
A new study from the U.K. confirms the conventional wisdom: friends and exercise make us happy. It also shows how unhappy people drag us down.
{ The Atlantic | Continue reading }
photo { Jim Britt }
marketing, photogs, psychology |
April 12th, 2011

If beautiful people have more daughters, and if physical attractiveness is heritable, then it follows that, over time, women become physically more attractive than men. This indeed appears to be the case.
The logic of the generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis (gTWH) suggests that physically more attractive parents are more likely to have daughters than physically less attractive parents. (…)
Earlier studies indeed show that women are on average physically more attractive than men both in Japan and in the United States. Analysis of the NCDS data now replicates the sex difference in physical attractiveness in the United Kingdom.
{ PsychologyToday | Continue reading }
genders, science |
April 12th, 2011

{ How food-breaks sway the decisions of judges. The graph above shows that the odds that prisoners will be successfully paroled start off fairly high at around 65% and quickly plummet to nothing over a few hours (although, see footnote). After the judges have returned from their breaks, the odds abruptly climb back up to 65%, before resuming their downward slide. | Discover | full story }
food, drinks, restaurants, law, psychology |
April 12th, 2011
Forget passwords, tricky sums are more secure
Classic user identification requires the remote user sending a username and a password to the system to which they want to be authenticated. The system looks up the username in its locally stored database and if the password submitted matches the stored password, then access is granted. This method for identification works under the assumption there exist no malicious users and that their local terminals cannot be infected by malware. (…)

Nikolaos Bardis of the University of Military Education, in Vari, Greece and colleagues there and at the Polytechnic Institute of Kiev, in Ukraine, have developed an innovative approach to logins, which implements the advanced concept of zero knowledge identification.
Zero knowledge user identification solves these issues by using passwords that change for every session and are not known to the system beforehand. The system can only check their validity.
{ ScienceText | Continue reading }
mathematics, spy & security, technology |
April 12th, 2011

Remember Paul Ceglia? He’s the fellow in upstate New York who sued Mark Zuckerberg last July, claiming that, way back in 2003, Zuckerberg had agreed to give him a 50% ownership in the project that became Facebook.
That claim seemed preposterous at the time, not least because Ceglia had waited 7 years to file it. And there was also the fact that Ceglia was a convicted felon, having been charged with criminal fraud in connection with a wood-pellet company he operated. (…)
But now Paul Ceglia has refiled his lawsuit. With a much larger law firm. And a lot more evidence. And the new evidence is startling.
{ Business Insider | Continue reading }
economics, law, social networks |
April 12th, 2011

Suicide Gene Identified
The study evaluated the entire genomes of patients with bipolar disorder who had attempted suicide (n=1201) and those who had not (n=1497). In total, there were more than 2500 regions located on various chromosomes that showed significant associations with suicidal behavior. The strongest association was with a region on chromosome 2 containing the ACP1 gene. This gene encodes for a signaling protein (tyrosine phosphatase) produced in the brain.
{ BrainBlogger | Continue reading }
photo { Sophia Wallace }
genes, science |
April 12th, 2011

In recent years several studies have suggested that women’s voices change at different times over the menstrual cycle, with the tone rising as ovulation approaches.
Now a study conducted by researchers at the West Texas A&M University in which women’s voices were subjected to computerized acoustical analysis contradicts those findings.
After assessing 175 samples provided by 35 study participants at various points throughout the menstrual cycles, the researchers say that changes in hormonal status have no significant impact on eight distinct voice parameters.
{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }
photo { Zev Jonas }
genders, horse, science |
April 11th, 2011

A study found that pigeons recognize a human face’s identity and emotional expression in much the same way as people do.
Pigeons were shown photographs of human faces that varied in the identity of the face, as well as in their emotional expression — such as a frown or a smile. In one experiment, pigeons, like humans, were found to perceive the similarity among faces sharing identity and emotion. In a second, key experiment, the pigeons’ task was to categorize the photographs according to only one of these dimensions and to ignore the other. The pigeons found it easier to ignore emotion when they recognized face identity than to ignore identity when they recognized face emotion.
{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }
images { 1 | 2. Shomei Tomatsu }
birds, science |
April 11th, 2011

Key genital measurement linked to male fertility
The dimension in question is not penis or testicle size, but a measurement known as anogenital distance, or AGD.
That distance, measured from the anus to the underside of the scrotum, is linked to male fertility, including semen volume and sperm count, the study found. The shorter the AGD, the more likely a man was to have a low sperm count. (…)
Phthalates are a group of chemicals widely used in industrial and personal care products, including fragrances, shampoos, soaps, plastics, paints and some pesticides.
Scientists tested for the presence of phthalates in the pregnant women’s urine. They found that women who had high levels of phthalates in their urine during pregnancy gave birth to sons who were 10 times more likely to have shorter than expected AGDs.
{ Reuters | Continue reading }
health, science |
April 11th, 2011
Police in Maryland are on the hunt for the perpetrator of what appears to be an April Fools’ Day prank that left a man glued to a toilet at a Wal-Mart store.
Woman who tried to tear a Gauguin painting off a wall at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC said “Two Tahitian Women” is “very homosexual. I think it should be burned. (…) I am from the American CIA and I have a radio in my head.”
Paranoid schizophrenic knifed elderly mum after release from hospital for killing dad.
Drunk teacher who allegedly flapped arms and made chicken noises removed from classroom.
Illinois man calls police after strippers fail to show up at his Wisconsin motel room.
A prostitute shot a client to death when their sexual encounter was interrupted by a woman banging at the man’s door, claiming he’d given her a sexually transmitted disease.
Staten Island man set pregnant ex-girlfriend’s apartment ablaze in bizarre fecal rampage.
Cow manure fetish man jailed for 2 years in UK.
Police Officer Pepper Sprays Baby Squirrel In Texas. [Thanks Tim]
Ten flamingoes massacred in frenzied anteater attack in Sweden.
Man ‘goofing around’ falls out bus bathroom window, dies.
An East Village artist uses MetroCards as canvases for her oil paintings, and now the MTA is demanding a 10 percent cut.
Brooklyn Cemetery Expansion Pushing Out Residents.
Three more sets of human remains found on Long Island beach, NY.
Mee became known as ‘hiccup girl’ in 2007, when she began hiccuping 50 times a minute. Her story took another twist today when she gave a tearful interview from prison denying her alleged role in the murder of a Florida man.
Face of Jesus appears on log.
Cambodia sets marriage age limit for foreign husbands. Would-be bridegrooms will now have to be less than 50 years old.
Independent female directors are making pornographic films aimed at women. What makes them so different?
Adult industry enraged as ‘Porn Wikileaks’ gives stars’ real names.
Kremlin rejects FSB proposal to ban Skype, Gmail.
An accountant who tipped off the IRS that his employer was skimping on taxes has received $4.5 million in the first IRS whistleblower award. The accountant’s tip netted the IRS $20 million in taxes and interest from the errant financial-services firm.
Learning new color names increases the volume of gray matter in certain regions of the brain.
‘Molyneux’s question’ asks, “if a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could he similarly distinguish those objects by sight if given the ability to see?”
Contrary to our intuition, research suggests that more trusting people are better than cynics at detecting when others are lying.
Olfactory pathogen primes [bad smell] increase intentions to use condoms. Related: Someone please explain this condom ad to me.
Yawns More Contagious Around Relatives, Friends.
Sleepy or Empathetic: What Does Yawning Mean?
Eating freeze-dried strawberries can slow the growth of precancerous lesions in the esophagus.
Confirmation that stressed people can’t resist the temptation of a cigarette.
Starting periods before the age of 10 increases risk of lung complaints in future.
Sand drift explained.
The way galaxies form and evolve is largely a mystery to astronomers. A particular focus of much head scratching is the bar that appears in many spiral galaxies.
By recreating the Big Bang inside a metamaterial for the first time, physicists have shown why the cosmological arrow of time points in the same direction as the thermodynamic arrow of time.
In the continuing series of posts on belief in the paranormal 100 years after it was all originally debunked by Victorian scientists and psychologists, we discuss Michael Faraday who debunked spiritualism by observing the claim that the table at seances could move under its own power.
42% of people who graduate from college never read another book.
Around 25 percent of health messages in Spanish text books are not based on scientific evidence.
How Materialistic Advertising Messages Negatively Shape the Female Body Image.
Media’s focus on ideal body shape can boost women’s body satisfaction — for a while.
Computer Software Proves Shakespeare Co-Authored Plays. Yet some may ask why Shakespeare, the author of the greatest plays in the English language, would tinker with the works of a lesser playwright from a rival company?
Barbarian Group CEO Benjamin Palmer on Cheil, Brands and Social Media.
Apple’s iPad, iOS to Lead Tablet Market Through 2015, according to a report from market research firm Gartner.
Android and iOS War Is Not Mac vs Windows.
Man vs. Machine on Wall Street: How Computers Beat the Market.
On the eve of our IPO, we decided to withdraw the offering.
The entire history of air power was written the very first time that a bomb was dropped out of an airplane in warfare.
Early on Jan. 1, 2007, Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was shot to death after a New Year’s Eve party at a Denver nightclub. The police launched a massive investigation that included multiple interviews with two other Broncos who were at the same club that night. But years would pass before the full story came to light.
Tony Botello, the 36-year-old man-boy behind Kansas City’s biggest independent blog.
Mr. Gagosian said the Hong Kong launch means he’s always got a gallery open somewhere in the world, no matter the time zone.
Jeff Koons, The Video Game. [Thanks Daniel]
Does magic need more female performers to be cool again?
I’d seen four shrinks in my life, and they’d all dozed off mid-session. Was it them—or me? I went back to find out.
Why is it so difficult to transcribe birdsong?
Part three in a three part series: Steven Heller on the design practices of the Third Reich.
Welcome to the booming world of high-end aquariums.
A long-forgotten soft drink is helping create surprising new cocktails.
Is organic wine better for the environment?
Why Escalators Bring out the Best in People.
Why Do the World’s Fattest People Live on Islands?
Amid all the earbudded iPods, smart phones and MP3 players, one can’t help but wonder: Whatever happened to the audiophile?
Now I will describe my first analytic experience as an analyst.
7 Most Terrifying Sex Toys Ever Patented.
Here’s a tip for falling asleep. I don’t think you’ll see it anywhere else. It goes like this: Don’t think words.
In a move described as “remarkable” by Joycean scholars, the singer Kate Bush has said she has been given permission to use Molly Bloom’s famous soliloquy from Ulysses in a song to be released next month. The Joyce estate, whose main trustee is the writer’s grandson Stephen Joyce, are notoriously protective of the writer’s work and have brought numerous lawsuits against scholars and artists attempting to quote from the writer’s work.
James Joyce estate strikes again with writ to DNA pioneer Craig Venter.
I’ve seen every Woody Allen movie. Here’s what I’ve learned.
A Complete Guide to Seinfeld’s Sneakers.
Drug runners’ jungle-built Kevlar-coated Supersubmarines.
Where does the suffix “-arama,” as in “foodarama,” come from?
Do It Yourself : How to Build Hallucinogenic Goggles.
A brief history of time zones.
The History of Science Fiction.
Polaroid of Keith Haring painting Grace Jones, signed by Andy Warhol. Sold for $2,425.00 on eBay.
At 4:32 p.m. Tuesday, every single resident of New York City decided to evacuate the famed metropolis, having realized it was nothing more than a massive, trash-ridden hellhole that slowly sucks the life out of every one of its inhabitants. ‘We’re Getting The Hell Out Of This Sewer,’ Entire Populace Reports.
Family Freud.
Chinese Boob Clamp Commercial. [Thanks Glenn]
every day the same again |
April 11th, 2011

Cranberry juice is apparently very good at prevent urinary tract infection, particularly in women. There have been a few studies approaching it from different angles but, disappointingly, the studies all use different types of cranberry product, different doses and dosing techniques but despite all this the message seems to be pretty clear. Cranberries prevent urinary tract infections kicking in.
Before we can consider how this occurs its important to define what we are talking about. Urinary tract infections or UTIs are generally caused by a strain of Escherichia coli called Uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) and it gets there by moving from the colon…ew. For this reason men rarely have to worry about them while they can be a chronic problem for women around the world, however the insertion of urinary catheters is a major risk factor for both genders. Clinical symptoms include burning sensation during urination and cloudy urine but these are only really evident once the bacteria have ascended the urethra into the bladder causing urethritis and cystitis respectively. If you want to feel real pain however let the little bastards work their way into your kidneys where kidney infection (or pyelonephritis) results in the above symptoms plus back pain and fever and the possibility of systemic spread.
{ Disease Prone | Continue reading }
food, drinks, restaurants, health |
April 11th, 2011

Medieval Venice was a trading empire, one of the busiest ports of the late medieval world. As a hub of commerce waves of plague visited and revisited Venice in 1348, 1462, 1485, 1506, 1575-1577, and 1630-1632 with the last two producing mortality rates around 30% of the population.
As we all know, Venice has a land problem, or rather a lack of land problem. Thriving economies draw large populations and burial space becomes difficult to come by. Adding the plague on top and we have the perfect conditions for the discovery of mass plague burials.
{ Detecting pathogens in medieval Venice | Contagions | Continue reading }
photo { Grave of Peggy Guggenheim and her dogs in Venice | i took the photo | Starting in late December 1937, Peggy Guggenheim and Samuel Beckett had a brief affair. | And: Of everything she did in her life, she said discovering Pollock was “by far the most honourable achievement.” But Pollock was rarely invited to her outrageous bashes “as he drank so much and did unpleasant things on such occasions.” He once urinated into a fireplace. }
flashback, health, venice |
April 11th, 2011

{ Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, ca. 1482 | Enlarge/Zoom | There are 500 identified plant species depicted in the painting, with about 190 different flowers. Of the 190 different species of flowers depicted, at least 130 have been specifically named. | Wikipedia | Continue reading }
Botany, art |
April 9th, 2011
I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday-School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free-papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department at Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly–and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. (…)
P.S.—Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
{ Letter from Jourdan Anderson to His Former Master, 1865 | Continue reading | PDF }
U.S., experience, flashback |
April 8th, 2011

It has become harder to escape feeling like a tourist. Part of this is because cities are becoming more indistinguishable. In his essay “The City in the Age of Touristic Reproduction” philosopher Boris Groys notes how the local distinctions that once made foreign destinations exotic — the architectural or culinary peculiarities, the unique monuments, the cultural idiosyncrasies — have all become exportable signifiers, rapidly transmissible around the globe. This dissemination of local ideas, Groys argues, establishes a worldwide uniform city in places that were once distinct.
{ The New Inquiry | Continue reading }
image { Olivier Laric, Versions, 2010 }
bonus (1:04 mark):
halves-pairs, ideas, within the world |
April 8th, 2011

We often remember things by relying on the overall gist of an event—for example, instead of storing every detail about our last birthday, we tend to remember abstract things like “I had a fun party” or “I was in a grumpy mood because I felt old.”
This strategy allows us to remember more things about an event, but there’s one major drawback: by storing memories based on gist, we actually change how we remember the event. This happens because we are biased to remember things that are consistent with our overall summary of the event. So if we remember the birthday party was “super fun” overall, we’ll exaggerate how we remember the details—the average chocolate cake is now “insanely good”, and the 10 friends who were there becomes a “huge crowd.” (…)
As it turns out, gist changes the way we remember an event after just one second.
{ I on Psych | Continue reading }
photo { Noah Kalina }
memory, neurosciences |
April 8th, 2011

At the start of the new documentary Orgasm Inc., we meet Charletta, a sixtysomething woman who says she cannot reach orgasm. Well, she takes that back: She can. Just not at the same time as her husband. Not like they do in the movies. “Not like normal women,” she insists. She’s so convinced something’s wrong that she joins a clinical trial for the Orgasmatron – an electrical device implanted in the spine to induce climax.
Produced over 10 years by Vermont filmmaker Liz Canner, Orgasm Inc. is an indictment of the medicalization of female sexuality and the quest to develop and market medical solutions for a class of disorder called female sexual dysfunction, or FSD. The film targets, for instance, an alarming, though ultimately flawed, study cited by drug companies claiming that as many as 43 percent of American women suffer from FSD – a ready-made pharmaceutical market if ever there was one.
Canner uses Charletta and others as evidence of the ridiculous – even dangerous – lengths women have gone to feel “normal.” She argues that FSD doesn’t exist, at least not in the physiological sense, but rather was manufactured by “Big Pharma” to convince us we have a problem that only its pricey drugs and technologies can fix. (…)
Many doctors specializing in female sexuality argue that women are indeed candidates for FSD drugs. “The pharmaceutical industry did not create distressing sexual problems for women,” says Dr. Jan Shifren, director of the Vincent Menopause Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. She says the percentage of women who experience such difficulties hovers around 12. Not Big Pharma’s 43, but not insignificant, either. “That doesn’t mean we need to treat women exclusively with pills,” she adds. “The answer is somewhere in between.”
{ The Boston Globe | Continue reading }
health, sex-oriented |
April 8th, 2011

A concept is not at all something that is a given. Moreover, a concept is not the same thing as thought: one can very well think without concepts, and everyone who does not do philosophy still thinks, I believe, but does not think through concepts–if you accept the idea of a concept as the product of an activity or an original creation.
I would say that the concept is a system of singularities appropriated from a thought flow. A philosopher is someone who invents concepts. Is he an intellectual? No, in my opinion. (…)
Philosophy arises with the action that consists of creating concepts. For me, there are as many creations in the invention of a concept as in the creation by a great painter or musician.
{ Gilles Deleuze, Cours de Vincennes on Leibniz | Continue reading }
deleuze |
April 8th, 2011

Science is not always about success. Most research projects are unsuccessful stories producing ambiguous or ‘null’-results that don’t lead to unambiguous conclusion. Nevertheless this ‘failed’ research provides useful and valuable information for fellow scientists. Currently only research projects with positive results and clear conclusions have the chance to get published in scientific journals. Due to these publication practices a lot information is lost for the scientific community and additionally scientists find themselves in the dilemma of having to overinterpret data.
We have set out to change this. With the Journal of Unsolved Questions (JUnQ) we provide a means to gather ‘null’-result research and open problems.
{ JUnQ.info | Continue reading }
ideas, science |
April 8th, 2011