A recent paper has put a hole in another remnant of Freud’s influence, that suppressed memories are still active. Freud noticed that we can suppress unwelcome memories. He theorized that the suppressed memories continued to exist in the unconscious mind and could unconsciously affect behaviour. Uncovering these memories and their influence was a large part of psychoanalysis. Understanding whether this theory is valid is important for evaluating recovered memories of abuse and for dealing with post-traunatic stress disorder.

The question Gagnepain, Henson and Anderson set out to answer was whether successfully suppressed conscious memories were also suppressed unconsciously or whether they were still unconsciously active. […]

[T]he results do fit with a number of other findings about memory, so that it is now unwise to take the Freudian view of suppression as reliable.

{ Neuro-patch | Continue reading }

CNN’s Sister Network Asks Psychic To Explain What Happened To Missing Malaysia Jet

3 elephants escape from circus in Missouri during performance

Germans seize cocaine destined for the Vatican

Marriage is hard work, but the alternative might be less attractive, at least financially.

Durex surveyed 2,000 adults and found that 15 percent of those surveyed would answer the phone or read a text while otherwise engaged in a sexual act.

Men found faces more attractive when they were wearing less makeup

Computer system spots real or faked expressions of pain more accurately than people can

Trust highly correlated with intelligence, study

Genetic mugshot recreates faces from nothing but DNA

How the internet works, and why it’s impossible to know what makes your Netflix slow

In one experiment angel investors watched pitches and then handed out start-up money. Attractive men were more likely than unattractive men and even more likely than women to succeed. [Thanks Tim]

Who Just Dumped $220 Million Nasdaq Futures In 1 Second?

Regulating Cryptocurrencies in the United States: Current Issues and Future Directions

Record bosses now hope that online streaming could become a big enough business to arrest their industry’s long decline.

Band makes money on Spotify by streaming silent tracks [related: 4′33″]

Like the music industry, Adobe is abandoning selling its wares on physical discs to rent them out online

What Happens To Your Body When You Get Drunk And Stoned At The Same Time?

The historical timeline you keep in your head is all messed up: Oxford University is older than the Aztecs.

It is possible that the total energy of the entire universe is exactly zero

10 Questions Still Baffling Scientists [Thanks Tim]

A clock that writes the time. [Thanks Tim]

Compare Lincoln’s hand to yours

How the Dalí Atomicus photo was taken

houdini was arrested for sucking a statues dick

Male movements serve as courtship signals in many animal species, and may honestly reflect the genotypic and/or phenotypic quality of the individual. Attractive human dance moves, particularly those of males, have been reported to show associations with measures of physical strength, prenatal androgenization and symmetry. […]

By using cutting-edge motion-capture technology, we have been able to precisely break down and analyse specific motion patterns in male dancing that seem to influence women’s perceptions of dance quality. We find that the variability and amplitude of movements in the central body regions (head, neck and trunk) and speed of the right knee movements are especially important in signalling dance quality.

{ Biology Letters | PDF }

At one end is our everyday consciousness, and at the other is total unconsciousness, as represented by coma. Actually, the term “coma” covers two very similar states: One is the kind of coma that results from a severe head injury or cardiac arrest, and the other is the state induced in a hospital setting by means of general anesthesia.

So anyone who has had general anesthesia has been in a coma?

Yes, general anesthesia is nearly identical to what we might call “natural” coma.

{ American Scientist | Continue reading }

The most striking finding of our study is that addition of milk to black tea completely prevents the biological activity of tea in terms of improvement of endothelial function. Our results thus provide a possible explanation for the lack of beneficial effects of tea on the risk of heart disease in the UK, where milk is usually added to tea.

{ European Heart Journal | PDF }

and { Happy people work harder (especially if they get chocolate) }

art { Barnett Newman, The Voice, 1950 }

In a survey of more than 1,300 adults, 20% agreed with the theory that childhood vaccines cause autism. Far fewer believed that the U.S. government hatched a plot to infect African Americans with HIV. Overall, 49% agreed with at least one of the six conspiracy theories presented.

{ NY Daily News | Continue reading }

Fox News host Bill Hemmer explains missing plane: ‘It took 2,000 years to find Noah’s Ark’

Woman charged $787.33 for two-mile cab ride

Two charged in an insider trading scheme that used notes scribbled on napkins — then eaten to maintain secrecy

Time Warner Cable chief will get a nearly $80 million golden parachute. He was CEO less than two months.

Most popular hedge fund stocks

Peoples’ jobs as adults in 2010 and their parents’ income when they were kids in 1979

Human nose can detect at least 1 trillion odors — far more than thought, says study. For comparison, our eyes can see a few million different colors, and we can hear about 340,000 tones.

How thinking in a foreign language makes you more rational in some ways but not others

Periods of sleeplessness may cause permanent brain damage regardless of makeup rest, study

At present, no more than about 200 young people start using crack-cocaine each day. Ten years ago, the corresponding estimated daily rate was 1000.

Pots of honey, thousands of years old, and yet still preserved.

Knowing whether food has spoiled without even opening the container

The waning popularity of the American microwave deserves a closer look.

Why did Anthony Gatto, the greatest juggler alive — and perhaps of all time — back away from his art to open a construction business?

In the summer of 1982 the city of Waco was confronted with the most vicious crime it had ever seen: three teenagers were savagely stabbed to death, for no apparent reason.

The story of a totally made-up place that suddenly became real — and then, strangely, undid itself and became a fantasy again.

Like other federal agencies, the NSA is compelled by law to try to commercialize its R&D.

Plausible Scenario of What Happened to Flight 370, part II: It increasingly appears to be a mystery that will never be solved with any certainty.

Museum of Endangered Sounds

Avoid exes, co-workers, that guy who likes to stop and chat [Thanks Tim]

How many times would you have to fold a page onto itself to reach the Moon? 42.

What Jupiter would look like if it were the same distance from us as the Moon

Self-propelled catwalk car in the Lincoln Tunnel, NY, 1960 and in the Holland Tunnel, 1954

Burden called a group of friends into a gallery to watch an assistant shoot him with a .22 rifle

Can you unsuck a penis? [via Max Read]

“Would you please take a selfie of my friend and I in front of this window?”

She was not aware that she had approached a linguist. […]

It would not be like him to snarl that of my friend and I should be of my friend and me (or perhaps better, of me and my friend). Nor did he remonstrate with the woman over her rather extraordinary misuse of the noun selfie.

{ Language Log | Continue reading }

unrelated { Photographer countersues Empire State Building for $5M over topless photos }

More than 400 years after Shakespeare wrote it, we can now say that “Romeo and Juliet” has the wrong name. Perhaps the play should be called “Juliet and Her Nurse,” which isn’t nearly as sexy, or “Romeo and Benvolio,” which has a whole different connotation.

I discovered this by writing a computer program to count how many lines each pair of characters in “Romeo and Juliet” spoke to each other, with the expectation that the lovers in the greatest love story of all time would speak more than any other pair.

{ FiveThirtyEight | Continue reading }

Australia has begun exporting camels to Saudi Arabia.

More than 100 animals are being shipped from the Australian port city of Darwin and are due to arrive in Saudi Arabia in early July [2002].

The vast majority are destined for restaurant tables in a major camel-consuming nation.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

photo { Janet Biggs, Point of No Return, 2013 }

A paper that correlates occupations with divorce and separation rates, to be published in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, reveals that those employed in extrovert and stressful jobs are highly likely to divorce, as are those who work in the caring professions.

Dancers, choreographers and bartenders have around a 40% chance of experiencing a relationship breakdown. But also at high risk are nurses, psychiatrists and those who help the elderly and disabled. Conversely, agricultural engineers, optometrists, dentists, clergymen and podiatrists are all in occupations which carry a 2-7% chance of family breakdown.

{ The Guardian | Continue reading }

{ Robert Heinecken, Lessons in Posing Subjects/Matching Facial Expressions, 1981 }

{ Robert Heinecken, Kodak Safety Film/Figure Horizon, 1971 }

{ Robert Heinecken, Cybill Shepherd/Phone Sex, 1992 | Robert Heinecken retrospective at MoMA, through September 7, 2014 }

Missing Woman Found Alive in Trash Compactor

Commercial drones are now legal in U.S. skies, thanks to a court decision this month that slapped down the Federal Aviation Administration’s attempt to ground them.

In Japan, helicopter drones have been spraying crops for 20 years. The drone industry and some members of Congress are worried the United States will be one of the last countries, rather than one of the first, to gain the economic benefits of the technology.

A plausible scenario of what happened to Flight 370

Organized criminals who have long trafficked drugs are diversifying into humdrum areas of commerce—particularly food, booze and cheap consumer goods.

How much meat is too much?

Even if your body makes it to 1,000 years, the thinking goes, that body is actually inhabited by a succession of persons over time rather than a single continuous person. And so, if you put someone in prison for a crime they committed at 40, they might, strictly speaking, be an entirely different person at 940.

Does the Human Body Really Replace Itself Every 7 Years?

Let’s say you transfer your mind into a computer—not all at once but gradually

The Phenomenology of Spirit: how to appreciate Hegel

Translating Lorem Ipsum [via Sunday reading]

Medieval multiverse heralded modern cosmic conundrums

Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, astronomer and professor of physics, first proposed what became the Big Bang theory

Scientists say they have extraordinary new evidence to support a Big Bang Theory for the origin of the Universe.

How an Army e-mail phishing experiment went awry

OKCoin Raises $10 Million to Become China’s ‘Largest Exchange’

If Newsweek did proper due diligence, all of this information should have been available to them prior to their publication of the article.

The whole event was supposed to be a fundraiser for charity, but ended up costing the city millions in lawsuits [read more]

By taking about 100 pictures of McDuffie using a pillow to pose as he did in the picture taken Aug. 14, 1945, by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gibson said she was able to match the muscles, ears and other features of the then-80-year-old McDuffie to the young sailor in the original image.

Prada Marfa vandalized

Damien Hirst exhibition in Doha, Qatar

Types of Weirdos

Lego robot crushes Rubik’s Cube world record with superhuman speed

Women hold about 60 per cent of the total jobs in the thirty occupations projectedby the US Bureau of Labor Statistics to have the most net job growth in the decade through 2022. […]

The projections obviously should be interpreted more as a guide to current trends than as a reliable forecast. But combined with the number from the NWLC, they suggest that if those trends don’t change, then the recent struggles of men — and especially young men — finding work in a labour market that continues to shift towards traditionally female-dominated occupations will only worsen. […]

The jobs of the new labour market are lower-paying, and therefore difficult to accept for men who were accustomed to making more, even if the old jobs aren’t coming back. Many of these jobs are in traditionally female-dominated occupations, which require training that men are less likely to have. And they pay higher wages to college grads, the vast majority of which are now women. […]

The composition of future jobs is unlikely to get “manlier”.

{ FT | Continue reading }

Your voice betrays your personality in a split second

[…]

They extracted the word “hello” and asked 320 people to rate the voices on a scale of 1 to 9 for one of 10 perceived personality traits – including trustworthiness, dominance and attractiveness. […] “We were surprised by just how similar people’s ratings were.” […] most people agreed very closely to what extent each voice represented each trait.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading }

related { How sound affects the taste of our food }

In the last years news are over and over again about record breaking prices reached for an artwork at a public auction. Such high pricing strucks not only the old masters but also works for still living artists. As you might know the prices for young artist’s paintings are often assessed by canvas size. So the question for my use-case arises: Is there also a correlation between size and hammer price of famous artworks at auctions?

{ Ruth Reiche | Continue reading }

Man pronounced dead last month and put in a body bag only to come alive just before embalming, has now died

Lady Gaga’s Charity Donated Just $5,000 of Its $2.1 Million

Road closed as police hunt severed penis

The economics of prostitution in eight U.S. cities

Gonorrhea is about to become impossible to treat. Antibiotic resistance means the STD might soon spread more aggressively than ever.

Most of the caffeine used in soft drinks is actually synthetically produced in Chinese pharmaceutical plants.

Elephants Know How Dangerous We Are From How We Speak

A new study shows that the use of cocaine dropped by half across the United States from 2006 to 2010, while use of marijuana jumped by more than 30 percent during the period.

If you want to kill someone, do it with a car. As long as you’re sober, chances are you’ll never be charged with any crime, much less manslaughter.

The very unscientific tale of how Amazon first set the price of Prime

This startup claims it can read your fingerprint from nine feet away

Sigma X is one of the largest dark pools in the U.S., accounting for 1 percent of total daily trading in January

TOR Network Increasingly Being Abused by Cybercriminals.

Any WordPress site with Pingback enabled (which is on by default) can be used in DDOS attacks against other sites

The Story Behind The THX Deep Note

This past summer was a disaster for the major studios - but it was also a highly predictable one. The Future of Film I, II, and III

Study finds that social ties influence who wins certain Hollywood movie awards

Heidegger’s Hitler Problem Is Worse Than We Thought

A study finds more than half the books lining shelves in British homes have never been read.

The man who has painted more than 1,000 watercolors with his tongue.

Robert Mapplethorpe Children’s Museum Celebrates Grand Opening

3D Printed Phil Robertson Duck Dynasty Butt Plug

In his story Sarrasine, Balzac, describing a castrato disguised as a woman, writes the following sentence: “This was woman herself, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive worries, her impetuous boldness, her fussings, and her delicious sensibility.” Who is speaking thus? Is it the hero of the story bent on remaining ignorant of the castrato hidden beneath the woman? Is it Balzac the individual, furnished by his personal experience with a philosophy of Woman? Is it Balzac the author professing ‘literary’ ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom? Romantic psychology? We shall never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.

{ Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, 1967 | Continue reading }