Being bored has just become a little more nuanced, with the addition of a fifth type of boredom by which to describe this emotion. […]

The study builds on preliminary research done by Goetz and colleague Anne Frenzel in 2006 in which they differentiated between four types of boredom according to the levels of arousal (ranging from calm to fidgety) and how positive or negative boredom is experienced (so-called valence). These were indifferent boredom (relaxed, withdrawn, indifferent), calibrating boredom (uncertain, receptive to change/distraction), searching boredom (restless, active pursuit of change/distraction) and reactant boredom (high reactant, motivated to leave a situation for specific alternatives).

The researchers have now identified another boredom subtype, namely apathetic boredom, an especially unpleasant form that resembles learned helplessness or depression. It is associated with low arousal levels and high levels of aversion.

{ Springer | Continue reading }

photo { Robert Carrithers }

This column discusses the roots of the Great Divergence between European and Asian economies. […] The Great Divergence of living standards between Europe and Asia had late medieval origins and was already well under way during the early modern period. […]

The economic history literature suggests two important shocks coinciding with the turning points identified above around 1348 and 1500.

- The Black Death – which began in western China before spreading to Europe and reaching England in 1348 – wiped out around one-third of Europe’s population within three years, and more than a half over the following century.

- Around 1500, new trade routes were opened up between Europe and Asia around the south of Africa, and between Europe and the Americas.

[…]

The Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century had quite different effects in different parts of Europe. The classic Malthusian response to such a mortality crisis is a rise in incomes for those lucky enough to survive because of an increase in the per capita endowment of land and capital for survivors.

{ Vox | Continue reading }

Woman fined $3500 for leaving a negative review online. […] Apparently, she violated a non-disparagement agreement hidden within the terms of sale.

{ Gawker| Continue reading }

twophrasebark
Just because something is in the terms of agreement does not make it legal. Or binding.

lobstr
Exactly — what’s to stop them from picking “$1,000,000″ instead of the arbitrary amount of “$3,500″ as the fine?

Sue–Asponte
Not to mention that the husband is the one that signed it so it never bound the wife. Not to mention, further, that the contract was probably void when the purpose of the agreement wasn’t fulfilled when the couple didn’t get their crap.

olal
According to reports from Techdirt, it would appear that the company didn’t even have this clause up when the woman made the order. It seems that years later, after having their rating ruined, they added this clause and then threatened these customers retroactively.

{ Gawker/Comments | Continue reading }

related { Your Phone Number Is Going To Get A Reputation Score }

Rescuers search for passenger who fell from plane.

U.S. military may have 10 robots per soldier by 2023.

Nearly 1 in 4 adults surf the Internet while driving.

Manhattan architect sues an ex-lover $1.25M for posting online saying he has a “tiny STD-infested weiner.”

A new study suggests it’s less important to be friendly than to be good.

Here’s another reason to love coffee. Researchers from Brazil found that morning coffee consumption not only keeps you awake and alert, but also improves performance on cognitively demanding tasks. That is, if you’re already a habitual drinker.

Chocolate and chili peppers can help us lose fat.

Why can we taste bitter flavors? Turns out, it’s still a mystery.

The sun is producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected, and its magnetic poles are oddly out of sync.

Using examples from a wide range of application areas in science and engineering, we will demonstrate how standard uses of color can distort the meaning of the underlying data, and can lead the analyst to incorrect evaluations, conclusions or decisions.

The impossibility of being literal.

NSA Surveillance Drives U.S. Writers to Self-Censor [PDF]

Google Finally Gets Legal OK to Scan the World’s Books.

Nearly 3 in 10 adults say one of their social-media accounts has been hacked.

It will go down as one of the biggest missed opportunities in the boardroom: Blockbuster deciding not to buy Netflix.

Why Did Snapchat Turn Down $3 Billion?

Why is Silicon Valley funding these really silly internet companies and not major life changing innovations?

In an all-out battle over the summer, Christie’s beat Sotheby’s on consignment after consignment, snaring major trophies of the contemporary art world.

What is the value of stolen art? [NY Times]

How would you weigh an airplane without a scale?

“If you ask people about their experience of falling in love, over 90 percent will say that a major factor was discovering that the other person liked them,” according to Dr. Aron.

People will just disappear.

The Wow! signal.

Line of T-shirts and dresses featuring various images of Oprah’s head Photoshopped onto nude bodies.

Dai Macedo Wins 2013 Miss Bum Bum Competition, Despite Controversy.

Harry Smith collected paper airplanes he found on the streets of New York.

LEARNING TO SWALLOW follows Patsy, a charismatic artist who destroys her digestive system during an unmedicated bipolar episode.

Bunny takes a shower. [via Stella and Tim]

White Jesus Skin Bleach [more]

Growth.

Teenagers’ brains are wired to confront a threat instead of retreating, research suggests. The results may help explain why criminal activity peaks during adolescence.

{ Science News | Continue reading }

Research in recent years has suggested that young Americans might be less creative now than in decades past, even while their intelligence — as measured by IQ tests — continues to rise.

But new research from the University of Washington Information School and Harvard University, closely studying 20 years of student creative writing and visual artworks, hints that the dynamics of creativity may not break down as simply as that.

Instead, it may be that some aspects of creativity — such as those employed in visual arts — are gently rising over the years, while other aspects, such as the nuances of creative writing, could be declining. […]

The review of student visual art showed an increase in the sophistication and complexity both in the designs and the subject matter over the years. The pieces, Davis said, seemed “more finished, and fuller, with backgrounds more fully rendered, suggesting greater complexity.” Standard pen-and-ink illustrations grew less common over the period studied, while a broader range of mixed media work was represented.

Conversely, the review of student writing showed the young authors adhering more to “conventional writing practices” and a trend toward less play with genre, more mundane narratives and simpler language over the two decades studied.

{ University of Washington | Continue reading }

Can computers be creative? […] The team has gathered information by downloading a large corpus of recipes that include dishes from all over the world that use a wide variety ingredients, combinations of flavours, serving suggestions and so on.

They also download related information such as descriptions of regional cuisines from Wikipedia, the concentration of flavour ingredients in different foodstuffs from the “Volatile Compounds in Food” database and Fenaroli’s Handbook of Flavor Ingredients. So big data lies at the heart of this approach—you could call it the secret sauce.

They then develop a method for combining ingredients in ways that have never been attempted using a “novelty algorithm” that determines how surprising the resulting recipe will appear to an expert observer. […] The last stage is an interface that allows a human expert to enter some starting ingredients such as pork belly or salmon fillet and perhaps a choice of cuisine such as Thai. The computer generates a number of novel dishes, explaining its reasoning for each. Of these, the expert chooses one and then makes it.

These human experts seem impressed. “Recipes created by the computational creativity system, such as a Caymanian Plantain Dessert, have been rated as more creative than existing recipes in online repositories,” say Varshney and co.

{ The arXiv | Continue reading }

{ JPMorgan is taking questions from Twitter | What exactly possesses PR people into thinking it’s a wise idea to launch live “Twitter Q&As?” }

Our brains perceive objects in everyday life of which we may never be aware, a study finds, challenging currently accepted models about how the brain processes visual information. […]

“There’s a brain signature for meaningful processing,” Sanguinetti said. A peak in the averaged brainwaves called N400 indicates that the brain has recognized an object and associated it with a particular meaning.

“It happens about 400 milliseconds after the image is shown, less than a half a second,” said Peterson. “As one looks at brainwaves, they’re undulating above a baseline axis and below that axis. The negative ones below the axis are called N and positive ones above the axis are called P, so N400 means it’s a negative waveform that happens approximately 400 milliseconds after the image is shown.”

The presence of the N400 peak indicates that subjects’ brains recognize the meaning of the shapes on the outside of the figure.

“The participants in our experiments don’t see those shapes on the outside; nonetheless, the brain signature tells us that they have processed the meaning of those shapes,” said Peterson. “But the brain rejects them as interpretations, and if it rejects the shapes from conscious perception, then you won’t have any awareness of them.”

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

Francis Bacon’s 1969 triptych, “Three Studies of Lucian Freud,” sold for $142.4 million at Christie’s, described as the highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction. […]

Sometime in the 1970s the three panels were sold separately. The right-hand panel was bought by a collector in Rome who spent 20 years trying to reunite the triptych. He bought the middle panel from a Paris dealer in the early 1980s. Then, in the late ‘80s, he bought the left and final panel from a collector in Japan. It is also one of just two full-length triptychs that Bacon painted of Freud — the other, from 1966, is missing.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

previously { List of most expensive paintings }

Female sexual dysfunction is almost a non-experience, the opposite of an adventure that you have, then process, then write about.

{ Cris Mazza interviewed by Megan Milks | TNI | Continue reading }

art { Richard Phillips, Untitled (Smiley), 2000 }

related { Playboy erects huge neon bunny art installation near Marfa, Texas }

New Mexico man sues over repeated anal probes by police.

Man apparently ate his dog, who saved him from a bear attack, to stay alive in woods.

World’s one hundred richest people have added $200 billion to their fortunes this year.

South Korea now has five times as many credit cards as people — and more per capita debt than anyone. But the market is not what it was.

How early do we learn to lie? And what purpose does it serve in young children? 

What is the most common nightmare?

Apple said developing curved iPhone screens.

Simply by looking at geotagged tweets, an algorithm can track the spread of flu and predict which users are going to get sick .

Last year, Netflix and YouTube made up 47.8 % of Internet traffic. This year, 50.3 %.

What Happens to Google Maps When Tectonic Plates Move?

In the 1960s, scientists discovered a new form of water. How did they get it so wrong?

Is there any reason to think dolphins and humans have a special relationship?

Only one planet has been proven to support life: our own. But with at least 11 billion Earth-sized words in our galaxy orbiting in their stars’ habitable zones, plus new evidence of strange kinds of life that thrive in extreme environments, the odds that we are not alone are improving.

Things con men can teach you about persuasion.

I think you’ve got the RIGHT number, if you want to know about dudes not wearing a shirt right now.

These NYC Neighborhoods Are Having The Most Sex.

Carpet made of 20,000 folded DIN A4 papers.

Google patent: THROAT TATTOO with lie-detecting mobe microphone built-in.

Long ago, stock trades were reported over ticker tape, and one type of manipulation was called “painting the tape.” Traders would enter orders to give the appearance of activity in a stock to entice others to buy shares, thus pushing the price higher.

Today, a slightly more sophisticated scheme is called “banging the close,” in which transactions are made in one market at the end of the day to benefit a trader’s positions in another market, say derivatives. Same scheme, different means. […]

The growth of high-frequency trading firms and transactions executed on alternative trading systems, called dark pools, have made it more difficult to police potential manipulative conduct. High-frequency traders buy and sell millions of financial instruments but rarely hold a position for more than a day. While such trading provides greater liquidity to the markets, helping to lower costs for all investors, it can also offer new opportunities for manipulating prices. […]

Manipulation can also involve benchmark indexes, which are incorporated into a wide variety of transactions, including mortgage interest rates. When an index relies on reports provided by rival market participants, the temptation to furnish false information to affect its value can be powerful because a small shift in value can affect billions of dollars. Several large banks have already paid billions in penalties for manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, and investigations are gaining steam into how currency prices were reported in the foreign exchange markets.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

The future of computing, after about 2035, is adiabatic reservable hardware. When such hardware runs at a cost-minimizing speed, half of the total budget is spent on computer hardware, and the other half is spent on energy and cooling for that hardware. Thus after 2035 or so, about as much will be spent on computer hardware and a physical space to place it as will be spent on hardware and space for systems to generate and transport energy into the computers, and to absorb and transport heat away from those computers. So if you seek a career for a futuristic world dominated by computers, note that a career making or maintaining energy or cooling systems may be just as promising as a career making or maintaining computing hardware.

{ Overcoming bias | Continue reading }

{ How to fix global warming before it’s too late | Is it too late to prepare for climate change? }

The National Intelligence Council has just released its much anticipated forecasting report, a 140-page document that outlines major trends and technological developments we should expect in the next 20 years. Among their many predictions, the NIC foresees the end of U.S. global dominance, the rising power of individuals against states, a growing middle class that will increasingly challenge governments, and ongoing shortages in water, food and energy. But they also envision a future in which humans have been significantly modified by their technologies — what will herald the dawn of the transhuman era. […]

In the new report, the NIC describes how implants, prosthetics, and powered exoskeletons will become regular fixtures of human life — what could result in substantial improvements to innate human capacities. By 2030, the authors predict, prosthetics should reach the point where they’re just as good — or even better — than organic limbs. By this stage, the military will increasingly rely on exoskeletons to help soldiers carry heavy loads. Servicemen will also be adminstered psychostimulants to help them remain active for longer periods.

Many of these same technologies will also be used by the elderly, both as a way to maintain more youthful levels of strength and energy, and as a part of their life extension strategies.

{ io9 | Continue reading | Thanks Tim }

{ Westinghouse demonstrates an electric razor using x-ray technology, May 1941 | Helmut Newton, Van Cleef + Arpels Diamond Necklace X-Ray, Paris 1979 }

Guests at Paris restaurants are seated following a strict appearance policy. Owners would tell staff “where to seat ugly people.”

Cornell University accidentally destroyed more than $200,000 worth of horse semen.

Unlike just about every other developing country’s carbon print, Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling—fast.

“The impostor syndrome describes the countless millions of people who do not experience an inner sense of competence or success.”

I study a new explanation grounded in the idea that altruists want to think they are helping.

‘Liking’ on Facebook may mean less giving.

Women have greater shortness of breath than men when exercising.

City birds use cigarette butts to smoke out parasites. [Thanks Tim]

Fully autonomous robots that collect human urine to power themselves could be a step closer.

The Internet killed distance. Mobile computing brought it back. Here’s why location matters again in e-commerce.

Credit Card Numbers Still Google-able.

Soon, nearly every device will be online. That is both a beautiful and a dangerous thing

Technology that derives personality traits from Twitter updates is being tested to help target promotions and personalize customer service.

How smart cities must plan for electric cars.

What makes a city a great place to live – your commute, property prices or good conversation?

Why do we hate seeing photos of ourselves?

7 Research-Backed Ways to Raise Kids Right.

What goes on in our minds when we see someone naked? The more we see of a person’s body the less intelligent they seem.

The way people move can influence the likelihood of an attack by a stranger.

Bulletproof three-piece suits.

Scissors That Cut Perfectly Straight Lines—Every Time.

Taking A Dip With Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.

Japan’s ‘Liberation Wrapper’ lets women eat burgers without violating social taboo.

Gangster Party Line. [Thanks GG]