Keith Chen, an economist from Yale, makes a startling claim in an unpublished working paper: people’s fiscal responsibility and healthy lifestyle choices depend in part on the grammar of their language.

Here’s the idea: Languages differ in the devices they offer to speakers who want to talk about the future. For some, like Spanish and Greek, you have to tack on a verb ending that explicitly marks future time—so, in Spanish, you would say escribo for the present tense (I write or I’m writing) and escribiré for the future tense (I will write). But other languages like Mandarin don’t require their verbs to be escorted by grammatical markers that convey future time—time is usually obvious from something else in the context. In Mandarin, you would say the equivalent of I write tomorrow, using the same verb form for both present and future.

Chen’s finding is that if you divide up a large number of the world’s languages into those that require a grammatical marker for future time and those that don’t, you see an interesting correlation: speakers of languages that force grammatical marking of the future have amassed a smaller retirement nest egg, smoke more, exercise less, and are more likely to be obese.

{ Discover | Continue reading }

Epicurus himself, while dismissive of the claims of all religions, was no “luxurious sensualist.” Known for the simplicity of his life, he was born on the Greek island of Samos in 341 BCE, studied philosophy in Athens with a disciple of Plato’s and eventually founded a school of his own there, over which he presided until his death, in 270. Breaking with the Idealism of Plato, his thought, influenced by the Atomism of Democritus, was thoroughly materialistic in its description of the universe and — though its starting point was quite different — similar in many of its conclusions to that of the Stoics. The physical world, he held, was all there was and was composed of differently shaped atoms whose various combinations formed all matter; there were no divine laws or divine rewards or punishments for human actions, and hence no moral codes that human beings were obliged to obey. The only rational goal was to live life as pleasurably as possible.

And yet, Epicurus wrote: “When we say that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life…. We cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly, nor live wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly.”

{ The Jewish Daily Forward | Continue reading }

When people have positive experiences with members of another group, they tend to generalize these experiences from the group member to the group as a whole. This process of member-to-group generalization results in less prejudice against the group. Notably, however, researchers have tended to ignore what happens when people have negative experiences with group members.

In a recent article, my colleagues and I proposed that negative experiences have an opposite but stronger effect on people’s attitudes towards groups.

{ Mark Rubin | Continue reading }

{ Sheron Rupp | interview }

Scientists are attempting to clarify the path that leads to consciousness by following a single, bite-sized piece of information — the redness of an apple, for instance — as it moves into a person’s inner mind.

Recent research into the visual system suggests that a sight simply passing through the requisite vision channels in the brain isn’t enough for an experience to form. Studies that delicately divorce awareness from the related, but distinct, process of attention call into question the role of one of the key stops on the vision pipeline in creating conscious experience.

Other experiments that create the sensation of touch or hearing through sight alone hint at the way in which different kinds of inputs come together. So far, scientists haven’t followed enough individual paths to get a full picture. But they are hot on the trail, finding clues to how the brain builds conscious experience.

One of the best-understood systems in the brain is the complex network of nerve cells and structures that allow a person to see. Imprints on cells in the eye’s retina get shuttled to the thalamus, to the back of the brain and then up the ranks to increasingly specialized cells where color, motion, location and identity of objects are discerned.

After decades of research, today’s map of the vision system looks like a bowl of spaghetti thrown on the floor, with long, elegant lines connected by knotty tangles. But there’s an underlying method in this ocular madness: Information appears to flow in a prescribed direction.

After planting a vision in a person’s retina, scientists can then watch how one image moves through the brain. By asking viewers when they become aware of the vision, researchers may pinpoint where along the pipeline it pops into consciousness.

{ ScienceNews | Continue reading }

Half a century ago, roughly half of all hospital deaths in the United States got autopsies. (…)

The autopsy is the ultimate medical audit. It is a foundation of modern medicine, and its two greatest values are to show doctors where they tend to go wrong, both on the individual level and through all of medicine, and providing crucial medical information to the families of the dead. It ensures that instead of burying their mistakes, doctors learn from them.

For instance, an autopsy revealed that an otherwise mysterious death was due to a pulmonary embolism — and that the embolism was in turn caused by widespread cancer in a woman who was thought healthy. This history of cancer will be of vital importance to her children and other relatives. It will also teach the doctors who cared for her some valuable lessons in diagnosis and treatment.

{ Wired | Continue reading }

It’s estimated that 1% of the world’s population is asexual, although research is limited. Annette and others like her have never and probably will never experience sexual attraction. She has been single her whole life, something she repeatedly says that she is more than happy about. (…)

Listen to asexual people talk about everyday life and you realise they face social minefields that don’t affect people of other sexualities. “Living in a world that holds the romantic and the sexual as the highest ideals possible is difficult,” says Bryony, a 20-year-old biology student from Manchester. “The most pervasive effect on my life at the moment, as a student, is how many conversations revolve around sex and the sexual attractiveness of certain people that I just don’t really want to join in with.”

{ The Guardian | Continue reading }

related { Some people never find the love of their lives. And live to tell about it. }

When you fly trans-Atlantic, why does the plane not go straight? One would think the shortest route would be a straight line from say NYC to London… but the plane makes a curve…

What is a straight line on the globe may appear as a curved line on a flat map. Use a globe and hold a piece of string tight against it with one end at each of the two cities you are flying between. You might find that this gives you a very different path than if you drew a straight line on a map. (…)

For example, a direct line from Toronto to Tokyo goes through Alaska and Siberia. On a flat map with the north pole at the top, this would look like an arch. (…)

Notice that the red line is shorter than the blue line. The sphere has a smaller circumference as you get closer to either of the polls than it does at the equator (closer to the blue line)
 
If you were to fly directly to your destination on a transatlantic flight (let’s say along the blue line), you would have to fly a much further distance than if you bowed up north over Greenland (and flew closer to the red line) for a bit.

{ Askville | Continue reading }

North Atlantic Tracks (NAT) are trans-Atlantic routes that stretch from the northeast of North America to western Europe across the Atlantic Ocean. They ensure aircraft are separated over the ocean, where there is little radar coverage.

These heavily-traveled routes are used by aircraft traveling between North America and Europe, flying between the altitudes of 28,500 and 42,000 feet, inclusive. Entrance and movement along these tracks is controlled by special Oceanic Center air traffic controllers to maintain separation between airplanes.

The primary purpose of these routes is to provide a Minimum Time Route. They are aligned in such a way as to minimize any head winds and maximize tail winds impact on the aircraft. This results in much more efficiency by reducing fuel burn and flight time.

To make such efficiencies possible, the routes are created daily to take account of the shifting of the winds aloft. (…)

Concorde did not travel on the North Atlantic Tracks as it flew to the United States from the United Kingdom and France from a much higher altitude, between 45,000ft and 60,000ft. The weather variations at these altitudes were so minor that Concorde followed the same route each day, traveling to and from Europe to North America on fixed tracks.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Chang and Eng Bunker were conjoined twin brothers, born on May 11, 1811 in Siam (now Thailand). Their condition and birthplace became the basis for the term “Siamese twins.”

Because of their Chinese heritage (as they were born from a Thai Chinese father and Chinese-Malay mother), they were known as the “Chinese Twins” in Siam. They were joined at the sternum by a small piece of cartilage. Their livers were fused but independently complete. Although 19th century medicine did not have the means to do so, modern surgical techniques would have easily allowed them to be separated.

In 1829, they were “discovered” in Siam by British merchant Robert Hunter and exhibited as a curiosity during a world tour. Upon termination of their contract with their discoverer, they successfully went into business for themselves. In 1839, while visiting Wilkesboro, North Carolina, the twins were attracted to the area and settled on a 110-acre farm in nearby Traphill, becoming naturalized United States citizens.

Determined to start living a normal life as much as possible, the brothers settled on a plantation, bought slaves, and adopted the name “Bunker.”

On April 13, 1843, they married two sisters: Chang to Adelaide Yates and Eng to Sarah Anne Yates. This made their respective children double first cousins. In addition, because Chang and Eng were identical twins, their children were genetically equivalent to half-siblings, thus making them genetically related in the same manner as half-siblings who are also first cousins.

Their Traphill home is where they shared a bed built for four. Chang and his wife had 10 children; Eng and his wife had 11. In time, the wives squabbled and eventually two separate households were set up – the twins would alternate spending three days at each home. During the American Civil War Chang’s son Christopher and Eng’s son Stephen both fought for the Confederacy. Chang and Eng lost part of their property as a result of the war, and were very bitter in their denunciation of the government in consequence.

After the war, they again resorted to public exhibitions, but were not very successful. They always maintained a high character for integrity and fair dealing, and were much esteemed by their neighbors. The twins died on the same day in January 1874. Chang, who had contracted pneumonia, died rather suddenly in his sleep. Eng awoke to find his brother dead, and called for his wife and children to attend to him. A doctor was summoned to perform an emergency separation, but Eng refused to be separated from his dead brother. He died three hours later.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | Thanks Tim }

In this article we explore how online daters use technology to assess and manage the real and perceived risks associated with online dating. (…)

All participants believed that online dating was risky in some manner.

To manage these risks participants used technology in various ways: ways: to assist them in assessing authenticity and compatibility, to limit their self disclosure and exposure, to undertake surveillance of others and to control their online interactions. The participants made pragmatic use of the technologies available to them to minimise the risks, deploying risk management strategies throughout their online dating experiences.

{ International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society | Continue reading }

photo { Yoshihiro Tatsuki }

{ Ryou has crafted a series of food storage contraptions that counter the hidden, black box technology of the refrigerator by relying on “traditional oral knowledge [that] has been accumulated from experience.” | Architizer | Continue reading }

My wife quit watching 20 minutes into the movie preferring to play Words with Friends on her I-pad. I toughed it out hoping that it would get better and it finally did… it ended.

{ Netflix Users/Gawker | Continue reading }

photo { Colleen Nika }

A couple of years ago, I was asked to give a talk about “The American Novel Today.” It wasn’t my first choice of topic, frankly, partly because I read as few contemporary novels as possible, partly (here we get into cause and effect) because most of the novels that get noticed today (like most of the visual art that gets the Establishment’s nod) should be filed under the rubric “ephemera,” and often pretty nasty ephemera at that. I do not, you may be pleased to read, propose to parade before you a list of those exercises in evanescence, self-parody, and general ickiness that constitute so much that congregates under the label of American fiction these days. Instead, I’d like to step back and make some observations on the place of fiction in our culture today, A.D. 2012. It is very different from the place it occupied in the 19th century, or even the place it occupied up through the middle of the last century.

We get a lot of new novels at my office. I often pick up a couple and thumb through them just to keep up with what is on offer in the literary bourse. The delicate feeling of nausea that ensues as my eye wanders over these bijoux is as difficult to describe as it is predictable. The amazing thing is that it takes only a sentence or two before the feeling burgeons in the pit of the stomach and the upper lip grows moist with sweat. (…)

I do not deny that there are good novels written today. I think, for example, of the spare, deeply felt novels of Marilynne Robinson, especially Gilead, her quiet masterpiece from a few years back. It might even be argued (I merely raise this as a possibility) that there are as many good novels being written today as in the past. It is sobering to reflect that between 1837—when Victoria ascended the throne and Dickens’s first novel, The Pickwick Papers, was published—and 1901—the year of Victoria’s death—some 7,000 authors published more than 60,000 novels in England. How much of that vast literary cataract has stood the test of time?

{ Roger Kimball/Weekly Standard | Continue reading }

A nurse has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and among the top ones is ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’. (…)

There was no mention of more sex.

{ The Guardian | Continue reading }

artwork { Jeremy Geddesart }

related { Hollywood has gone crazy for human growth hormone, with top stars, filmmakers, and studio executives touting its benefits: ripped abs, fewer wrinkles, increased sex drive, more energy (and aggression), etc. With anti-aging clinics prescribing it freely, is H.G.H. a career-saving miracle or a pricey, silly, even hazardous placebo? | Vanity Fair | full story }

Jonathan Turley wants to keep lies legal:

Alvarez … is a liar. … After his election to a water board in California, he introduced himself at a public meeting as “a retired Marine of 25 years,” a repeatedly wounded warrior and a Medal of Honor recipient. … He was found out, publicly ridiculed and hounded out of office. … [He is] one of the first people prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act, … [which] makes it a crime to falsely claim “to have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the Armed Forces of the United States.” …

The problem with the law they may have broken is not just that it is unnecessary, but that it can be dangerous to criminalize lies. After all, with the power to punish a lie comes the power to define the truth — a risky occupation for any government. (…)

Turley’s arguments are surprisingly weak. We needn’t let government set the truth on all topics to outlaw very clear cases of lying. Lies being common in social talk doesn’t require us to legalize all lies.

{ Overcoming Bias | Continue reading | Read more: Arguments in United States v. Alvarez delve into whether fibbing is free speech. }

photo { Square America }

The world’s population is burning through the planet’s resources at such a reckless rate – about 28 per cent more last year - it will eventually cause environmental havoc, said the Worldwatch Institute, a US think-tank.

In its annual State of the World 2010 report, it warned any gains from government action on climate change could be wiped out by the cult of consumption and greed unless changes in our lifestyle were made.

Consumerism had become a “powerful driver” for increasing demand for resources and consequent production of waste, with governments, including the British, too readily wanting to promoted it as necessary for job creation and economic well-being.

More than £2.8 trillion of stimulus packages had been poured into economies to pull the world out of the global recession, it found, with only a small amount into green measures.

But the think tank warned that without a “wholesale transformation” of cultural patterns the world would not be able to “prevent the collapse of human civilisation”.

The think tank found that over the past decade consumption of goods and services had risen by 28 per cent — with the world digging up the equivalent of 112 Empire State Buildings of material every day.

The average American consumes more than his or her weight in products each day.

{ Guardian | Continue reading }

Gil Yosipovitch and his colleagues have performed one of the first comparisons to see if itches are itchier on some body parts than others. They also investigated whether scratching itches in some places brings more satisfaction than others. (…)

The main findings were that itches were perceived as more intense on the ankle and back, as compared with the forearm. Similarly, scratching was more pleasurable on the ankle and the back than on the forearm.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

photo { Billy Kid }

First of all, shemale is a derogatory term. (…)

Of course tops who want to penetrate have to keep their penises. Since I’m a bottom I want to be penetrated vaginally, which is why I am going to have my penis removed.

{ Arts & Opinion | Continue reading }

First she hired T-Symmetric, at the time when she was banging asses in video booths for 50 bucks a pop. She learned bondage by doing it and before long she could make the Williamsburg Bridge out of ropes.

{ The New Inquiry | Continue reading }

photo { Joe Skilton }

In the last decade or so, the study of networks has had a profound effect on the way we understand the spread of everything from fashion and ideas to forest fires and disease.

But this better understanding of individual networks has revealed a gaping hole in our knowledge of how networks interact with each other. That looks to be hugely important. Many systems, rather than being individual networks, are actually networks of networks: the financial system, the economy, our brain and our genetic control system to name just a few.

What’s puzzling about all these systems is that they demonstrate emergent behaviour that single networks alone cannot reproduce.

So it’s no surprise that with the triumphs in understanding single networks under their belts, complexity scientists have set their sights on the more ambitious goal of understanding ‘networks of networks’. Consequently, this area is set to become one of the fastest growing in science.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

artwork { Mike Kelley, Riddle of the Sphynx, 1991 | knitted afghan, stainless-steel bowls, and offset photolithograph }

Dr Benoist Schaal, researcher at the Dijon-Dresden European Laboratory for Taste and Smell (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), states that eating habits start in the womb. He explained a study conducted by himself, along with researchers Luc Marlier and Robert Soussignan, on how unborn babies “learn odours from their pregnant mother’s diet.”

The scientists asked a group of pregnant women to consume anise flavoured cookies. Once they gave birth, researchers tested their kids along with others whose mothers hadn’t consumed the cookies. They found that the former recognized the smell and showed a good disposition towards it, while the latter rejected it.

{ United Academics | Continue reading }