Imagine we rewound the tape of your life. Your diplomas are pulled off of walls, unframed, and returned. Your children grow smaller, and then vanish. Soon, you too become smaller. Your adult teeth retract, your baby teeth return, and your traits and foibles start to slip away. Once language goes, you are not so much you as potential you. We keep rewinding still, until we’re halving and halving a colony of cells, finally arriving at that amazing singularity: the cell that will become you. The question, of course, is what happens when we press “play” again. Are your talents, traits, and insecurities so deeply embedded in your genes that they’re basically inevitable?

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

Processed-food companies increasingly turn to their legions of scientists to produce foods that we can’t resist. These food geeks tweak their products by varying the levels of the three so-called pillar ingredients—salt, sugar, and fat. […]

[The] optimum amount of salt, sugar, or fat is called the bliss point. Scientists also adjust these ingredients as well as factors such as crunchiness to produce a mouthfeel—that is, the way the food feels inside a person’s mouth—that causes consumers to crave more. Technologists can also induce a flavor burst by altering the size and shape of the salt crystals themselves so that they basically assault the taste buds into submission.

The holy grail of junk-food science is vanishing caloric density, where the food melts in your mouth so quickly that the brain is fooled into thinking it’s hardly consuming any calories at all, so it just keeps snacking.

{ IEEE | Continue reading }

art { Peter Palombi }

American households have rebuilt less than half of the wealth lost during the recession, according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve, hampering the country’s economic recovery.

The research from the St. Louis Fed shows that households had accumulated net worth totaling $66 trillion at the end of last year. After adjusting for inflation and population growth, the bank found that meant families on average have only made up 45 percent of the decline in their net worth since the peak of the boom in 2007.

In addition, most of the improvement was due to gains in the stock market, according to the report, primarily benefiting wealthy families. That means the recovery for most households was even weaker. […]

The Fed is spending $85 billion a month to lower long-term interest rates and stimulate the economy. It has also kept short-term interest rates to near zero. That has helped push stock markets to record highs, while home prices have jumped by the most in seven years. Consumer confidence is at its highest point since February 2008. Officials hope those factors will eventually result in more consumer spending power.

{ Washington Post | Continue reading }

Uncertainty exists about how markets will reestablish normal valuations when the Fed withdraws from the market. It will likely be difficult to unwind policy accommodation, and the end of monetary easing may be painful for consumers and businesses. Given the Fed’s balance sheet increase of approximately $2.5 trillion since 2008, the Fed may now be perceived as integral to the housing finance system.

{ Federal Advisory Council via Zero Hedge | Continue reading }

Big news from the annals of science last week. A British newspaper reports that the mysteries of the universe may have been solved by a hedge-fund economist who left academia 20 years ago. Eric Weinstein’s theory – he calls it geometric unity – posits a 14-dimensional “observerse”, which contains our work-a-day, four-dimensional, space-time universe.

{ The National | Continue reading | More: Guardian }

photo { Alessandra Celauro }

BMJ Case Reports has a paper that describes two patients with Parkinson’s disease who experienced hallucinations that transferred onto photos they took to try and prove they were real. This is ‘Patient 1′ from the case report:

Patient 1 was first evaluated at age 66, having been diagnosed with PD [Parkinson’s Disease] at age 58… She complained of daytime and night-time visual hallucinations for the past one year. Most of the time she did not have insight about them. She described seeing three children playing in her neighbor’s yard and a brunette woman sleeping under the covers in one of the beds in her house. She also saw images of different people sitting quietly in her living room. […] In one instance, she saw a man covered in blood, holding a child and called 911.

Her husband, in an attempt to prove to her that these were hallucinations, took pictures of the neighbor’s yard and the bed in their house. Surprisingly, when shown these photos, the patient continued to identify the same children playing in the yard and the same brunette woman sleeping under the covers. This perception was present every time the patient looked at these photos.

{ Mind Hacks | Continue reading }

screenshot { Chantal Akerman, Je, tu, il, elle, 1975 }

unrelated { PETA Wants to Sue People Who Leave Anonymous Comments }

Each month many women experience an ovulatory cycle that regulates fertility. Whereas research finds that this cycle influences women’s mating preferences, we propose that it might also change women’s political and religious views. Building on theory suggesting that political and religious orientation are linked to reproductive goals, we tested how fertility influenced women’s politics, religiosity, and voting in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. In two studies with large and diverse samples, ovulation had drastically different effects on single versus married women. Ovulation led single women to become more liberal, less religious, and more likely to vote for Barack Obama. In contrast, ovulation led married women to become more conservative, more religious, and more likely to vote for Mitt Romney. In addition, ovulatory- induced changes in political orientation mediated women’s voting behavior. Overall, the ovulatory cycle not only influences women’s politics, but appears to do so differently for single versus married women.

{ Psychological Science | PDF }

We usually show different sides of ourselves on the workfloor than we do when we’re with family. In a group of friends we play yet another role, and so we do in a sport’s club. This switching between such social settings makes life stressful, a study suggests.

That seems to be the case at least for the women in the study. […] Cornwell looked at how many social roles respondents played and how many settings they visited on a given day. It turned out that individuals who switched more frequently between these roles and settings reported higher levels of stress. This doesn’t necessarily mean role-switching is causing stress. It’s also very likely for instance that counting the settings people visit is a good measure of how busy their lives are.

Men, anyhow, don’t seem to have any problems with social switching.

{ United Academics | Continue reading | SAGE }

Couple Plans To Deliver Baby In Dolphin-Assisted Birth.

People will lie about their sexual behavior to match cultural expectations about how men or women should act – even though they wouldn’t distort other gender-related behaviors, new research suggests. […] men wanted to be seen as “real men:” the kind who had many partners and a lot of sexual experience. Women, on the other hand, wanted to be seen as having less sexual experience than they actually had, to match what is expected of women.

{ The Ohio State University | Continue reading }

photo { Annemarie Heinrich, Caprichos, 1936 }

A man pretending to be ‘Gangnam Style’ singer psy has crashed the Cannes Film Festival, working his way into a number of VIP parties. […] He was spotted at the Carlton Hotel VIP Room and Martinez Beach, and attended the “secret party” of “millionaire oil magnate and fashion designer” Goga Ashkenazi at Le Baron. He was also seen teaching fellow party goers how to do the dance for ‘Gangnam Style’.


{ NME | Continue reading | Fake Psy Interview }

art { Yves Klein, The Void (Empty Room), 1961 | Invisible: Art about the Unseen, 1957–2012 }

By early 2030s, experts predict nanorobots will be developed to improve the human digestive system, and by 2040, as radical as this sounds, we could eliminate our need for food and eating. This is the vision of futurist Ray Kurzweil and nutritionist Terry Grossman, M.D. […] By mid-2030s, nutritional needs tailored solely to meet each person’s requirements will be more clearly understood. The required nutrients could then be provided inexpensively by a nano-replicator and delivered directly to each cell by nanorobots; thus eliminating the need to eat food.

{ IEET | Continue reading }

photo { Stephen Shore }

Venezuela’s grand plan to fix its toilet-paper shortage: $79 million and a warning to stop eating so much.

NASA funds project to make space meals with 3-D printer.

Formlabs is bringing down the costs of a better 3-D printing technique, but it must survive a patent lawsuit.

Coffee is at its cheapest in three years (but your latte isn’t).

Less than 7 percent of Greece has been properly mapped, officials say. [NY Times]

Even farm animal diversity is declining as accelerating species loss threatens humanity.

Researchers say hybrid of human gum cells and mouse stem cells raises possibility of growing new teeth on patient’s jaw.

With aging, our cognition inevitably declines – some faster than others. One brake that slows this process is the ability to fluently speak two or more languages.

Expert in 10,000 Hours? Maybe Not.

In 2008, the 311 complaint hot line introduced a program that allows people to submit photos, audio and video with their grievances. 8,000 were submitted in the last 15 months. One tipster submitted three photos of a suited man at Florio’s Ristorante in Little Italy on Feb. 12, alleging he sold cigars to minors. Disgruntled neighbors photographed at least 19 “illegal animals,” including one ferret and at least five roosters.

Nine years ago, Graham woke up and discovered he was dead. He was in the grip of Cotard’s syndrome. People with this rare condition believe that they, or parts of their body, no longer exist. Interview.

Are There Really as Many Neurons in the Human Brain as Stars in the Milky Way?

How many people get hit each year by contract killers?

Spain just spent $680 million on a submarine that can’t swim.

Advertising agency is paying to put mini ads in men’s beards. ($5 a day)

A man who set up a video camera to capture paranormal activity in his kitchen instead recorded evidence of his partner engaging in a sexual relationship with his 16-year-old son.

Honeybees trained in Croatia to find land mines.

Why are the cells in honeycombs hexagons? Always hexagons.

Study Shows How Bilinguals Switch Between Languages.

Contrary to popular belief, headaches do not actually happen in the brain.

How pain works.

Hormone levels may provide key to understanding psychological disorders in women.

The Mental Health of Lonely Marijuana Users.

What is going on in the brain of someone who has the deluded belief that they are brain dead?

People with higher IQs are slow to detect large background movements because their brains filter out non-essential information, say US researchers.

A brief visual task can predict IQ, according to a new study.

Once I realized that thinking in patterns might be a third category, alongside thinking in pictures and thinking in words, I started seeing examples everywhere. How an Entirely New, Autistic Way of Thinking Powers Silicon Valley.

CEOs are Terrible at Management, Study Finds.

Google is considering buying map-software provider Waze, setting up a possible bidding war with Facebook.

New Android malware intercepts incoming text messages, silently forwards them on to criminals.

The first major conference for the digital currency Bitcoin suggests it is gaining legitimacy, but in a manner disappointing to some early enthusiasts.

A network of ex-gay groups that believes that LGBTQ people can be helped to become heterosexuals. [PDF]

Peeper’s diagnosis meant that, over her lifetime, she would essentially develop a second skeleton.

Thousands of German POWs held captive in England during World War II were bugged by “secret listeners” who were themselves German refugees, working for the British.

Serial Killer Groupies. Who are they? Related: Hybristophilia.

Why Can’t We Take Pictures in Art Museums?

Colm Ó Cíosóig / My Bloody Valentine Playlist [audio].

Real Lesbians React to Fake Lesbian Porn.

Randy Miller. [Thanks Yvonne!]

On April 7, 1994, Federal Express Flight 705, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 cargo jet ferrying electronics across the United States from Memphis, Tennessee to San Jose, California, experienced an attempted hijacking for the purpose of a suicide attack.

Auburn Calloway, a FedEx employee facing possible dismissal for lying about his previous flying experience, boarded the scheduled flight as a deadheading passenger with a guitar case carrying several hammers and a speargun. He intended to disable the aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder before take-off and, once airborne, kill the crew using the blunt force of the hammers so their injuries would appear consistent with an accident rather than a hijacking. The speargun would be a last resort. He would then crash the aircraft while just appearing to be an employee killed in an accident. This would make his family eligible for a $2.5 million life insurance policy paid by Federal Express.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

art { Caleb Brown }

Sturgeon‘s law is usually expressed thus: 90% of everything is crap. So 90% of experiments in molecular biology, 90% of poetry, 90% of philosophy books, 90% of peer-reviewed articles in mathematics – and so forth – is crap. […]

A good moral to draw from this observation is that when you want to criticize a field, a genre, a discipline, an art form …don’t waste your time and ours hooting at the crap. […] In order not to waste your time and try our patience, make sure you concentrate on the best stuff you can find, the flagship examples extolled by the leaders of the field, the prize-winning entries, not the dregs.

{ Improbable | Continue reading }

Yahoo didn’t just buy a company, it validated, to the tune of a billion dollars, the notion that bad business is worth pursuing. The entire concept of what makes something a good idea continues to be inverted, warped, and thrown in a gully. This is the idea economy, remember—the industry of fantasy. It doesn’t have to “make sense.” Money isn’t valuable. Success isn’t lucrative. Profit is pointless. These are the industry’s norms. All you need to do to become a billion-dollar business is make people entertained and vaguely interested.

David Karp did just that. Over 100 million entranced humans blog with Tumblr, and not a single one pays for the privilege. They’re free to swap reality show GIFs, aspirational shopping photos, and masturbate, with only the faintest whisper of marketing reaching their ears.

{ Valleywag | Continue reading }

Venezuela is running out of toilet paper.

The new legislation stipulates that witches on broomsticks flying over Swaziland may not fly higher than 150 meters.

Prague metro plans to launch love train for singles.

One in five beauty products on women’s shelves are never opened. [via Beauty Blogosphere]

A novel study reports that white men and women of European descent inherit common foot disorders, such as bunions (hallux valgus) and lesser toe deformities, including hammer or claw toe.

How needing a wee affects your decision making.

“Nice guys finish last.” Is it true?

After years of investigations and rumors, prosecutors appear to be closing in on SAC Capital Advisors. SAC Could Face Criminal Charges; Cohen Subpoenaed. Read more: Steven Cohen is an American hedge fund manager, founder of SAC Capital Advisors. He has bought around $700 million worth of artwork, including Hirst’s shark and paintings by Pollock, Picasso, Warhol, de Kooning, Munch.

Rolling Stone owner Jann Wenner has a knack for picking talent.

Yahoo Back On Top After Purchasing Millions Of 13-Year-Old Girls’ Blogs.

Jamaica Ginger extract, known in the United States by the slang name “Jake,” was a late 19th century patent medicine that provided a convenient way to bypass Prohibition laws, since it contained between 70-80% ethanol by weight.

If I fired a pistol and then stuck it in my waistband like on TV, wouldn’t I get burned?

Driverless cars and the automated highway system (1997).

Portfolio boxes for Robert Mapplethorpe’s X, Y & Z portfolios.

Beethoven’s hair.

Racist Park.

When we age, our brain gradually looses the ability to give birth to new neurons (neurogenesis). This sad decline is linked to impairments in cognitive functions such as learning and memory. The brain, like any other organ, feeds off of nutrients and chemicals in the blood to keep it going. This made researchers wonder: is something in the blood affecting neurogenesis as we age?

To explore this, researchers hooked up the circulation of young and old mice (with young-young & old-old pairing as control) so that their blood intermixed.[…] Several weeks after the surgery, researchers examined the animals’ brains to look for changes in neurogenesis. Young mice, when linked with older mice, had significantly fewer newly born neurons and neural progenitor cells than young-young controls.

{ Neuroxia | Continue reading }

photo { Bill Brandt }

{ Is there a breaking point at which Europeans simply say, “Enough”? }