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‘It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.’ –W. C. Fields

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Is the desire to know other people’s secrets a natural instinct – or a vulgar vice?

The need to maintain a barrier against the outside world may be one of our most basic human urges; but another is the lust to know the unknown, to observe and indulge in the privacy of others. In his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life the sociologist Erving Goffman demonstrates how we all perform in various guises and to different groups of people, as if we were on stage. We preserve our “backstage” selves as an essential part of our identity – and it is this protected part of our personality that we attempt to mask, while harbouring a strong desire to penetrate those of others.

{ New Humanist | Continue reading }

photo { Man Ray }

They laugh also at chastity, and ask: What is chastity?

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Bryan Caplan complains about evo psych folk who say we didn’t inherit “an overwhelming, conscious desire to have children,” and about my suggestion that “It is hard to tell grand hero stories” about high fertility.

{ Overcoming Bias | Continue reading }

photo { Richard Foulser }

O dee, O dee, that’s very lovely!


Is being polite honest? Young adults aren’t quite sure. (…)

Should you honestly tell your roommate she looks fat in her summer white pants, or that he should dump his clingy girlfriend? When you put on a big smile for your sixth interview of the day in a seemingly hopeless job search, are you being honest?

These are questions our great-grandparents would have dismissed out of hand. In their world, there was virtue in being polite, and if you didn’t have something nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all. During the inner-directed 1960s, however — the era of the Human Potential Movement and self-actualization — sincerity and expressions of visceral emotions became our new definition of honesty. And these ideas stuck.

{ Big Questions Online | Continue reading }

You know, you’re the divver’s own smart gossoon, aequal to yoursell and wanigel to anglyother

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If a plagiarist plagiarizes from an author who herself has plagiarized, do we call it a wash and go for a beer?

That scenario is precisely what Steven L. Shafer found himself facing recently. Shafer, editor-in-chief of Anesthesia & Analgesia (A&A), learned that authors of a 2008 case report in his publication had lifted two-and-a-half paragraphs of text from a 2004 paper published in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia.

A contrite retraction letter, which appears in the December issue of A&A, from the lead author, Sushma Bhatnagar, of New Delhi, India, called the plagiarism “unintended” and apologized for the incident. Straightforward enough.

But then things get sticky. Amazingly, the December issue of A&A also retracts a 2010 manuscript by Turkish researchers who, according to Shafer, plagiarized from at least five other published papers—one of which happens to have been a 2008 article by Bhatnagar in the Journal of Palliative Medicine. (…)

Shafer said his journal is now running every submitted manuscript through CrossCheck, a copy-checking system that allows editors and publishers to screen papers for signs of plagiarism.

{ Retraction Watch | Continue reading }

photo { Abby Wilcox }

You know, you were always one of the bright ones, since a foot made you an unmentionable, fakes!

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The belief culture thrives on the false principle that all opinions are equal, even those without a shred of factual data, documentation, or reasoned methodology. It is a culture in which one in 20 Americans believe NASA faked the Apollo moon landings, and half the population believes the world was made in six days. (…)

There is a certain irony in the case of the United States, a nation founded on Enlightenment principles of rationality and now so eagerly becoming a culture of raw, unquestioning belief.

{ Utne | Continue reading }

And never stop fighting

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A link between quantum mechanics and topology implies the existence of an entirely new state of matter. And physicists have already found the first example. (…)

A key point here is that the circles in a flat 2 dimensional plane cannot form a Borromean ring.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

Every day, the same, again

12211.jpgTwo 6-year-olds and 3-year-old burglarize home, taking among other things a board game and a jar of vegetables, according to police.

Hospital sent man home with bone stuck in throat.

Man seeking sexual stimulation acted severely autistic and wore diapers to con baby sitters into caring for him.

Polish policeman fines himself for walking on railway to meet daily quota.

Nashville billboards claim Jesus will return May 21, 2011.

Nurse guilty of raping another woman in Brisbane hotel toilets.

Conjoined twins Tatiana and Krista may see through each other’s eyes and even share unspoken thoughts.

Londoner used a petrol bomb to destroy a pub, then turned around and ran face-first into a lamppost. Here’s security camera footage of the violent criminal looking like a total dum-dum.

Digital video recorders do not change shopping behavior.

Woman shocked to find squirrel in toilet.

The attempt by a group of patriotic Chinese scholars to create a Chinese alternative to the Nobel Prize appears to have backfired disastrously.

A lawsuit’s been filed by lawyers at the Texas Civil Rights Project because, allegedly, for the last seven years, the state’s Department of State Health Services has “deceptively and unlawfully sold, traded, bartered, and distributed blood samples” taken from babies.

A Florida judge has agreed with a defense request to have Ditullio’s tattoos covered up by a makeup artist so that they cannot influence the jury in his murder trial.

Interview with John Pistole, head of the TSA.

The global nuclear industry is willing to take big risks to get a piece of China’s nuclear budget. The danger is that in landing those fat contracts — and sharing technology with Chinese partners — the industry will help build a formidable rival.

Africa has more Serial-Killers than U.S. and Europe.

After World War II, American counterintelligence recruited former Gestapo officers, SS veterans and Nazi collaborators to an even greater extent than had been previously disclosed and helped many of them avoid prosecution.

A newly discovered microbe dubbed Halomonas titanicae is chewing its way through the wreck of the famous ship and leaving little behind except a fine dust, researchers report.

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Asking children and teenagers to promise to tell the truth actually works.

Children who don’t like fruit and vegetables are 13 times more likely to be constipated.

People who are particularly open to new experiences are most likely to have chills in response to music.

The Era of Error-Tolerant Computing. Errors will abound in future processors…and that’s okay.

Smoking marijuana can suppress the body’s immune system, which explains why pot-smokers are more susceptible than non-smokers to certain cancers and infections, according to a new study.

A map of the emotions, according to Spinoza, showing the dependency of all the emotions on Desire, Pleasure and Pain. Related: Metaphors, models & theories

Evolution of Colour Terms.

Synesthesia and Artistic Experimentation [PDF]

Rich Women Prefer Attractive Older Men.

Fish Have Feelings (And They Can Be Seen In Their DNA).

Why do flamingoes like to stand on one leg? [via TYWKIWDBI]

Bees deprived of a good night’s sleep make shoddy dancers and poor communicators.

Some frogs have been found to be able to pee out foreign objects that get stuck in their skin by absorbing the objects in their bladders.

Originally mistaken for dinosaur fossils, whale bones uncovered in recent years have told us much about the behemoth sea creatures.

Saturn’s rings explained.

Cosmic accidents: 10 lucky breaks for humanity.

How to create temperatures below absolute zero.

Concentric circles in WMAP data may provide evidence of violent pre-Big-Bang activity.

From the Nazis to the US presidential campaign of 2008, choosing which font to use has been anything but simple – and always political.

This paper assesses the benefits and detriments regarding the “personal and social consequences” of email, especially when it serves as a tool for conducting interviews for academic purposes.

33.gifFacebook is a few steps away from trademarking the word ‘face,’ online documents reveal.

It appears that non-Facebook members can also be traced via the Like button.

Branding in the Digital Age: You’re Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places.

In July 2009, Pepsi started marketing itself as Pecsi in Argentina in response to its name being mispronounced by 25% of the population and as a way to connect more with all of the population.

Don’t worry – almost no one knows it’s called an octothorpe. In the UK it’s generally known as “hash”. In America they call it a pound sign. Elsewhere it’s called a number sign.

Why People Pay for Bizarre Experiences. “Contrary to what people predict, it’s not young and impulsive people who want to pay so much for these crazy experiences. It’s actually people who plan and are obsessed with being productive,” says Anat Keinan, who now teaches marketing at Harvard Business School.

Confessions of a College Pimp.

Memoirs of an Anonymous Phone Sex Worker.

How infidelity has become accepted and even expected in Russia.

How one mother, with a series of female lovers, two rabbinic sperm donors, two adoptions and one gay parenting partner, raises five exceptional kids.

How did chemists become the greatest force in fragrance? Few perfumes are crafted by hand in a dusty atelier. Instead, they come to life in the lab.

98.jpgCan science explain art, music and literature?

Gay Bashing at the Smithsonian.

Warhol Foundation Threatens to End Financing of Smithsonian Exhibitions.

Jeffrey Deitch - a longtime champion of street art - late last week ordered a wall mural it had commissioned by Blu, an Italian graffiti artist, to be whitewashed because it found the artwork inappropriate.

The Murder that Changed the Movies. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, shot in four weeks for $800,000, released 50 years ago.

George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It’s Okay.

Five Boys: The Story of a Picture.

Why do we drive on the parkway and park on the driveway?

How To Present Yourself In Court To Be Optimally Likable and Persuasive.

How to identify a shark on a biting rampage.

If a bear charges you, what exactly are you supposed to do?

How to hire a programmer when you’re not a programmer

A Brief History—and Future—of the Shopping Cart.

Interview with gastroenterologist Michael D. Levitt, the world’s leading authority on flatulence.

Attention-grabbing ambient advertising via New Zealand.

u gave away an iphone for a treo??? ewww man… wtf?

This is the uniform for crap party promoters all over Europe.

Lawyer Commercial. [via copyranter]

Pure chingchong idiotism with any way words all in one soluble. Gee.

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Many drivers enjoy the so-called “new car smell,” a mix of volatile organic compounds that rise from the plastic, leather, cloth, wood and other interior components of cars fresh off the assembly line. The aroma is so popular that some companies even sell “new car smell” air fresheners. But is “new car smell” intoxicating?

That appears likely to be an element of the defense of a Colorado driver charged in a hit-and-run accident, according to court documents filed this week, The Vail Daily News reports. The driver, Martin Joel Erzinger, a financial manager, allegedly fled the scene of a crash with a cyclist in July.

The “new car smell” from a month-old Mercedes-Benz may have contributed to Mr. Erzinger’s losing consciousness before the accident, his lawyers say.
The seemingly novel defense has been raised by an “accident reconstructionist” hired by Mr. Erzinger’s lawyers. They contend that Mr. Erzinger suffered from sleep apnea and dozed off at the wheel before driving off the road and striking the cyclist. (…)

When the local police arrested him, the police records say, he was placing a broken side mirror and a damaged bumper in his trunk.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Try it till you make it }

Do you like movies about gladiators?

{ Acrobats strip for Pope Benedict XVI, perform topless in Vatican }

Running awage with the use of reason (sics) and ramming amok at the brake of her voice (secs)

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My most useful mental trick involves imagining myself to be far more capable than I am. I do this to reduce the risk that I turn down an opportunity just because I am clearly unqualified.

{ Scott Adams | Continue reading }

photo { Belt by Wayne Lee | Scanned from the DDD }

Cause I spent it all

Wonder One’s my cipher and Seven Sisters is my nighbrood

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Evolutionary biologists suggest there is a correlation between the size of the cerebral neocortex and the number of social relationships a primate species can have. Humans have the largest neocortex and the widest social circle — about 150, according to the scientist Robin Dunbar. Dunbar’s number — 150 — also happens to mirror the average number of friends people have on Facebook. Because of airplanes and telephones and now social media, human beings touch the lives of vastly more people than did our ancestors, who might have encountered only 150 people in their lifetime. Now the possibility of connection is accelerating at an extraordinary pace. As the great biologist E.O. Wilson says, “We’re in uncharted territory.”

{ TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year: Mark Zuckerberg | Continue reading | A map of the world, as drawn by Facebook }

Immaculacy, give but to drink to his shirt

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3. Slow down your conversation. Don’t cut people off in your haste to get your two cents in. Listen—really listen—to what others are saying, instead of using the time to compose your rebuttal. Stop to think before saying (or posting or texting) something you may regret later.

4. Be slow to judge. There’s no good reason others should think, act or dress just like you. Honor diversity.

{ The Nation | Continue reading }

photos { Harri Peccinotti, Pirelli Calendar, 1969 }

And all that sort of thing which is dandymount to a clearobscure

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The question now, as humanity pours greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an accelerating rate, is not whether Antarctica will begin to warm in earnest, but how rapidly. The melting of Antarctica’s northernmost region — the Antarctic Peninsula — is already well underway, representing the first breach in an enormous citadel of cold that holds 90 percent of the world’s ice.

{ Environment 360 | Yale | Continue reading }

photo { Tony Stamolis }

Detox, rehab, cold sweat, watch ‘em shake

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Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything

Pursue what you love.

Do the hardest work first.

Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.

Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses.

Take regular renewal breaks. (..) It’s during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.

Ritualize practice.

{ Harvard Business Review | Continue reading }

As it was mutualiter foretold of him by a timekiller to his spacemaker

{ Mozart’s 140 causes of death and 27 mental disorders }

Eat larto altruis with most perfect stranger

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By most all accounts a brilliant mind, Fischer was perhaps the most visionary chess player since José Raul Capablanca, a Cuban who held the world title for six years in the 1920s. Fischer’s innovative, daring play — at age 13, he defeated senior master (and former U.S. Open champion) Donald Byrne in what is sometimes called “The Game of the Century” — made him a hero figure to millions in the United States and throughout the world. In 1957, Fischer became the youngest winner of the U.S. chess championship — he was just 14 — before going on to beat Spassky for the world title in 1972.

But Fischer forfeited that title just three years later, refusing to defend his crown under rules proposed by the World Chess Federation, and he played virtually no competitive chess in ensuing decades, retreating, instead, into isolation and seeming paranoia. Because of a series of rankly anti-Semitic public utterances and his praise, on radio, for the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, at his death, Fischer was seen by much of the world as spoiled, arrogant and mean-spirited.

In recent years, however, researchers have come to understand that Bobby Fischer was psychologically troubled from early childhood. Careful examination of his life and family shows that he likely suffered with mental illness that may never have been properly diagnosed or treated.

{ Miller-McCune | Continue reading | Donald Byrne vs Robert James Fischer, “The Game of the Century,” 1956 | select Java Viewer and press set }

Love and romance poetry

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{ When you think of the words “prudent” and “marriage,” the last person you should think of is Elizabeth Taylor, who was married eight times, and shocked and astounded each and every time it didn’t work out. The most bizarre choice of husband was probably Larry Fortensky, a construction worker she met in rehab. | Craked | Continue reading }

If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. I’ll always be with you.

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One of the most surprising findings is that people have a natural aversion to inequality. We tend to prefer a world in which wealth is more evenly distributed, even if it means we have to get by with less.

Consider this recent experiment by a team of scientists at Caltech, published earlier this year in the journal Nature. The study began with 40 subjects blindly picking ping-pong balls from a hat. Half of the balls were labeled “rich,” while the other half were labeled “poor.” The rich subjects were immediately given $50, while the poor got nothing. Such is life: It’s rarely fair.

The subjects were then put in a brain scanner and given various monetary rewards, from $5 to $20. They were also told about a series of rewards given to a stranger. The first thing the scientists discovered is that the response of the subjects depended entirely on their starting financial position. For instance, people in the “poor” group showed much more activity in the reward areas of the brain (such as the ventral striatum) when given $20 in cash than people who started out with $50. This makes sense: If we have nothing, then every little something becomes valuable.

But then the scientists found something strange. When people in the “rich” group were told that a poor stranger was given $20, their brains showed more reward activity than when they themselves were given an equivalent amount. In other words, they got extra pleasure from the gains of someone with less.

{ Wall Street Journal | Continue reading }

photos { David Stewart | Valerie Chiang }

Level three Teflon plate



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