Chinese zoo under fire for trying to pass off dog as African lion. Related: The Serengeti Lion.

A man who enjoys dressing up as a dog has been arrested for having sex with a cat in Idaho.

Israeli Arrested in International Art Forgery Ring.

Study: How long do little kids stand sitting still?

Seemingly Unimportant Mutations Can Foster Disease. Initially innocuous genetic changes known as neutral mutations may play a role in disorders ranging from the flu and bacterial infections to schizophrenia.

The official list of “never events” in surgery includes operating on the wrong part of the body, performing the wrong procedure, leaving instruments or swabs inside the body, or having the wrong prosthesis or medical device implanted.

Shadows Alter Facial Expressions of Noh Masks.

Are “soft” sciences, like psychology, actually science?

More eye-wateringly egregious neuromarketing bullshit from Martin Lindstrom.

Overview of the Brain In Just Under 4 Minutes.

Who would have guessed that a famous Chongqing pickle, the preserved mustard tuber made in the town of Fuling, would be used by the Chinese government to measure labour migration? The preserved mustard index.

How Chess Explains the World. And predicts the rise and fall of nations.

Facebook to Test PayPal Competitor.

Paying Some Cabbies Won’t Involve Cash or a Card Swipe.

Google is preparing for screenless computers.

My Life as a Cellphone Holdout.

When e-mail was created 40 years ago, security or anonymity wasn’t part of the design.

15 Strange Beaches.

“He’s friendly, relatable, and just a general salt-of-the-earth dude.” –Lying acquaintance of Hollywood megastar

A missile command game comes up and starts to attack the video.

Banana equivalent dose [Thanks Tim]

The man behind the ‘132 Lb. Scrotum.’

At this very moment, your eyes and brain are performing an astounding series of coordinated operations.

Light rays from the screen are hitting your retina, the sheet of light-sensitive cells that lines the back wall of each of your eyes. Those cells, in turn, are converting light into electrical pulses that can be decoded by your brain.

The electrical messages travel down the optic nerve to your thalamus, a relay center for sensory information in the middle of the brain, and from the thalamus to the visual cortex at the back of your head. In the visual cortex, the message jumps from one layer of tissue to the next, allowing you to determine the shape and color and movement of the thing in your visual field. From there the neural signal heads to other brain areas, such as the frontal cortex, for yet more complex levels of association and interpretation. All of this means that in a matter of milliseconds, you know whether this particular combination of light rays is a moving object, say, or a familiar face, or a readable word. […]

This post is about a question that’s long been debated among scientists and philosophers: At what point in that chain of operations does the visual system begin to integrate information from other systems, like touches, tastes, smells, and sounds? What about even more complex inputs, like memories, categories, and words?

We know the integration happens at some point. If you see a lion running toward you, you will respond to that sight differently depending on if you are roaming alone in the Serengeti or visiting the zoo. Even if the two sights are exactly the same, and presenting the same optical input to your retinas, your brain will use your memories and knowledge to put your vision into context

{ Virginia Hughes/National Geographic | Continue reading }

photo { Harry Callahan }

A surge of electrical activity in the brain could be responsible for the vivid experiences described by near-death survivors, scientists report.

A study carried out on dying rats found high levels of brainwaves at the point of the animals’ demise.

US researchers said that in humans this could give rise to a heightened state of consciousness.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

Dogs trained to sniff out ovarian cancer.

Two Xiamen Airlines stewardesses kneel in prayer at a shrine dedicated to being “on time”.

17-year legal fight between two law professors over their divorce has lasted seven years longer than their 10-year marriage.

Spain: “Every job has 100 applicants, and you only get work now based on who you know…”

Modern pregnancy comes with a long list of strict rules, but does it have to? An economist examines the data.

Herb used as Chinese herbal remedy for centuries can cause cancer, two studies say.

A man who suffered a stroke can no longer feel sadness.

Testicle-Biting Amazon Fish Caught in Denmark

Fish Fear Robotic Predators, Unless They’re Drunk.

Some innovations spread fast. How do you speed the ones that don’t?

Why are sales of non-alcoholic beer booming?

How Can You Redeem Stolen Airline Miles?

All Bitcoin Wallets On Android “Vulnerable To Theft.”

UK bars ad firm from using Wi-Fi-enabled trash cans to track passersby through their smartphones.

New delivery service brings retro video game machines right to your door for $75 a month.

We used phony ’service dogs’ to see how easy it is to get badly behaved pups into NYC’s elegant eateries.

40 maps that explain the world.

Map of Manhattan Using Only Handwritten Directions From Strangers.

Currency Collages by Mark Wagner. [More]

Infant Circumcision Trainer, White.

One Second on the Internet…

Builders of Spanish Skyscraper Forgot the Elevator.

A man’s plan to have sex with a woman on a giant pile of cash goes awry after thieves steal the money.

Massive drop in razor sales attributed to hairy hipsters, increased stubble in the workplace.

Why world hunger won’t be solved with the test-tube burger. About 12.5% of the world’s population is considered “hungry,” but many development economists say we already grow enough food to feed them all.

The Animals are Also Getting Fat.

This Is How Your Brain Becomes Addicted to Caffeine.

A mother’s perceived social status predicts her child’s brain development and stress indicators.

Possession Trance Disorder Caused by Door-to-Door Sales.

It’s important to differentiate anger and aggression.

Study: Positive comments create an illusory snowball effect, while negative responses get cancelled out.

New forensic technique for analysing lipstick traces,

Hiring private detectives to investigate paranoid delusions.

One interesting model system for thinking about the consequences of neural delays is the giraffe. Adults giraffes stand 5-6m tall, so the feet are a long way from the brain. Anything that happens to the feet as they walk (say, tripping on a tree root) will potentially not be registered fast enough for the brain to issue a response. Why don’t giraffes fall over often enough that people? Faster neurons? Cautious gait?

The History and Psychology of Clowns Being Scary.

A network analysis reveals the thinkers who most influence the rest of us.

Goldman’s Top Disruptive Themes: E-cigarettes, Cancer Immunotherapy, LED Lighting, Natural Gas Engines,3D Printing, Big Data…

BTFATH.

Ibiza is enjoying a bumper season with over 900,000 morons flying in.

High speed 3D printed robot. [Thanks Tim]

Blood vessels in a human body.

CL > new york > queens > all personals > missed connections
Seen on the N Train to Queensboro…..did we have something? - w4m - 26 (queens)
Posted: 2013-08-08, 9:22PM EDT

I got on at Union Square, you were already seated on the train. Actually, you were kind of sprawled halfway under one of the seats, sort of lying on the floor. I liked your style. Most people just sit on the seats. I can tell you see things differently.

Me, wearing a flared denim vintage skirt, white blouse, glasses. Small red pillbox hat. You, smooth-looking skin, distant stare. Kind of pale grey complexion. I kept trying to catch your eye over my copy of Damien Hirst’s biography, but you were preoccupied with something else.

You seemed like you had such faraway eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. What’s behind those eyes? I’d love to find out. I like the Discovery Channel, romantic movies, bicycles, picnics in the park, and deep-sea fishing. I got off at Queensboro, but I’m still wishing I’d said hello. Can we go for sushi sometime? Drop me a line.

{ craigslist | Continue reading }

background reading { Early on Aug. 8 ,2013 in New York the conductor aboard a Ditmars-bound N train at Queensboro Plaza reported a shark aboard the train in car }

Dead Shark Found in NYC Subway Car.

How room and desk size affect people’s comfort discussing personal issues.

When asked to imagine going to a cinema, people preferentially select seats to the right. For aircraft, contrary to expectation, occupancy rate was higher for left.

The Nobel disease is a term used to describe a phenomenon in which Nobel Prize-winning scientists endorse or perform “research” in pseudoscientific areas in their later years.

In a predictable world, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon would have been regarded as a regrettable aberration and quickly forgotten. What makes one brilliant iconoclast wildly successful, and another ignored?

Prisoners were immersed into tanks of ice water for hours at a time, often shivering to death, to discover how long German pilots downed by enemy fire could survive the frozen waters of the North Sea. The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments.

Abandoned underwater strip club.

Here’s What Happens Inside You When a Mosquito Bites.

In two experiments we showed that exposure to an incidental black and white visual contrast leads people to think in a “black and white” manner, as indicated by more extreme moral judgments.

Participants who were primed with a black and white checkered background while considering a moral dilemma (Experiment 1) or a series of social issues (Experiment 2) gave ratings that were significantly further from the response scale’s mid-point, relative to participants in control conditions without such priming.

These findings suggest that in addition to affective cues and gut feelings, non-affective cues relating to processing style can influence moral judgments.

{ ScienceDirect }

art { Lorna Simpson }

I purchased this product and sent it back immediately. The moment I took it out of the wrapping, I knew there was a problem, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Then I did put my finger on it. It felt a bit weird and when I started picking at it some of the paint flaked off. Cheap materials.

Anyhow, I may not be a member of the cognoscenti, but I have several Thomas “the Painter of Light” Kinkade paintings, so I know art. First of all, shouldn’t the lines be straight? It’s way too blurry and it hurts my eyes just to look at it. You know what also hurts my eyes? That little girls face. It looks like she has rosacea or something. And why is the girl so sad?!? Thomas Kinkade paintings are happy and joyful. This painting is just a bummer.

Save yourself a lot of disappointment and $1,448,500 and just get yourself a nice Kinkade lithograph. You’ll be glad that you did.

{ Customer Review/Amazon | Continue reading }

related { Amazon Enters Art World; Galleries Say They Aren’t Worried }

related { The utility of bad art }

In human psychology, overconfidence is typically taken to be the overestimation of one’s own capabilities. This, and other apparent cognitive biases such as optimism, are well-documented phenomena whose underlying neural mechanisms are becoming known. However, a convincing evolutionary explanation of such phenomena is lacking.

Two recent high-profile publications have advanced proposals for evolutionary explanations of overconfidence. […] The first proposal, a model by Johnson and Fowler (J&F), […] considers a scenario in which individuals compare their estimated fighting ability against that of potential opponents when deciding whether to contest a resource, doing so only if they perceive themselves as more capable. By identifying conditions under which individuals should overestimate their fighting ability, J&F claim to show that overconfidence should evolve.

The second is Trivers’ theory of self-deception. […] Among Trivers’ primary arguments for the evolution of cognitive bias are that selective pressure exists for animals to deceive each other and that deception is more effective, and less cognitively costly, when the deceiver believes the deception; in the context of animal conflict, the explanation of overconfidence would be that acting as if one’s abilities are greater than they really are can more effectively dissuade others from competition.

[…]

We argue that recent proposals, focused on benefits from overestimating the probability of success in conflicts or practicing self-deception to better deceive others, are still lacking in crucial regards. Attention must be paid to the difference between cognitive and outcome biases; outcome biases are suboptimal, yet cognitive biases can be optimal.

[…]

Cognitive bias: an inaccurate view of the world. This is a psychological definition. A cognitive bias might produce rational behavior or might result in an outcome bias.

Outcome bias: a departure from rational behavior. This is an operational definition.

{ Cell | PDF }

Sex pheromones are chemical compounds released by an animal that attract animals of the same species but opposite sex. They are often so specific that other species can’t smell them at all, which makes them useful as a secret communication line for just that species. But this specificity raises an intriguing question: When a new species evolves and uses a new pheromone signaling system, what comes first: the ability to make the pheromone or the ability to perceive it? […]

Any individuals that make a new and different scent would then be perceived by the receivers as being the wrong species and they won’t attract any mates. If you don’t attract mates, you can’t pass on your new genes for your new scent. This produces a strong pressure to make a scent that is as similar as the scent produced by everyone else as possible (this is called stabilizing selection). With this intense pressure to be like everyone else, how did the incredible diversity of species-specific pheromones come to be?

{ Nature | Continue reading }

The prevailing view in psychology is that materialism is bad for our well-being. Research by Tim Kasser (at Knox College) and others has revealed an association between holding materialist values and being more depressed and selfish, and having poorer relationships. Kasser has previously called for a revolution in Western culture, shifting us from a thing-centred to a person-centred society. Other research by Leaf Van Boven, Thomas Gilovich and colleagues has shown that the purchase of experiences leaves people happier than buying material products. In another study of theirs, materialistic people were liked less than people who appeared more interested in experiences.

{ The Psychologist | PDF }

images { 1 | 2 }

Analyzing data from 60 earlier studies, Solomon Hsiang from the University of California, Berkeley, found that warmer temperatures and extremes in rainfall can substantially increase the risk of many types of conflict. For every standard deviation of change, levels of interpersonal violence, such as domestic violence or rape, rise by some 4 percent, while the frequency of intergroup conflict, from riots to civil wars, rise by 14 percent. Global temperatures are expected to rise by at least two standard deviations by 2050, with even bigger increases in the tropics.

{ The Scientist | Continue reading }

Quebec poop painter says cops bullying him.

Bird Poop Facials at NYC Spa, $180.

Despite popular folklore, hypnosis is not a form of sleep. Brain imaging findings support the contention that hypnosis is a distinct form of consciousness.

The sad tendency for whistle-blowers to be ‘accused’ of being ‘mentally ill’ when others don’t like what they’re saying.

A new Florida State University study has found that adolescent boys who are hurt in just two physical fights suffer a loss in IQ that is roughly equivalent to missing an entire year of school. Girls experience a similar loss of IQ after only a single fighting-related injury.

Human cells make mice smarter.

Questions answered with the pupils of your eyes.

Blundering Makes You More Attractive.

Why Every Coin Flip May Be a Schrödinger’s Cat. Previously: In 1935, Erwin Schrödinger devised an insidious thought experiment.

Loeb, Clooney said, “calls himself an activist investor, and I would call him a carpet bagger.”

Cell phone ownership (i.e., cellular subscribers/population) has grown sharply since 1988, average use per subscriber has risen from 140 to 740 minutes a month since 1993, and surveys indicate that as many as 81 percent of cellular owners use their phones while driving—yet aggregate crash rates have fallen substantially over this period. [PDF]

Math advances suggest that the encryption systems that secure online communications could be undermined in just a few years.

With such technology, the bureau can remotely activate the microphones in phones running Android to record conversations, one former U.S. official said. It can do the same to microphones in laptops without the user knowing, the person said.

It Now Appears Possible to Hack a Japanese Toilet.

How the big studios, desperate to protect German business, let Nazis censor scripts, remove credits from Jews, get movies stopped and even force one MGM executive to divorce his Jewish wife.

Gay Russian Neo-Nazis Are Fighting And Fisting For Gay Rights… Or Something.

Neuroscientist, Robert Ferrante, 64, denies the homicide charge. It’s not clear, of course, how he’ll explain the fact that he purchased a half-pound of cyanide. Investigators also found witnesses who saw Ferrante experimenting with mixing up the creatine-enhanced energy drink that his wife, Dr. Autumn Klein, was taking in the belief that it would help her become pregnant.

How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish.

Abandoned Walmart is Now America’s Largest Library.

The Fake Townhouses hiding Mystery Underground Portals.

Porn Sex vs Real Sex.

Since the size, density, and even shape of a person’s skull is somewhat unique, that resonance will vary across individuals. Our current research was designed to explore whether this uniqueness in skull resonance might have a direct influence on the kinds of music a person prefers. […] this research suggests that the skull [shape and size] might influence the music that a person dislikes rather than the music a person likes.

{ Acoustical Society of America/Improbable | Continue reading }

“Tell me what kinds of toxins are in your body, and I’ll tell you how much you’re worth,” could be the new motto of doctors everywhere. In a finding that surprised even the researchers conducting the study, it turns out that both rich and poor Americans are walking toxic waste dumps for chemicals like mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium and bisphenol A, which could be a cause of infertility. And while a buildup of environmental toxins in the body afflicts rich and poor alike, the type of toxin varies by wealth.

People who can afford sushi and other sources of aquatic lean protein appear to be paying the price with a buildup of heavy metals in their bodies, found Jessica Tyrrell and colleagues from the University of Exeter.

{ Quartz | Continue reading }

An open source project to combat “stylometry”, the study of attributing authorship to documents based only on the linguistic style they exhibit, is proving that it is possible to change writing style so as to evade detection.

Artificial Intelligence techniques are routinely used to detect plagiarism and recently were employed to reveal that Harry Potter author J K Rowling is indeed the author of The Cuckoo’s Calling published under the byline of Robert Galbraith.

Now software is tackling the opposite problem–anonymizing writing style to protect the identity of the originator.

{ I Programmer | Continue reading }

How much do you like courgettes? According to one Facebook page devoted to them, hundreds of people find them delightful enough to click the “like” button – even with dozens of other pages about courgettes to choose from.

There’s just one problem: the liking was fake, done by a team of low-paid workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, whose boss demanded just $15 per thousand “likes” at his “click farm”. […]

That particular Facebook page on courgettes was set up by the programme makers to demonstrate how click farms can give web properties spurious popularity. […]

Sir Billi, a British cartoon film voiced by Sir Sean Connery, has more than 65,000 Facebook likes – more than some Hollywood films.

Although it has so far only been released in South Korea, Facebook data suggests the city of Dhaka is the source of the third-largest number of likes. (The Egyptian capital, Cairo, is presently the source of the highest number.)

{ The Guardian | Continue reading }

Running late is often referred to as a time management issue, but try thinking of it as life span management and commitment integrity. It has impact on many areas of your life but especially on your relationships. Your ability to arrive and depart according to your commitments is one of the ways people ascertain if they can rely on you or if they will respect you.

{ Max Strom | Continue reading }

In the middle of the 20th century, experimental psychologists began to notice a strange interaction between human vision and time. If they showed people flashes of light close together in time, subjects experienced the flashes as if they all occurred simultaneously. When they asked people to detect faint images, the speed of their subjects’ responses waxed and waned according to a mysterious but predictable rhythm. Taken together, the results pointed to one conclusion: that human vision operates within a particular time window – about 100 milliseconds, or one-tenth of a second.

[…] Pretty much anyone with a pair of eyes will tell you that vision feels smooth and unbroken. But is it truly as continuous as it feels, or might it occur in discrete chunks of time?

{ Garden of the Mind | Continue reading }

screenshot { Ivan Mozzhukhin, Le brasier ardent, 1923 }