Ingenious idea exploits the annoying but necessary Captcha process to help digitize texts.

Playing Card Superstitions (Snopes Urban Legends Reference Page)

I did a web search on this phenomenon because it seems to happen to me most times I walk past a certain street light on my street. I mentioned it to a few friends who, of course, thought I was wacky. Then, taking my cue from the fact that it was one particular lamp post, I began to ask several neighbors on my street (yes, I live on a street where I know and talk to my neighbors; in fact, we have block parties). My rational side suspected that it was a defective lamp which cycles on and off (several commenters in the thread to which this post points offered explanations of how this might work with sodium arc lamps) constantly, and that I was guilty of observer bias for remembering, and generalizing from, those times when it went off as I neared or passed it. (By the way, I am talking about this happening when I am walking down the street, not driving, so the speculation that my car headlights were activating the photocell that turns the lamp off does not apply.) But none of my neighbors had noticed this about that, or any other, street light on our street.

So should I descend to pseudoscience — do I have some psi power going on? I don’t have to be thinking about turning the lamp off for it to happen; in fact, I often forget about this, especially in the winter when I am not out walking down the street after dark as much, and am only reminded when I notice the light go out. Or do I put out some kind of EM pulse to which that particular street light is sensitive? Some of the commenters suggest we are “electrical beings” and thus can affect electrical circuitry. Certainly an extrapolation, and I have never noticed it with any other light fixtures or other electrical equipment. And, unlike some of the commenters, I don’t notice the light go on again after I pass. But on the other hand, that light is never already off, it seems, before I approach it, or as I drive up my street.

I am in that cognitively dissonant position of being a skeptic but also having a healthy respect for the power of belief. The lamp post on my street goes right to the heart of that dilemma. After reading other people’s beliefs about their ability to interfere with street lights, I realize mine is a weak case, typically affecting a particular lamp which does not go back on after I have passed. To debunk my doubts, though, I suppose I’ve got to go out one nice summer evening and sit under that particular lamp for a couple of hours and assess whether it is cycling on and off. What do you think?

BTW, here is a good Wikipedia discussion of the phenomenon.

Top 10 Finalists. And here’s the winner [via rc3], which is elegantly simple and discombobulating — yes, my eyes deceive me. If you ever doubted that perception is an active process requiring synthetic input from the brain, you won’t after looking at this illusion and pondering the explanation.

…After Being Prescribed Paxil, Ritalin, Prozac, Lithium, Provigil, and Benadryl. — Jeffrey Greenstein (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

“For nearly half a century, SETI efforts have Searched for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Instead of searching for alien life outside our planet, the Lifeboat Foundation has decided to take the opposite approach and to search for ‘alien’ life on this planet. We call our efforts ‘Finding Artificial Life Created by Nanobiotechnology’…”

Thanks to walker for pointing me to this diatribe from Craigslist. It is clear, despite his/her disclaimers toward the bottom of the passage, that the ER doctor is very angry with this class of patients. But clean up the language a bit and it is something that ought to be posted on the ER door as an open letter.

Fred Kaplan in Slate Magazine: “Since Donald Rumsfeld’s departure from the Pentagon, American military officers are starting to speak their minds again�and what some of the best of them are saying is even darker than expected.”

In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, James Comey, former assistant to Attorney General John Ashcroft, describes Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card rushing to the critically ill Ashcroft’s hospital bedside in March 2004 to pressure him to override Comey’s refusal to reauthorize the secret warrantless domestic surveillance program before its expiration the following day.

The researchers’ basis for determining if the dropped food is safe to eat depends on ascertaining what bacterial load they pick up from a dirty surface after various intervals. But that does not address the likelihood that the added bacterial load is probably an infinitesimal addition to the daily bacterial load to which we are exposed already, from the same varieties of microbes, even if we never eat a piece of dropped food. More important, although I am not a bacteriologist or an immunologist, I seem to recall an argument that exposure to dirt should be considered akin to an inoculation, invigorating the immune system, and that an obsession with cleanliness may actually leave a person in immunological jeopardy when the time comes to defend oneself. At least that’s my reasoning when I eat something I’ve dropped…and I utilize something more like a thirty-second rule.

Bruce Stutz, in the New York Times Magazine, gives a first-person account of his struggles to get off an antidepressant after treated with it. He speculates on whether these drugs have more costs than benefits:

Bruce Stutz, in the New York Times Magazine, gives a first-person account of his struggles to get off an antidepressant after treated with it. He speculates on whether these drugs have more costs than benefits:

The first time I saw this, I read it as Discordia. Now that miight be a holiday I would celebrate wholeheartedly.

Largely for those with privacy concerns; should this be in the closing-the-barndoor-after-the-horse-is-gone dept.? In any case, by asking Google to block reverse searches on your phone number, you can call even those with caller ID with impunity.

OTOH: 

What to do if you do want to be found through Google

Avoid Speeding Tickets. “Your online guide to Bear Traps and Exits for all the Interstate Highways of the United States. Bears are creatures of habit.”

This one is from several years ago — “Reflected and diffuse light from an obscured computer monitor can still be used to reconstruct what is on its screen, say UK researchers. The technique could be used to spy on computers through an office window, for example, even if the monitor was not facing the window.” (New Scientist) The system only works for CRTs, so your laptops and flat panel displays are safe. It was also thought that flat panels were safe from Van Eck phreaking, in which images can be reconstructed by tuning in to the radio coils in CRTs. But the same researcher from the earlier result, Cambridge University’s Marcus Kuhn, has reconstructed LCD images by tuning in to radio transmissions from the video cables carrying the signal to the display. (New Scientist via abby)