An expert in synthetic biology explains how people could soon live for centuries.

Superlongevity Without Overpopulation.

Chinese authorities have detained 93 people accused of spreading doomsday rumors and arrested a man who slashed 23 children at a school after he was “psychologically affected” by such predictions.

A kindergarten is being investigated after its so-called “hug fee” caused a backlash from angry parents in China.

Woman in China fined after insulting dog she named after neighbor.

Grad student demonstrates how phones can be turned into listening devices by attackers.

Scientists make fish grow “hands” in experiment that may reveal how fins became limbs.

SoHo, Murray Hill, and the Upper West Side are some of the hottest places in NYC to pick up syphilis.

Office Space Bacterial Abundance and Diversity in Three Metropolitan Areas.

Researchers have developed novel technology to detect the tumors in the body in early stages with the help of nanoparticles.

Have Scientists Found Two Different Higgs Bosons?

Climate Change Tipping Point: Research Shows That Emission Reductions Must Occur by 2020.

Innovations that will change our lives in the next five years. [ibm.com]

The author of the story I’ve described, Heinz von Lichberg, published his tale of Lolita in 1916, forty years before Vladimir Nabokov’s novel.

Louis C.K., Proust Questionnaire.

Mr. Finger. [video]

{‘Instagram’s suicide note.’ | Instagram is changing its terms of use in January }

Man picks up iron instead of telephone.

“There have been no systematic studies of the safety of tattoo inks,” says Howard, “so we are trying to ask—and answer—some fundamental questions.” For example, some tattoos fade over time or fade when they are exposed to sunlight. And laser light is used to remove tattoos. “We want to know what happens to the ink,” says Howard. “Where does the pigment go?” [Thanks Tim]

The American Psychiatric Association: Being transgender is no longer a disorder.

Myers-Briggs is the world’s most widely used personality test and is beloved by Corporate America. But does it actually work?

People live more than a decade longer on average today than they did in 1970, but spend much of these boon years battling diseases like cancer, according to a global health review.

For the first time, a scholarly study has investigated the effects (in an organizational context) of not just one – but four – types of festive headgear.

The web was an interesting and different place before links got monetized, but by 2007 it was clear that Google had changed the web forever, and for the worse. The Web we lost.

The TseTse fly is unique to the African continent and transmits a parasite harmful to humans and lethal to livestock. This paper tests the hypothesis that the presence of the TseTse reduced the ability of Africans to generate an agricultural surplus historically by limiting the use of domesticated animals and inhibiting the adoption of animal-powered technologies. [PDF]

We have past, present and future; we can imagine various time relationships such as imagining some time in the future from the prospective of looking back at it from even further into the future. But we can also abandon identifying a particular time when we imagine. For example we can simulate what it would be like to be in another’s shoes or what it would be like to be in a different place. Instead of time-traveling, we can space-travel or identity-travel. It seems that the evidence so far implies that future and atemporal imagined events are represented similarly. But there are differences between temporal and atemporal imaginings.

{ thoughts on thoughts | Continue reading }

Cops use Taser on woman buying too many iPhones.

Overeating now bigger global problem than lack of food.

Sociophysicists Discover Universal Pattern of Voting Behaviour.

What goes wrong when talks break down. Nonlinear analysis explains how negotiations often fail.

Some people like to have a few close friends, while others prefer a wider social circle that is perhaps less deep. These preferences reflect people’s personalities and individual circumstances — but is one approach to social networks “better” than the other? New research suggests that the optimal social networking strategy depends on socioeconomic conditions.

Nanoscale materials are used in everything from sunscreen to chemical catalysts to antibacterial agents–from the mundane to the lifesaving. 7 ways nanotechnology is changing the world.

110 Predictions For The Next 110 Years.

The James Joyce Scholars’ Collection.

The western style of having both a family name (surname) and a given name (forename or “Christian” name) is far from universal. In many countries it is common for ordinary people to have only one name or mononym.

Indiana Jones Mystery Package.

Fin­ger bis­cuits.

How to Avoid Falling: A Guide for Active Aging and Independence.

‪Chinese Woman Writes With Both Hands Simultaneously in Different Languages‬.

Exreme.

We live in an image society. Since the turn of the 20th century if not earlier, Americans have been awash in a sea of images – in advertisements, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards, throughout the visual landscape. We are highly attuned to looks, first impressions and surface appearances, and perhaps no image is more seductive to us than our own personal image. In 1962, the cultural historian Daniel Boorstin observed that when people talked about themselves, they talked about their images. If the flourishing industries of image management — fashion, cosmetics, self-help — are any indication, we are indeed deeply concerned with our looks, reputations, and the impressions that we make. For over a hundred years, social relations and conceptions of personal identity have revolved around the creation, projection, and manipulation of images. […]

In what follows, I want to contemplate one legal consequence of the advent of the image society: the evolution of an area of law that I describe as the tort law of personal image. By the 1950s, a body of tort law – principally the privacy, defamation, publicity, and emotional distress torts4 — had developed to protect a right to control one’s own image, and to be compensated for emotional and dignitary harms caused by egregious and unwarranted interference with one’s self-presentation and public identity. The law of image gave rise to the phenomenon of the personal image lawsuit, in which individuals sued to vindicate or redress their image rights. By the postwar era, such lawsuits had become an established feature of the sociolegal landscape, occupying not only a prominent place on court dockets but also in the popular imagination. The growth in personal image litigation over the course of the 20th century was driven by Americans’ increasing sense of entitlement to their personal images. A confluence of social forces led individuals to cultivate a sense of possessiveness and protectiveness towards their images, which was legitimated and enhanced by the law.

This article offers a broad overview of the development of the modern “image torts” and the phenomenon of personal image litigation.

{ Samantha Barbas/SSRN | Continue reading }

{ Tobias Wong & J.A.R.K. }

Germany plans to slap a fine of up to 25,000 euros on people having sexual relations with pets, but zoophiles plan to fight the move. They say there’s nothing wrong with consensual sex.

A convicted murderer and rapist behind bars concocted a plot to murder and castrate Justin Bieber and his bodyguard.

In October, 3D-printing startup Shapeways opened its New York production facility in Long Island City, Queens, the biggest consumer-focused 3D printing factory in the world.

In 1955, L’Origine du monde was sold at auction for 1.5 million francs. Its new owner was the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

The impact of alcohol in pedestrian trauma.

How to help a fat cat lose weight.

{ Hugh Crawford | Jen Trausch & Eli Fernald }

{ I went to Art Basel and tried to “get” art }

Eternalism is a philosophical approach to the ontological nature of time, which takes the view that all points in time are equally “real”, as opposed to the presentist idea that only the present is real.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | Thanks James }

While risk research focuses on actions that put people at risk, this paper introduces the concept of “passive risk”—risk brought on or magnified by inaction. […]

Avoidance of regret (more precisely “perceived future regret”/ “anticipated regret”) is a major factor in most inaction biases. Support for this idea can be found in Norm Theory which claims that inactions are usually perceived as “normal”, in contrast to actions, which are viewed as “abnormal” and therefore elicit more counterfactual thinking and regret. People regret actions (with bad outcomes) more than inactions, so it is clear why people who try to avoid regret prefer inaction in situations when actions may lead to unwanted outcomes. However, in passive risk taking behavior we refer to situations in which actions can only lead to positive/neutral outcomes, so regret avoidance cannot be the cause of inaction in these instances. People do not avoid cancer tests because they fear they might feel regret after having the tests done. […]

Procrastination is defined as “the act of needlessly delaying tasks to the point of experiencing subjective discomfort.” It may seem as though passive risk taking is essentially procrastination, but there is a major difference: the procrastinator knows that eventually he will have to complete the task at hand, the decision to act has already been established—it is only the actual doing that is delayed. In passive risk taking people decide “not to act,” or in some cases “not act for now.”

{ Judgment and Decision Making | Continue reading }

photos { Paul Kooiker }

{ Temple of Schlock | Continue reading }

Coffee Lowers the Risk of Oral Cancer by 49 Percent.

Do genes influence personality?

Would you pay more cash to experience intense happiness or to avoid intense embarrassment? Your answer may depend on the culture you live in.

The data in this study indicate that, on a gross society basis, male parts are more often injured by products than are female parts.

Neurofeminism and Anne Jaap Jacobson.

Researchers build featherweight chips that dissolve in water.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have used genome engineering to create algae that can produce expensive biological drugs more cheaply and in larger quantities than bacteria or mammalian cells.

The Evolution of English Words and Phrases Since 1520.

The Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign and Russia’s Mortality Crisis.

The quoted sentence is indicative of a nauseating and cloying posture of precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.

What if you could not access YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia? How would you feel if Google informed you that your connection had been reset during a search? What if Gmail was only periodically available, and Google Docs was completely unreachable?

These things happen almost every day in China. […] Most of these problems are caused by GFW (Great Firewall of China, also known as GFC), one of the most important building blocks in China’s comprehensive censorship system, and perhaps the most sophisticated Internet censorship system in the world. […] Using special techniques, it successfully blocks the majority of Chinese Internet users from accessing most of the Web sites or information that the government doesn’t like. […]

Over a decade of development, GFW has been deployed near the gateways of all Chinese domestic ISPs. With DPI (deep packet inspection) technology, GFW wiretaps all international links and inspects the traffic to detect any sensitive keywords going through the gateway. GFW depends mainly on three technologies to block “harmful” information: IP blocking, DNS (Domain Name System) injection, and TCP RST (Reset).

{ ACM | Continue reading }

photo { Florian Ruiz }

Workers at Jaguar Land Rover plant given bacon sandwich as their Christmas bonus.

Random House gives employees $5,000 Christmas bonuses because of 50 Shades of Grey success.

Brain cells made from urine.

We like people more when they mimic us. But only up to a point. If mimicry becomes too obvious, it can backfire, becoming mockery. A new study asks just how much imitation is enough to trigger benefits. Does the mimicker need to copy every action, or merely to move the same body parts?

Text messages direct to your contact lens.

Syrian rebels debut homemade fighting vehicle controlled by a Sony PlayStation remote control.

This paper compares corruption in China over the past 15 years with corruption in the U.S. between 1870 and 1930, periods that are roughly comparable in terms of real income per capita.

The rotting carcass of a 40-foot fin whale was quietly pulled out to sea Saturday evening by a private tugboat hired by Malibu residents who were tired of its smell.

Ice fishing shack.

Karaoke.

According to new research, playing hard to get tests the commitment and quality of any would-be mate. Researchers identified 58 different hard-to-get strategies used, from on/off flirting and being snooty to using voicemail to intercept calls from would-be partners.

“Playing hard to get might be one way that people – women in particular – can test their prospective mate’s commitment and to manipulate their prospective mates to obtain what – or whom – they want,” said the psychologists who carried out the study. “We revealed that the more unavailable a person is, the more people are willing to invest in them.”

In the study, reported in the European Journal of Personality, the researchers carried out four separate projects involving more than 1,500 people, looking at playing hard to get as a mating strategy to see how and why it works. […]

Women used the tactics more than men. That, say the researchers, could be because women are trying to learn more information about a potential mate as they have more to lose in terms of pregnancy. […]

Appearing highly self-confident was the top-ranked tactic, followed by talking to other people and, third, withholding sex.

{ Independent | Continue reading }

In fact, crosswords are made by people (called constructors) whose status is roughly equivalent to freelance writers—that is to say, low. Puzzles are sent on spec to editors, who buy them or turn them down, and who fine-tune the ones they accept without, as a nearly universal rule, consulting the constructor. Submissions may sit in an editor’s inbox for months or even years before the author hears back. (A few months ago, constructor Tim Croce received an acceptance from The New York Times—for a puzzle he submitted in 2001.) […]

Most outlets offer less than $100 for a daily crossword and less than $300 for a Sunday-sized. […] The New York Times, which runs the most prestigious American crossword series, pays $200 for a daily or $1,000 for a Sunday.

{ The Awl | Continue reading }

The construction of a crossword consists of two operations that are quite different and in the end perfectly independent of each other: the first is the filling of the diagram; the second is the search for definitions.

{ Georges Perec/The Believer | Continue reading }

Extraverted gorillas enjoy longer lives, research suggests.

No One Knows What To Do With The Massive Whale Carcass Rotting Near Malibu’s Celebrity Homes.

Indian village bans mobile phone use by women, saying the phones were “debasing the social atmosphere” by leading to elopements.

Celebrities turn to encryption to keep phones private.

Builders sent in to renovate an 18th century chateau in western France’s Bordeaux wine region reduced it to rubble instead, according to the Russian owner of the property.

Female employees benefit from a male CEO’s generosity when he becomes a father, particularly when the first child is a girl.

Could boredom be curable? An elusive human annoyance may finally be yielding its secrets.

We all consider our bodies to be our own unique being, so the notion that we may harbor cells from other people in our bodies seems strange.

A new generation of researchers is heading into the weird world of psychedelic drugs. It could change their minds.

Sex in Cheese: Evidence for Sexuality in the Fungus Penicillium roqueforti.

Your Cell Phone Could Soon Become Part of a Massive Earthquake Detection System.

If you can find it on iTunes it probably won’t be on Amoeba’s Vinyl Vaults.

Rousseau’s New Heloise, the most popular novel of the eighteenth century, transformed the author from a celebrated philosopher into the object of a cult. It also transformed the history of literature through its influence on giants like Goethe, Flaubert, Stendhal, and Tolstoy. Today, however, the New Heloise is seldom read and even less often enjoyed.

Why aren’t green or blue naturally occurring human hair colors?

A 120-Year-Old Mechanical Device that Perfectly Mimics the Song of a Bird. [thanks GG]

The Earth’s oldest trees.

Life’s great in Miami. [gif]

Pleasantness of an odor is attributed mainly to associative learning: The odor acquires the hedonic value of the (emotional) context in which the odor is first experienced. Associative learning demonstrably modifies the pleasantness of odors, particularly odors related to foods. Experimentally, classical conditioning paradigms (Pavlovian conditioning) have been shown to modify the responses to odors, not only in animals but also in humans (olfactory conditioning).

In olfactory conditioning an olfactory stimulus is the conditioned stimulus that has been paired with an unconditioned stimulus (e.g., taste). For instance, the pleasantness of odors with originally neutral hedonic value was improved after the odors were paired as few as three times with the pleasant unconditioned stimulus, sweet taste. This type of conditioning, where liking of a stimulus changes because the stimulus has been paired with another, positive or negative, stimulus is called evaluative conditioning.

Naturally occurring evaluative conditioning may be important also in modifying the pleasantness of a partner’s body odors (conditioned stimulus) that are encountered initially during affection and sexual intercourse (unconditioned stimulus), because the sexual experiences presumably provide strong, positive, emotional context.

Searches for human pheromones have focused on androstenes, androgen steroids occurring in apocrine secretions, for example, axillary (underarm) sweat, motivated by the fact that one of them, androstenone, functions as a sex pheromone in pigs. However, some 20–40% of adult humans, depending on age and sex, cannot smell androstenone, although their sense of smell is otherwise intact. To date, no convincing evidence exists to demonstrate that any single compound is able to function as a sexual attractant in humans, although several other types of pheromonal effects (e.g., kin recognition) have been observed.

While many studies have explored potential physiological and behavioral effects of the odors of androstenes, we asked a different question: Could an odor (conditioned stimulus) that is perceived during sexual intercourse gain hedonic value from the intercourse experience (presumably a pleasant unconditioned stimulus) through associative learning? While experimental challenges limit human studies of this kind, we approached the question by asking young adults, randomly sampled regarding the level of sexual experience and olfactory function, to rate the pleasantness of body-related (androstenone and isovaleric acid) and control odorants (chocolate, cinnamon, lemon, and turpentine). We compared the responses of participants with and without experience in sexual intercourse and hypothesized that those with intercourse experience would rate the pleasantness of the odor of androstenone higher than would those without such experience. […]

The results suggest that, among women, sexual experience may modify the pleasantness of the odor of androstenone.

{ Archives of Sexual Behavior/Springer | Continue reading }