Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk.
When a romantic relationship isn’t going well it seems like it influences everything in life. This brings up a slew of interesting questions. What is the exact nature of a relationship’s influence on unrelated decisions? How might different kinds of relationship troubles influence people in different ways? For example, in what ways do you behave differently when you’re considering breaking up your significant other as opposed to when you feel like they’re considering breaking up with you? […]
The researchers found that feeling as though your partner was the reason for incompatibility led people to become “promotion focused” – a psychological orientation where the tendency is to be motivated by gains, growth, and not missing out on positive outcomes. On other hand, when people felt that they were the reason for the incompatibility, it led to a “prevention focus” — an orientation where the tendency to is to be motivated by the need to maintain responsibilities and avoid negative outcomes.
photo { Isabel Martinez }
Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman.
According to the evolutionary physiologist and geographer Jared Diamond, in his acclaimed book “Guns, Germs and Steel” (1997), there are six criteria that animals must meet for domestication. […]
First, domestic animals cannot be picky eaters; they must be able to find enough food in and around human settlements to survive. […]
Second, only animals that reach maturity quickly relative to the human life span are worth considering. We can’t afford to waste too much time feeding and caring for an animal before it grows large enough to be put to work or slaughtered. Failure to meet this requirement prevented elephants from achieving widespread domestication; they can be tamed and are good laborers, but take 15 years to reach adult size. […]
Third, domesticated species must be willing to breed in captivity. […]
Fourth, domesticated animals must be docile by nature. […]
Fifth, domestic animals cannot have a strong tendency to panic and flee when startled. This rules out most species of deer and gazelles, which have flighty temperaments and a powerful leap that enables them to escape over high fences. […]
Lastly, with the exception of the cat, all the major domesticated animals conform to a social hierarchy dominated by strong leadership.
photo { Anri Sala, No Barragán, No Cry, 2002 }
‘It’s better to be a dictator than gay.’ –Alexander Lukashenko
Chemical giant Monsanto has partnered with the Gates Foundation, which reportedly works to suppress local seed exchanges and environmentally sustainable agricultural practices through its global agricultural charity work. Fraud-prone drug giant GlaxoSmithKline is a partner in the Foundation’s work to leverage its own relatively fractional contribution to vaccination efforts, so that it centrally controls enormous world funds for purchase, pricing, and delivery of vaccines for world public health. […]
The Gates Foundation, and Gates personally, also own stock and reap profits from many of these same partner corporations. In addition, the Foundation owns a profit-generating portfolio of stocks which would seem to work against the Foundation’s declared missions, such as the Latin American Coca-Cola FEMSA distributorship and five multinational oil giants operating in Nigeria. These corporate investments, now moved to a blind trust whose trustees are Bill and Melinda Gates, are collaterally supported by the Foundation’s tax-free lobbying and advocacy activities.
His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air
The FBI and national cybercrime agencies are warning people traveling abroad to be wary of shady scammers planting malware via insecure hotel Internet connections.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center notes that malware perpetrators are masking their cybercrime weapons as popup software updates travelers see when setting up their Internet connections.
Every day, the same, again
No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found. [US government denies mermaids exist after documentary mix-up.]
Survey: 25% of Female Facebook Users Admit to Posting Unflattering Photos of Friends on Purpose .
Fed-up Lebanese protest against protests.
A Korean Rice Liquor Is Far And Away The World’s Best-Selling Booze.
Meet the 14-year-old who unlike her mother and four sisters is refusing to have breast implants.
Drug-Sniffing Drones Are Flying Over Bolivia, the New Cocaine Underdog.
Alex White, a drug dealer in Atlanta with a side business as an informant, had a crisis of conscience. What do you do when the cops you work for are dirtier than you are? [NY Times]
CBS Reporter Lara Logan thought she was going to die in Tahrir Square when she was sexually assaulted by a mob on the night that Hosni Mubarak’s government fell in Cairo. [NY Times]
Big Banks Have Become Mafia-Style Criminal Enterprises.
International timekeepers added a second to the clock at midnight universal time Saturday, June 30, going into July 1.
How Exactly Could a Squid ‘Inseminate’ Your Mouth?
We think more rationally in a foreign language.
Embarrassing Conditions: Waking up with an Italian Accent.
What’s it Like to be a Man with an Eating Disorder?
Breast-Feeding Won’t Make Your Children Smarter.
Sleep deprivation affects the immune system in a similar way as physical stress.
A moral argument against the war on drugs.
Physicists seem to have finally trapped their most-desired quarry: the Higgs boson, the last undiscovered fundamental particle in the standard model that underpins modern physics. More: Higgs boson: physics professors answer your questions live.
According to this study, information gleaned from interrogational torture is very likely to be unreliable, and when torture techniques are employed, they are likely to be used too frequently and too harshly.
Reflections on 10 Years of Countering Terrorism. [CIA.gov]
What can surnames tell us about the culture, genetics and history of our society? That is the question being answered by Chinese researchers who have traced the evolution of surnames across China. 1.28 billion people share 7,327 surnames
Playing cards, used for games and magic, are so familiar, yet we know remarkably little about the way we perceive and think about them. Are some cards more memorable than others? Are some easier to identify?
How Headphones Changed the World.
How Does the Film Industry Actually Make Money? [NY Times]
New York’s Monument to Gentrification: The High Line represents the high-water mark of the hipster aesthetic, which venerates poverty and decay as signifiers of authenticity.
Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. Retailers and some publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books.
Google search techniques. [via ZunguZungu]
What is the Fibonacci Sequence and why is it famous?
What If All of America’s Toilets Were Flushed Simultaneously?
Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman.
Findings from a first-of-its-kind study by Indiana University researchers confirm anecdotal evidence that exercise—absent sex or fantasies—can lead to female orgasm.
While the findings are new, reports of this phenomenon, sometimes called “coregasm” because of its association with exercises for core abdominal muscles, have circulated in the media for years. […]
“The most common exercises associated with exercise-induced orgasm were abdominal exercises, climbing poles or ropes, biking/spinning and weight lifting,” Herbenick said. “These data are interesting because they suggest that orgasm is not necessarily a sexual event, and they may also teach us more about the bodily processes underlying women’s experiences of orgasm.”
On ne sort de l’ambiguïté qu’à son détriment
1. Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2. The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons, while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
The mirage of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the wall
In the West, plot is commonly thought to revolve around conflict: a confrontation between two or more elements, in which one ultimately dominates the other. The standard three- and five-act plot structures—which permeate Western media—have conflict written into their very foundations. A “problem” appears near the end of the first act; and, in the second act, the conflict generated by this problem takes center stage. Conflict is used to create reader involvement even by many post-modern writers, whose work otherwise defies traditional structure.
The necessity of conflict is preached as a kind of dogma by contemporary writers’ workshops and Internet “guides” to writing. A plot without conflict is considered dull; some even go so far as to call it impossible. This has influenced not only fiction, but writing in general—arguably even philosophy. Yet, is there any truth to this belief? […]
For countless centuries, Chinese and Japanese writers have used a plot structure that does not have conflict “built in,” so to speak. Rather, it relies on exposition and contrast to generate interest. This structure is known as kishōtenketsu.
Kishōtenketsu contains four acts: introduction, development, twist and reconciliation.
It would have served her just right if she had tripped up over something accidentally on purpose with her high crooked French heels on her to make her look tall and got a fine tumble. Tableau!
How does the brain decide between actions? Is it through comparisons of abstract representations of outcomes or through a competition in a sensorimotor map defining the actions themselves?
{ Neural Mechanisms for Interacting with a World Full of Action Choices | via Thoughts on Thoughts | Continue reading }
related { New Mind-Reading Device Lets Paralyzed People Type }
photo { Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari }
‘If you’re going through hell, keep going.’ –Winston Churchill
Manufacturers all have their own recipes for creating their fireworks; but the basic chemistry behind is the same for any fireworks.
Manufacturers start by combining a mixture of metals and oxidizers such as chlorates, perchlorates, or nitrates. The type of metals used influences the fireworks colours while the oxidizers provide the oxygen needed to achieve the required temperature for the reaction. Water is also added to the mixture to bind the metals and oxidizers together. This damp mixture is then cut into smaller pieces known as “stars”.
The manufacturers then fill a fireworks shell with “stars” and black powder, a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur. A time-delay fuse is also inserted into the shell which ignites the black powder and stars causing the shell to burst open.
There are 5 basic colours for fireworks, and each colour is produced by a different metal:
Red—strontium
Green—barium
Yellow—sodium
Blue—copper
White—aluminum, magnesium, or titanium[…]
“Some colours are pretty easy, and those colours would be red and green,” says Worsey, “but you can tell how good a firework manufacturer is by the quality of their blues.” Blue is such a difficult colour to produce because the reaction temperature has to be perfect.
[…]
Some fireworks create familiar shapes like as rings, stars, and hearts as they explode. The trick behind these fireworks is the plastic mold that’s placed inside the fireworks shell.
artwork { Cy Twonbly, Untitled, 1993 }
Don’t grow up, it’s a trap
Psychiatrists used to say that personality never changes. […] Recent years have revealed a more liberating picture. Rather than being set in stone, qualities and traits evolve (often subtly) over time. Research shows that you aren’t likely to be the same person at 90 as you were at 19.
Although we are all different some general patterns occur. Typically, we become more introverted and more emotionally stable when progressing into older age (from 65+). Crucially, an average retired person is more ‘agreeable’ than either a young or middle-aged adult: they are more likely to be empathetic, considerate, friendly, generous, and helpful. […]
A large ‘quality of life’ survey performed in the UK and USA looked at the mental and physical well-being of 10,000 men and women. Comparing the differences between younger and older adults – physical health is worse after the age of 60 (no surprises there), but, mental wellbeing actually improves.
images { Julianna Brion | Hudson Hayden }
And targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs
A group of scientists from MIT and the University of British Columbia have created “mini-factories” that can be programmed to produce different types of proteins and, when implanted into living cells, it should distribute those proteins throughout the body. The scientists have initially triggered these “factories” into action through the use of a laser light to relay the message of which proteins to produce.
The medical functions of this technology is nearly endless in treating and perhaps curing numerous diseases, from diabetes to cancer.
After them march gentlemen of the bed chamber Black Rod, Deputy Garter Gold Stick, the master of hone
…New York the most linguistically diverse city in the world. […]
While there is no precise count, some experts believe New York is home to as many as 800 languages — far more than the 176 spoken by students in the city’s public schools or the 138 that residents of Queens, New York’s most diverse borough, listed on their 2000 census forms. […]
New York is such a rich laboratory for languages on the decline that the City University Graduate Center is organizing an endangered-languages program. […]
In addition to dozens of Native American languages, vulnerable foreign languages that researchers say are spoken in New York include Aramaic, Chaldic and Mandaic from the Semitic family; Bukhari (a Bukharian Jewish language, which has more speakers in Queens than in Uzbekistan or Tajikistan); Chamorro (from the Mariana Islands); Irish Gaelic; Kashubian (from Poland); indigenous Mexican languages; Pennsylvania Dutch; Rhaeto-Romanic (spoken in Switzerland); Romany (from the Balkans); and Yiddish.
Researchers plan to canvass a tiny Afghan neighborhood in Flushing, Queens, for Ormuri, which is believed to be spoken by a small number of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan. […]
In northern New Jersey, Neo-Aramaic, rooted in the language of Jesus and the Talmud, is still spoken by Syrian immigrants and is taught at Syriac Orthodox churches in Paramus and Teaneck. […] And on Long Island, researchers have found several people fluent in Mandaic, a Persian variation of Aramaic spoken by a few hundred people around the world.
photo { “Back to the 50′s” car show at the Minnesota State Fair Grounds }
Just like a shadow
{ Two students swallowed 35mm film. After “collecting” the slides in a dark room, they fixed the silver and scanned the film with an electron microscope. | more }
All turned where they stood; John Wyse Nolan came down again.
Are human beings intrinsically good but corruptible by the forces of evil, or the reverse, innately sinful yet redeemable by the forces of good? […]
Until about three million years ago the ancestors of Homo sapiens were mostly vegetarians, and they most likely wandered in groups from site to site where fruit, tubers, and other vegetable food could be harvested. Their brains were only slightly larger than those of modern chimpanzees. By no later than half a million years ago, however, groups of the ancestral species Homo erectus were maintaining campsites with controlled fire — the equivalent of nests — from which they foraged and returned with food, including a substantial portion of meat. Their brain size had increased to midsize, between that of chimpanzees and modern Homo sapiens. The trend appears to have begun one to two million years previously, when the earlier prehuman ancestor Homo habilis turned increasingly to meat in its diet. With groups crowded together at a single site, and an advantage added by cooperative nest building and hunting, social intelligence grew, along with the centers of memory and reasoning in the prefrontal cortex.
Probably at this point, during the habiline period, a conflict ensued between individual-level selection, with individuals competing with other individuals in the same group, versus group-level selection, with competition among groups. The latter force promoted altruism and cooperation among all the group members. It led to group-wide morality and a sense of conscience and honor. The competitor between the two forces can be succinctly expressed as follows: within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. Or, risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.
She is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her luck-penny
His view was that 1% of people would never steal, another 1% would always try to steal, and the rest of us are honest as long as we’re not easily tempted. Locks remove temptation for most people. And that’s good, because in our research over many years, we’ve found that everybody has the capacity to be dishonest and almost everybody is at some point or another. […]
People are able to cheat more when they cheat for other people. In some experiments, people cheated the most when they didn’t benefit at all. […]
Small dishonesties matter because they can lead to larger ones. Once you behave badly, at some point, you stop thinking of yourself as a good person at that level and you say, What the hell. […]
We think if we make the punishments harsh enough, people will cheat less. But there is no evidence that this approach works. Think of the death penalty.
This tenebrosity of the interior, he proceeded to say
Disease has changed since 1812. People have different diseases, doctors hold different ideas about those diseases, and diseases carry different meanings in society. […]
Disease is always generated, experienced, defined, and ameliorated within a social world. Patients need notions of disease that explicate their suffering. Doctors need theories of etiology and pathophysiology that account for the burden of disease and inform therapeutic practice. Policymakers need realistic understandings of determinants of disease and medicine’s impact in order to design systems that foster health. The history of disease offers crucial insights into the intersections of these interests and the ways they can inform medical practice and health policy. […]
The bill of mortality from 1811 contains both the familiar and the exotic. Consumption, diarrhea, and pneumonia dominated the mortality data, but teething, worms, and drinking cold water apparently killed as well. […] Doctors agreed that even a near miss by a cannonball — without contact — could shatter bones, blind people, or even kill them. Reports of spontaneous combustion, especially of “brandy-drinking men and women,” received serious, if skeptical, consideration. […]
A century later, the infections had been redefined according to specific microbial causes. The Journal ran reviews of tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and syphilis. Diphtheria, measles, pneumonia, scarlet fever, and typhoid made frequent cameos, and Massachusetts still maintained a leper colony on Penikese Island.
unrelated { Miami Cannibal attacker was not on bath salts, just marijuana }
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it
Legal action conducted by organisations deemed to be “patent trolls” cost US companies an estimated $US29 billion during 2011.
The study suggested that during 2011, 2150 companies mounted a total 5842 defences in US cases against intellectual property companies that owned and licensed patents without producing any related goods of their own.
