The European Union is funding ambitious programs aimed at monitoring human behavior in an effort to identify deviance and pick out potential terrorists. The implications for privacy are myriad. (…)

One system involves a network of cameras in airports that can measure your speed and alert the control room should it seem excessive. The system knows terrorists tend to be nervous and almost never stop for coffee. This makes a speedy traveller a suspicious traveller.

You may also want to think twice about using the airport bathroom more than once. There is a good chance you will be picked out for an extensive security check.

{ Der Spiegel | Continue reading }

{ New scientific techniques have uncovered evidence that this picture is a previously unrecognised work by Leonardo da Vinci. | Antique Trade Gazette | Continue reading }

Dead man body remained slumped on the balcony of his apartment for four days. Neighbors thought it was a Halloween decoration.

A 10-year-old British girl has been barred from trying to sell her granny on eBay, who she described “cuddly” but “annoying.”

Charity runner in an ape costume stopped by police who thought he was an escaped gorilla.

Two women, one a 92-year-old wheelchair user with cocaine strapped to her body, arrested after arriving in Madrid on flight from Brazil.

Fake-virginity kits. Conservative Muslims in Egypt try to ban a device designed to fool men on their wedding nights

Man sees Virgin Mary in football-sized rock. Friends have called it a miracle. Father Harvey Fonseca, of Livingston’s Saint Jude Thaddeus Roman Catholic Church, isn’t so sure. Related: Shoppers spot Jesus face on the toilet door in Ikea store.

A Vermont man is behind bars after police say he stabbed his son with a corkscrew over a clogged toilet.

A judge has dismissed a felony charge against a Wisconsin woman accused of plotting with her husband’s lovers to lure him to a motel where he ended up tied to a bed with his penis glued to his stomach.

Homeowners insurance expensive on erupting volcano.

The draw of the same six winning numbers twice in a row in Bulgaria’s national lottery was a freak coincidence, officials said.

The Heene family aren’t the first to come up with a balloon-based con: Edgar Allan Poe did it in 1844. Digest: Balloon Boy saga.

Roman Polanski may return to the United States to confront charges against him, one of his lawyers said.

Cindy Crawford’s signature mole has grown, prompting cancer concern.

To understand the real difference between being circumcised and uncircumcised, ask someone who’s been cut and uncut. More: A comprehensive investigation into the pros, cons, and controversies of circumcision.

He modernized Chicago’s emergency-response center, served as Mayor Daley’s chief of staff, and led (albeit briefly) the CTA—all before his 38th birthday. Now Ron Huberman, the Israeli-born gay ex-cop, has brought his intensity and his technocratic management style to the city’s public schools.

About 25% of US jobs are offshorable.

Study reveals previously undocumented evidence about the up and downsides of having authority in the workplace. In most cases, the health costs negate the benefits.

Google to partner with iLike and Lala for their new music service.

But Twitter is already weird: It rocketed into the mainstream without really knowing what its service was.

Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium?

Study of rhesus monkeys shows running protects dopamine neurons from death.

The rates of non-familial sex crimes against children under the age of 12 are no higher during the Halloween season than at any other times of the year. The findings raise questions about the wisdom of law enforcement practices aimed at dealing with a problem that does not appear to exist.

In the past few decades, the Asian tiger mosquito has travelled from its natural home in Southeast Asia to the ends of the earth, becoming one of the world’s most invasive species. Related: Invasive beetles of various colors and sizes have infiltrated U.S. forests, despite efforts by government experts.

Pesticides exposure linked to suicidal thoughts.

Astronomers discover 32 new planets.

The long-standing rule of matching wine and food actually has a scientific explanation. Researchers found that the small amounts of iron found in many red wines caused those who eat fish to have a strong, fishy aftertaste.

Alain Ducasse judges New York’s French fries.

A train derailment on Monday morning scrambled subway routes from Manhattan’s West Side to Downtown Brooklyn. No passengers were injured when one wheel of a southbound No. 2 express train jumped the rail as the train entered the Park Place station in the financial district.

A woman standing on a Manhattan subway platform with her pants down bit a New York City police officer in the back, police said Thursday.

Chair made of 10,000 drinking straws, kitchen island made of 20,000 Lego bricks, giant balloon sculptures.

The fastest Cadillac on the planet.

The largest salt desert in the world.

In the 1970s, Stuart Hample was a struggling cartoonist. Then he hit on the idea of turning Woody Allen into a comic strip.

Illustrated Book of Genesis by Robert Crumb features Bible characters having intercourse.

The Red Book: Liber Novus by CG Jung [9 pictures]. [Previously: NY Times, Wikipedia]

Book-pricing. Target has entered the battle to bring down the price of some of the holiday season’s biggest anticipated hardcover books. And Wal-Mart, which started it all, immediately fired back.

The rise of the neuronovel.

The Nation is releasing a book of essays slamming Sarah Palin for being the rollicking jalopy of folksy horseshit that she is titled, Going Rouge, An American Nightmare, on the same day that Palin’s autobiography titled, Going Rogue, An American Life, hits the bookstores. Related: Fox News’ Palin parody book warning.

There seems to be some confusion about what David Lynch’s Inland Empire is about.

The Simpsons has made fun of religions and ethnicities of all stripes, but one they won’t touch is Scientology. 10 Things You Never Knew About The Simpsons.

‘Sup Magazine 20, Carl Craig interview.

Damien Hirst with no glasses on. More: Exhibition at the Wallace Collection.

B/w accident photos.

Mick Jagger letter to Andy Warhol.

Grace Jones polaroids.

L’indovinello più difficile del mondo (The hardest logic puzzle in the world).

Stool, Epsom salts, rare earth magnet, hematite magnet, harmony balls.

Dead albatross.

Anal bleaching is for losers.

Apparently in Slovenia, all billboards have boobs.

Kids on energy drink.

In our contemporary ‘information age’, information and the body stand in a new, peculiar, and ambiguous relationship to one another. Information is plumbed from the body but treated as separate from it, facilitating, as Irma van der Ploeg has suggested, the creation of a separate virtual ‘body-as-information’ that has affected the very ontology of the body.

This ‘informatization of the body’ has been both spurred and enabled by surveillance techniques that create, depend upon, and manipulate virtual bodies for a variety of predictive purposes, including social control and marketing. While, as some feminist critics have suggested, there appears to be potential for information technologies to liberate us from oppressive ideological models, surveillance techniques, themselves so intimately tied to information systems, put normative pressure on non-normative bodies and practices, such as those of queer and genderqueer subjects. Ultimately, predictive surveillance is based in an innately conservative epistemology, and the intertwining of information systems with surveillance undermines any liberatory effect of the former.

{ Surveillance, Gender, and the Virtual Body in the Information Age | Full Text | More: Surveillance & Society, Vol 6, No 4 (2009)

photo { Arno Bani }

If you were a woman reading this magazine 40 years ago, the odds were good that your husband provided the money to buy it. That you voted the same way he did. That if you got breast cancer, he might be asked to sign the form authorizing a mastectomy. That your son was heading to college but not your daughter. That your boss, if you had a job, could explain that he was paying you less because, after all, you were probably working just for pocket money.

It’s funny how things change slowly, until the day we realize they’ve changed completely. It’s expected that by the end of the year, for the first time in history the majority of workers in the U.S. will be women — largely because the downturn has hit men so hard. This is an extraordinary change in a single generation, and it is gathering speed: the growth prospects, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are in typically female jobs like nursing, retail and customer service. More and more women are the primary breadwinner in their household (almost 40%) or are providing essential income for the family’s bottom line. Their buying power has never been greater — and their choices have seldom been harder.

{ Time | Continue reading }

Super Freakonomics is getting a lot of flak for its flip contrarianism on climate change, most of which seems based on incorrectly believing solar panels are black (they’re blue, and this has surprisingly large energy implications) and misquoting important climate scientists.

{ Washington Post | Continue reading }

At first glance, what it looks like is that Levitt and Dubner have fallen into the trap of counterintuitiveness. For a long time, there’s been an accepted way for commentators on politics and to some extent economics to distinguish themselves: by shocking the bourgeoisie, in ways that of course aren’t really dangerous. Ann Coulter is making sense! Bush is good for the environment! You get the idea.

Clever snark like this can get you a long way in career terms — but the trick is knowing when to stop.

{ Paul Krugman/NY Times | Continue reading }

update:

They have given the impression that we are global-warming deniers of the worst sort, and that our analysis of the issue is ideological and unscientific. Most gravely, we stand accused of misrepresenting the views of one of the most respected climate scientists on the scene, whom we interviewed extensively. If everything they said was actually true, it would indeed be a damning indictment. But it’s not.

{ Freakonomics/NY Times | Continue reading | Also: Superfreakingmeta }

photo { Grant Cornett }

quote { Marx & Engels on Skepticism & Praxis: Selected Quotations }

unrelated { A new short novel from Don DeLillo is scheduled to appear in February, 2010, entitled Point Omega }

One nagging thing that I still don’t understand about myself is why I often succumb to well-documented psychological biases, even though I’m acutely aware of these biases. One example is my failure at affective forecasting, such as believing that I will be happy for a long time after some accomplishment (e.g. publishing a new book), when in fact the happiness dissipates more quickly than anticipated. Another is succumbing to the male sexual overperception bias, misperceiving a woman’s friendliness as sexual interest. A third is undue optimism about how quickly I can complete work projects, despite many years of experience in underestimating the time actually required. One would think that explicit knowledge of these well-documented psychological biases and years of experience with them would allow a person to cognitively override the biases. But they don’t.

{ David Buss | More: BPS invited some of the world’s leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don’t understand about themselves. }

photo { SW▲MPY }

People often use metaphors to describe their life… Which ONE of the following do you think best describes your life?

A Journey: 51%
A Battle: 11%
The Seasons: 10%
A Novel: 8%
A Race: 6%
A Live Performance, Like a Play: 5%
A Carousel: 4%
Other: 2%
Unsure: 2%

{ Pollster | Continue reading }

The amount of stress we endure is increasing because of our focus on efficiency. Stress is caused by uncertainty, more specifically, by doubts in our ability to handle something. As machines and computers handle more things that are predictable and certain, we are pressured to deal with more things that are unpredictable and uncertain. This inevitably leads to more stress. As soon as our tasks become predictable and certain, we automate them using our technology. The result of this process of streamlining is that we are increasingly called upon to use our, what I would call, irrational abilities, such as instincts, sensibilities, creativities, and interpersonal skills. These things are, by nature, unpredictable.

Take stock trading, for instance. When there were no computers to process the trades, the number of trades you could do in a day was limited. A certain amount of your work as a trader involved processing of paperwork, communicating with others, and doing some arithmetic; tasks that are predictable and not stressful. Today, a click of a button essentially takes care of all of those predictable tasks, and you skip right ahead to another stressful decision-making.

As another example, take graphic designers. Now with computers handling everything from typesetting, layout, image processing, color management to printing, what used to be done by several specialists are now combined into one person. The number of jobs one can handle in a year increased dramatically. Now designers spend more time being creative, and less time creating the final products. This may sound good, but in terms of stress and rewards, it is not. Because creativity is irrational and unpredictable, coming up with a creative solution can be highly stressful. Designers now have to come up with significantly more creative solutions per year for the same amount of money.

{ Dyske Suematsu | Continue reading }

When we say someone is a warm person, we do not mean that they are running a fever. When we describe an issue as weighty, we have not actually used a scale to determine this. And when we say a piece of news is hard to swallow, no one assumes we have tried unsuccessfully to eat it.

These phrases are metaphorical–they use concrete objects and qualities to describe abstractions like kindness or importance or difficulty–and we use them and their like so often that we hardly notice them. For most people, metaphor, like simile or synecdoche, is a term inflicted upon them in high school English class: “all the world’s a stage,” “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” Gatsby’s fellow dreamers are “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Metaphors are literary creations–good ones help us see the world anew, in fresh and interesting ways, the rest are simply cliches: a test is a piece of cake, a completed task is a load off one’s back, a momentary difficulty is a speed bump.

Metaphors are primarily thought of as tools for talking and writing–out of inspiration or out of laziness, we distill emotions and thoughts into the language of the tangible world. We use metaphors to make sense to one another.

Now, however, a new group of people has started to take an intense interest in metaphors: psychologists. Drawing on philosophy and linguistics, cognitive scientists have begun to see the basic metaphors that we use all the time not just as turns of phrase, but as keys to the structure of thought. (…) Metaphors aren’t just how we talk and write, they’re how we think.

{ Boston Globe | Continue reading }

related { Temperature affects how we perceive relationships }

Nuclear physics was once considered the pinnacle of man’s effort to know reality; its image was tarnished by association with the bomb’s destructive violence.

{ The New Atlantis | Continue reading }

photo { Taryn Simon | video of the explosion }

Adelphia Communications, Barings Bank, Enron, HealthSouth, HIH Insurance, Hollinger International, Tyco International, WorldCom/MCI, Xerox…the white collar crime list goes on. But, did the executives at these companies start out as criminals or did they head down the slippery slope to criminality one misplaced step at a time? According to research to be published in the International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, there are twelve steps to white-collar crime. (…)

The researchers have broken down the process of white-collar crime into 12 steps, with steps one to four explaining how the “players” first encounter and support each other and begin to spot the opportunity for illegal activity.

These first four steps are: The perpetrator is hired into a position of power. Second step, personality and life circumstances affect the perpetrator in such a way that they recognise their power. In the third step “drivers” who turn a blind eye or condone certain activities come into view. The fourth step sees passive participants recognizing an opportunity.

In steps 5 to 8 the truth of escalating illegal activity is hidden.

In step 5 reluctant participants are drawn into the web of deceit by the “leader”. In step 6 distrust of the other people involved emerges. In step 7, the perpetrator recognizes they have their accomplices in a vulnerable position and begin to exploit that position. In step 8 bullying tactics become increasingly common as illegal goals are aimed for.

In steps 9 through 12 the perpetrator’s actions are challenged and publicised revealing the white-collar crime.

In step 9, the crime continues, but the perpetrators, trapped in their insatiable addiction, become more blaze, taking bigger risks, and seeking more lucrative exploits.

In step 10, an undeniable paradox becomes apparent, as the participants’ values and their behavior are now obviously in conflict.

In step 11, a whistleblower steps up to the mark and the leader loses control.

Finally in step 12, blame is laid at the feet of the perpetrator at which point they either deny everything or admit their guilt and seek forgiveness by laying bare their activities.

{ Inderscience/EurekAlert | Continue reading }

photo { Finlay MacKay }

Frankenhooker, an American film released in 1990.

Plot: When his gorgeous fiancée “goes to pieces” in a freak lawnmower accident, aspiring mad scientist Jeffrey Franken is determined to put her back together again. With the aid of an explosive superdrug, he sets about reassembling his girlfriend, selecting the choicest bits from a bevy of raunchy New York prostitutes. But his bizarre plan soon goes awry. His reanimated girlfriend no longer craves his body… she craves everybody! And, for money, she’ll love anyone… to death!

{ Wikipedia | Watch the trailer }

{ Playboy may finally publish an issue that nobody jerks off to the cover model. | Playboy November 2009 cover feat. Marge Simpson | Playboy October 1971 cover feat. Darine Stern }

related:

{ Andrea Mantegna, St Sebastian, c. 1470 | Esquire magazine, April 1968 | And: Radar Magazine parodies 1968 Muhammed Ali Esquire cover }

{ The Gervais Principle and Its Consequences }

In the search for extraterrestrial life, some scientists say we’re focusing too much on finding signs of existence as we know it, and in the process, we may be missing more strange forms of life that don’t rely on water or carbon metabolism.

Now researchers from Austria have started a systematic study of solvents other than water that might be able to support life outside our planet. They’re hoping their research will lead to a shift in what they call the “geocentric mindset” of our attempts to detect extraterrestrial life. (…)

While water is liquid only between zero and 100 degrees Celsius, other solvents are liquid over a much larger temperature range. For instance, because ammonia stays liquid at a lower temperature, an ocean of ammonia could exist on a planet much further from its host star.

{ Wired | Continue reading }

In the mid-1800s researchers discovered cells in the brain that are not like neurons (the presumed active players of the brain) and called them glia, the Greek word for “glue.” Even though the brain contains about a trillion glia—10 times as many as there are neurons—the assumption was that those cells were nothing more than a passive support system. Today we know the name could not be more wrong.

Glia, in fact, are busy multitaskers, guiding the brain’s development and sustaining it throughout our lives. Glia also listen carefully to their neighbors, and they speak in a chemical language of their own. Scientists do not yet understand that language, but experiments suggest that it is part of the neurological conversation that takes place as we learn and form new memories. (…)

All neurons have certain characteristic attributes: axons, synapses, and the ability to produce electric signals. As scientists peered at bits of brain under their microscopes, though, they encountered other cells that did not fit the profile. When impaled with electrodes, these cells did not produce a crackle of electric pulses. If electricity was the language of thought, then these cells were mute. German pathologist Rudolf Virchow coined the name glia in 1856, and for well over a century the cells were treated as passive inhabitants of the brain.

At least a few scientists realized that this might be a hasty assumption. (…) Today the mystery of glia is partially solved. Biologists know they come in several forms. One kind, called radial glia, serve as a scaffolding in the embryonic brain. Neurons climb along these polelike cells to reach their final location. Another kind of glia, called microglia, are the brain’s immune system. They clamber through the neurological forest in search of debris from dead or injured cells. A third class of glia, known as Schwann cells and oligodendrocytes, form insulating sleeves around neurons to keep their electric signals from diffusing.

{ Discover | Continue reading }

{ Finding the locations used in Taxi Driver turned out to be incredibly difficult, largely because the film documents a side of the city that has since been demolished, rebuilt, renovated… | Scouting NY | Part 1 | Part 2 }

{ Dyson’s blade-free fan | full story | More: Gizmag, IT Media News }

{ Motocompo/Honda Trunk Bike | via DesignBoom | more }