A tweet from a bogus account said that the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was dead. […] The account behind this Thatcher hoax amassed more than 32,000 followers before publishing word that the Iron Lady had kicked the bucket.
{ Washington Post | Continue reading }
If you see posts floating around the Twittersphere that the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden is dead, don’t believe it.
We are in a state of harassed busyness from which – we are now promised – there will never be any relief.
{ Gonzo Circus | Continue reading | via Rob }
Sometime after 2 A.M. one Sunday morning in May 1987, Kenneth James Parks, then 23, left his house in a Toronto suburb and drove 23 kilometers to the apartment of his wife’s parents. He got out of the car, pulled a tire iron out of the trunk and let himself into the older couple’s home with a key they had given him. Once inside, he struggled with and choked his father-in-law, Dennis Woods, until the older man fell unconscious and then struggled with and beat his mother-in-law, Barbara Ann Woods, stabbing her to death with a knife from her kitchen.
Parks then got back into his car, drove to a nearby police station and announced to the startled officers on duty, “I think I have killed some people.” For several hours before the Toronto man left his home, however, and throughout the course of the attack, Parks was asleep and therefore not criminally responsible for his actions, according to five doctors and the defense lawyer at his 1988 trial for the murder of Barbara Ann and the attempted murder of Dennis. After deliberating for nine hours, the jury agreed and Parks was set free.
If you’ve ever wondered why you can remember some things from long ago yet can’t recall what you ate for dinner last night, a new study led by psychologists at the University of Toronto may help.
How much something means to you actually influences how you see it – as well as how vividly you can recall it later – the study shows.
“We’ve discovered that we see things that are emotionally arousing with greater clarity than those that are more mundane,” says Rebecca Todd. […] “Whether they’re positive – for example, a first kiss, the birth of a child, winning an award – or negative, such as traumatic events, breakups, or a painful and humiliating childhood moment that we all carry with us, the effect is the same.”
“What’s more, we found that how vividly we perceive something in the first place predicts how vividly we will remember it later on,” says Todd. “We call this ‘emotionally enhanced vividness’ and it is like the flash of a flashbulb that illuminates an event as it’s captured for memory.”
related { Scientists Confirm that Memories of Music Are Stored in Different Part of Brain than Other Memories }
photo { René Magritte, Éclipse Solaire, 1935 }
Physically securing a company doesn’t necessarily have to be about expensive alarm systems, high resolution cameras and other fancy gadgets. To keep burglars at bay, all you might need is a gadget that tricks them into thinking that you have high-tech security systems.
{ Softpedia | Continue reading | Thanks Tim }
I have read several times that there is evidence of a U-curve in happiness over an individual’s life. People are happy in their youth, and happy again after retirement, but suffer from a serious malaise in between as they grapple with their finances, careers and family life. […] Today I was glad to find some evidence that the U-curve is just a statistical illusion. […]
Happiness is nearly flat from 20 through 50. Frijter’s explanation for the disagreement with the existing literature is that, “happy people in middle age are busy and don’t have time to participate in lengthy questionnaires, leading previous studies to erroneously think there was a huge degree of unhappiness in middle-age.”
photo { Irving Penn, Girl in Bed (Jean Patchett), New York, 1949 }
Ancient Greek philosophers considered the ability to “know thyself” as the pinnacle of humanity. Now, thousands of years later, neuroscientists are trying to decipher precisely how the human brain constructs our sense of self.
Self-awareness is defined as being aware of oneself, including one’s traits, feelings, and behaviors. Neuroscientists have believed that three brain regions are critical for self-awareness: the insular cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the medial prefrontal cortex. However, a research team led by the University of Iowa has challenged this theory by showing that self-awareness is more a product of a diffuse patchwork of pathways in the brain – including other regions – rather than confined to specific areas. […]
“What this research clearly shows is that self-awareness corresponds to a brain process that cannot be localized to a single region of the brain,” said David Rudrauf, co-corresponding author of the paper, published online Aug. 22 in the journal PLOS ONE. “In all likelihood, self-awareness emerges from much more distributed interactions among networks of brain regions.”
art { Joshua Davis }
For the most part, it’s illegal to sell your body in Britain. But, in fact, there are various legal ways human body parts can be sold that don’t involve waking up in a bath of ice with a kidney missing. In a research experiment, I tried to see how much of the human body can lawfully be put up for sale: by trying to sell as much of my own body as I could. […]
I tried to sell my hair. I was quoted £50 by a hairdresser in London that specialises in harvesting human hair to make wigs for chemotherapy patients. I was hoping they’d offer me considerably more, given that wigs can sell for £1,000. […]
The best offer I got was £30 for some blood. Another clinic would have paid me £50 for some skin – if I had psoriasis. […]
Human urine is about £30 a pot, breast milk £5, even fingernails and faeces do their own roaring trade. […]
My most valuable sale item was eggs. In the UK, they only allow donors £750 compensation, which means almost no donors come forward – and many desperate prospective parents are driven overseas to buy eggs. But in the US, thousands of women sell eggs – it’s a mainstream market.
What are some things that money can’t buy?
Per the answers given below, in no particular order:
Health, strength, athleticism
Unconditional love
Time
A clean conscience or genuine serenity
Genuine human companionship
A natural good night’s sleep
Rain
Taste/Class/Character
Artistic ability
Natively high water pressure (debatable)
[…]
Here’s one thing that most people probably won’t realize money can’t buy: natively high water pressure.
related { How is being a billionaire better than being a millionaire? }
photo { William Gedney }
A group of leading neuroscientists has used a conference at Cambridge University to make an official declaration recognising consciousness in animals. […]
“The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states.”
photo { Ernst Haas, The Misfits, Nevada, 1960 }
Consider the following scenario:
Madeline is an infamous courtesan operating in Victorian London. She counts among her clients some of the most powerful establishment men in Britain. With her career on the wane, she decides to write her memoirs, which will reveal all the sordid details of her many dalliances. This will no doubt cause great scandal and (given the social mores of the time) will be the downfall of her indecorous clientele. Spotting an opportunity to make more money, Madeline offers her former clients a deal: if they pay her a large sum of money, she will keep their name out of the published version of her memoirs.
This thought experiment — which is based on the real-life case of Harriette Wilson — is an example of blackmail: Madeline threatens to do something that would upset or destabilize her clients, unless they pay her a sum of money.
Blackmail is recognized as a crime in most countries. For example, in England and Wales, blackmail is criminalized under s. 21 of the Theft Act of 1968 and carries a potential maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment. But the fact that blackmail is criminalized is thought to be troubling by many theorists of criminal law. As they see it, there is a paradox underlying the criminalization of blackmail. […]
In this series of posts, I want to consider the so-called paradox of blackmail and its possible resolutions.
Married couples who undergo long-term separations appear to be those who can’t afford to divorce, a new nationwide study suggests.
Researchers found that about 80 percent of all respondents who went through a marital separation ultimately divorced, most within three years.
About 5 percent attempted to reconcile. But 15 percent of separations didn’t lead to divorce or reconciliation within 10 years. Couples in these long-term separations tended to be racial and ethnic minorities, have low family income and education, and have young children.
“Long-term separation seems to be the low-cost, do-it-yourself alternative to divorce for many disadvantaged couples,” said Dmitry Tumin, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University.
photo { Richard Klingshirn, The Mini Dress, 1980 }
A virus is a stretch of DNA or RNA, usually a few thousand bases long, enclosed in a protein shell. Once inside the cell, the RNA or DNA from the virus starts producing viral proteins, which are then used for replication.
Now imagine a circular strand of RNA that instead of a few thousand bases comprises a few hundred bases. It doesn’t code for proteins, it doesn’t come in a shell. And yet it’s highly pathogenic and able to reproduce. In plants, that is.
A viroid is essentially a circular strand of RNA, typically between ~250 and ~450 bases long, and it doesn’t encode for proteins. As a consequence, it depends entirely on cell proteins in order to replicate and propagate. Currently there are 30 known viroids.
Driver swerves to avoid moose, hits bear.
PayPal Founder Backs Synthetic Meat Printing Company. [Thanks Tim]
EBay Bans Magic Potions, Curses, Spells.
Sea-surfing ‘wave glider’ robot deployed to help track white sharks in the Pacific.
Divers discover 2,000-year-old Roman shipwreck that is so well preserved even the FOOD is intact. Fish, wine, oil and grain found inside pots, giving new insight into Roman lifestyle.
Humans don’t have labyrinthine vaginal canals.
A male contraceptive pill in the making?
Birth control for men edges closer.
How little we know about the brain and how it affects our daily lives.
How to Build a Neuron: Step 1.
New research from New Zealand’s University of Otago is casting doubt on a landmark US study that suggested infants as young as six months old possess an innate moral compass that allows them to evaluate individuals as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Four-Digit Robotic Hand Approaches Human Dexterity.
Should We Make Crime Impossible?
The single most important object in the global economy: The pallet.
“The Player”, “The Beer Drinker” and “The Buddy”. These are tried and true “ideal male images” used by advertisers to attract men to their products and brand. Apparently, it’s not working so well anymore. Researchers say advertisers may need to incorporate “The Dad”, “The Husband” and “The Handyman” or even, “The Mentor” to avoid alienating the Gen X male consumer.
Facebook not only is on course to go bust but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it.
Google’s real rival, and real competition to watch over the next few years is Amazon.
ReDigi calls the copy on its site “used” or “recycled” (it was originally sold on iTunes). Why Can’t You Resell Old Digital Songs?
Are some fonts more believable than others?
“Modulo” is on Wikipedia’s preposition list, and has an OED entry.
Names of Dogs in Ancient Greece. [Thanks Tim bis]
This article argues that the “traditional concept” of sex discrimination is an invented tradition.
Study: Eggs Are Nearly as Bad for Your Arteries as Cigarettes.
We ate roasted rat and survived.
High-speed video probes how mammals shake water from their fur.
OMG: Kitten Stuck In Bag Of Chips Saved From Subway Tracks.
As a 21-year-old art student, I answered a help-wanted ad at the SoHo studio of Jeff Koons. [NY Times]
Proton-enhanced nuclear induction spectroscopy (PENIS). [Thanks Tim ter]
Thirteen Techniques for Truth Suppression.
Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing, Mexico City, 1997.
Bangladesh has a slightly off-center flag, supposedly so that it appears centered when it’s flying.
You walk into your shower and find a spider. You are not an arachnologist. You do, however, know that any one of the four following options is possible:
a. The spider is real and harmless.
b. The spider is real and venomous.
c. Your next-door neighbor, who dislikes your noisy dog, has turned her personal surveillance spider (purchased from “Drones ‘R Us” for $49.95) loose and is monitoring it on her iPhone from her seat at a sports bar downtown. The pictures of you, undressed, are now being relayed on several screens during the break of an NFL game, to the mirth of the entire neighborhood.
d. Your business competitor has sent his drone assassin spider, which he purchased from a bankrupt military contractor, to take you out. Upon spotting you with its sensors, and before you have any time to weigh your options, the spider shoots an infinitesimal needle into a vein in your left leg and takes a blood sample. As you beat a retreat out of the shower, your blood sample is being run on your competitor’s smartphone for a DNA match. The match is made against a DNA sample of you that is already on file at EVER.com (Everything about Everybody), an international DNA database (with access available for $179.99). Once the match is confirmed (a matter of seconds), the assassin spider outruns you with incredible speed into your bedroom, pausing only long enough to dart another needle, this time containing a lethal dose of a synthetically produced, undetectable poison, into your bloodstream. Your assassin, who is on a summer vacation in Provence, then withdraws his spider under the crack of your bedroom door and out of the house and presses its self-destruct button. No trace of the spider or the poison it carried will ever be found by law enforcement authorities.
This is the future. According to some uncertain estimates, insect-sized drones will become operational by 2030.
{ Gabriella Blum/Hoover Institution/Stanford University | PDF }
photo { Alexander Hammid, Maya Deren, 1945 }
{ Barbra Streisand by Richard Avedon, 1965 | More: Vogue, 1966 }
New research examining relationships and the use of alcohol finds that while a long-term marriage appears to curb men’s drinking, it’s associated with a slightly higher level of alcohol use among women.
photo { Stephen Shore }
A number of recent papers have found that religious and paranormal beliefs were positively associated with “intuitive” thinking and negatively associated with “analytical” thinking. One of these studies investigated personality traits and found that openness to experience had a moderate negative correlation with belief in God, suggesting that the more open to experience people are, the less likely they are to believe. […]
Openness to experience is a broad feature of personality associated with intellectual curiosity, artistic interests, questioning of traditional values and authority, and willingness to explore new experiences and activities. Openness to experience is positively related to a construct called need for cognition, which is associated with analytical thinking.
art { Gary Hume, The Dryad, 2012 }
Theorists have studied Prisoner’s Dilemma for decades, using it as a model for the emergence of co-operation in nature. This work has had a profound impact on disciplines such as economics, evolutionary biology and, of course, game theory itself. The new result will have impact in all these areas and more. […]
The game is this: imagine Alice and Bob have committed a crime and are arrested. The police offer each one a deal–snitch and you go free while your friend does 6 months in jail. If both Alice and Bob snitch, they both get 3 months in jail. If they both remain silent, they both get one month in jail for a lesser offence.
What should Alice and Bob do?
If they co-operate, they both spend only one month in jail. Nevertheless, in a single game, the best strategy is to snitch because it guarantees that you don’t get the maximum jail term.
However, the game gets more interesting when played in repeated rounds because players who have been betrayed in one round have the chance to get their own back in the next iteration.
Until now, everyone thought the best strategy in iterative prisoner’s dilemma was to copy your opponents behaviour in the previous round. This tit-for-tat approach guarantees that you both spend the same time in jail.
That conclusion was based on decades of computer simulations and a certain blind faith in the symmetry of the solution.
So the news that there are other strategies that allow one player to not only beat the other but to determine their time in jail is nothing short of revolutionary.
