Archive for April, 2009
Quantum Theory May Explain Wishful Thinking
Lisa Zyga, PhyOrg: Humans don’t always make the most rational decisions. As studies have shown, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction, sometimes we chose the opposite route, motivated by personal bias or simply “wishful thinking.”
This paradoxical human behavior has resisted explanation by classical decision theory for over a decade. But now, scientists have shown that a quantum probability model can provide a simple explanation for human decision-making — and may eventually help explain the success of human cognition overall.
If you were asked to gamble in a game in which you had a 50/50 chance to win $200 or lose $100, would you play? In one study, participants were told that they had just played this game, and then were asked to choose whether to try the same gamble again.
One-third of the participants were told that they had won the first game, one-third were told they had lost…
Everything You Know About Human Evolution Is Wrong
Graeme McMillan, i09.com: Well, maybe not everything, but new research suggests that we’re not as closely related to apes as you may have thought. The giveaway? The way we climb trees, apparently.
According to Dr Jeremy DeSilva, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, our earliest ancestors may have liked to climb trees, but they didn’t have the skeletons to do it like our chimpanzee brethren. His recent study showed that chimpanzees’ ankles are much more flexible than humans’:
“Early hominins may have climbed trees like modern humans can and occasionally do today; however, this study suggests that vertical climbing and arboreality were not significant parts of their locomotor repertoire…”
Translated? The earliest humans weren’t quite as apelike as we may have previously thought. Which may be a sign that previous evolutionary theories were wrong… or just that our ankles have become less bendy over time.
…
Eritrea Becoming ‘A Giant Prison’
The Eritrean government is turning its country into a giant prison, according to Human Rights Watch.
The Horn of Africa nation is widely using military conscription without end, as well as arbitrary detention of its citizens, says HRW.
Hundreds of Eritrean refugees forcibly repatriated from countries like Libya, Egypt and Malta face arrest and torture upon their return, says the group.
Religious persecution and forced labour are also rife in Eritrea, says HRW.
The report urges countries not to send back Eritrean asylum-seekers and calls on the international community and donors to exert pressure on the government in Asmara over its rights record. HRW says every year thousands of Eritreans flee their country, where statutory national service, which used to last 18 months, has been made indefinite.
The advocacy group says most of Eritrea’s adult population is currently conscripted. Sixteen years after it won independence from Ethiopia following a three-decade war, Eritrea is one of…
Ronald Reagan Was a Secret FBI Anti-Commie Snitch
Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing:
Documents released revealed that Ronald Reagan served as a secret FBI snitch during the Red Scare (we already knew he named names during the hearings, but now we also know that he snuck around behind his friends’ and members’ backs and destroyed their lives):
“It was revealed last week that the future President played another role as well: as a secret FBI informant, code name T-10. According to an article published in the San Jose Mercury News, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act indicate that Reagan and his first wife, Actress Jane Wyman, provided federal agents with the names of actors they believed were Communist sympathizers.”
Airport Security Workers Might Get to See You Naked
Kyle Munzenrieder, Miami New Times: The measures taken to screen people at airports are getting a bit ridiculous. The government is already working on ways to determine whether you’re a terrorist based on scent alone, but in the meantime, they can just take a look at a computer image of your naked body. They don’t even take you to the airport bar and buy you drinks first. Larry Craig had more polite airport manners than this.
The New York Times ran a column about the TSA’s new full-body imaging machines currently in the testing phase at 19 airports across America, including Miami International. The machines use millimeter wave scanning technology to map out a rough image of a person’s naked body to make sure they have no contraband on their person. We’re not talking Playboy-quality images here, but the results can be embarrassing enough. Originally the machines were to be used only…
The ‘Hawking Solution’: Will Saving Humanity Require Leaving Earth Behind?
Rebecca Sato, Daily Galaxy: Humans have always been fascinated by the idea of space travel. Some even believe that colonizing new planets is man’s best hope for the future. The popular idea is that we’ll eventually need some fresh, unexploited new worlds to inhabit.
Professor Stephen Hawking, celebrated expert on the cosmological theories of gravity and black holes, believes that traveling into space is the only way humans will be able to survive in the long-term.
He has said, “Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers … I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space.” Another of his famous quotes reiterates his position that we need to get off the planet relatively soon. “I don’t think the human race will survive the next 1,000…
26-Year-Old Man with Body of a Two-Year-Old
Metro (UK): Surgeons have been astonished by the medical rarity of a 26-year-old man trapped in the body of a two-year-old toddler. Jerly Lyngdoh — who lives with his farmer parents in Meghalaya, northern India — looks like any other tot with his tiny head and delicate 2ft 9ins long body.
But it’s only when he opens his mouth to reveal a full set of adult teeth that the truth about the world’s oldest baby is revealed.
Experts believe glands which secrete growth hormones may be damaged in the 22 lbs medical miracle. ‘Jerly’s infantile features are remarkable, and the only thing he shares with an adult are his teeth,’ said paediatrician Dr J. Ryndong.
‘We think this is a case of pan-hypo pituitarism leading to poor secretion of growth hormones from the pituitary gland. He is a genuine rarity,’ he added. Jerly — who is still dressed in baby clothes by his…
The War On Dolphins Explained
Graeme McMillan, io9.com: Finally, humanity may have gained the upper hand in the ongoing battle for supremacy with our number one nemeses — the dolphins. The possible silver bullet for our aquatic mammal antagonists? Sonar. We explain all.
According to a new study from the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, military sonar causes temporary deafness in dolphins. Luckily for the dolphins, this isn’t always the case — the source of the sonar pings has to be nearby, and deafness is only caused by repeated exposure — but this study only confirms what the US military have suspected since the early part of the decade, when they accepted blame for the beaching of 16 whales in the Bahamas due to trauma brought on by sonar.
Given that the US Navy has already decided that threats to marine life won’t change their sonar usage, it’s unknown what effect if any this new study will have…
Somali Pirate Blog: We Demand the Press Stop Using Pirate to Describe Computer Nerds
Somali Pirate Blog: We, the true pirates, are upholding a tradition of actual piracy. The violent kind. With weapons, booty, boats, and hostages. We are demanding that the press stop describing internet kids who send movies to each other pirates.
File sharing is not real piracy. Real piracy is approaching a oil tanker in a fishing boat with your cousins holding rocket launchers. Real piracy is holding an American sea captain hostage with a hand gun while you try to negotiate his release for millions of dollars using a 10 year old satellite phone. Real piracy is watching your brothers die taking head shots from NAVY snipers while you’re trying to swim away. Real piracy is having your children watch “Blue Velvet” every day after school. Real piracy has real costs and real stakes.
The things that we take are real too — money, boats, human lives. File sharing takes away what?…
America’s Deadliest Wars and the Leadership Behind Them
Which presidents and political parties were responsible for America’s deadliest wars? To what extent can you blame a president or a political party for choosing to go to war? This map may hold some answers. It illustrates the history of American war from 1775 to 2006.
Pay Up or Your Car Engine Will Stop
Gary Hoffman (AOL Autos): With consumer credit ratings plummeting, more American car owners could soon be driving around with an electronic Big Brother on board.
Shut-off devices give audio and flashing light warnings before the vehicle’s power is cut.
Business is booming for makers of shut-off devices, which turn engines off when car payments are late. Sales at one manufacturer, Littleton, Colorado-based Passtime, are up 33 percent over last year. CEO Stan Schwarz says the company is cranking up production to meet the demand.
“Right now, we are moving about 2,000 units a month into the marketplace,” Schwarz says. “I fully expect by the end of the year we will be up to 14,000 to 15,000 a month,”
While the devices have mostly been used in the subprime auto loan market, other lenders are looking closely at the technology, manufacturers say. It’s no mystery why interest in the gadgets soaring: the creditworthiness of American…
Eyeball Spy Turns the Tables on Big Brother
Paul Marks, New Scientist: AN ORWELLIAN nightmare it may be to many of us, but CCTV is a boat full of holes to the organisations that pay for it. That’s because the people watching CCTV images back in the control rooms often have too many screens to monitor at once, and so may miss the criminal or antisocial activities they are there to spot.
To the rescue of Big Brother’s limited attention capabilities come Ulas Vural and Yusuf Akgul of the Gebze Institute of Technology in Turkey, who have developed a gaze-tracking camera system that watches the eyeballs of CCTV operators as they work. It then automatically produces a summary of the CCTV video sequences they have missed during their shift. “This increases the reliability of the surveillance system by giving a second chance to the operator,” the researchers write in the journal Pattern Recognition Letters (DOI: 10.1016/j.patrec.2009.03.002).
The system uses webcam-style…
Child Labour in the United States vs. Child Labour in Bangladesh: How Far Have We Come in 100 Years?
While reviewing the following information about child labour, let’s take a look at some photographs of what child labour looked like in the United States at the turn of the last century, and what it looks like in some parts of the world at present. Regarding the photographs, to the left are photos of child labour in the United States from 1908 to 1912 by Lewis W. Hine, and to the right, photographs of present day child labour in Bangladesh by G.M.B. Akash. Click images to enlarge and expand, and visit the referenced sites for additional photos and information.
Why Do You Kill?: A former German Parliament Member Speaks on the Iraqi Resistance
In one of his final interviews, former president George W. Bush told ABC News Martha Raddatz that the war in Iraq was justified because of al-Qaeda. But Raddatz said that wasn’t “until the U.S. invaded.” Then Bush responded with “So what? The point is that al-Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand… we have denied al-Qaeda a safe haven because a young democracy is beginning to grow, which will be an important sign for people in the Middle East.”
But how much of a presence does al-Qaeda really have? Very small according to Jurgen Todenhofer, author of the new book, Why Do You Kill? The Untold Story of the Iraqi Resistance. Todenhofer was a member of the German parliament for 18 years and spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria political parties on development aid and arms control. He has visited the…
A Black Hole That Grew Brighter Than Its Galaxy
io9.com via LiveScience: The black hole that sits at the heart of the M87 galaxy has been spewing a stream of particles that mysteriously grew so bright that their radiance outshone the galaxy itself.
A study published this month in Astronomical Journal explains that researchers were watching the black hole for 7 years, and discovered that it grew 90 times brighter during that time for reasons that they can’t explain. In the image above, you can see the M87 galaxy in the lower left. The light in the center of the images is the black hole’s stream of particles, which as you can see gets brighter and brighter over time.
Astronomers aren’t sure if this is normal behavior for a black hole, or if something really weird is going on in M87. Perhaps the black hole is eating the entire galaxy and spitting it out again?
…
Slowing Our Aging Clock — World’s Leading Expert Tells How
Posted by Luke McKinney, Daily Galaxy: Just Say NO To Old Age: Professor X isn’t the only one with incredible mental powers: recent research says that you might be even better at brain-boosting, helping heal yourself with the power of a positive attitude — while he can’t even summon up the mental energy to stand.
The power of positive thinking might make us sound infinity percent more likely to wear hemp and say “man” an inappropriate number of times for science reporters (i.e. ever), but it’s real research at Harvard. Professor Ellen Langer has conducted several studies into “mindfulness theory”, researching just how much your attitude affects your actual body. The answer: quite a bit.
One of Benjamin Button’s many stories-within-stories in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, involves the tale of a clock built for the New Orleans train station that is designed to run backwards,…
18 Vintage Sci Fi Posters
Yosef Solomon: From the 1950s to the 1980s, sci-fi films were pretty bad: bad acting, bad special effects and overall lackluster villains. This was, however, and era in which movie posters were still pieces of art in an of themselves. They were pulpy, and they featured strange-looking robots, aliens and monsters. But most importantly, many of them featured hot women. Below is a collection of some of our favorite posters from this time.
Jesus Is Just Alright With Him
Gary Kamiya, Salon: Bart Ehrman’s career is testament to the fact that no one can slice and dice a belief system more surgically than someone who grew up inside it. Raised as a not particularly devout Episcopalian in 1950s Kansas, the best-selling Bible scholar had a “born-again” experience as a high school sophomore and asked Jesus into his heart. Eager to study Holy Scripture full-time, he entered the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago — motto: “Moody Bible Institute, where Bible is our middle name” — where every professor and student had to sign a statement attesting that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, a divinely inspired document from its first page (Genesis 1:1) to its last (Revelation 22:21).
But almost immediately, Ehrman ran into a problem. It was an intellectual problem at first, but it soon became larger and harder to quarantine. In one of the first classes he…
30-Foot ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Fightercraft Auctioned on eBay
A 30-foot fightercraft used in Battlestar Galactica just got auctioned on eBay.
The bidding started at $1.00, and rose to $28,100 — but it didn’t meet the reserve so it’s still up for grabs at a “live” auction in May. Bidders included actual pilots and a World War II memorabilia collector — and flight jackets are also for sale. In fact, 1,800 props from the show have already been purchased on eBay.
“We sell paper — auction off paper from the show,” says the auction’s Manager, “and people love it.”
