For a long time it has been said that children born in different seasons are more or less susceptible to certain illnesses. (…)

A wealth of data shows that your month of birth has very small but noticeable difference in your long term outcome. For example, spring babies end up growing to be a quarter of an inch (0.6 cm) taller than autumn babies.

Some medical conditions also show a fairly strong relationship to birth month. Schizophrenia is uncommon but the risk is increased 10% if you are born in the dark months (winter to early spring). For Multiple Sclerosis, May is a particularly bad month to be born (or November in the Southern hemisphere).

{ Doctor Stu’s Blog | Continue reading }

painting { Herbert James Draper, Halcyone, 1915 }

Had my parents not happened to meet when they did, and happened to conceive at the moment they did, with a specific pair of egg and sperm, I wouldn’t be here. (…)

I recently came across a lovely (if statistically questionable) visual demonstration. (…) It incorporates probabilities ranging from our parents’ first encounter to our unbroken line of ancestors to the emergence of the first single celled organism, concluding with the following analogy:

The probability that we as unique individuals came to be is equivalent to “the probability of 2 million people getting together each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice, and they all come up with the exact same number - for example, 550, 343, 279, 001. The odds that you exist at all are basically zero.”

{ Psych Your Mind | Continue reading }

1. High heels can lead to heel and ankle pain. (…)

2. High heels alter the electrical activity in your lower back muscles. (…)

3. High heels can shorten your muscle fibers and thicken your tendons. Last year, scientists in Austria reported on their findings on women who, perhaps counter-intuitively, feel pain when walking flat-footed. These women were habitual heel-wearers, and ultrasounds revealed their calf muscle fibers to be 13% shorter than those of women who wear flat shoes. (…)

4. High heels can lead to joint degeneration and osteoarthritis of the knee. (…)

5. High heels can lead to calluses, bunions, and hammertoes.

{ Try Nerdy | Continue reading }

{ Horst P. Horst, Mrs. George Whitney, 1946 | Previously: Horst P. Horst, Costume for Salvador Dalí’s Dream of Venus, 1939 }

Two men have been arrested for installing “skimmers” on 11 separate Chase ATMs near Union Square in January. They stole $300K altogether. Maybe some was yours!

{ Gawker | Continue reading }

related { Using a credit card induces euphoria, new research shows. }

The drop in street crime in New York City after 1990 is not only the largest decline ever documented in a major city but also a major test of the conventional wisdom that has dominated crime policy in the United States for a generation. (…)

Part of New York’s good fortune was the tailwind of a national crime decline during the 1990s, but the New York decline was twice as large and almost twice as long as the national drop. Why was that? What can we learn from this experience to help other cities?

{ NY Post | Continue reading | More: How New York Became Safe | City Journal }

Sylvia Beach (1887 - 1962) was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris. (…)

Beach dreamed of starting a branch of Monnier’s book shop in New York that would offer contemporary French works to American readers. Since her only capital was USD$3,000 which her mother gave her from her savings, Beach could not afford such a venture in New York. However, Paris rents were much cheaper and the exchange rates favorable, so with Monnier’s help, Beach opened an English language bookstore and lending library that she named Shakespeare and Company. Four years beforehand, Monnier had been among the first women in France to found her own bookstore. Beach’s bookstore was located at 8 rue Dupuytren in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

Shakespeare and Company quickly attracted both French and American readers - including a number of aspiring writers to whom Beach offered hospitality and encouragement as well as books. As the franc dropped in value and the favorable exchange rate attracted a huge influx of Americans, Beach’s shop flourished and soon needed more space. In May 1921, Shakespeare and Company moved to 12 rue de l’Odéon.

Shakespeare and Company gained considerable fame after it published James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922, as a result of Joyce’s inability to get an edition out in English-speaking countries. Beach would later be financially stranded when Joyce signed on with another publisher, leaving Beach in debt after bankrolling, and suffering severe losses from the publication of Ulysses.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

What do people die from? And how many of those deaths are caused by mistakes, that we make in human decision-making.

About a hundred years ago this was about 10 percent. Think about how could you kill yourself a hundred years ago by mistake. Maybe you pushed a rock over yourself or got into some bad accident.

A few years ago this percentage was a little bit more than 45 percent. Why? Because over the years as we’ve designed new technologies, we’ve created new ways for us to kill ourselves. Think about diabetes, obesity, smoking, texting while driving. We are creating all of those technologies without really understanding what human nature is and often those technologies are incompatible with us.

{ Dan Ariely/The European | Continue reading }

How kids are getting tipsy. “What we’re hearing about is teenagers utilizing tampons, soak them in vodka first before using them. It gets absorbed directly into the bloodstream.”

Dog Eats $1000 in Cash, Only Returns $900.

Physicians in India discovered seven-year-old Kura Nitya cries stones from her eyes.

Hu Xiao says his job as one of China’s executioners is usually not very complicated, except for the time when a prisoner he was about to kill stood up and ran toward his loaded rifle.

Painting by fictional artist sells for $11,000. David Bowie was part of the hoax.

Europe Bans Airport X-Ray Body Scanners Amid Cancer Concerns.

European Children More Likely to Outperform Parents Than Americans.

What Iceland Teaches Us: “Let Banks Fail.”

Analysis of phallic decorations in Paleolithic art may also show evidence of the world’s first known surgery performed on a male genital organ.

Live forever? Scientists are now able to reverse old age.

Sounds Like a Winner: Voice Pitch Influences Perception of Leadership Capacity.

Evolution of Narcissism: Why We’re Overconfident, and Why It Works. Overestimating our abilities can be a strategy for success, model shows.

What triggers an Earworm - the song that’s stuck in your head?

Tortoises Don’t Catch Yawns. Sleepiness and boredom aren’t always contagious.

Buy More Experiences and Less Stuff. Experiences improve with time, resist unfavourable comparisons and are often mentally revisited (unlike stuff).

Why is it so difficult to develop drugs for cancer?

How Has Magic Johnson Survived 20 Years with HIV?

In 1960, 68%) of all Americans in their twenties were married. By 2008, just 26% of twenty-somethings were wed. How Marriage Became Optional: Cohabitation, Gender, and the Emerging Functional Norms.

Why do experts seek negative feedback to get motivated?

Did I do that? The psychology of alcohol-induced blackouts.

The strange and curious history of lobotomy.

Memoirs of an Addicted Brain: A Neuroscientist Examines his Former Life on Drugs. One moment, he is remembering the details of his life as an addict; the next, he is reconstructing, based on newer scientific findings, what the drugs were doing to his brain.

From 1997: How the practice of consuming heroin by ‘chasing the dragon‘ – inhaling vapours after heating the drug on tin foil – spread across the world.

The developers of “Project black mirror” claim to have developed a BCI that can control an  iphone using Siri. The developers of “Neurowear” claim to have developed a pair of wearable rabbit ears containing a BCI that moves based on your mood. Can you tell which one is an elaborate hoax?

The Economist says lie-detectors bring “disaster.” I think they exaggerate.

Do ads with facts work better than ads that appeal through emotion and aspiration?

What’s your beef? This is funny. My beef? It’s not funny, the concept sucks, and the retouching work is bad student level.

The Impact of New Media on Customer Relationships.

Demonology is not simply the study of demons, but of noise’s assault on signal.

Her article ‘Psychology Constructs the Female’ was originally published in 1968 and became an instant classic.

Vladimir Nabokov’s understanding of human nature anticipated the advances in psychology since his day.

Correspondence between between T.S. Eliot and Groucho Marx began in 1961.

Germany’s biggest Catholic-owned publishing house has been rocked by disclosures that it has been selling thousands of pornographic novels with titles such as Sluts Boarding School.

Who wrote the Bible?

Great written works from authors such as Shakespeare and Homer that you’ll never have a chance to read. The Top 10 Books Lost to Time.

Amazon Reveals the Most Well-Read Cities in America.

You wouldn’t think it by looking at the long line of Shakespeare biographies on the library shelves, but everything we know for sure about the life of the world’s most revered playwright would fit comfortably on a few pages. William Shakespeare, Gangster.

NFL great saves former L.A. gang member.

If a medical professional prescribes medication to you and that medication is known to have psychiatric side effects, are they responsible when you kill your spouse? The Utah Supreme Court is considering that very question in the case of David Ragsdale, who killed his wife almost three years ago, but says he wouldn’t have done it if not on medications.

In the summer of 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was on top of the world. Paramount Pictures had paid him an unprecedented $3 million over three years to star in 18 silent films, and he’d just signed another million-dollar contract with the studio. By the end of the week, Fatty Arbuckle was sitting in Cell No. 12 on “felony row” at the San Francisco Hall of Justice, held without bail in the slaying of a 25-year-old actress named Virginia Rappe.

Dwolla is an innovative online payment system that sidesteps credit cards completely. Unlike PayPal, it doesn’t take a percentage of the transaction. It only asks for $0.25  whether it’s moving $1 or $1,000. We interviewed Milne about how he is building a credit card killer.

The bookstore chain that did everything wrong. Bought long leases on huge shops in second-rate locations. Bet heavily on CDs just as the music business slumped. Outsourced online sales to Amazon.

A Preliminary Analysis of Privacy On Google+. Computer scientists say there are privacy concerns over some data that Google+ shares.

John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Steve Jobs. Topics include Isaacson’s failings as an author and biographer, the technical cluelessness on display in the book, and Steve Jobs, Enemy of Progress. [audio]

A History of the word Oops. [Thanks Tim]

Brian Eno on bizarre instruments.

Hair Metal’s Proto-Punk Roots.

The decline of horse racing.

Why don’t Americans eat horse meat?

Maurizio Cattelan announced that after his Guggenheim retrospective, he will retire.

The Clock is a 24-hour long montage meticulously constructed by Marclay and sound designer Quentin Chiappetta from several thousand film scenes that feature clocks or references to time. It took two years and a team of six researchers to assemble all the footage. A work of art that tells the precise time of day, minute by minute, wherever it is shown, exactly matching the time in the real world.

Charlie Chaplin once lost a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

Here’s a map of every McDonald’s in America.

Dolphin laughs.

Mousthair. [via copyranter]

…suggesting that brains have two distinct molecular learning mechanisms, one to learn about relationships among events in the world around them, and one to learn about the effects of their own behavior on the world.

{ Bjoern Brembs | Continue reading }

Do you really know what you want in a partner?

“People have ideas about the abstract qualities they’re looking for in a romantic partner,” said Eastwick, assistant professor of psychology at Texas A&M University and lead author of the study. “But once you actually meet somebody face to face, those ideal preferences for traits tend to be quite flexible.”

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

photo { Ruth Bernhard }

Stuart Brody, a psychology professor at the University of the West of Scotland, claims that you can discern a woman’s ability to achieve orgasm just by looking at her lips.

Vaginal Orgasm Is More Prevalent Among Women with a Prominent Tubercle of the Upper Lip

Introduction. Recent studies have uncovered multiple markers of vaginal orgasm history (unblocked pelvic movement during walking, less use of immature psychological defense mechanisms, greater urethrovaginal space). Other markers (perhaps of prenatal origin) even without obvious mechanistic roles in vaginal orgasm might exist, and a clinical observation led to the novel hypothesis that a prominent tubercle of the upper lip is such a marker.

Aims. To examine the hypothesis that a prominent tubercle of the upper lip is associated specifically with greater likelihood of experiencing vaginal orgasm (orgasm elicited by penile–vaginal intercourse [PVI] without concurrent masturbation).

{ Wiley | Continue reading | via UA }

photo { Annika von Hausswolff }

New research suggests it can take just 20 seconds to detect whether a stranger is genetically inclined to being trustworthy, kind or compassionate.

The findings reinforce that healthy humans are wired to recognize strangers who may help them out in a tough situation. They also pave the way for genetic therapies for people who are not innately sympathetic, researchers said.

“It’s remarkable that complete strangers could pick up on who’s trustworthy, kind or compassionate in 20 seconds when all they saw was a person sitting in a chair listening to someone talk,” said Aleksandr Kogan, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral student at the University of Toronto at Mississauga.

{ UC Berkeley | Continue reading }

Dental health has a major effect on the overall health of an individual. A new study from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology assesses the association of dental health with other pathology on the skeleton. A number of modern studies have correlated dental diseases with other infections and pathologies, finding that individuals with poor oral health have a higher risk of mortality.

{ Bones don’t lie | Continue reading }

photo { John Vachon, Advertising, Woodbine, Iowa, 1940 }

Dmitri Mendeleev (1834 – 1907) was a Russian chemist and inventor. He is credited as being the creator of the first version of the periodic table of elements. Using the table, he predicted the properties of elements yet to be discovered.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

photos { 1. Daniel Everett | 2. Lars Tunbjörk, Stockbroker Tokyo, 1999 }

We examine some of the implications of the possibility that the human penis may have evolved to compete with sperm from other males by displacing rival semen from the cervical end of the vagina prior to ejaculation. (…)

During intercourse the effect of repeated thrusting would be to draw out and displace foreign semen away from the cervix. As a consequence, if a female copulated with more than one male within a short period of time this would allow subsequent males to “scoop out” semen deposited by others before ejaculating. (…)

Under conditions that raise the possibility of females engaging in extra-pair copulations (i.e., periods of separation from their partner, allegations of female infidelity), Gallup et al. (2003) also found that males appear to modify the use of their penis in ways that are consistent with the displacement hypothesis. Based on anonymous surveys of over 600 college students, many sexually active males and females reported deeper and more vigorous thrusting when in-pair sex occurred under conditions related to an increased likelihood of female infidelity.

{ Evolutionary Psychology | Continue reading | PDF }

photo { Erwin Olaf }

In the story, an encyclopedia article about a mysterious country called Uqbar is the first indication of Orbis Tertius, a massive conspiracy of intellectuals to imagine (and thereby create) a world known as Tlön.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Today, one of the churches of Tlön Platonically maintains that a certain pain, a certain greenish tint of yellow, a certain temperature, a certain sound, are the only reality. All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.

{ J. L . Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, 1940 | full story | PDF }

images { 1 | 2 }

Past research, feminist theory and parental admonishments all have long suggested that when men see a woman wearing little or nothing, they focus on her body and think less of her mind. The new findings by Gray, et al. both expand and change our understanding of how paying attention to someone’s body can alter how both men and women view both women and men.

“An important thing about our study is that, unlike much previous research, ours applies to both sexes. It also calls into question the nature of objectification because people without clothes are not seen as mindless objects, but they are instead attributed a different kind of mind,” says UMD’s Gray.”

“We also show that this effect can happen even without the removal of clothes. Simply focusing on someone’s attractiveness, in essence concentrating on their body rather than their mind, makes you see her or him as less of an agent [someone who acts and plans] more of an experiencer.”

Traditional research and theories on objectification suggest that we see the mind of others on a continuum between the full mind of a normal human and the mindlessness of an inanimate object. The idea of objectification is that looking at someone in a sexual context—such as in pornography—leads people to focus on physical characteristics, turning them into an object without a mind or moral status.
However, recent findings indicate that rather than looking at others on a continuum from object to human, we see others as having two aspects of mind: agency and experience. Agency is the capacity to act, plan and exert self-control, whereas experience is the capacity to feel pain, pleasure and emotions. Various factors – including the amount of skin shown – can shift which type of mind we see in another person.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

I was working with psychotic patients at the time, and I particularly enjoyed my conversations with one of my patients, Ron, who would discourse at length on politics, art and science, and who gave cogent accounts of his brilliant, but curtailed, academic career. And then he would flip. He entered a parallel, paranoid universe; an alternative history in which he had served as Princess Anne’s bodyguard, but was now being persecuted by agents of the royal family. Why? Because he had betrayed a terrible secret: the princess had given birth to Siamese twin daughters and hidden them away. One of the brightest people I ever met, Ron was also the most resolutely insane. He refused medication, preferring to meet his madness head on. (…)

Then there are the extremely rare cases of “dicephalic parapagus” (one trunk, two heads) and “diprosopic parapagus” (one trunk, one head, two faces).

Is it possible in such cases to determine the number of persons present? Philosophers delineate various conditions of personhood, among them: humanity (membership of the human race), identity (psychological continuity over time), and individuation (factors distinguishing one person from another). Conjoined twins clearly meet the first two conditions but create confusion over the third. If bodily functions and/or brain activity are to some extent shared then, arguably, the individuation of conjoined twins is only partial. There is neither one person nor two.

{ Prospect | Continue reading }