ‘longer than a minibus.’
US moves to ban 9 species of snakes.
Solar-powered bibles sent to Haiti.
China’s share of world markets increased during the recession. It will keep rising.
The day I decided to stop being gay.
They’re here, they’re queer, and they’re not going home until they kick some ass. Meet the fearsome gay gangsters of Bash Back. Related: Why does mixed-martial arts have such a following in the gay community?
More men marrying wealthier women.
Alligators breathe like birds.
Why antidepressants don’t work for half of patients.
A brief history of bipolar kids.
Why we act without thinking. Three classic experiments show how stereotypes can influence our behaviour without our knowledge.
How our brains build social worlds.
Older brains make good use of ‘useless’ information.
Phineas Gage: brain-injury survivor, neuroscience’s most famous patient.
What does bell ringing have to do with maths?
Both musicians and non-musicians can perceive bitonality.
Apple to unveil ‘latest creation’ on Jan. 27.
Why a NYT paywall is a bad idea.
Why the NYT Is wary of an Apple Tablet deal.
Interview with a yellow cab driver.
NYPD’s latest crackdown on using hand-held cellphones while driving starts at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.
Why are traffic jams so bad on Mondays?
How to start a speech: Tell a story.
How do “scratch-’n'-sniff” cards work?
The murder of Leo Tolstoy: A forensic investigation.
Authentic and counterfeit shrunken-heads? Counterfeit heads prepared by someone other than the Jivaro Indians are usually, much more skillfully prepared through the use of superior equipment, than the actual work of the Jivaros.
Scientists say no two snowflakes are alike. Apparently, designers have their own opinion.
How can you show the details of a history visually? Timelines and Visual Histories.
Obama head selling chicken balls.
Harrison Ford’s movie career heading in the wrong direction.
Are you a media multitasker? We know you’re reading a blog, but what else are you doing right now? Take a quick inventory: Are you also listening to music? Monitoring the progress of a sports game on TV? Emailing your co-worker? Texting your friend? On hold with tech support? If your inventory has revealed a multitasking lifestyle, you are not alone. Media multitasking is increasingly common, to the extent that some have dubbed today’s teens “Generation M.” (…)
However, new research suggests that people who multitask suffer from a problem: weaker self-control ability.
In the 19th and 20th centuries we made stuff: corn and steel and trucks. Now, we make protocols: sets of instructions. A software program is a protocol for organizing information. A new drug is a protocol for organizing chemicals. Wal-Mart produces protocols for moving and marketing consumer goods. Even when you are buying a car, you are mostly paying for the knowledge embedded in its design, not the metal and glass.
A protocol economy has very different properties than a physical stuff economy. For example, you and I can’t use the same piece of metal at the same time. But you and I can use the same software program at the same time. Physical stuff is subject to the laws of scarcity: you can use up your timber. But it’s hard to use up a good idea. Prices for material goods tend toward equilibrium, depending on supply and demand. Equilibrium doesn’t really apply to the market for new ideas.
We use coin tosses to settle disputes and decide outcomes because we believe they are unbiased with 50-50 odds.
Yet recent research into coin flips has discovered that the laws of mechanics determine the outcome of coin tosses: The startling finding is they aren’t random. Instead, for natural flips, the chance of a coin coming up on the same side as it started is about 51 percent. Heads facing up predicts heads; tails facing up predicts tails.
Jeanette’s Taxidermy proudly introduces Pet Pillows as an alternative way to remember your pet. Each pet pillow is hand made from the fur of your pet and made into a pillow that you can display. On one side of the pillow is your pet’s fur and the other side of the pillow is your choice of fabric. These soft, huggable pillows are a great way to enjoy your cherished pet and is an inexpensive alternitave to taxidermy.
Prices: $65 for a cat, $75-$125 for a dog, $150 for a horse.
Freeze your pet immediately upon passing to insure there will be no hair slippage.
Double bag to insure no freezerburn.
Ship packages ONLY on Mondays to prevent carrier mishaps. All frozen animals must be shipped next day air to insure against spoilage.
{ Thanks Shampoo! | The site Jeanettestaxidermy.com doesn’t exist anymore | Jeanette’s Taxidermy profile on Muley Madness | Read more: Woman who turns pets into pillows faces death threats and Taxidermist Jeanette Hall standing with her pedestal mounted horse | The story behind this photo }
Are pillow fights more dangerous than roller coasters?
A paper compared head motions that occurred in 4 participants when they rode 3 different roller coasters, drove bumper cars, and had a pillow fight. What are the implications for brain injury? they asked. (…) “The highest level of rotational acceleration was measured during the pillow fight. Interestingly, the pillow fight generated peak head accelerations and velocities greater than the 3 roller coaster rides.”
A new study suggests that the first letter in your name could be linked to your longevity. If your name starts with “A,” then you probably have no cause for concern, but if your name begins with “D,” study authors suggest the letter’s symbolic significance could result in you dying sooner than your peers, reports the Daily Mail.
Swinging has taken on a key role among contemporary sexual customs, consequently constituting the subject matter of various contributions in the fields of psychology, sociology and other social sciences. However, in spite of the constant increase in the number of couples involved and in the economic relevance of this phenomenon, to the best of my knowledge no article on the topic has yet appeared in economics journals. The aim of this paper is to cast light on swinging, both empirically and theoretically.
On the empirical side, the paper describes what swinger is, discusses the economic relevance of the phenomenon and singles out the main characteristics of swingers’ behavior. To this end, the Italian situation has been considered as a type of case study. On the theoretical side, the paper proposes some preliminary assessments of the causes and consequences of swinger couples’ behavior. In this respect, some contributions on two-sided markets, hedonic adaptation approaches and equilibrium matching models have proved particularly useful.
{ Fabio D’Orlando, Swinger Economics, 2009 | via Perfect Substitute | with link to PDF }
polaroid { Dash Snow }
I also learned of Kandinsky’s growing love affair with the circle. The circle, he wrote, is “the most modest form, but asserts itself unconditionally.” It is “simultaneously stable and unstable,” “loud and soft,” “a single tension that carries countless tensions within it.” (…)
Quirkily enough, the artist’s life followed a circular form: He was born in December 1866, and he died the same month in 1944. This being December, I’d like to honor Kandinsky through his favorite geometry, by celebrating the circle and giving a cheer for the sphere. Life as we know it must be lived in the round, and the natural world abounds in circular objects at every scale we can scan. Let a heavenly body get big enough for gravity to weigh in, and you will have yourself a ball. Stars are giant, usually symmetrical balls of radiant gas, while the definition of both a planet like Jupiter and a plutoid like Pluto is a celestial object orbiting a star that is itself massive enough to be largely round.
On a more down-to-earth level, eyeballs live up to their name by being as round as marbles, and, like Jonathan Swift’s ditty about fleas upon fleas, those soulful orbs are inscribed with circular irises that in turn are pierced by circular pupils. Or think of the curved human breast and its bull’s-eye areola and nipple.
We asked some of the world’s most prominent futurists to explain why slowness might be as important to the future as speed.
Jamais Cascio says slower decision-making allows for greater resilience. (…) A system that allows for slack, like the slow movement, is more resilient than a system that assumes nothing ever fails. “Just-in-time manufacturing is really great when all component systems work perfectly, but when a part breaks down, the whole operation comes to a complete halt. Failure happens. So we’d better build in a way to absorb it.”
related { Latest neuroscience research suggests spreading resolutions out over time is the best approach. }
photo { Morad Bouchakour }
A study that’s in press at Social Cognition has shown that women rate men’s photos as more attractive when they’re placed near the top of the screen. By contrast, men rate women’s photos as more attractive when they’re located near the bottom of the screen. (…)
The results could help explain why, in even more cases than you’d expect based on sex differences in height, the man in a heterosexual couple is taller than the female. ‘Height could be a cue to power and hence attractiveness,’ they said.
{ The 13 Archimedean solids are the convex polyhedra that have a similar arrangement of nonintersecting regular convex polygons of two or more different types arranged in the same way about each vertex with all sides the same length. | Wolfram MathWorld | Continue reading }
There comes a time in every science writer’s career when one must write about glass duck vaginas and explosive duck penises.
That time is now.
To err on the side of caution, I am stuffing the rest of this post below the fold. My tale is rich with deep scientific significance, resplendent with surprising insights into how evolution works, far beyond the banalities of “survival of the fittest,” off in a realm of life where sexual selection and sexual conflict work like a pair sculptors drunk on absinthe, transforming biology into forms unimaginable. But this story is also accompanied with video. High-definition, slow-motion duck sex video. (…)
In brief, Brennan wanted to understand why some ducks have such extravagant penises. Why are they cork-screw shaped? Why do they get so ridiculously long–some cases as long as the duck’s entire body? As Brennan dissected duck penises, she began to wonder what the female sexual anatomy looked like. If you have a car like this, she said, what kind of garage do you park it in?
Brennan discovered that female ducks have equally weird reproductive tracts (called oviducts). In many species, they are ornamented with lots of outpockets. And like duck penises, duck oviducts are corkscrew-shaped. But while male duck penises twist clockwise, the female oviduct twists counterclockwise.
UFO spotters, Raëlian cultists, and self-certified alien abductees notwithstanding, humans have, to date, seen no sign of any extraterrestrial civilization. We have not received any visitors from space, nor have our radio telescopes detected any signals transmitted by any extraterrestrial civilization. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been going for nearly half a century, employing increasingly powerful telescopes and data-mining techniques; so far, it has consistently corroborated the null hypothesis. As best we have been able to determine, the night sky is empty and silent. (…)
Here is another fact: the observable universe contains on the order of 100 billion galaxies, and there are on the order of 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone. In the last couple of decades, we have learned that many of these stars have planets circling them; several hundred such “exoplanets” have been discovered to date. Most of these are gigantic, since it is very difficult to detect smaller exoplanets using current methods. (In most cases, the planets cannot be directly observed. Their existence is inferred from their gravitational influence on their parent suns, which wobble slightly when pulled toward large orbiting planets, or from slight fluctuations in luminosity when the planets partially eclipse their suns.) We have every reason to believe that the observable universe contains vast numbers of solar systems, including many with planets that are Earth-like, at least in the sense of having masses and temperatures similar to those of our own orb. We also know that many of these solar systems are older than ours.
From these two facts it follows that the evolutionary path to life-forms capable of space colonization leads through a “Great Filter,” which can be thought of as a probability barrier. The filter consists of one or more evolutionary transitions or steps that must be traversed at great odds in order for an Earth-like planet to produce a civilization capable of exploring distant solar systems. You start with billions and billions of potential germination points for life, and you end up with a sum total of zero extraterrestrial civilizations that we can observe. The Great Filter must therefore be sufficiently powerful–which is to say, passing the critical points must be sufficiently improbable–that even with many billions of rolls of the dice, one ends up with nothing: no aliens, no spacecraft, no signals. At least, none that we can detect in our neck of the woods.
Now, just where might this Great Filter be located? There are two possibilities: It might be behind us, somewhere in our distant past. Or it might be ahead of us, somewhere in the decades, centuries, or millennia to come. Let us ponder these possibilities in turn.
If the filter is in our past, there must be some extremely improbable step in the sequence of events whereby an Earth-like planet gives rise to an intelligent species comparable in its technological sophistication to our contemporary human civilization. Some people seem to take the evolution of intelligent life on Earth for granted: a lengthy process, yes; complicated, sure; yet ultimately inevitable, or nearly so. But this view might well be completely mistaken. There is, at any rate, hardly any evidence to support it. Evolutionary biology, at the moment, does not enable us to calculate from first principles how probable or improbable the emergence of intelligent life on Earth was. Moreover, if we look back at our evolutionary history, we can identify a number of transitions any one of which could plausibly be the Great Filter.
For example, perhaps it is very improbable that even simple self-replicators should emerge on any Earth-like planet. Attempts to create life in the laboratory by mixing water with gases believed to have been present in the Earth’s early atmosphere have failed to get much beyond the synthesis of a few simple amino acids. No instance of abiogenesis (the spontaneous emergence of life from nonlife) has ever been observed. (…)
The other possibility is that the Great Filter is still ahead of us. This would mean that some great improbability prevents almost all civilizations at our current stage of technological development from progressing to the point where they engage in large-scale space colonization. For example, it might be that any sufficiently advanced civilization discovers some technology–perhaps some very powerful weapons technology–that causes its extinction. (…) …a nuclear war fought with arms stockpiles much larger than today’s (perhaps resulting from future arms races); a genetically engineered superbug; environmental disaster; an asteroid impact; wars or terrorist acts committed with powerful future weapons; superintelligent general artificial intelligence with destructive goals; or high-energy physics experiments. (…)
So where is the Great Filter? Behind us, or not behind us?
If the Great Filter is ahead of us, we have still to confront it. If it is true that almost all intelligent species go extinct before they master the technology for space colonization, then we must expect that our own species will, too, since we have no reason to think that we will be any luckier than other species. (…)
What has all this got to do with finding life on Mars? Consider the implications of discovering that life had evolved independently on Mars (or some other planet in our solar system). That discovery would suggest that the emergence of life is not very improbable. If it happened independently twice here in our own backyard, it must surely have happened millions of times across the galaxy. This would mean that the Great Filter is less likely to be confronted during the early life of planets and therefore, for us, more likely still to come.
{ Nick Bostrom/Technology Review | Continue reading }
Final proof that Mars has bred life will be confirmed this year, leading NASA experts believe. The historic discovery will come not on Mars itself but from chunks of the red planet here on Earth.
David McKay, chief of astrobiology at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, says powerful new microscopes and other instruments will establish whether features in martian meteorites are alien fossils. He says evidence for life in the space rocks could have been claimed by the UK if British scientists had used readily-available electron microscopes. Instead, images of colonies of martian bacteria were collected by American scientists.The NASA team is already convinced that colonies of micro-organisms are visible inside three martian rocks that landed on Earth. If so, this would have profound implications for our understanding of life in the universe.
How does popularity affect how we judge music?
We tend to say we like what other people like. No-one wants to stand out and risk ridicule by saying they don’t enjoy universally loved bands, like The Beatles… unless they’re trying to fit into a subculture where everyone hates The Beatles.
But do people just pretend to like what others like, or can perceived popularity actually change musical preferences? Do The Beatles actually sound better because we know everyone loves them? An amusing Neuroimage study from Berns et al aimed to answer this question with the help of 27 American teens, an fMRI scanner, and MySpace. (…)
The twist was that each song was played twice: the first time with no information about its popularity, and then again, either with or without a 5 star popularity score shown on the screen. Cleverly, this was based on the number of MySpace downloads. This meant that the subjects had a chance to change their rating based on what they’d just learned about the song’s popularity. (…)
Berns et al interpreted this as meaning that, in this experiment, popularity did not affect whether the volunteers really enjoyed the songs or not.
