‘Lethal temperatures in Minnesota. A frost warning for the Everglades. The North Pole is moving south thanks to climate change.’ (The Daily Beast).

They are no more effective than regular soap and water; they are bad for the environment; they help breed resistant bacterial strains; they may be acting as endocrine disruptors; and they have added negative health consequences. (Smithsonian)

“…as with all religion, those sects with most in common are the ones who hold the most vicious grudges against one another.” (Gizmodo).

Related articles

• TOP 10 Forgotten Ancient Religions
• Embracing organized religion
• Whitenoise Gizmodo Community

‘ The real-time map is a simulation, providing a qualitative view of births and deaths.

“[The map] can apparently seem to evoke a strange mixture of emotions,” Lyon, the map’s creator, said. “At least for me, it is a bit overwhelming and sobering, and provides some perspective on how big 300 million+ really is. However, if the rates and population counts are correct, something like this is actually happening as I type this. It\s just weird.” ‘ (PolicyMic).

The rich got much richer in 2013 (Bloomberg).

‘Liberals, conservatives, and libertarians unite! If ever there was a time for us to see past our differences in the name of a common cause, that time is now.

As Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced last night, a movement is afoot for a class action lawsuit against the federal government over the National Security Agency\’s decision to spy on millions of American citizens. The petition on his website has already received thousands of signatures…, with Paul rightly pointing out that “every person in America who has a cell phone would be eligible for this suit.” If any fault can be found with this petition drive, it is the fact that it immediately solicits donations from the plaintiffs for Rand Paul’s personal Political Action Committee, Rand 2016.

This is unfortunate because, although Paul himself is a heavy libertarian conservative, the issue he is championing could — and, more importantly, should — rally Americans of all philosophical persuasions.’ (PolicyMic).

“Science, philosophy and technology run on the model of American Idol – as embodied by TED talks – is a recipe for civilizational disaster…” — Benjamin Bratton (theguardian.com). 

Related articles

• TED actually stands for middlebrow megachurch infotainment
• Skepticism about TED Talks
• Benjamin Bratton to TED: ‘More Copernicus, Less Tony Robbins’ (VIDEO)

(Ultralinx)

‘Martin Krzywinski is an artist. No, wait, he’s a mathematician. Actually, scratch that: he’s both, and he can make the number Pi look insanely beautiful.

In this video, Numberphile takes a look at his work on visualizing the magical number Pi. Some of them are simple, some are complex; all are beautiful. Sit back and enjoy.’ (Youtube Numberphile via Gizmodo)

(Gizmodo)

‘Recent studies have shown that many vitamins and supplements do little for our health and are a waste of money. This chart will make it abundantly clear how true that is.

In this brilliant chart by David McCandless from 2010, you can see a gorgeous visualization of how many supplements are actually helpful — based on scientific studies — and how many are basically nothing more than snake oil.’ (io9).

…but don’t call this storm ‘Hercules’, as some weather outlets would have you do. The reason is discussed here (Gawker).

Abstract: ‘Time travel has captured the public imagination for much of the past century, but little has been done to actually search for time travelers. Here, three implementations of Internet searches for time travelers are described, all seeking a prescient mention of information not previously available. The first search covered prescient content placed on the Internet, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific terms in tweets on Twitter. The second search examined prescient inquiries submitted to a search engine, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific search terms submitted to a popular astronomy web site. The third search involved a request for a direct Internet communication, either by email or tweet, pre-dating to the time of the inquiry. Given practical verifiability concerns, only time travelers from the future were investigated. No time travelers were discovered. Although these negative results do not disprove time travel, given the great reach of the Internet, this search is perhaps the most comprehensive to date.’ (arxiv.org).

“When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government. That’s why Rick Ledgett, who leads the N.S.A.’s task force on the Snowden leaks, recently told CBS News that he would consider amnesty if Mr. Snowden would stop any additional leaks. And it’s why President Obama should tell his aides to begin finding a way to end Mr. Snowden’s vilification and give him an incentive to return home.” (NYTimes editorial).

‘ “Duck Dynasty” bigotry still has a sizable audience — but not for long…’ (Salon).

‘This is how the Great Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda would look in the sky if it were bright enough. Sadly, its light is too faint. But imagine seeing that every night. Would you get tired of it? I know I wouldn’t.’ (Gizmodo)

One of the last known photos of the Formosan Clouded Leopard, this vest made of its pelt, underscores the human role in species extinction.

‘Our extinction crisis continues; 2013 allowed us to safely conclude that we will never again see the animals listed below…

It is just unfathomable, if not unconscionable, that we are responsible for causing a single species to completely disappear from the planet forever. Yet, we continue to do so over and over again. Extinct species have no future, they are gone to us and everyone that comes after us.

Let’s hope that our 2014 list is shorter than this year’s.’ (Living Alongside Wildlife)

Related articles

• Save Vietnam’s Elephants From Extinction (forcechange.com)
• Their World, Their Future~ (walkingwiththealligators.wordpress.com)
• Endangered Species Act – Facts, Stats, Stories and Photos (naturalhistorywanderings.com)
• Why You NEED To Care About Wildlife Conservation (landlopers.com)

‘…Democratic drinkers are more likely to sip Absolut and Grey Goose vodkas, while Republican tipplers are more likely to savor Jim Beam, Canadian Club and Crown Royal. That research comes from consumer data supplied by GFK MRI, and analyzed by Jennifer Dube of National Media Research Planning and Placement, an Alexandria-based Republican consulting firm.

The results are fascinating: Analyzing voting habits of those who imbibe, Dube found that 14 of the top 15 brands that indicate someone is most likely to vote are wines.

If you see someone at your New Years party tonight drinking Kendall-Jackson or Robert Mondavi wines, that person is highly likely to vote, and they’re likely to vote Republican. Someone who savors a Chateau Ste. Michelle Merlot, one of Washington State’s top producers, or Smoking Loon, they’re likely to cast ballots for Democrats.

Columbia Crest, Ravenswood, Francis Coppola and Charles Shaw (better known as two-buck Chuck) all produce wines Democrats favor. Fish Eye, Bogle and Franzia drinkers are more likely to lean right…’ (Washington Post).

‘The fact that we’ve kept the number of U.S. states relatively static is nothing short a miracle—there have been hundreds of attempts at state secession over the years. But what if they had all succeeded? This brilliant map depicts that alternative universe, where the U.S. is broken up into 124 different states that stretch from sea-to-shining-sea.’ (Gizmodo).

‘The newest update in the highly disconcerting series of devastating failures that is the Fukushima cleanup effort is troubling to say the least. Tepco has confirmed that (unexplained) plumes of steam have been rising from the mangled remains of Reactor Building 3. In other words, there\’s a chance Fukushima could be in the middle of another meltdown.’ (Gizmodo).

New Year Sunrise

This is the annual update of my New Year’s post, a tradition I started early on on FmH:

I once ran across a January 1st Boston Globe article compiling folkloric beliefs about what to do, what to eat, etc. on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year to come. I’ve regretted since — I usually think of it around once a year (grin) — not clipping out and saving the article. Especially since we’ve had children, I’m interested in enduring traditions that go beyond getting drunk [although some comment that this is a profound enactment of the interdigitation of chaos and order appropriate to the New Year’s celebration — FmH], watching the bowl games and making resolutions.

A web search brought me this, less elaborate than what I recall from the Globe but to the same point. It is weighted toward eating traditions, which is odd because, unlike most other major holidays, the celebration of New Year’s in 21st century America does not seem to be centered at all around thinking about what we eat (except in the sense of the traditional weight-loss resolutions!) and certainly not around a festive meal. But…

Traditionally, it was thought that one could affect the luck they would have throughout the coming year by what they did or ate on the first day of the year. For that reason, it has become common for folks to celebrate the first few minutes of a brand new year in the company of family and friends. Parties often last into the middle of the night after the ringing in of a new year. It was once believed that the first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or bad luck the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor happened to be a tall dark-haired man.

“Traditional New Year foods are also thought to bring luck. Many cultures believe that anything in the shape of a ring is good luck, because it symbolizes “coming full circle,” completing a year’s cycle. For that reason, the Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune.

“Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by consuming black-eyed peas. These legumes are typically accompanied by either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas and other legumes have been considered good luck in many cultures. The hog, and thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes prosperity. Cabbage is another ‘good luck’ vegetable that is consumed on New Year’s Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper currency. In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on New Year’s Day.”

The further north one travels in the British Isles, the more the year-end festivities

Fireworks over Edinburgh on New Year’s Eve

focus on New Year’s. The Scottish observance of Hogmanay has many elements of warming heart and hearth, welcoming strangers and making a good beginning:

“Three cornered biscuits called hogmanays are eaten. Other special foods are: wine, ginger cordial, cheese, bread, shortbread, oatcake, carol or carl cake, currant loaf, and a pastry called scones. After sunset people collect juniper and water to purify the home. Divining rituals are done according to the directions of the winds, which are assigned their own colors. First Footing:The first person who comes to the door on midnight New Year’s Eve should be a dark-haired or dark-complected man with gifts for luck. Seeing a cat, dog, woman, red-head or beggar is unlucky. The person brings a gift (handsel) of coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity in the New Year. Mummer’s Plays are also performed. The actors called the White Boys of Yule are all dressed in white, except for one dressed as the devil in black. It is bad luck to engage in marriage proposals, break glass, spin flax, sweep or carry out rubbish on New Year’s Eve.”

Here’s why we clink our glasses when we drink our New Year’s toasts, no matter where we are. Of course, sometimes the midnight cacophony is louder than just clinking glassware, to create a ‘devil-chasing din’.

In Georgia, eat black eyed peas and turnip greens on New Year’s Day for luck and prosperity in the year to come, supposedly because they symbolize coppers and currency. Hoppin’ John, a concoction of peas, onion, bacon and rice, is also a southern New Year’s tradition, as is wearing yellow to find true love (in Peru, yellow underwear, apparently!) or carrying silver for prosperity. In some instances, a dollar bill is thrown in with the other ingredients of the New Year’s meal to bring prosperity. In Greece, there is a traditional New Year’s Day sweetbread with a silver coin baked into it. All guests get a slice of the bread and whoever receives the slice with the coin is destined for good fortune for the year. At Italian tables, lentils, oranges and olives are served. The lentils, looking like coins, will bring prosperity; the oranges are for love; and the olives, symbolic of the wealth of the land, represent good fortune for the year to come.

A New Year’s meal in Norway also includes dried cod, “lutefisk.” The Pennsylvania Dutch make sure to include sauerkraut in their holiday meal, also for prosperity.

In Spain, you would cram twelve grapes in your mouth at midnight, one each time the clock chimed, for good luck for the twelve months to come. (If any of the grapes happens to be sour, the corresponding month will not be one of your most fortunate in the coming year.) The U. S. version of this custom, for some reason, involves standing on a chair as you pop the grapes. In Denmark, jumping off a chair at the stroke of midnight signifies leaping into the New Year. In Rio, you would be plunging into the sea en masse at midnight, wearing white and bearing offerings. In many northern hemisphere cities near bodies of water, they will have a tradition of people plunging into the cold water on New Year’s Day. The Coney Island Polar Bears Club in New York is the oldest cold-water swimming club in the United States. They have had groups of people enter the chilly surf since 1903.

Ecuadorian families make scarecrows stuffed with newspaper and firecrackers and place them outside their homes. The dummies represent misfortunes of the prior year, which are then burned in effigy at the stroke of midnight to forget the old year. Bolivian families make beautiful little wood or straw dolls to hang outside their homes on New Year’s Eve to bring good luck.

In China, homes are cleaned spotless to appease the Kitchen God, and papercuttings of red paper are hung in the windows to scare away evil spirits who might enter the house and bring misfortune. Large papier mache dragon heads with long fabric bodies are maneuvered through the streets during the Dragon Dance festival, and families open their front doors to let the dragon bring good luck into their homes.

The Indian Diwali festival, welcoming in the autumnal season, also involves attracting good fortune with lights. Children make small clay lamps, dipas, thousands of which might adorn a given home. In Thailand, one pours fragrant water over the hands of elders on New Year’s Day to show them respect.

Elsewhere:

• a stack of pancakes for the New Year’s breakfast in France.
• banging on friends’ doors in Denmark to “smash in” the New Year, where it is also a good sign to find your doorstep heaped with broken dishes on New Year’s morning. Old dishes are saved all years to throw at your friends’ homes on New Year’s Eve.
• going in the front door and out the back door at midnight in Ireland.
• making sure the First Footer, the first person through your door in the New Year in Scotland, is a tall dark haired visitor.
• water out the window at midnight in Puerto Rico rids the home of evil spirits.
• cleanse your soul in Japan at the New Year by listening to a gong tolling 108 times, one for every sin
• it is Swiss good luck to let a drop of cream fall on the floor on New Year’s Day.
• Belgian farmers wish their animals a Happy New Year for blessings.
• In Germany and Austria, lead pouring” (das Bleigießen) is an old divining practice using molten lead like tea leaves. A small amount of lead is melted in a tablespoon (by holding a flame under the spoon) and then poured into a bowl or bucket of water. The resulting pattern is interpreted to predict the coming year. For instance, if the lead forms a ball (der Ball), that means luck will roll your way. The shape of an anchor (der Anker) means help in need. But a cross (das Kreuz) signifies death.
• “It’s a bit bizarre when you think about it. A short British cabaret sketch from the 1920s has become a German New Year’s tradition. Yet, although The 90th Birthday or Dinner for One is a famous cult classic in Germany and several other European countries, it is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, including Britain, its birthplace.” (Watch on Youtube, 11 min.)

Some history; documentation of observance of the new year dates back at least 4000 years to the Babylonians, who also made the first new year’s resolutions (reportedly voews to return borrowed farm equipment were very popular), although their holiday was observed at the vernal equinox. The Babylonian festivities lasted eleven days, each day with its own particular mode of celebration. The traditional Persian Norouz festival of spring continues to be considered the advent of the new year among Persians, Kurds and other peoples throughout Central Asia, and dates back at least 3000 years, deeply rooted in Zooastrian traditions.Modern Bahá’í’s celebrate Norouz (”Naw Ruz”) as the end of a Nineteen Day Fast. Rosh Hashanah (”head of the year”), the Jewish New Year, the first day of the lunar month of Tishri, falls between September and early October. Muslim New Year is the first day of Muharram, and Chinese New Year falls between Jan. 10th and Feb. 19th of the Gregorian calendar.

The classical Roman New Year’s celebration was also in the spring although the calendar went out of synchrony with the sun. January 1st became the first day of the year by proclamation of the Roman Senate in 153 BC, reinforced even more strongly when Julius Caesar established what came to be known as the Julian calendar in 46 BC. The early Christian Church condemned new year’s festivities as pagan but created parallel festivities concurrently. New Year’s Day is still observed as the Feast of Christ’s Circumcision in some denominations. Church opposition to a new year’s observance reasserted itself during the Middle Ages, and Western nations have only celebrated January 1 as a holidy for about the last 400 years. The custom of New Year’s gift exchange among Druidic pagans in 7th century Flanders was deplored by Saint Eligius, who warned them, “[Do not] make vetulas, [little figures of the Old Woman], little deer or iotticos or set tables [for the house-elf] at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks [another Yule custom].” (Wikipedia)

The tradition of the New Year’s Baby signifying the new year began with the Greek tradition of parading a baby in a basket during the Dionysian rites celebrating the annual rebirth of that god as a symbol of fertility. The baby was also a symbol of rebirth among early Egyptians. Again, the Church was forced to modify its denunciation of the practice as pagan because of the popularity of the rebirth symbolism, finally allowing its members to cellebrate the new year with a baby although assimilating it to a celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. The addition of Father Time (the “Old Year”) wearing a sash across his chest with the previous year on it, and the banner carried or worn by the New Year’s Baby, immigrated from Germany. Interestingly, January 1st is not a legal holiday in Israel, officially because of its historic origins as a Christian feast day.

Auld Lang Syne (literally ‘old long ago’ in the Scottish dialect) is sung or played at the stroke of midnight throughout the English-speaking world (and then there is George Harrison’s “Ring Out the Old”). Versions of the song have been part of the New Year’s festivities since the 17th century but Robert Burns was inspired to compose a modern rendition, which was published after his death in 1796. (It took Guy Lombardo, however, to make it popular…)

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
And here’s a hand, my trusty friend
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Here’s how to wish someone a Happy New Year around the world:

• Arabic: Kul ‘aam u antum salimoun
• Brazilian: Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo means “Good Parties and Happy New Year”
• Chinese: Chu Shen Tan Xin Nian Kuai Le (thanks, Jeff)
• Czechoslavakia: Scastny Novy Rok
• Dutch: Gullukkig Niuw Jaar
• Finnish: Onnellista Uutta Vuotta
• French: Bonne Annee
• German: Prosit Neujahr
• Greek: Eftecheezmaenos o Kaenooryos hronos
• Hebrew: L’Shannah Tovah Tikatevu
• Hindi: Niya Saa Moobaarak
• Irish (Gaelic): Bliain nua fe mhaise dhuit
• Italian: Buon Capodanno
• Khmer: Sua Sdei tfnam tmei
• Laotian: Sabai dee pee mai
• Polish: Szczesliwego Nowego Roku
• Portuguese: Feliz Ano Novo
• Russian: S Novim Godom
• Serbo-Croatian: Scecna nova godina
• Spanish: Feliz Ano Nuevo
• Swedish: Ha ett gott nytt år
• Turkish: Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
• Vietnamese: Cung-Chuc Tan-Xuan
• [If you are a native speaker, please feel free to offer any corrections or additions!]

However you’re going to celebrate, my warmest wishes for the year to come… and eat hearty! [thanks to Bruce Umbaugh for research assistance]

Related?

• Lucky Foods for the New Year (wholefoodsmarket.com)
• New Year’s Day food traditions around the world (examiner.com)
• Lucky foods to Eat on New Year’s Day (kasamba.com)
• 10 Good Luck Foods (beatcancer2010.wordpress.com)
• Good luck food for New Year’s Day (mnn.com)
• New Year’s Eve Traditions 3 (languagelearnersandteachers.wordpress.com)
• How to Manifest Good Luck in the New Year (norinedresser.wordpress.com)
• New Year’s foods for prosperity and luck?
• What’s Cooking in January
• Pickle, Peach, Carp Drops Mark New Year
• It’s New Year’s Eve, You’re Drunk and Damnit, You Drove
• Regency Christmas Traditions: Hogmanay (trsparties.com)

‘In a feature straight out of the movies, Dr. Rob Jenkins and his team have demonstrated that for sufficiently high-resolution photos, recognizable images of reflected faces of the photographer and bystanders can be retrieved from a subject’s eyes.

The researchers say that in crimes in which the victims are photographed, such as hostage taking or child sex abuse, reflections in the eyes of the photographic subject could help to identify perpetrators. Images of people retrieved from cameras seized as evidence during criminal investigations could be used to piece together networks of associates or to link individuals to particular locations.’ (Kottke).

Related:

• Reflect, You Will
• Eye reflections in photos could help solve crimes, researchers say
• Zoom, enhance. Corneal reflections can reveal bystanders
• EYE SPY A CRIMINAL?Pupil reflections in photos could help solve crimes
• Can eyes of photographed crime victims help spot criminals?
• Hidden faces can be found by zooming into hi-res photos of eyes
• Can digital photos catch criminals in eye reflections?
• Scientists: Police can now identify suspects’ faces from victims’ eyes
• Hidden information in photographs may be used to spot criminals
• Reflections in victim’s eyes could help ID perpetrators, new research suggests

‘A BBC nature documentary crew has captured footage of young dolphins passing around a pufferfish. They characterize the activity as “careful manipulation” and speculate that the dolphins are getting a small dose of the pufferfish’s neurotoxin in order to enter a “trance-like state.” The documentary was produced by John Downer, a highly nature documentarian, and a zoologist on the crew also confirms the “dolphins get high” hypothesis.’ (Boing Boing).

‘Legendary game designer Chris Crawford …owns 29,216 small plastic beads. Each bead is one of eight colors, and there are 3,652 beads in each color group. One bead represents a single day in Crawford\’s life. Each color group, therefore, represents one decade. The yellow beads are his childhood. The black beads are his teens. The greens are his inexperienced twenties, the oranges his restless thirties, the navy blues his settling forties and so on, all the way up to bead 29,216, which will represent his eightieth birthday.

Chris Crawford owns two jars. One is filled with the beads that represent his past, and the other is filled with the beads that represent his potential future.

Every morning, Crawford takes a bead from the jar that holds his future days and places it into the jar that holds the past. While he performs the ritual he tells himself not to waste the day.’ — Mark Frauenfelder (Boing Boing).

06 Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)

‘The most accurately depicted psychopaths in cinema have been identified by a study that has just been published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences…It’s worth noting that the clinical definition of psychopathy is not what most people think – it’s not necessarily someone who is a knife wielding maniac – but suggests someone who has poor empathy, little remorse, and is impulsive and manipulative.

Needless to say, psychopathy is more common in people who are persistently violent, but you don’t need to be violent to be a psychopath.After conducting the analysis the authors note which films they feel have most accurately captured the characteristics of the psychopath.’ (Mind Hacks).

Related articles

• Psychopath Envy (terminclature.wordpress.com)
• Are Psychopaths good for society? (smwilliams92.wordpress.com)
• Psychopathic behaviour in society and the psychopath test #PsychopathNight (mindfuelstuff.wordpress.com)
• Psychopathy On A Rampage (zengardner.com)
• Psychopaths: Some are just like us! (salon.com)
• What Would You Do If You Found Out You Were A Psychopath? (gizmodo.co.uk)

‘Great maps were everywhere in 2013. Some seemed destined to go viral. Some were stunning to see. Others had noble intentions and interesting stories to tell. Lots were made by people who aren\’t professional mappers. Here are some our favorites.’ (Wired Science).

‘Christmas Man. Daddy Christmas. Grandfather Frost. Yule Man. Yule Elder. Yule Gnome. Yule Goat. Father Christmas. Old Man Christmas. Biblical Magi. Christ Child. Christmas Log. All those names are names for Santa Claus in other countries around the world. Calling him just Santa Claus just seems so boring in comparison, doesn\’t it?

This map, popularized on Reddit, shows the name for the person who brings gives to countries around Europe. And I guess it would make sense for other older countries to have some weird ass names for Saint Nick since his origin story there isn\’t as cheery and commercialized as it is here.’ (Sploid).

‘Artists generally like to sign their work. Painters, sculptors, poets, all leave their name as a mark of pride. But when your brush is a scalpel and your canvas is the human body, it’s probably best to avoid that urge. One British surgeon is finding that out, after being suspended for branding his initials on a patient’s liver. These ain’t cattle, doc!

Details are slim on this one, but it seems a surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, in England’s West Midlands, used an argon plasma coagulation tool to sear his brand in a patient’s liver. The tool, used to stop bleeding by burning tiny blood vessels shut with a beam of electrically-charged argon gas, can cut up to an inch deep in human tissue.

The surgeon’s signature was discovered by another doctor, who found the initials on the patient’s organ during a different surgery. Now they fear that potentially hundreds of patients are walking around with organs bearing the surgeon’s name. Doctors say the branding leaves only superficial burns, and isn’t likely to cause any harm to the patients. Small solace when you’re walking around with some bonkers doctor’s insignia on your guts.’ (Sploid).

• 

  The People You Choose To Follow Agree With You

You’re awesome, so you wouldn’t follow anyone who isn’t. And clearly anyone you think is awesome must be pretty smart, right? …

• The News You Choose to Consume Agrees With You

You’re really smart, so you only check the best news sources. Sure, there are other news sources out there, but your news sources are the most reliable – and the least biased. The news sources you like may occasionally get things wrong, but the news organizations you dislike are completely and utterly dishonest. They deliberately spin things. They can’t be trusted…

• The People You Disagree With Are Ridiculous

The people you follow, and the news sources you like, will of course point out when someone you disagree with says something stupid. …

Embrace Your Bubble! (Makeuseof).

‘Long-time readers of Wired magazine will recognize (with some sentimentality) their “wired/tired/expired” lists at the beginning of each issue. Happily, they ressurected the format for their year-end list. But — judging by the number of “expired” things I like and use — it’s a bittersweet reunion. I am perpetually the person who jumps on trends and ideas as they hit their close. Take their classification of music services, for example:

• Wired Streaming Music
• Tired Cloud-based Storage
• Expired iTunes

My beloved iTunes collection is “expired”? And it’s out-hipped by some upstart streaming services like Spotify and Rdio? Geddafuggouttahere.

…Spotify and Rdio probably work really well for people who see music as a transient background interest. But I’m difficult and picky, and music is extremely important to me.’ (Pixel Envy).

‘Do you know which words entered the English language around the same time you entered the world? Use our OED birthday word generator to find out! We’ve scoured the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to find words with a first known usage for each year from 1900 to 2004. Simply select the relevant decade and click on your birth year to discover a word which entered the English language that year.’ (OED birthday word generator)

‘Bertha, the world’s largest tunneling machine, churning through the rock and mud beneath Seattle, has hit a mysterious roadblock—so mysterious, it is only known for now as “the object.”

The New York Times reports that the machine—300 feet long and 5 stories tall—has ground to a halt. Built precisely not to be stopped by, well, just about anything, Bertha has apparently met her match. But what exactly is it? “Something unknown, engineers say—and all the more intriguing to many residents for being unknown—has blocked the progress of the biggest-diameter tunnel-boring machine in use on the planet,” the NYT writes.’ (Gizmodo).

R.I.P. The Blog, 1997-2013: ‘Sometime in the past few years, the blog died. In 2014, people will finally notice. Sure, blogs still exist, many of them are excellent, and they will go on existing and being excellent for many years to come. But the function of the blog, the nebulous informational task we all agreed the blog was fulfilling for the past decade, is increasingly being handled by a growing number of disparate media forms that are blog-like but also decidedly not blogs.

Instead of blogging, people are posting to Tumblr, tweeting, pinning things to their board, posting to Reddit, Snapchatting, updating Facebook statuses, Instagramming, and publishing on Medium. In 1997, wired teens created online diaries, and in 2004 the blog was king. Today, teens are about as likely to start a blog (over Instagramming or Snapchatting) as they are to buy a music CD. Blogs are for 40-somethings with kids.’ (kottke).

‘Pandora and Endor, eat your hearts out. The first known moon outside of our solar system may have been found, and it seems weirder than we ever could have imagined.

Exomoons have long been predicted to exist – some may even be habitable worlds – but until now, no one had detected any. “This is the first serious candidate from any survey that I am aware of,” says astronomer David Kipping of Harvard University, who was not involved in the discovery.

Unlike the exomoons that feature in the films Avatar and Return of the Jedi, not to mention the moons in our solar system, the new moon and its exoplanet seem to be adrift in the cosmos, far from any star.’ (New Scientist).

‘Narcolepsy is a mysterious disorder that involves sudden, uncontrollable sleepiness, among many other symptoms. On one hand, its cause seems straightforward: people slowly lose a special group of neurons that produce hypocretin, a hormone that keeps us awake.

But what kills the neurons?

Many scientists have long suspected that the immune system is responsible. That would make narcolepsy an autoimmune disease–one in which a person’s immune system turns on their own healthy cells.

There’s been a lot of evidence to support this idea, but a team of scientists from Stanford University have finally found what they describe as a “smoking gun”. People with narcolepsy, and only people with narcolepsy, have a special group of immune cells that targets hypocretin. These cells might be attacking the neurons directly, or acting through an intermediary, or something else altogether. Either way, it’s the first clear, direct sign of autoimmunity.

The study also helps to explain some puzzling quirks about narcolepsy, like why the 2009 swine flu pandemic led to a surge of cases in China, or why one particular vaccine against that strain did the same in Europe.’ — Ed Yong (Not Exactly Rocket Science).

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‘Are you slowly killing your houseplants? Probably! But there might be a reason other than neglect why they’re all yellow and wilty: your Wi-Fi router.

An experiment by a handful of high school students in Denmark has sparked some serious international interest in the scientific community.Five ninth-grade girls at Hjallerup School in North Jutland, Denmark, noticed they had trouble concentrating after sleeping with their mobile phones at their bedsides. They tried to figure out why. The school obviously doesn’t have the equipment to test human brain waves, so the girls decided to do a more rudimentary experiment. They placed six trays of garden cress seeds next to Wi-Fi routers that emitted roughly the same microwave radiation as a mobile phone. Then they placed six more trays of seeds in a separate room without routers. The girls controlled both environments for room temperature, sunlight and water. After 12 days, they found the garden cress seeds in the routerless room had exploded into bushy greenery, while the seeds next to the Wi-Fi routers were brown, shriveled, and even mutated…’ (The Daily Dot).

‘Merry—or not-so-merry—Krampus! This beast with Germanic roots is St. Nicholas\’s other half and scares children into being nice, not naughty.’ (National Geographic).

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Ocean Could be Ice Free by 2015: ‘Say goodbye to polar bears and a whole lot of ice. New research suggests the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free by 2015, with devastating consequences for the world. Can it be stopped?

Someone better tell Santa Claus. First it was polar bears that were threatened by global warming. Now it’s reindeer too. As temperatures in the Arctic skyrocket, reindeer are suffering staggeringly large, rapid population losses. “Herds of reindeer have declined by one-third since the 1990s as their access to food sources, breeding grounds and historic migration routes have been altered,” reports the environmental audit committee of the British Parliament.

The entire planet is getting hotter, but the top of the world is warming twice as fast as the global average. One leading expert, Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, says the Arctic Ocean could be completely free of ice in summer as soon as 2015. An overheated Arctic in turn threatens catastrophic knock-on effects for the rest of the globe, including more extreme weather; faster sea level rise; and a higher chance of accelerating global warming to where it becomes unstoppable—what scientists refer to as “runaway” global warming.’ — Mark Hertsgaard (The Daily Beast).

Related articles

• US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016 (therebel.org)
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Tea Party fantasies kill kids: ‘Newtown and Arapahoe shootings keep happening because there’s big money in guns — and outdated myths we must end…’ — Richard Eskow (Salon).

We’d better cooperate: ‘Leroy Chiao is a Chinese-American former NASA astronaut who commanded the International Space Station between 2004 and 2005. He was the first U.S. citizen invited to China’s astronaut training center. As China sends its first rover to the moon, he says it’s time for NASA to reach out and cooperate.‘ (Slate).

‘…Data from the Hubble space telescope suggests that enormous jets of water more than 200 kilometers tall (roughly twice as high as Earth’s atmosphere) may be spurting intermittently from the moon’s surface.

The frozen body Europa is known to have a vast liquid water ocean beneath its cold crust, a potential home for life. Should these newly observed water plumes be tapping into some Europan sea, they could be bringing material to the surface that would otherwise stay hidden. Follow-up observations from Earth or with probes around Europa could sample the fountains, hunting for organic material and perhaps finding evidence of living organisms beyond Earth.

The findings, presented today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, await independent confirmation. But if the jets are real, the frozen world would join the tiny number of others known to have active jets, including Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Neptune’s moon Triton.’ (Wired Science).

Science looks for signs we’re not real: “Some say the odds are good that were living in a computer simulation, and a few researchers think they might know how to find out the truth.” (Crave – CNET).

A directory of Opt-Out links to stop data brokers from selling your personal information: ‘Data brokers have pioneered advanced techniques to collect and collate information about consumers’ offline, online and mobile behavior. But they have been slow to develop innovative ways for consumers to gain access to the information that companies obtain, share and sell about them for marketing purposes. Now federal regulators are pressuring data brokers to operate more transparently.

In 2012, a report by the Federal Trade Commission recommended that the industry set up a public Web portal that would display the names and contact information of every data broker doing business in the United States, as well as describe consumers’ data access rights and other choices. But, for years the data brokers have been too busy to build a centralized Web portal for consumers. So, we decided to help them out and StopDataMining.me was born!’ (StopDataMining.me).

‘For the past century, an obscure mathematical principle called Zipfs law has predicted the size of mega-cities all over the world. And nobody knows why.’ (io9).

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Seymour M. Hersh: “Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack.” (LRB 8 December 2013).

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‘The German president has become the first major political figure to boycott the Sochi Winter Olympics in February. According to German weekly Der Spiegel, Joachim Gauck last week informed the Kremlin of his decision, which is understood to be a response to the Russian government’s violations of human rights and harrassment of the opposition.Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor who played a key part in the East German protest movement before the fall of the Berlin Wall, has declined any official visits to Russia since coming to office in March 2012 and repeatedly criticised the country’s “deficit of rule of law” and “air of imperialism”. ‘ (The Raw Story).

‘…Eriksson didn’t realise it then, but he was embarking on one of the internet’s most enduring puzzles; a scavenger hunt that has led thousands of competitors across the web, down telephone lines, out to several physical locations around the globe, and into unchartered areas of the \”darknet”. So far, the hunt has required a knowledge of number theory, philosophy and classical music. An interest in both cyberpunk literature and the Victorian occult has also come in handy as has an understanding of Mayan numerology.

It has also featured a poem, a tuneless guitar ditty, a femme fatale called \”Wind” who may, or may not, exist in real life, and a clue on a lamp post in Hawaii. Only one thing is certain: as it stands, no one is entirely sure what the challenge – known as Cicada 3301 – is all about or who is behind it. Depending on who you listen to, it’s either a mysterious secret society, a statement by a new political think tank, or an arcane recruitment drive by some quasi-military body. Which means, of course, everyone thinks it’s the CIA…’ (Telegraph.UK)

HIV Reappears in Two Patients Thought to Be Cured: ‘The two male patients seemingly cured of HIV thanks to bone marrow transplants have both begun to show signs of the virus again, according to researchers in Boston.

Dr. Timothy Henrich of Brigham and Womens hospital presented the disappointing news yesterday at an AIDS research conference in Florida, saying that both patients had resumed HIV medications after the virus reappeared. The two patients, both battling HIV for years, had received bone marrow transplants to treat Hodgkins lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. After the transplants, both showed undetectable levels of the HIV virus. The patients agreed to stop taking HIV medications to help researchers determine if the marrow transplant was responsible for the virus disappearing.

When both patients showed undetectable virus levels after several weeks without treatment seven weeks and 15 weeks, respectively, Henrichs team revealed this finding to the medical community. But the virus reappeared in one patient in August, and in the other in November, after eight months with no HIV detected.’ (Gizmodo)

Inspiration To World’, Dies At 95: “Nelson Mandela, who was born in a country that viewed him as a second-class citizen, died Thursday as one of the most respected statesmen in the world.” (NPR). Mournful day. Playing that parlor game, what famous person you would most like to meet, Mandela was one of the first who came to mind. Thinking about whose passing will diminish the world, and me, most, he is high on the list. Madiba is gone. Long live Madiba!.

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‘You’re looking at the Grand Canyon completely flooded by clouds, “a once in a lifetime event,” according to park ranger Erin Whittaker. It didn’t only happen once, she says, but two times in only three days’ (Gizmodo).

‘ …“Homeland” has long since abandoned the promise of its first exciting season, when The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum hailed it as “the antidote for ‘24.’” For those who may have repressed the memory, “24” was the Fox network’s action-packed, torture-rich, frankly Islamophobic series featuring the unstoppable Jack Bauer, who saved the world at least three times in any given 24-hour period.

“Homeland” was created by two men who were heavily involved with the earlier show, Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. They seemed to have scaled down the testosterone quite a bit, going so far as to hint in the Showtime series that the US drone program was at least partly responsible for the further radicalization of the Muslim world (and for Brody’s desire to kill the VP).

But season three brings back “American exceptionalism” with a vengeance — a concept author Stephen Kinzer described as “the view that the United States is inherently more moral and farther-seeing than other countries and therefore may behave in ways that others should not.”

Others, of course, might disagree. By all accounts, despite government bans, millions of Iranians are actively using social media; the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei has his own Twitter account, and issues fatwas via Facebook. Let’s just hope they’re not all watching “Homeland.” ‘ (Salon)

A recent study showed that more than 90% of depositions of the crucifixion show Jesus with his head turned toward the right, showing the left side of his face. The investigators speculate that artists are betraying an implicit understanding of the neuroscience of emotion — it is generally acknowledged that the left side of the face is more expressive, controlled as it is by the right cerebral hemisphere. However, there are plenty of non-neurological explanations:

‘For one thing, Mary is usually located to Jesus’ right, so maybe he is looking toward her. Or if Jesus is feeling abandoned by God, perhaps he is looking to the right, away from God (Jesus is usually described as being on God’s right-hand side). The saved are also depicted by convention on the right, so Jesus could be looking toward salvation. The number of speculations are almost endless.’ (Wired Science).

‘You’re pretty smart right? Clever, and funny too. Of course you are, just like me. But wouldn’t it be terrible if we were mistaken? Psychologists have shown that we are more likely to be blind to our own failings than perhaps we realise. This could explain why some incompetent people are so annoying, and also inject a healthy dose of humility into our own sense of self-regard.’ (Mind Hacks).

Related:

• The more inept you are the more inaccurate your self-assessment
• Why the stupid think they’re smart

Soviet military dog training school in Moscow Oblast

Exploding Dogs Were Used as Mobile Anti-Tank Mines During World War II (part of my sometime series, The Annals of Human Depravity).

In a tactic pioneered by the Soviets, the dogs (usually Alsatians and also called hundminen or dog mines in German) ‘were trained to carry explosives on their bodies to enemy tanks, where they would then be detonated’ by timer or remote control, with obvious consequences for the animal in question.

Fortunately for the dogs, a number of impracticalities, described in the article, limited the extent and duration of this approach, although various countries including the United States continued to train dogs as suicide bombers until the end of the 20th century and ‘insurgents attempted to use them during the Iraq War. In this case, there’s only one documented case of a bomb actually being detonated while attached to a dog though; protests rose up among Muslims who believe that animals should be killed only for food.’

Other animals have been trained to become wartime munitions delivery systems as well, including cats, birds, rats, camels, donkeys, mules and horses, monkeys and marine mammals. (Gizmodo).

Related:

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• Declassified 1943 Film ‘The Use of War Dogs’ by US Military (Video) (theepochtimes.com)

‘There may well be more than 60 billion habitable planets littering the Milky Way, but it’s virtually impossible to make use of that figure. Instead, how about this picture, which shows you how many planets are within 60 light-years of Earth.

In the image, the size of the circle represents the size of the planet, while color indicates the kind of star it orbits: dusky red signifies that it’s spinning around something similar to the Sun, gray means that the star is a different size. Dark circles represent planets the same size as Earth.’ (Gizmodo)

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…So why can’t we stop using it? ‘In my research I have found that social software may inadvertently promote inequality rather than countering it. Metrics, like follower count or number of “likes” on a photo, facilitate this process by rendering social status into something that can be quantified, qualified, and publicized.

The process of what I call “digital instantiation” works similarly toward quantification, qualification, and publicity by rendering users’ lives in piecemeal fashion, unintentionally creating a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. Social media tools digitize formerly ephemeral pieces of information, like what one had for breakfast, making it possible to create a bigger picture of a person or community’s actions. Once “breakfast” is captured in a Foursquare check-in or Instagram photo, it can be combined, searched, or aggregated with other pieces of information to create mental models of actions, beliefs, and activities. Within this context, social surveillance, or the monitoring of friends’ and peers’ digital information, becomes normal.

While lifestreaming has plenty of social and emotional benefits, it also comes with costs. Lifestreamers must see themselves through the gaze of others, altering their behavior as needed to maintain their desired self-presentation. This constant monitoring against the backdrop of a networked audience creates anxiety and encourages jockeying for status, even as it brings forth new forms of social information.’ (Medium).

Related articles

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‘During the 1990s, a previously little-known concept rapidly became the hottest term in international relations. “Humanitarian intervention”—at its simplest, the use of military force to protect human rights—established itself in the political lexicon following a series of brutal conflicts in Africa and the Balkans.

As with most political concepts, humanitarian intervention became voguish thanks to circumstances. The Soviet Union had collapsed. We hadn’t fully grasped the threat posed by Islamist terrorism. With the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and the relative success of the Israel-Palestinian peace process, even the Middle East seemed uncommonly stable.

Most important, there was an acute awareness in Western countries that our impressive military strength hadn’t deterred some of the worst slaughters of the 20th century. For around 14 weeks in 1994, Rwanda was the site of the most rapacious extermination since the Holocaust, with more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus murdered by machete-wielding Hutu extremists. Between 1992 and 1995, the war in Bosnia spawned countless atrocities, such as the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Serb forces in the town of Srebrenica. To many—especially American Jews—it seemed that these failures showed the hollowness of oft-repeated promises of “never again.”

Humanitarian intervention was the response to these failures. When the United States and the United Kingdom led a “coalition of the willing” to stop the Serb onslaught in Kosovo in 1999—supported by an ideologically broad coalition of liberal internationalists and neoconservatives—it wasn’t to pursue a strategic interest but to arrest yet another episode of ethnic cleansing on European soil. Similarly, when the British intervened in Sierra Leone’s civil war in 2000, the sole purpose was to prevent drug-addled paramilitaries controlled by a psychopath named Foday Sankoh from hacking off the limbs of young children.

The images of those wars—the long columns of refugees, the mass graves, the flowers and candy and cheers that greeted the liberating foreign armies—all seem very distant now. The combined experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan have persuaded many Westerners that any kind of military action, even when it’s undertaken in the defense of basic human rights, is just plain wrong—morally, politically, and strategically.

Thus do we come to the debacle in Syria. Once Syrian President Bashar al-Assad unleashed chemical weapons against his own people, Western policymakers were confronted with a textbook case for humanitarian intervention. In a different context, they might have acted. But there was little domestic backing, even from those who had spoken strongly in the 1990s of “never again.” This lack of support was one critical reason America and its allies caved under Russian pressure, calling off planned air strikes in favor of a dubious diplomatic process guided by Moscow.

Was humanitarian intervention just a passing fad, or can it be resuscitated? Can we ever reach agreement among both liberals and conservatives that military action in defense of human rights is sometimes justified, or are we fated to remain polarized, to the detriment of those under the boot of tyrannical regimes?’ (Slate)

Helium is wasted in floating parade balloons: ‘Back in September, before the U.S. government shut down for a few days, Congress approved a bill that would prevent the National Helium Reserve from shutting down. This might sound minor, but as Miriam Krule and Noam Prywes explained in 2012, we’re quickly running out of helium—a valuable, and nearly impossible to recreate, natural resource. More than just funny voices and balloons, helium is necessary for MRIs, deep-sea diving, and aerospace engineering. So, before you sit down to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade, take a minute to read their piece…’ (Salon).

“Brian the dog elevated the show’s humor to actual social commentary. Killing him off was a huge mistake…” — Kevin Wong (Salon.com).

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‘Having type 2 diabetes may mean you are already on the path to Alzheimer’s. This startling claim comes from a study linking the two diseases more intimately than ever before.’ (New Scientist).

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William Saletan: ‘…[P]eople who suspect conspiracies aren’t really sceptics. Like the rest of us, they\’re selective doubters. They favour a world view, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn’t about God, values, freedom, or equality. It\’s about the omnipotence of elites.

Conspiracy chatter was once dismissed as mental illness. But the prevalence of such belief, documented in surveys, has forced scholars to take it more seriously. Conspiracy theory psychology is becoming an empirical field with a broader mission: to understand why so many people embrace this way of interpreting history. As you’d expect, distrust turns out to be an important factor. But it’s not the kind of distrust that cultivates critical thinking…’  (Slate, via New Scientist).

‘The kind of boredom you experience most often may be linked to your personality, say researchers.’ (National Geographic)

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‘This exceedingly rare triple system, seen when the universe was only 800 million years old [which is cosmic terms is the equivalent to the first 3.8 years of our lives], provides important insights into the earliest stages of galaxy formation during a period known as ‘cosmic dawn,’ when the universe was first bathed in starlight.’ (Gizmodo).

‘When the Queen of Denmark opted to commission the first royal family portrait in almost 125 years, she turned to Thomas Kluge, a largely self-taught Danish portrait painter whose inspirations are said to include Rembrandt and Caravaggio. After four years of work, Kluge\’s finished painting is finally here: an inexplicably creepy portrait that reimagines the royal family as a clan of sadists, transvestites, and malevolent pigmen whose abominable ruttings have brought into the world a brood of Damien-like progeny.’ (Co.Design via Boing Boing)

‘Pilots flying Boeing’s massive 747 Dreamlifter accidentally landed at the wrong airport yesterday, and have been stuck there overnight. The modified jumbo jets hopscotch the world picking up sections of the 787 Dreamliner and flying them to the company’s factories in Everett, Washington and North Charleston, South Carolina. But last night instead of landing at McConnell Air Force Base where the nose sections are made by Spirit Aerosystems, they landed several miles away at Jabara airport. No big deal? Big deal: The runway at Jabara is only 6,101 feet long, a bit shorter than the 747′s normal takeoff requirements…’ (Wired.com).

‘150 is “the approximate number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.” 150 is often referred to as the Dunbar number.

Ten years ago, Robin Dunbar studied the sending of Christmas cards in England. He used the count to measure meaningful social connections. The number sent averaged 153.5, precisely what Dunbar expected. He and other researchers kept finding groupings of 150; self-governing communes, offices of Gore-Tex, etc. Dunbar postulates that this is simply the brain’s limit. Sure, there are outliers, but most people top out at 150 relationships…

“Fundamentally, once you go beyond this number of people you can keep in your head, you begin to filter yourself, you change what you share and how much, you put on your public face.” …

Dunbar plotted the size of the neocortex of each type of primate with the size group that it lived in. The bigger the neocortex, the larger the group. To predict human group size, Dunbar supplanted the ratio of the human neocortex into the group. The result? 147.8, roughly 150…

Dunbar says within the 150, there are other interesting numbers. Three to five are our closest friends. The death of any of our 12-15 closest would devastate us….’ (dirjournal.com).

..but scientists killed it (Telegraph.UK)

 

…Follow Me Here dawned the second week of November, 1999. How long have you been following?

“God doesn’t need our permission to be anywhere” …The separation of church and state is not even worth debating because “God is everywhere” and “doesn’t need our permission to be anywhere.” (Salon.com).

Despite inarguably vast stress levels, multiple measures since the mid-’90s have shown that African Americans are psychologically healthier than Caucasian Americans. The phenomenon is formally described as the “race paradox in mental health”.

And it is not simply a matter of lower rates of diagnosis or detection. More credible speculations have pointed to more supportive family relationships or what are called “fictive kin” relationships, the unofficial family structures that develop in communities not dominated by standard nuclear family structures.

But, in an investigation published last week, Dawne Mouzon, a Rutgers sociologist, dispensed with much of the received wisdom, writing that “neither the quality nor quality of family relationships can explain the race paradox in mental health.” Instead,  “it is plausible that African Americans possess other resilience mechanisms (e.g., other social relationships, different types of coping strategies) that I was unable to consider here.” (The Last Word On Nothing).

‘It’s a question that’s perplexed philosophers for centuries and scientists for decades: Where does consciousness come from? We know it exists, at least in ourselves. But how it arises from chemistry and electricity in our brains is an unsolved mystery.

Neuroscientist Christof Koch, chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, thinks he might know the answer. According to Koch, consciousness arises within any sufficiently complex, information-processing system. All animals, from humans on down to earthworms, are conscious; even the internet could be. That’s just the way the universe works.’ (Wired Science).

‘What are the World’s Most Irreplaceable Places? Here are 6 From a Big New List. A new study highlights some of the world’s most critical places essential for species survival.’ (National Geographic)

‘It’s hard to think of a critter that inspires as much hyperbolic hysteria as the brown recluse spider. They’re pretty much universally hated. If you believe the tales, these small arachnids are biting people all day, every day, producing massive, stinking flesh-craters that require months of intensive care and perhaps a prosthetic appendage. Sometimes, it seems these spiders have nothing better to do than hunker down in dark corners throughout North America, waiting for tender human skin to present itself.

Though there are strands of truth in the hype, on the whole, it’s bunk.’ (Wired Science).

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No, they don’t “protect our freedoms”: ‘We need not thank the troops for every breath we take. When we do, we reduce our entire existence as free people to something that only exists at the whim of the U.S. military, and suffocate critical thought about the military and what it’s actually doing in the world.’ — Justin Doolittle (Salon).

‘The Florida senator is keynoting a fundraiser for a notorious anti-LGBT rights group.’ (Salon).

‘YOLO is a myth.’ — SMBC (BuzzFeed).

Shocked astronomers discover strange new type of space object: ‘The object in these photographs captured by Hubble is not a comet. It’s something that no astronomer has ever seen before, according to NASA: An asteroid with six comet-like tails that isn’t moving like a comet and it’s not made of ice. It’s just hanging up there, rotating like a crazy space spider…’ (Gizmodo).

“It could be the brightest comet in decades, or even centuries, and it\’s coming to visit for the holidays. It might also fizzle out.” (CNET).

‘

The chances of accidentally insulting someone is greater when you travel internationally, thanks to differing customs and ideas of etiquette. Even common hand gestures can signal the wrong thing.

Mental Floss has gathered five hand signals that don’t mean what you might think, depending on the country you’re in. A thumbs up, for example, doesn’t mean “good job” in parts of Latin America, West Africa, Iran, and Sardinia—it’s more like giving someone the finger. Likewise, the peace sign is not so peaceful in the UK, depending on how your palm is turned, and the okay sign does not mean “okay” in the Middle East, Turkey, Germany, or Brazil.

Before you travel to a foreign country, it’s best to review the etiquette and customs, including when it comes to eating. Or, in case of doubt, just to avoid making hand gestures all together.’  (Lifehacker).

‘Watertown, New York is the last place you\’d expect to find a creepy, supernatural mystery. After all, they\’re mostly known as the birthplace of the safety pin and those air fresheners for your car that are shaped like trees – both safe, friendly things. But now, it seems that they’re finally ready to admit that they\’re becoming more well known for their local park’s nasty habit of eating people.

Last week, the city officials erected a sign in the park warning locals of the \”vortex\”. As it turns out, the Mayor himself felt compelled to acknowledge the rumors after digging up some recently declassified information linking Watertown to the infamous Area 51 base in Nevada.’ (Roadtrippers).

‘More than 7,000 Americans named John Smith have gone missing.  Smith is unchallenged as the most numerous surname in the U.S., some 28 percent ahead of second-place Johnson, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and WhitePages.com. And, based on the most recent available data from these sources, John heads the list of the most frequent first names. And yet, John Smith doesn’t even rank in the top 10 combinations of first and last name in the country. What happened? Where did all the John Smiths go?’ (Slate)

.

‘The U.S. is facing a shortage of a drug widely used for lethal injections. With few options, states are turning to new drugs and compounding pharmacies, rather than overseas companies.

The move is raising safety concerns, and in some cases delaying executions. Other executions are proceeding, however, and advocates are asking whether the use of new drugs violates the inmates’ Eighth Amendment protection from cruel and unusual punishment…’ (NPR)

‘…[T]ime is an emergent phenomenon that comes about because of the nature of entanglement. And it exists only for observers inside the universe. Any god-like observer outside sees a static, unchanging universe…’ (The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium).

‘It is not just a Starbucks’ coffee that you get when you walk through the café doors; it is a Starbucks’ experience. It was after careful psychological research that the company first decided to have white cups with green writing, “tall” lattes, natural materials, and round tables…’ (Whittaker Associates)

Thanks to William Gibson. (The Rockpot).

‘So much of social-network analysis confirms what we already know. Relationships that last are ones in which the other person widens our world? Well, yes. Still, it’s kind of nice to have it confirmed with lots of data and algorithms. “We hadn’t had this view of it before,” Mr. Kleinberg observed.’ (NYTimes)

‘The two-sentence horror story has become something of a genre — a super-popular Reddit thread this summer spawned numerous compilations. In honor of Halloween, Salon asked 12 novelists to try their hand at the form. Below are their ghostly, bloody, watery and surprisingly pet-focused forays into darkness.’ (Salon.com).

‘Sunday morning at 6:45AM, folks on the east coast will have a chance to see a very rare hybrid solar eclipse. The last one occurred 150 years ago, and the next one won\’t come until the year 2172, so make sure you set your alarm.

Let\’s talk terminology. An annular eclipse is the \”ring of fire\” type, where a small ring of sunlight shines around the moon. A total eclipse is where the moon blocks the sun completely. The hybrid eclipse has both phases: a ring is briefly visible, then the moon blocks out the sun completely, then (sometimes) the ring reappears. They\’re exceedingly rare — fewer than five percent of eclipses are hybrids.’ (Gizmodo).

‘When humans see a dog wagging its tail, we pretty much equate that with a happy dog. It turns out that a dogs tail may be much more expressive than we realize. Research has shown that happy dogs tend to wag more to the right, while anxious dogs go more to the left. A new study published in the journal Current Biology delves into the question of whether other dogs read this response.’ (CNET).

(Boston.com).

Related articles

• Oh, the Horror: are these scariest characters of all time this Halloween? (glasgow.stv.tv)
• Hidden Haunts: 10 Scariest Movies You May Have Never Seen (entertainment.time.com)
• Scariest Movies of All Time! (wordofthemouth.wordpress.com)
• What is the scariest film music? (telegraph.co.uk)
• Best horror movies ever! (lifecable.wordpress.com)
• Hannibal Lecter voted scariest horror film character of all time (mirror.co.uk)
• Get Into The Halloween Spirit With The Best Horror Films Ever Made (makeuseof.com)
• The Scariest Movies Of All Time – Brian’s Blog [VIDEO] (k99.com)
• Open Thread: What’s The Scariest Movie Ever? (crooksandliars.com)
• The 100 Scariest Movie Moments (Part I) (theyearofhalloween.com)

Der Vampir

‘The myth of the bloodsucking vampire has stalked humans from ancient Mesopotamia to 18th-century Eastern Europe, but it has differed in the terrifying details. So, how did we arrive at the popular image we know, love and fear today? And what truly makes a vampire…a vampire?’ (YouTube).

Related articles

• Vampires – Folklore, Fantasy, and Fact (arunbabyveranakunnel.wordpress.com)
• True Blood: Sucking the Magic Out of Vampires (neuwritesd.org)
• Vampires – Folklore, Fantasy, and Fact (howtogeek.com)
• Myths and Legends: Vampires (daliennation.wordpress.com)
• Vampire Graves Unearthed (costaricantimes.com)
• Exhuming the Vampire (whitedragonmagazine.wordpress.com)
• 3. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black (bookishmatters.com)
• Halloween Chaos Countdown: Vampires in Nature (bizarrocentral.com)
• Guest Blogger: Holly Black, author of “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown” (kindlepost.com)
• Just for Halloween: Vampires: Immortal Prisoners (reginajeffers.wordpress.com)

A reprise of my traditional Hallowe’en post of past years:

It is that time of year again. What has become a time of disinhibited hijinx and mayhem, and a growing marketing bonanza for the kitsch-manufacturers and -importers, has primeval origins as the Celtic New Year’s Eve, Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”). The harvest is over, summer ends and winter begins, the Old God dies and returns to the L of the Dead to await his rebirth at Yule, and the land is cast into darkness. The veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead becomes frayed and thin, and dispossessed dead mingle with the living, perhaps seeking a body to possess for the next year as their only chance to remain connected with the living, who hope to scare them away with ghoulish costumes and behavior, escape their menace by masquerading as one of them, or placate them with offerings of food, in hopes that they will go away before the new year comes. For those prepared, a journey to the other side could be made at this time.

With Christianity, perhaps because with calendar reform it was no longer the last day of the year, All Hallows’ Eve became decathected, a day for innocent masquerading and fun, taking its name Hallowe’en as a contraction and corruption of All Hallows’ Eve.

All Saints’ Day may have originated in its modern form with the 8th century Pope Gregory III. Hallowe’en customs reputedly came to the New World with the Irish immigrants of the 1840’s. The prominence of trick-or-treating has a slightly different origin, however.

The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.

English: A traditional Irish turnip Jack-o’-lantern from the early 20th century.

Jack-o’-lanterns were reportedly originally turnips; the Irish began using pumpkins after they immigrated to North AMerica, given how plentiful they were here.

The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.

According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.

Folk traditions that were in the past associated wtih All Hallows’ Eve took much of their power, as with the New Year’s customs about which I write here every Dec. 31st, from the magic of boundary states, transition and liminality.

The idea behind ducking, dooking or bobbing for apples seems to have been that snatching a bite from the apple enables the person to grasp good fortune. Samhain is a time for getting rid of weakness, as pagans once slaughtered weak animals which were unlikely to survive the winter. A common ritual calls for writing down weaknesses on a piece of paper or parchment, and tossing it into the fire. There used to be a custom of placing a stone in the hot ashes of the bonfire. If in the morning a person found that the stone had been removed or had cracked, it was a sign of bad fortune. Nuts have been used for divination: whether they burned quietly or exploded indicated good or bad luck. Peeling an apple and throwing the peel over one’s shoulder was supposed to reveal the initial of one’s future spouse. One way of looking for omens of death was for peope to visit churchyards

The Witches’ Sabbath aspect of Hallowe’en seems to result from Germanic influence, and fusion with the notion of Walpurgisnacht. (Familiar with the magnificent musical evocation of this, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain?) Although probably not yet in a position to shape mainstream American Hallowe’en traditions, Mexican Dia de los Muertos observances have started to contribute some delightful and whimsical iconography to our encounter with the eerie and unearthly as well.

What was Hallowe’en like forty or fifty years ago in the U.S. when, bastardized as it has become with respect to its pagan origins, it retained a much more traditional flair? For my purposes, suffice it to say that it was before the era of the pay-per-view ’spooky-world’ type haunted attractions and its Martha Stewart yuppification with, as this irreverent Salon article from several years ago [via walker] puts it, monogrammed jack-o’-lanterns and the like. Related, a 1984 essay by Richard Seltzer, frequently referenced in other sources, entitled “Why Bother to Save Hallowe’en?”, argues as I do that reverence for Hallowe’en is good for the soul.

That would be anathema to certain segments of society, however. Hallowe’en certainly inspires a backlash by fundamentalists who consider it a blasphemous abomination. ‘Amateur scholar’ Isaac Bonewits details academically the Hallowe’en errors and lies he feels contribute to its being reviled. Some of the panic over Hallowe’en is akin to the hysteria, fortunately now debunked, over the supposed epidemic of ‘ritual Satanic abuse’ that swept the Western world in the ’90’s.

The horror film has become inextricably linked to Hallowe’en tradition, although the holiday itself did not figure in the movies until John Carpenter took the slasher genre singlehandedly by storm. Googling “scariest films”, you will, grimly, reap a mother lode of opinions about how to pierce the veil to journey to the netherworld and reconnect with that magical, eerie creepiness in the dark (if not the over-the-top blood and gore that has largely replaced the subtlety of earlier horror films).

In any case: trick or treat!

Related:

• Tricks, Treats and Traditions – Some Useful Tips for Hallowe’en (southeasttourguides.co.uk)
• Weighing In on Hallowe’en (4mothers1blog.wordpress.com)
• Preparing for All Hallow’s Eve (sporeflections.wordpress.com)
• OCTOBER FINALE! Hallowe’en! (pm27.wordpress.com)
• Tricksey Treats (jasperlocalfood.wordpress.com)
• Hallowe’en Night divination game. (jenniferlinton.com)
• Hallowe’en Weekend (sporeflections.wordpress.com)
• All Hallows’ Eve (ramblingratz.wordpress.com)
• About Samhain or ‘All Hallows’ (bethtrissel.wordpress.com)
• Halloween: A Brief History (lakeside.com)
• 13 Facts You Never Knew About Halloween (businessinsider.com)
• A Tarot Circle Game/Encounter for Samhain (jameswells.wordpress.com)
• Hallowe’en; The Do’s And The Don’ts (jackcollier7.com)
• Get ye gone, ye evil spirits (annabelfrage.wordpress.com)
• ‘It was a dark and stormy night…’ – Resources for Hallowe’en (davidbradshawenglish.org)
• Hallowe’en! (thepiepatch.wordpress.com)

Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer Dead at 71: ‘Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May.’ (Rolling Stone obituary)

“I see it as a Broadway for writers,” said Henriette Lazaridis Power, editor of the Drum. “The way Broadway is a loosely defined geographic area of New York and everyone knows that’s where you go to find theater, this is a place where people who want to take in writing in the forms of events will go, and writers will find resources there.” (Boston Globe).

‘For the second time in a week, a rare serpentine oarfish has surfaced on a Southern California beach, NBC reports. The one found Friday afternoon at Oceanside Harbor wasn’t quite as large as the 18-foot behemoth found near Catalina Island. This one was only 13-and-a-half feet long. It weighed an estimated 200 pounds and took 15 people to carry.

That is actually quite small for an oarfish. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it’s the largest bony fish in the sea and can grow to more than 50 feet long… Little is known about the species, since it’s usually found thousands of feet below the surface…’ (LAist).

‘Time is an illusion – at least in a toy model of the universe made of two particles of light. The experiment shows that what we perceive as the passage of time might emerge from the strange property of quantum entanglement. The finding could assist in solving the long-standing problem of how to unify modern physics.’ (New Scientist).

‘As the chart above shows, the cities with the worst air are often not big capitals, but provincial places with heavy industry in them or nearby. Ahwaz, for instance, in southwestern Iran, far outstrips infamously polluted cities like New Delhi or Beijing, with 372 parts per million of particles smaller than 10 micrometers (PM10), compared to the world average of 71. Life expectancy for the city of 1.2 million residents is the lowest in Iran.’ (Quartz).

‘…a disturbing series about the world of street monkeys in the city of Jakarta, created by the Finnish photographer Perttu Saska. Trained and dressed as humans to ask for money to passersby, as is an old Asian tradition, these monkeys have now become real objects, even wearing doll heads to accent mimicry, turning them into real living toys… A cruel phenomenon that leaves a strong sense of unease…’ Ufunk.net)