(via  Unplggd).

‘An artificial cerebellum has restored lost brain function in rats, bringing the prospect of cyborg-style brain implants a step closer to reality. Such implants could eventually be used to replace areas of brain tissue damaged by stroke and other conditions, or even to enhance healthy brain function and restore learning processes that decline with age.’ (via New Scientist, thanks to Neal).

‘A taxi cuts you off in Rome. A Mumbai merchant spurns your best offer. A maitre d’ snubs you in Beirut. At times like these, words can fail even the most seasoned polyglot. But now salvation is literally at hand, thanks to Rude Hand Gestures of the World, by Romana Lefevre, with photographs by Daniel Castro. If I’d had a copy of this in my days as a boy diplomat, my Foreign Service career would have come to an even more abrupt halt! Herewith a sampling, courtesy of the ever-brilliant Chronicle Books, of how to throw down with the locals, wherever you are:…’ (via The Atlantic).

…applies for a patent for a method in which merchants can pay for your GPS to serve you up a suboptimal route that takes you past their business establishment. Where there are competing routes, you end up being sent past whatever business paid the most for your attention. (United States Patent Application: 0110087524).

The CERN results are prompting a renewed interest in neutrino jokes on the net. (Google Search). Here are some:

— A neutrino walks into a bar and the bartender says, “You’re early.”

— A neutrino walks into a bar and the bartender says, “For you, no charge.”

— A neutrino walks into a bar and the bartender says, “We don’t serve your kind here.” The neutrino replies, “I’m just passing through.”

But the best, to my way of thinking:

— “We don’t allow faster than light neutrinos in here” said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.

And here are some related jokes about other subatomic particles etc.

 

 

‘About once a year or so, a case comes along that jars us from our complacency, reminds us that, as a society, we put people to death. Without making judgments about the efficacy of the death penalty as a deterrent against crime, or about its moral legitimacy as a form of justice, its worth noting that putting someone to death is a weighty thing, and it inevitably takes a profound toll on those involved.’ (via PBS).

(via Spiked Math).

Lehigh Valley workers tell of brutal heat, dizzying pace at online retailer. (via Allentown Morning Call).

Writer Jenny Diski: “…In 1964, having spent some time myself in a psychiatric hospital, I read The Three Christs, and soon after came on Laing’s early books, which confirmed what I had seen in it. It has made me very wary of reading ‘case histories’, written about the disturbed by those who believe themselves to know better. It also seemed to me, aged 16, that The Three Christs of Ypsilanti contained everything there was to know about the world. That’s not the case of course, but if resources were short, I’d still be inclined to salvage this book as a way of explaining the terror of the human condition, and the astonishing fact that people battle for their rights and dignity in the face of that terror, in order to establish their place in the world, whatever they decide it has to be.” (via London Review of Books, September 2011).

The book to which she refers, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, is by my uncle, the late psychologist Milton Rokeach. This brilliant and poignant study in the 1950s, an attempt  at a god-like manipulation of three deluded long-term denizens of a psychiatric hospital,  is well-described in Diski’s article and well worth your while if you are interested in the nature of belief and the boundaries of delusions.

Related

• Jenny Diski: The psychology and history of shoplifting. (newyorker.com)
• “They were astonished at the majesty of God” (worryisuseless.wordpress.com)
• What proof do we have that Jesus Christ is real (wiki.answers.com)
• Caution: The Delusion Of Good Intentions (defrostingwindows.wordpress.com)
• psychosis (alixmacdonald.wordpress.com)

‘The holiday of Autumn Equinox, Harvest Home, Mabon, the Feast of the Ingathering, Meán Fómhair or Alban Elfed (in Neo-Druidic traditions), is a pagan ritual of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and a recognition of the need to share them to secure the blessings of the Goddess and the God during the winter months. The name Mabon was coined by Aidan Kelly around 1970 as a reference to Mabon ap Modron, a character from Welsh mythology.[14] In the northern hemisphere this equinox occurs anywhere from September 21 to 24. In the southern hemisphere, the autumn equinox occurs anywhere from March 20–23. Among the sabbats, it is the second of the three pagan harvest festivals, preceded by Lammas/Lughnasadh and followed by Samhain.’ (via Wheel of the Year – Wikipedia).

“Scientists said on Thursday they recorded particles travelling faster than light – a finding that could overturn one of Einstein’s fundamental laws of the universe… [M]easurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done…

If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Albert Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a “cosmic constant” and that nothing in the universe can travel faster. That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works.” (via Telegraph.UK)

 

 

‘The innermost parts of a black hole’s active jets have been revealed for the first time. The observation suggests that the energetic spouts are more dynamic than previously suspected, with enormous blasts firing off randomly over timescales as short as 11 seconds.

It is somewhat odd that black holes, which are ultra-dense balls of matter from which no light can escape, can produce energetic flares. But these jets are a byproduct of gas and dust from a companion star that the black hole is consuming. The matter falls in circles toward the black hole, like water down a drain, and forms a gigantic flat disk that accelerates particles within, causing them to discharge energy. As yet scientists have only a vague notion of how the entire process works.’ (via Wired).

‘1982: At precisely 11:44 a.m., Scott Fahlman posts the following electronic message to a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:

:-(

With that post, Fahlman became the acknowledged originator of the ASCII-based emoticon. From those two simple emoticons (a portmanteau combining the words emotion and icon) have sprung dozens of others that are the joy, or bane, of e-mail, text-message and instant-message correspondence the world over.

Fahlman was not, however, the first person to use typographical symbols to convey emotions. The practice goes back at least to the mid-19th century, when Morse code symbols were occasionally used for the same purpose. Other examples exist as well.

In 1881, the American satirical magazine Puck published what we would now call emoticons, using hand-set type. No less a wordsmith than Ambrose Bierce suggested using what he called a “snigger point” — \__/ — to convey jocularity or irony. Baltimore’s Sunday Sun suggested a tongue-in-cheek sideways character in 1967.

But none of those caught on. The internet emoticon truly traces its lineage directly to Fahlman, who says he came up with the idea after reading “lengthy diatribes” from people on the message board who failed to get the joke or the sarcasm in a particular post — which is probably what “given current trends” refers to in his own, now-famous missive.’ (via Wired)

Related:

• Happy :-) emoticon day! (arjanshahani.wordpress.com)
• Happy Birthday, Emoticon :-) (abcnews.go.com)
• Internet Emoticons Are 29 Today :-) (gizmodo.com.au)
• September 19 in history (homepaddock.wordpress.com)
• Afternoon Bites: Ambrose Bierce, Edsel, Goodreads, and more (vol1brooklyn.com)

 

 

 

 

 

Miami Invaded By Giant, House-Eating Snails: ‘In southwest Miami, a small subdivision is being called “ground zero” of an invasion by a destructive, non-native species.”It’s us against the snails,” Richard Gaskalla, head of plant industry for Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.That’s the Giant African Land Snail, to be precise. They can grow to be 10 inches long. They leave a slimy trail of excrement wherever they go. They harbor the microscopic rat-lung worm, which can transmit meningitis to humans. And they will literally eat your house.’ (via NHPR)

Related:

• These giant snails are looking for a new home – your home. (inquisitr.com)
• Florida Residents: Don’t Touch That Giant Snail! Make A Phone Call Instead (alternativenewsreport.net)

Obama: “The odds of me being reelected are much higher than the odds of me being elected in the first place.” (via Talking Points Memo).

“…Archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence…” (via DISCOVER Magazine).

Pet parrots, such as cockatoos, that are let loose in the wild are teaching native birds to talk. (via Australian Geographic).

Jonathan Sacks (chief rabbi of the UK): ‘The question is not radical Islam but, does the West believe in itself any more? Is it capable of renewing itself as it did two centuries ago? Or will it crumble as did the Soviet Union from internal decay. “We have met the enemy,” said the cartoon character Pogo, “and he is us.” That is the challenge of 9/11. It’s about time we came together to meet it.’ (via Standpoint).

‘Sci-fi has predicted reality before (think Star Trek‘s communicators and The Prisoner’s ubiquitious surveillance). But now there’s a science fiction concept that we never thought we’d see in real life: psychohistory.

Psychohistory is a concept found in Isaac Asimov’s epic series Foundation—which beat out Lord of the Rings in 1965 for the Hugo award for best all-time series—about using sociology, history and statistics to predict the future of large groups.

Now the BBC reports that “Feeding a supercomputer with news stories could help predict major world events.”

Could it help? Actually, it already has. Believe it or not, a computer predicted the revolutions in Libya and Egypt, as well as the approximate location of Osama bin Laden.’ (via Blastr).

‘The Department of Homeland Security said today that it was studying several “credible threats” made to the United States government in a two-hour broadcast Wednesday night from a location believed to be the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.

Homeland Security spokesman Harland Dorinson said that the Department did not want to alarm the American people, “but whenever you have a group of individuals threatening to dismantle the US government piece by piece, it has to be taken seriously.”

In reviewing the two-hour tape, Homeland Security officials said they found threats to some of the most essential functions of the US government, from Social Security to the Federal Reserve.

While stopping short of saying that the speakers were engaged in some sort of jihad, Mr. Dorinson did note that a tone of religious extremism dominated the video.

“One speaker in particular, seemed bent on rolling back the advances of science and plunging America back into the Dark Ages,” he said.

But the most terrifying moment in the tape came when that same speaker received thunderous applause from the audience after threatening to execute people.’ (via Borowitz Report, with thanks to Dennis).

“…[M]any of society’s most pernicious troubles arise under the guise of, or as a consequence of, attempts to help others. Pathologies of altruism can result in all kinds of abuses, such as the neglect of children, and can lead to misinformed legislation and the misapplication of science. If we really want to help others, we should recognise that altruism can be dangerous…” (via New Scientist).

 

 

 

 

 

A modern approach to interviewing witnesses of crimes may make things worse: “People love to tell tales. Indeed, even when someone’s memory is patchy, he will still do his best to spin the information he has into a credible yarn. This is not a matter of deceit. Rather, it is an established psychological phenomenon in which the brain tries to make sense of fragmentary information. Although such behaviour is natural and normal, it is a nuisance for the forces of law and order when they are trying to find out what happened during an incident by taking statements from witnesses. For this reason, psychologists working with the police often advocate asking witnesses of crimes to say what they saw in reverse order, to stop them making things up to help the story run smoothly. It sounds like sensible advice, and police forces in Australia, Britain, New Zealand, Norway, Spain and Sweden have all adopted it. But a new study suggests that far from improving recall, it makes things worse.” (via The Economist.

“Whence the female orgasm? After 40 years of debate evolutionary biologists are no closer to deciding whether it evolved to give women a reproductive boost, or whether it is simply a by-product of male orgasm evolution. The latest attempt to settle the dispute involves quizzing some 10,000 twins and pairs of siblings on their sexual habits.

Some evolutionary biologists reckon the female orgasm is adaptive and possibly influences mate choice, strengthens pair bonds or indirectly helps to suck sperm into the uterus. Others argue that women have orgasms for the same reason that men have nipples – being highly adaptive in one sex, the traits tag along for the ride in the other…” (via New Scientist).

So you got to college, but… “…[t]o get an education, you’re probably going to have to fight against the institution that you find yourself in—no matter how prestigious it may be. (In fact, the more prestigious the school, the more you’ll probably have to push.)” (via Oxford American)

“For centuries, almost all carrots were yellow, white or purple. But in the 17th century, most of those crunchy vegetables turned orange. Why? Turns out it all has to do with Dutch politics.” (via  Ezra Klein – The Washington Post).

“An Israeli psychologist is asking whether Moses may have been tripping when he saw God on Mount Sinai, suggesting that many of our traditional ideas about the Abrahamic God may have been inspired by hallucinogenic drugs.

Professor Benny Shannon’s apparently cites historical evidence that the religious ceremonies of the Israelites included hallucinogenic plants and further bases his speculation on his own experiences with the reportedly similar psychedelic plant ayahuasca.”  (via Mind Hacks).

Jim Romenesko is closing up shop at the OS & RR as part of his ‘semi-retirement’, after 13 years. One of the first generation of webloggers and always worth reading. I was honored that he took note of and encouraged me, back when there were so few of us you couldn’t help but notice. Coming soon: jimromenesko.com, “a blog about media — and other things I’m interested in.”

Related:

• A fond farewell to The Obscure Store (kottke.org)
• The End Of The Obscure Store (theawl.com)
• The Sad Decline Of Poynter Media News (lukeford.net)
• Half the end of an era – Jim Romenesko plans ‘semi-retirement’ (nextlevelofnews.com)

Illusory Invulnerability Created by Taking Dietary Supplements Licenses Health-Risk Behaviors (Chiou, Yang and Wan, 2011, abstract via Psychological Science).

Related:

• Who should take dietary supplements? (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• The Orchestrated Smear Campaign (lewrockwell.com)
• Take vitamin pill, eat cake. How supplements can encourage unhealthy behaviour (bps-research-digest.blogspot.com)
• Dietary supplements: Do we need them? (pdresources.wordpress.com)
• Balancing the risks and benefits of dietary supplements (bioidenticalhormoneexperts.com)

“Although the history of carving miniature bas relief sculptures into coins stretches back to the 18th century if not earlier, it was greatly popularized in the early 20th century with the introduction of the Buffalo nickel. This particular coin was minted using soft metal and was imprinted with the portrait of an indian with bold features, making it easier to deface and transform into the portraits of other people, animals, or even scenery. Add to that the idle hands of unemployed artists during the depression (thus, “hobo”) and soon a flood of curious numismatic treasures were born. Most of the images on hobo nickels are too folk artsy for my taste, however a number of artists etched away the flesh of the subject to reveal these awesomely macabre skulls. Hobo nickel carving remains a popular hobby today and it even has a society. Don’t you wish we had actual money that looked like this?”  (via Colossal).

Related:

• Hobo Nickels (neatorama.com)

Scholars are enchanted by the notion of this anarchistic region in Asia. But how real is it? 

‘Much of the most recent debate has been spurred by the Yale University professor of political science and anthropology James C. Scott, who describes the region in his latest book, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale University Press, 2009)…

Zomia does not appear on any official map, for it is merely metaphorical. Scott identifies it as “the largest remaining region of the world whose peoples have not yet been fully incorporated into nation-states.” Though the scholars who have imagined Zomia differ over its precise boundaries, Scott includes all the lands at altitudes above 300 meters stretching from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to northeastern India. That encompasses parts of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma, as well as four provinces of China. Zomia’s 100 million residents are minority peoples “of truly bewildering ethnic and linguistic variety,” he writes. Among them are the Akha, Hmong, Karen, Lahu, Mien, and Wa.

 

He depicts an alternative past for the inhabitants of Zomia. The majority of the people who ended up in the hills were either escaping the state or driven out by it, he says…

While others might describe the hill peoples as “primitive” because they did not have permanent abodes or fixed fields, adhere to a major religion, or adopt other modern practices, Scott turns that idea around. He argues that those many minority ethnic groups were, in a sense, barbarians by design, using their culture, farming practices, egalitarian political structures, prophet-led rebellions, and even their lack of writing systems to put distance between themselves and the states that wished to engulf them.

As Scott develops his thesis, concepts that many scholars might hold dear vanish. Longstanding notions about the meaning of ethnic identity: Poof, gone. The idea that being “civilized” is superior to being uncivilized. Poof. The perception that absence of a written language signals a group’s failure to advance. Poof.

Instead, Scott asserts, “ethnic identities in the hills are politically crafted and designed to position a group vis-à-vis others in competition for power and resources.”

Over the past two millennia, “runaway” communities have put the “friction of terrain” between themselves and the people who remained in the lowlands, he writes. The highland groups adopted a swidden agriculture system (sometimes known, pejoratively, as “slash and burn”), shifting fields from place to place, staggering harvests, and relying on root crops to hide their yields from any visiting tax collectors. They formed egalitarian societies so as not to have leaders who might sell them out to the state. And they turned their backs on literacy to avoid creating records that central governments could use to carry out onerous policies like taxation, conscription, and forced labor.’ (via  The Chronicle of Higher Education).

“A recently published New York Times expose details the improper ties between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and influential rightwing funder and activist Harlan Crow…

Crow is not the sole source of questionable ethical behavior on the part of Clarence Thomas. His highly questionable relationship to an ethically challenged Supreme Court justice is simply the latest to be exposed.

Clarence Thomas participated in a secret political fundraising event put on by the Koch brothers to fund Tea Party infrastructure groups.³

And for years, Thomas disregarded rules requiring him to report his wife’s income on financial disclosure forms. His household received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the conservative Heritage Foundation during a period when he was voting on landmark cases in which the rightwing think tank had a clear ideological stake.⁴

This type of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated for other federal court judges because they, unlike the Supreme Court, are bound by a code of ethics. Common Cause Attorney Arn Pearson says in the Times, “The code of conduct is quite clear that judges are not supposed to be soliciting money for their pet projects or charities, period. If any other federal judge was doing it, he could face disciplinary action.”

…Clarence Thomas’ behavior has long been beyond the bounds of what is considered acceptable. In response to these latest revelations by the New York Times it’s well past time to demand Clarence Thomas’ resignation.” (via CREDO Action).

Related:

• Clarence Thomas: Liberal nightmare on Obamacare (gunnyg.wordpress.com)
• Is Clarence Thomas the only man in America that can take down ObamaCare? (ironmill.wordpress.com)
• Clarence Thomas praised in New Yorker (blithespirit.wordpress.com)
• Clarence Thomas Is Not An Idiot [The Supremes] (jezebel.com)

“Inspired by The Lesser Key of Solomon, comics, mythology and 17th-century grimoire, the 72DEMONS project is a venue for new and budding visual artists. Our goal is to compile and publish an illustrated book depicting the 72 demons archived in the Ars Goetia, believed to be a guide for summoning spirits.The 72DEMONS project started in the summer of 2011. We encourage all artists to apply.” (via Ars Goetia).

“Ars Goetia, contains descriptions of the seventy-two demons that Solomon is said to have evoked and confined in a brass vessel sealed by magic symbols, and that he obliged to work for him. It gives instructions on constructing a similar brass vessel, and using the proper magic formulae to safely call up those demons.

It deals with the evocation of all classes of spirits, evil, indifferent and good; its opening Rites are those of Paimon, Orias, Astaroth and the whole cohort of Infernus. The second part, or Theurgia Goëtia, deals with the spirits of the cardinal points and their inferiors. These are mixed natures, some good and some evil.^[1]

The Ars Goetia assigns a rank and a title of nobility to each member of the infernal hierarchy, and gives the demons’ “signs they have to pay allegiance to”, or seals. The lists of entities in the Ars Goetia correspond (to high but varying degree, often according to edition) with those in Johann Weyer‘s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, an appendix appearing in later editions of his De Praestigiis Daemonum, of 1563.

A revised English edition of the Ars Goetia was published in 1904 by magician Aleister Crowley, as The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King. It serves as a key component of his popular and highly influential system of magick.” (via Wikipedia).

“This spring, the Archives of Internal Medicine published a much-discussed study that showed that doctors might recommend different treatments for their patients than they would for themselves. They were far more likely to prescribe for patients a potentially life-saving treatment with severe side effects than they were to pick that treatment for themselves.

Understandably, people are worried that this means doctors know something they’re not telling their patients. But my own experience with illness taught me a simpler truth: when it comes to their own health, doctors are as irrational as everyone else.” (via NYTimes).

“Take a piece of paper. Crumple it. Before you sink a three-pointer in the corner wastebasket, consider that you’ve just created an object of extraordinary mathematical and structural complexity, filled with mysteries that physicists are just starting to unfold.” (via Wired.com).

Starting with Yellowstone, a gallery of 21 satellite images. False color highlights features that might not otherwise stand out. How many have you visited? (via Wired.com).

“Starting this weekend, the closest supernova found in at least 25 years will be visible from your backyard with just binoculars or a small telescope. The exploding white dwarf star is currently brightening in the Pinwheel Galaxy, nestled, from our perspective, within the Big Dipper.

…Most supernovas spotted at the Palomar Observatory are around 1 billion light-years away, far too distant to be seen by amateurs. At only 21 million light-years away, the newly discovered, violently exploding star is a close cosmic neighbor. In the video … Berkeley Lab’s Peter Nugent describes how to spot this supernova, set to reach peak brightness Sep. 9.” (via Wired.com).