Linguistics |
May 17th, 2018
[L]ife may have been seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (about or just before 4.1 Billion years ago). […]
Evidence of the role of extraterrestrial viruses in affecting terrestrial evolution has recently been plausibly implied in the gene and transcriptome sequencing of Cephalopods. The genome of the Octopus shows a staggering level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes more than is present in Homo sapiens. Octopus belongs to the coleoid sub-class of molluscs (Cephalopods) that have an evolutionary history that stretches back over 500 million years, although Cephalopod phylogenetics is highly inconsistent and confusing. Cephalopods are also very diverse, with the behaviourally complex coleoids, (Squid, Cuttlefish and Octopus) presumably arising under a pure terrestrial evolutionary model from the more primitive nautiloids. However the genetic divergence of Octopus from its ancestral coleoid sub-class is very great, akin to the extreme features seen across many genera and species noted in Eldridge-Gould punctuated equilibria patterns (below). Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch colour and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene. The transformative genes leading from the consensus ancestral Nautilus to the common Cuttlefish to Squid to the common Octopus are not easily to be found in any pre-existing life form — it is plausible then to suggest they seem to be borrowed from a far distant “future” in terms of terrestrial evolution, or more realistically from the cosmos at large. Such an extraterrestrial origin as an explanation of emergence of course runs counter to the prevailing dominant paradigm. […]
One plausible explanation, in our view, is that the new genes are likely new extraterrestrial imports to Earth — most plausibly as an already coherent group of functioning genes within (say) cryopreserved and matrix protected fertilized Octopus eggs. […]
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe thus argued and predicted on the basis of the then available evidence that microorganisms and virus populations in the comets and related cosmic bolides appear to have regularly delivered living systems (organisms, viruses and seeds) to the Earth since its formation, and continue to do so. […]
Darwinian evolution and its various non-Darwinian terrestrial drivers are therefore most likely caused by the continuing supply of new virions and micro-organisms from space with their genetic impact events written all over our genomes. Indeed a strong case can be made for hominid evolution involving a long sequence of viral pandemics, each one of which was a close call to total extinction of an evolving line. The most crucial genes relevant to evolution of hominids, as indeed all species of plants and animals, seems likely in many instances to be of external origin, being transferred across the galaxy largely as information rich virions. In some cases it is possible to imagine multicellular life-forms that were established on an icy cometary or planetary body to be transferred as frozen eggs, embryos or seeds in large icy bolides that have been transported to the Earth in soft landings.
{ Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology | PDF }
photo { Ezra Stoller, Philip Morris headquarters, Richmond, 1972 }
evolution, genes, science |
May 14th, 2018
In Study 2, we moved chairs together in Starbucks across the country so that they were partially blocking the aisle (n = 678).
People in northern China were more likely to move the chair out of the way, which is consistent with findings that people in individualistic cultures are more likely to try to control the environment. People in southern China were more likely to adjust the self to the environment by squeezing through the chairs. Even in China’s most modern cities, rice-wheat differences live on in everyday life.
{ Improbable | Continue reading }
psychology |
May 1st, 2018
ideas, leisure |
April 23rd, 2018
framed text, glass jars, shelf, hair, fingernails, and skin { Adrian Piper, What Will Become of Me, 1985, ongoing }
art |
April 23rd, 2018
Hackers stole a casino’s high-roller database through a thermometer in the lobby fish tank. They are increasingly targeting unprotected ‘internet of things’ devices such as air condition systems and CCTV to get into corporate networks.
‘Bitcoin Heist’ suspect climbs out prison window in Iceland, gets on plane to Sweden, reportedly same flight as Iceland’s leader
A powerful combination of lawyers, banks and hedge funds have lined up to talk hundreds of women into unnecessary and sometimes dangerous surgery, to help build better lawsuits against medical device companies
T-Mobile agreed to pay $40 million to resolve a government investigation that found it failed to correct problems with delivering calls in rural areas and inserted false ring tones in hundreds of millions of calls
researchers found that people at higher elevations in an office building were more willing to take financial risks
After working in a world of ‘tech bros,’ entrepreneur Kristina Roth founds SuperShe, a female-only island
we found that better government services were related to lower religiosity among countries (Study 1) and states in the United States (Study 2).
In jobs where existing research has posited that attractiveness is plausibly a productivity enhancing attribute—those that require substantial amounts of interpersonal interaction—a large beauty premium exists. In contrast, in jobs where attractiveness seems unlikely to truly enhance productivity—jobs that require working with information and data—there is no beauty premium.
The plastic, which can come from soft furnishings and synthetic fabrics, gets into household dust which falls on plates and is consumed. We could be swallowing more than 100 tiny plastic particles with every main meal, a Heriot-Watt study has revealed.
Women’s voice pitch lowers after pregnancy
Not using smartphones in the bedroom increases happiness and quality of life.
New research shows that we can train our brains to become memory champions [More: The Method of Loci]
This finding provides new insights on the attentional mechanisms behind the initial stages of serendipity.
HARVEST uses wind energy to mine cryptocurrency to fund climate research [Thanks Tim]
A kakistocracy is a system of government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens
every day the same again |
April 18th, 2018
{ while ordinary people are struggling, those at the top are doing just fine. Income and wealth inequality have shot up. The top 1% of Americans command nearly twice the amount of income as the bottom 50%. The situation is more equitable in Europe, though the top 1% have had a good few decades. | The Economist | full story }
{ Netflix performance burns hedge fund short sellers }
economics, showbiz, traders |
April 18th, 2018
Twelve years ago, my now-Bloomberg colleague Joe Weisenthal proposed that startups that planned to disrupt an established industry should short the stock of the incumbents in that industry. That way, if they were right — if they were able to undercut big established public companies — then they’d get rich as those public companies declined. […] Their profits would come from the incumbents’ shrinking.
Weisenthal’s proposal was for disruptors offering a free product; the idea was that the entire business model would consist of (1) offering a free service that public companies offer for money and (2) paying for the service by shorting the public companies. But there’s a more boring and more widely generalizable — yet still vanishingly rare — version of this approach in which it just augments the disruptors’ business model: You sell better widgets cheaper and make a profit that way, while doubling down by also shorting your competitors. It’s a more leveraged way to do the business you were going to do anyway, an extra vote of confidence in yourself.
{ Bloomberg | Continue reading }
economics, traders |
April 16th, 2018
Across four experiments participants chose between two versions of a stimulus which either had an attractive left side or an attractive right side. […]
In each experiment participants showed a significant bias to choose the stimulus with an attractive left side more than the stimulus with an attractive right side. The leftward bias emerged at age 10/11, was not caused by a systematic asymmetry in the perception of colourfulness or complexity, and was stronger when the difference in attractiveness between the left and right sides was larger.
The results are relevant to the aesthetics of product and packaging design and show that leftward biases extend to the perceptual judgement of everyday items. Possible causes of the leftward bias for attractiveness judgements are discussed and it is suggested that the size of the bias may not be a measure of the degree of hemispheric specialization.
{ Laterality | Continue reading }
art { Adrian Piper, Catalysis III, 1970 }
eyes, marketing |
April 16th, 2018
The image of the world that we see is continuously deformed and fragmented by foreshortenings, partial overlapping, and so on, and must be constantly reassembled and interpreted; otherwise, it could change so much that we would hardly recognize it. Since pleasure has been found to be involved in visual and cognitive information processing, the possibility is considered that anhedonia (the reduction of the ability to feel pleasure) might interfere with the correct reconstruction and interpretation of the image of the environment and alter its appearance.
{ Schizophrenia Research and Treatment | Continue reading }
eyes, neurosciences |
April 16th, 2018
It is often claimed that negative events carry a larger weight than positive events. Loss aversion is the manifestation of this argument in monetary outcomes. In this review, we examine early studies of the utility function of gains and losses, and in particular the original evidence for loss aversion reported by Kahneman and Tversky (Econometrica 47:263–291, 1979). We suggest that loss aversion proponents have over-interpreted these findings.
{ Psychological Research | Continue reading }
economics, psychology |
April 16th, 2018
Coding theorists are concerned with two things. Firstly and most importantly they are concerned with the private lives of two people called Alice and Bob. In theory papers, whenever a coding theorist wants to describe a transaction between two parties he doesn’t call then A and B. No. For some longstanding traditional reason he calls them Alice and Bob.
Now there are hundreds of papers written about Alice and Bob. Over the years Alice and Bob have tried to defraud insurance companies, they’ve played poker for high stakes by mail, and they’ve exchanged secret messages over tapped telephones.
If we put together all the little details from here and there, snippets from lots of papers, we get a fascinating picture of their lives. This may be the first time a definitive biography of Alice and Bob has been give
In papers written by American authors Bob is frequently selling stock to speculators. From the number of stock market deals Bob is involved in we infer that he is probably a stockbroker. However from his concern about eavesdropping he is probably active in some subversive enterprise as well. And from the number of times Alice tries to buy stock from him we infer she is probably a speculator. Alice is also concerned that her financial dealings with Bob are not brought to the attention of her husband. So Bob is a subversive stockbroker and Alice is a two-timing speculator.
But Alice has a number of serious problems. She and Bob only get to talk by telephone or by electronic mail. In the country where they live the telephone service is very expensive. And Alice and Bob are cheapskates. So the first thing Alice must do is MINIMIZE THE COST OF THE PHONE CALL.
{ John Gordon, The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech, 1984 | Continue reading }
acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, and roll-a-tex on canvas { Peter Halley, Laws of Rock, 2008 }
flashback, technology |
April 12th, 2018
Long-term relationships and especially marriage have long got a bad rap in terms of the erotic. The German poet Gottfried Benn, for example, stated: “Marriage is an institution for the paralysis of the sexual instinct” Even women like the American author Erica Jong join in the lament. “Even if you loved your husband, there came that inevitable year when fucking him turned as bland as Velveeta cheese: filling, fattening even, but no thrill to the taste buds, no bittersweet edge, no danger.” That such remarks are not far-fetched, psychologist Kirsten von Sydow from the University of Hamburg has verified with a comprehensive literature review. […]
This loss of libido in marriage is also called the “Coolidge effect”. Among cattle breeders, it is known as the bull’s reluctance to mount the same cow repeatedly, with the libido returning after the encounter with a new cow. The name Coolidge refers to the 30 U.S. President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933). According to a famous anecdote, Mr. Coolidge once visited a farm with his wife where Mrs. Coolidge became aware of a cock who just mounted a hen. When they told her that the cock accomplished this feat up to twelve times a day, she replied: “Tell that to my husband!” When the president learned of the miracles, he asked: “Always with the same hen?” When he was assured that it was another one every time, he replied: “Tell that to my wife!” […]
The Coolidge effect can be expressed in numerical values, says von Sydow. “In the first year of living together, the weekly coital activity of three times drops to just under twice, then it further diminishes over two to three years.” […] For gay and lesbian couples, the decline in coital frequency is at least as strong. And this is not a question of age, because after a divorce and with a new partner, the sex drive is easily rekindled. […]
“Men love the idea of getting between the blankets with a woman just for fun, including with a woman with whom they do not want to have a long-term relationship,” Baumeister points out. “From the standpoint of these men, sex affords pleasure, and sex with new partners affords a particularly great pleasure. Why shouldn’t they have it off other with those women without tying up? Unfortunately for these men, most women do not share that view. ”
{ Rolf Degen | Continue reading }
sex-oriented |
April 12th, 2018
Austrian nobles Princess Pauline von Metternich and Countess Anastasia Kielmansegg agreed to a topless duel in the summer of 1892.
The duel went down in history as the first ‘emancipated duel’ because it involved female participants, female seconds’ and a female medic.
Baroness Lubinska from Warsaw, who had a medical degree, oversaw the duel and advised the women to sword fight topless to avoid infection.
{ Daily Mail | Continue reading }
Princess Pauline was involved in many charitable organizations. It was in her capacity as Honorary President of the Vienna Musical and Theatrical Exhibition that she quarreled with the Countess Kilmannsegg, wife of the Statthalter of Lower Austria and President of the Ladies Committee of the Vienna Musical and Theatrical Exhibition, apparently over the flower arrangements for the exhibition.
Whatever was said about those flowers could not be unsaid, and the Princess, then 56 years old, challenged the Countess to settle their dispute by blood.
The two adversaries and their seconds, Princess Schwarzenberg and Countess Kinsky, traveled to Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein, and took to the field of honor. Presiding over the encounter was Baroness Lubinska who, unusually for women of the time, was a medical doctor. Her modern understanding of infection proved pivotal. Having seen many superficial battle wounds turn septic and fatal because fragments of dirty clothes were driven into them, the Baroness insisted both parties remove all clothing above the waist.
So the Princess Metternich and Countess Kilmannsegg, both topless, took up their swords to fight until first blood.
After a few exchanges, the Princess received a small cut to the nose and the Countess was cut on the arm practically at the same time. The seconds called the duel and Princess Metternich was declared the winner.
{ Mental Floss | Continue reading }
fights, flashback |
April 11th, 2018
A French waiter is suing for the right to be rude at work
The Rise in Self-Proclaimed Time Travelers
How do blind people represent rainbows?
What Happens When a Blind Person Takes LSD?
Retaliation on a voodoo doll symbolizing an abusive supervisor restores justice
A new device, created by mad scientists at MIT, can accept commands that you say only in your own head. It works by analyzing “subvocalization,” or silent speech.
DNA tests for IQ are coming, but it might not be smart to take one
It took about 50 hours of interaction to move from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 hours to move from casual friend to friend, and more than 200 hours to qualify as a best friend. A new study shows how long—in hours—friendships take to develop.
Sleeping without smartphones improves sleep, relationships, focus and wellbeing, although impacts is relatively small
Mark Bittman and doctor David L. Katz patiently answer pretty much every question we could think of about healthy food
76% of sports sponsorships tied to junk food, study says
Last year, some social media genius discovered that single-paragraph updates did inordinately well on LinkedIn. Thus, through the opportunistic gaming of oblique algorithms, a new literary genre was born. [Thanks Tim]
By creating free wifi on the London Underground, Transport for London is harvesting data. Uber harvests data well beyond car journeys (the app continues to collect data on passenger behaviour after a ride has finished, although users can now opt out of this). New digital advertising billboards at Piccadilly Circus are harvesting data (they contain cameras to analyse the facial expressions of people in the crowds passing by).
Next month, the US government is expected to green-light a number of agreements between private drone operators and states and local entities that want to test drone services involving “beyond-line-of-sight operations”
Unicorns Take Different Paths to Being Public
Sex Workers Making Underground Porn on Snapchat
Self-storage: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38 billion industry
Scientists have spent 60 years agonizing over how our knuckles crack [study]
Why it’s Impossible to Accurately Measure a Coastline
Maine Restaurant Announces It Will Only Accept Reservations Via Snail-Mail
A brief history of audio recording and playback, from the 1850s onward [The Museum of Obsolete Media]
Metropolitan Police Coat Hook
Amalia Ulman’s Instagram art hoax
Japanese Are Polishing Foil Balls To Perfection
every day the same again |
April 8th, 2018
A distant galaxy that appears completely devoid of dark matter has baffled astronomers and deepened the mystery of the universe’s most elusive substance.
The absence of dark matter from a small patch of sky might appear to be a non-problem, given that astronomers have never directly observed dark matter anywhere. However, most current theories of the universe suggest that everywhere that ordinary matter is found, dark matter ought to be lurking too, making the newly observed galaxy an odd exception. […]
Paradoxically, the authors said the discovery of a galaxy without dark matter counts as evidence that it probably does exist.
{ Guardian | Continue reading }
photo { Luc Kordas }
mystery and paranormal, space |
March 29th, 2018
