Humanity has long struggled over the nature of time. In the last century, physicists were shocked to discover that the arrow of time cannot be derived from the laws of physics which appear perfectly symmetric. For every solution for t, there seems to be an equally valid solution for -t (except in a few cases involving the weak force in which case the symmetry is more complex, involving charge, parity and time).

At first glance that looks puzzling. But after a few years reflection, most physicists agreed that it’s perfectly possible for symmetric laws to give rise to asymmetric phenomena. Physicists have identified a number of such asymmetric phenomena that represent “arrows of time”, says Claus Kiefer at the Institut fur Theoretische Physik in Cologne, Germany.

Perhaps the most famous is the thermodynamic arrow of time in which the entropy of a closed system must always increase. But there is also a quantum mechanical arrow of time in which a preferred direction of time is determined by decoherence and a gravitational arrow of time in which the preferred direction is determined by gravitational collapse.

“What is peculiar is the fact that the time direction of the phenomena is always the same,” says Kiefer. It’s almost as if the arrow of time were predetermined in some way. “The question raised by the presence of all these arrows is whether a common master arrow of time is behind all of them,” he asks.

What master law might be responsible? Kiefer’s conjecture is that the direction of time arises when quantum mechanics is applied to the universe as a whole, a branch of science known as quantum cosmology.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

In the natural sciences, arrow of time, or time’s arrow, is a term coined in 1927 by British astronomer Arthur Eddington used to distinguish a direction of time on a four-dimensional relativistic map of the world, which, according to Eddington, can be determined by a study of organizations of atoms, molecules, and bodies.

Physical processes at the microscopic level are believed to be either entirely or mostly time symmetric, meaning that the theoretical statements that describe them remain true if the direction of time is reversed; yet when we describe things at the macroscopic level it often appears that this is not the case: there is an obvious direction (or flow) of time. An arrow of time is anything that exhibits such time-asymmetry.

The symmetry of time (T-symmetry) can be understood by a simple analogy: if time were perfectly symmetric then it would be possible to watch a movie taken of real events and everything that happens in the movie would seem realistic whether it was played forwards or backwards.

An obvious objection to this assertion is gravity: after all, things fall down, not up.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

{ Facial expressions, Charles Darwin argued, are a universal window into emotion. But new research challenges that notion, showing that east Asian people struggle to recognise facial expressions that western Caucasians attribute to fear and disgust. By focusing on eyes and brows, Asians miss subtle cues conveyed via the mouth. | NewScientist | Continue reading | Read more: BPS Research Digest blog | Images: D*Face | Jonathan LeVine Gallery, NYC | How to paint a mural in the Meatpacking District. }

What’s the gossip in your office? What’s the gossip doing to your office? And what are the best strategies for gossips or antigossips to employ in the office? (…)

Timothy Hallett, a sociologist at Indiana University, spent two years studying the institutional politics at an elementary school in a Midwestern city. During that time, Dr. Hallett videotaped formal meetings among a group of teachers who convened regularly to discuss problems and policies.

The teachers would occasionally start to deviate from the official agenda and discuss their feelings about the administrators, particularly the principal, who was disliked for her style and her effort to impose more “accountability” on the teachers. These “gossip episodes” are analyzed by Dr. Hallett and his co-authors. (…) “Gossip was a ‘weapon of the weak’: during a time in which teachers were disenfranchised, gossip empowered them and served to stigmatize Kox.”

{ TierneyLab/NY Times | Continue reading }

“Office gossip can be a form of reputational warfare,” Dr. Hallett says. “It’s like informal gossip, but it’s richer and more elaborate. There are more layers to it because people practice indirectness and avoidance. People are more cautious because they know they can lose not just a friendship but a job.”

During his two years studying the group dynamics at a Midwestern elementary school, which allowed him access on condition of anonymity, Dr. Hallett found that the teachers became so comfortable with him and his camera that they would freely insult their bosses during one-on-one interviews. But at the teachers’ formal group meetings, where they knew that another teacher might report their insults to the principal, they were more discreet.

Instead of making direct criticisms, they sometimes offered obliquely sarcastic comments to test the waters. They used another indirect tactic categorized as praise the predecessor, as in the meeting when a teacher fondly recalled a previous administration: “It was so calm, and you could teach. No one was constantly looking over your shoulder.” The other teachers quickly agreed. No one explicitly called the current principal an authoritarian busybody, but that was the obvious implication.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Paul Graham }

How do we fall in love? There are countless times during the course of the day when someone catches your eye. I remember recently being in [a coffee bar] across from my editor’s apartment (…) and there was a fine-boned woman behind the cash register with a neck like an antelope, and we looked at one another in that appraising and mutually approving way that, had I been a single man rather than a very happily married one (more on love, lies and marriage to come in a later column), would have resulted in a conversation. That is, we provoke and are provoked by one another frequently, perhaps many times a day. If our sexual antennae are up—in New York, when I visit, as opposed to Kansas City, where I live, the array and intertwining of sexual antennae seems like a tangle of erotic interest, a dangerous sensual spider web—we could begin the process of feeling one another out (which would lead, one hopes, to feeling one another up) in an almost daily way. (…)

According to Aristophanes, human beings were once joined together in pairs, so that we had four arms and four legs. But this unusual metrical composition and arrangement of limbs made us so speedy—have you ever noticed how everything accelerates when you’re in love, except the time apart from your lover?—that we dared to roll our way up Mount Olympus, challenging the Gods, which prompted Zeus, quite sensibly, to split us apart with thunderbolts (the stitching up of skin he had to do afterwards was pulled together at one point, which is why you have a belly button). But this splitting in two—whether woman from woman, man from man, or man from woman (there were all three sorts)–is why, now, you feel this desperate need to be reunited with your other half, it is why you no longer feel whole, except when you are in love. True love, then—and this is where all this trouble starts, which is later exploited by so many poets and brokenhearted cowboy singers—is when you are reunited with that single person who was once your other half.

{ Clancy Martin/The Faster Times | Continue reading }

Coffee contains caffeine, and as everyone knows, caffeine is a stimulant. We all know how a good cup of coffee wakes you up, makes you more alert, and helps you concentrate - thanks to caffeine.

Or does it? Are the benefits of coffee really due to the caffeine, or are there placebo effects at work? Numerous experiments have tried to answer this question, but a paper published today goes into more detail than most.

The authors took 60 coffee-loving volunteers and gave them either placebo decaffeinated coffee, or coffee containing 280 mg caffeine. That’s quite a lot, roughly equivalent to three normal cups. 30 minutes later, they attempted a difficult button-pressing task requiring concentration and sustained effort, plus a task involving mashing buttons as fast as possible for a minute.

The catch was that the experimenters lied to the volunteers. Everyone was told that they were getting real coffee. Half of them were told that the coffee would enhance their performance on the tasks, while the other half were told it would impair it. If the placebo effect was at work, these misleading instructions should have affected how the volunteers felt and acted.

Several interesting things happened. First, the caffeine enhanced performance on the cognitive tasks - it wasn’t just a placebo effect. (…)

Second, there was a small effect of expectancy on task performance in the placebo group - but it worked in reverse. People who were told that the coffee would make them do worse actually did better than those who expected the coffee to help them.

{ Neuroskeptic | Continue reading }

{ 17 year old Bianca Passarge of Hamburg dresses up as a cat, complete with furry tail, and dances on wine bottles, June 1958. Her performance was based on a dream and she practiced for eight hours every day in order to perfect her dance. | BBC }

We are liars and lie catchers, and the sport runs from the banal to the breathtaking, from personal to public. Right now, someone somewhere is lying about “having plans tonight.” Meanwhile, someone else is discovering that his or her spouse has methodically concealed an affair. And take a look at the news of the past couple of weeks: Barry Bonds was charged with perjury. City employees were accused of fabricating companies to siphon taxpayer money. Lies are all around us.

Sometimes, of course, dishonesty is the best policy. Lying, for all the bad it might cause, is an indispensable part of keeping our day-to-day lives running smoothly.

“Everybody lies — every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning,” Mark Twain wrote in his 1882 essay “On the Decay of the Art of Lying.”

Much of the time we don’t even know it. Lying is a necessary, near-involuntary practice that keeps the fabric of society from unraveling. Example:

“How are you?” a co-worker asks.

“Fine, thanks,” you say, when in truth you’re not fine. Life is a hellish morass, and this person is getting in the way of your dutiful self-pity. But to respond in such a dour manner would turn a passing pleasantry into an awkward, socially debilitating episode.

Take your average 10-minute conversation between two acquaintances. In that span, the average person will lie two to three times. That’s not cynicism. That’s science.

{ Washington Post | Continue reading }

A shrunken head is a human head that has been prepared for ritual use or trade.

Most known shrunken heads were manufactured either by indigenous peoples in Melanesia and the Amazon Basin, or by European or Euro-Americans attempting to recreate the practice. In Amazonia, the only people known to have shrunk human heads are the Shuar, Achuar, Huambisa and Aguaruna, collectively classified as the Jivaroan peoples of Ecuador and Peru. Among the Shuar, a shrunken head is known as a tsantsa.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

By the end of the nineteenth century, little was still known about the Jivaro Indian clans in South America, except for their macabre practices of taking the heads of their enemies. This practice intrigued travelers and collectors and compelled them to visit these tribes to satisfy their curiosity.

The visits of the white man helped revolutionize the Jivaro’s methods of warfare, as they began trading firearms and ammunition for shrunken human heads. (…)

In the 1930s heads were made to order and sold for approximately $25.00.

{ The History of the Shuar | Continue reading | via Cracked }

There is something to be said about fakes in tribal art, often seeming somehow to lack soul, and not quite having some kind of ring of truth. For example, they’re often somehow seemingly made to shock us, or to please us. The very finest works of tribal art, New Guinea art, or African art in my opinion, somehow have a lack of any interest in our perception at all, they’re sort of in another world. You can sort of see that in retrospect but can you always be certain with every piece you come across? No, I don’t think so.

{ The philosophy of authenticity, fakes and forgers | ABC | Continue reading }

artwork { Kefwele mask, Songye tribe, Congo }

The crocodilian has three eyelids. The top and bottom lids are the normal, opaque eyelids found on most reptiles and mammals. A third, transparent eyelid moves sideways across the eye. This eyelid protects the otherwise ‘open’ eyes when the crocodilian submerges and attacks under water.

Although nobody is quite sure how well the crocodile can see underwater, the transparent membrane which covers the eye during diving ensures that light can reach the eye if the water is clear enough to see. It is possible that the membrane itself alters the refractive index of light entering the eye to possibly improve vision underwater slightly.

{ Crocodile: Evolution’s Greatest Survivor by Lynne Kelly | Continue reading | Video shows an Australian saltwater crocodile opening its eye }

Asteroids and meteorites. Major asteroid collisions with Earth—involving objects larger than 1.5 kilometers, the minimum size required for “global consequences”—happen very rarely, roughly once every 100,000 years. (…) The odds of actually being hit by a meteorite are infinitesimal: only four people in recent history have been struck by one. The most famous (and documented) is Ann Hodges, who in 1954 was struck by a 7-inch meteorite in Sylacauga, AL. The object crashed through her roof and bounced off a wood-console radio before striking her in the side. In another case, in 1927, a meteorite struck a Japanese girl in the head—whether directly or indirectly is unclear. More recently, a Ugandan boy was indirectly struck in the head by a marble-sized meteorite (it ricocheted off a palm tree first), and just this year a pea-sized meteorite struck German teen Gerrit Blank in the hand—the only direct hit ever recorded, not to mention survived. However, according to Discover Magazine’s ” Bad Astronomy” blog, Blank’s story is either a hoax or drastically embellished.

Hail. The odds a person will be injured by hail in a year are 1 in 5,114,000. According to the National Weather Service, 718 people were injured by hail between 1995 and 2007. And the number killed? Just five. The odds a person will be killed by hail in a year, then, are 1 in 734,400,000.

Blue Ice. There are several known cases of houses being struck by frozen airplane-lavatory waste, euphemistically known as “blue ice.” The ice can form when a plane’s lavatory develops an external leak; frozen at high altitude, the waste warms and dislodges as a plane descends. Luckily, there are no known instances of people being struck by blue ice.
Aerospace Junk (Satellites, Space Stations, Weather Balloons). In the 52 years since the launch of Sputnik 1, there have been no recorded instances of death caused by falling satellite, shuttle, or space station parts. (…)

Suicide jumpers. At least one case exists in which a person has been struck and killed by another (falling) person: just this year, a Ukrainian man was crushed and killed in Barcelona by a 45-year-old woman who had thrown herself out of her 8th-story window in an act of apparent suicide.

Pennies. Empire State Building + dropped penny = fatality, or so the myth goes. In reality, there are no recorded instances of a falling penny (or any coin, for that matter) injuring/killing a pedestrian. The popular science show Mythbusters disproved this urban legend based on a penny’s light weight and low terminal velocity (64 mph), going so far as to fire a penny at a co-host’s hand at the correct velocity. It merely left a welt.

Coconuts. They do not, as occasionally claimed, “kill around 150 people worldwide each year.”

{ Book of Odds | Continue reading }

{ Mike Kelley, Private Address System, 1992 | Portable toilet, loudspeaker, two microphones and electric system }

{ Pepsi Azuki (red bean flavor) }

Mopery is a vague and obscure legal term, used in certain jurisdictions to mean “walking down the street with no clear destination or purpose.”

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

photo { Garry Winogrand }

{ Cell size and scale | Interactive graphic }

Man appears alive at own funeral.

Sudden hair loss affects female bears at zoo. [with pics]

Man told investigators he was found naked in his van because he had “explosive diarrhea” and was using his underwear to clean himself.

Saudi paedophile to be beheaded and crucified.

Woman gets 5-15 years for killing and dismembering her dad, and cooking her dad’s penis, to avenge years of sex abuse.

Have you ever heard of vaginal prolapse? I hadn’t either, until it happened to me.

About 300 protesters held a candlelit protest outside a Glasgow theatre over the staging of a play which portrays Jesus as a transsexual.

Police discover nearly 1,000 stolen suitcases in Arizona.

Wife disputes hooker bill: “I need you to repay back the money my husband gave you.”

Goldman Sachs lost money trading only one day in last quarter, and only two days the prior quarter.

Why Wall Street bonuses won’t go away.

Is it really possible to predict the end of financial bubbles? Didier Sornette at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich thinks so and has set up the Financial Crisis Observatory at ETH to study the idea.

What is money and how does one measure it

A top U.S. securities regulator said some hedge funds may now view insider trading as a central tenet of their business models, rather than as a one-time opportunity for big rewards as sometimes happened in the 1980s. More: Federal prosecutors charged 14 hedge fund employees, lawyers and other investors in criminal complaints that seem to be connected to the Raj Rajaratnam case.

How the Angelides Commission can crack open the Wall Street scandal—if it dares. (by Eliot Spitzer)

Derby is an investigator with the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Arson/Counter-Terrorism Section. Arson investigators have a three-pronged formula for determining the reasons for a fire. “It’s the fuel, the source of ignition and the event that brought those two together,” Derby says.

Imagine you are told, every single day of your life, where you are allowed to go and where you are not; when you can go there and when you can’t; what you can wear and what is not allowed, what you can and cannot do, say, listen to or even watch. This is the life of the average Saudi woman.

The best place in the world for women to live is Sweden. There is virtually no gender discrimination there. Men and women live as equals.

Cellphones outnumber lightbulbs in Uganda.

U.S. unemployment rate hits 10.2%, highest in 26 years. [Ugly unemployment charts] More: Broader measure of unemployment stands at 17.5% and It hurts more to be unemployed now than the last time the jobless rate hit 10 percent.

After months of prowling Internet chat rooms, posing as the mother of two young daughters, Detective Michele Deery thought she had a live one: “parafling,” a married, middle-aged man who claimed he wanted to have sex with her kids. Both the policewoman and her target give the author their versions of the truth.

How the Internet enables intimacy [TED video]

Google Books ‘finger condoms’ cause mirth.

The man who discovered what killed the dinosaurs.

Thinking negatively can boost your memory, study finds.

As a psychologist, one of my favorite puzzles is the motivation to experience pain and unpleasantness, something the psychologist Paul Rozin has called “benign masochism.”

Ten young geniuses shaking up science today.

Female bats have been observed performing fellatio on their partners during copulation. The bats copulate dorso-ventrally, with the male mounting the female from behind. During mating, the females reached over to lick the base of the male’s penis in 14 of the 20 pairs that copulated.

Study shows for the first time that, in exchange for sex and other benefits, male crabs protect their female neighbors from territory-seeking male intruders.

The science of hunger: What 1 billion people feel.

Rumours abound that being vegetarian is better for the environment. Could there be some truth to it?

Why a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re smart.

Are manners logical or superficial?

The history of philosophy itself has a history.

Why can’t you tickle yourself?

Exposing the media bullshit behind New York’s supposed heroin epidemic.

How New York City’s seven newspapers are (nearly) surviving.

How to make it as an artist in New York.

“New York City Museum of Complaint,” a collection of letters sent to the mayor of New York City from 1751 to 1969.

Window displays in New York’s Rockefeller Plaza: Actors replace the silhouettes used in the client’s new print campaign. [via copyranter }

Mr. Herring and his twin brother, Paul, work together as high-end art dealers, and are known for their discretion.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, the man who created modern anthropology, died. More: Susan Sontag on Claude Lévi-Strauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss interviewed by Georges Charbonnier in 1959 [France Culture podcast, Nov. 4, in French]

One formula (of many) for a successful blog is to create a “learning blog”. A blog that shares what you know, to help others. Even–or especially–if that means giving away your “secrets”.

Vintage Ventriloquism (flickr pool).

Facebook’s office in California.

Urban Cowboy [video].

Google Maps show an imaginary place near to where I live: a town with the ugly name of Argleton.

Movie plots (xkcd).

Until quite recently, no-one knew whether Gömböcs even existed.

“Hope for love,” mixed by Mike McGill and Tackleberry.

Michael Jackson: a pigmentation timeline.

Hope for love.

{ Duane Michals, Things Are Queer, 1971 }

{ Paul Graham, A Shimmer of Possibility, 2004-2006 }

{ Paul Graham, New Europe, 1986-92 }

This is the primary misconception about placebos: that the placebo itself is somehow “working” to treat a medical condition. You can see it even in the headline for an otherwise well-crafted article that appeared in Wired last August: “Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.” As internist and medical professor Peter Lipson noted on the Science-Based Medicine blog, placebos by definition have no medical effect. The “placebo effect” is due to the subject’s (and sometimes, the experimenter’s) expectation that a treatment will work. And, of course, a patient sometimes recovers simply due to chance or because his or her immune response handled the problem. Researchers observe an improvement, and this gets attributed to the placebo. In the case of the Wired article, the misconception in the headline is cleared up by the text of the report: The placebo effect may be getting stronger for reasons that are unclear to researchers. Placebos themselves, as ever, remain ineffective.

{ Seed | Continue reading | Cognitive Daily/ScienceBlogs }

photo { Camilla Akrans }

The problem with optimism is that it’s blatantly incorrect: we aren’t all above average in everything, things do not always get better, and we can’t always get what we want. The problem with realism is that by itself it is depressing, a demotivator that does not elevate.

As an altnernative to the Charbydis of Realism and the Scylla of Optimism, I present Stoicism, via Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, Book II, part 1):

Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill… I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together.

Now, this at first seems rather banal: don’t sweat mean people. But this is actually quite important, because frustrations with people, not nature, causes most of our grief. Most of what causes people angst are not exogenous constraints of no one’s fault, but rather, when people do things that seemingly are intended to harm you: someone cuts you off in traffic, privately belittles your contributions to colleagues. Recognize there are things you can control, and those you can’t, and this include other people’s actions: learn the difference, and don’t worry about things you can’t control.

{ Falken Blog | Continue reading }