Archive for April, 2011
Political Views Are Reflected in Brain Structure
Think your political views are based on reason and/or morality? ScienceDaily reports:
We all know that people at opposite ends of the political spectrum often really can’t see eye to eye. Now, a new report published online on April 7th in Current Biology, reveals that those differences in political orientation are tied to differences in the very structures of our brains.Individuals who call themselves liberal tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, while those who call themselves conservative have larger amygdalas. Based on what is known about the functions of those two brain regions, the structural differences are consistent with reports showing a greater ability of liberals to cope with conflicting information and a greater ability of conservatives to recognize a threat, the researchers say.
“Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual’s political orientation,” said Ryota Kanai of the University College London. “Our study now links such personality…
It’s Friday? Time To Rob A Bank
Aftermath of a Bank of America robbery. Photo: Colin Brown (CC)
Who knew? From Reuters:
Bank robberies in the United States take place most often in mid-morning, on Fridays and in southern and western states, according to government statistics released on Tuesday.
Robbers stole slightly more than $43 million last year nationwide in 5,546 robberies of banks, credit unions and other financial institutions, statistics released by the FBI showed.
The South led the way with 1,790 bank robberies, followed by the West with 1,691. California had the most robberies at 805, followed by Texas with 464. North Dakota, where there were two bank robberies, had the least.
Overall, there were 5,628 reported bank crimes — the 5,546 robberies along with 74 burglaries, eight larcenies and 13 extortions of financial institutions.
That marked a decrease from 2009, when there were 6,065 such crimes reported, the FBI said…
[continues at Reuters]
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‘Free Human Vasectomy’ Offered In PETA Contest
Was this an April Fools’ joke or did PETA just enter WTF territory? Via PETA:
It’s a two-fer: Get your animal companion fixed, and get yourself fixed too! Human overpopulation is crowding out animal life on the planet, and dog and cat overpopulation is creating a euthanasia crisis that is a crying shame. Disappearing wilderness, vanishing water resources, and pollution is the price that future generations will pay for more human births, while losing their lives is the price that millions of homeless dogs and cats pay when guardians neglect to “fix” their companion animals.
Every year in the U.S., an estimated 6 to 8 million lost, abandoned, or unwanted dogs and cats enter animal shelters. The best way to combat the companion-animal overpopulation crisis is to have your cat or dog neutered. And with a global population of almost 7 billion humans, more of our species could use a (voluntary) snip too.
Now,…
75-Year-Old Woman Single-Handedly Cuts Off Internet for Two Countries
Helena Bedwell writes on Bloomberg:
Georgian authorities detained a scrap-metal hunter for cutting a main Internet cable near Tbilisi, the Interior Ministry said. The break in the cable left tens of thousands of residents and businesses without Internet access in Georgia and all of Armenia on March 28, the ministry said.
A 75-year-old woman was arrested on evidence given by several witnesses and was “temporarily released due to her old age,” ministry spokesman Zurab Gvenetadze said today in a phone interview in Tblisi. She will be questioned again and may face charges, Gvenetadze said.
The incident cut Armenia’s Internet access for more than 12 hours, Gvenetadze said. An unidentified spokeswoman for Caucasus Online, one of the largest Georgina Internet service providers, said customers lost access to the World Wide Web for almost five hours.
Georgian Railway Telecom LLC spokesman Giorgi Ionatamishvili said the cable belonged to the company and customers suffered “massive and catastrophic”…
The New York Times Let The Truth Slip Out on the Radiation in Japan
Flashes of extremely intense radioactivity have become a serious problem, he said. Tokyo Electric’s difficulties in providing accurate information on radiation are not a result of software problems, as some Japanese officials have suggested, but stem from damage to measurement instruments caused by radiation, the executive said. It’s at the end of this NY Times article:
Still, concerns about the plant remain high. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission speculated Wednesday that some of the core of the No. 2 reactor had flowed from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure. The theory implies more damage at the unit than previously believed.
While a spokeswoman for Tokyo Electric dismissed the analysis, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of Japan agreed that it was possible that the core had leaked into the larger containment vessel.
The possibility raised new questions. The Nuclear Regulator Commission said that its speculation about the flow of core material out of the reactor vessel would explain high radiation readings in an area underneath, called the drywell.
But some of the radiation readings at Reactors Nos. 1 and 3 over the last week were nearly as high as or higher than the 3,300 rems per hour that the commission said it was trying to explain, so it would appear that the speculation would apply to them as well. At No. 2, extremely radioactive material continues to ooze out of the reactor pressure vessel, and the leak is likely to widen with time, a western nuclear executive asserted.
The Search For Alien Space Miners
Ray Villard writes on Discovery News:
Rather than looking for aliens who use interstellar radio signals to say “hi,” an alternative search strategy is simply to spy on any mega-engineering projects that an advanced civilization might be undertaking. Veteran SETI astronomer Jill Tarter calls this strategy “SETT” — the Search for Extraterrestrial Technology.
A new science paper by Duncan Forgan at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and Martin Elvis at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., suggests we look for evidence of a very ambitious macro-engineering project: the wholesale mining of an asteroid belt. The asteroid material may be mined to build space colonies, solar power satellites or maybe even an entire “ringworld,” as imagined by sci-fi writer Larry Niven.
What’s more, precious metals are in high demand for technologies such as computers, high-speed networks and mobile phones. So-called “green technologies” of the future, such as hydrogen fuel cells, will…
Archaeologists Discover First ‘Gay Caveman’
Example of a 'Squat Burial'. Photo: Hamed Saber (CC)
Researchers have found the remains of a skeleton that may be an early homosexual man. This conclusion did not come from the findings of any ‘gay gene,’ but rather the burial placement and its social implication. The man was given the burial of a woman which prompted archaeologists to believe that his social role reflected his sexual orientation. Via TIME:
Kamila Remisova Vesinova and her team of researchers from the Czech Archeological Society believe they have unearthed the remains of an early homosexual man. The remains date from around 2900-2500 B.C., on the outskirts of Prague.
That claim stems from the fact the 5,000-year old skeleton was buried in a manner reserved for women in the Corded Ware culture: its head was pointed east rather than west, and its remains were surrounded by domestic jugs rather than by hammers, flint knives and weapons that typically…
First Eyeball Grown From Stem Cells
Photo: Danny Hope (CC)
The Guardian reports:
Scientists have used stem cells to grow a rudimentary eye in the laboratory in a landmark study that raises the prospect of creating tissues to treat blindness and tease apart how diseases can destroy eyesight.
The Japanese team is the first to make significant progress in turning embryonic stem cells into an organ as complex as the eye.
Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists describe how they used embryonic stem cells from mice to grow an “optic cup”, a structure that forms the retina and contains the light-sensitive cells and neurons needed to see properly.
The work gives researchers hope for growing parts of the human eye to investigate the progression of devastating diseases that lead to blindness, and to screen for drugs that might slow or even reverse the conditions.
It also raises the more distant prospect of creating banks of healthy retina cells to transplant into patients whose…
2 To 3 Minutes In Hell: Cleaning Chernobyl
A gripping, short documentary video of the horrifying challenge confronting the Soviet Union’s “biorobots” — soldiers, scientists, and civilians who were tasked with the emergency cleanup following the explosions at Chernobyl. Radio-controlled robotic machines were used at first, but their circuitry broke down from the radiation, leaving humans with shovels as the only option.
By The Top One Percent, For The Top One Percent
In a fantastic piece for Vanity Fair, acclaimed economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses what America’s vast income inequality means for our future — in short, how it will corrode and distort every aspect of society:
Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.
First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such…
Apocalypse Survival Goes Mainstream
In the “first” wave of 2012 apocalypse fears a couple of years ago, the media often paired disinformation (as the producers of the film 2012: Science or Superstition) with Dennis McClung, owner of survival supplies company 2012supplies.com. The 2012 hype faded after Roland Emmerich’s mega-disaster movie exited theaters, but with 2012 approaching interest is building again, as evidenced by the New York Times‘ discovery of Dennis and his survivalist swimming pool:
MESA, Ariz. — Swimming pools are one way of surviving Arizona’s sky-high temperatures, which hit triple digits in a recent uncharacteristically early burst of heat. But Dennis McClung’s pool, in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, has been redesigned into a survivalist refuge of an entirely different sort.
Mr. McClung has installed a subterranean garden in his pool along with a fish pond and chicken coop. The chicken droppings feed the tilapia, which swim in water that is pumped up through the blackberry, cherry…
April Gallop Sues For 9/11 Truth With George W. Bush’s Cousin As Judge
This press release sets the scene for the continuing battle for 9/11 Truth by former Army Specialist April Gallop, who was in the wing of the Pentagon that was hit on 9/11:
… On the morning of September 11, 2001, she was ordered by her supervisor to go directly to work at the Pentagon, before dropping off her ten-week-old son Elisha at day care.
Amazingly, the infant was given immediate security clearance upon arrival.
The instant Gallop turned on her computer an enormous explosion blew her out of her chair, knocking her momentarily unconscious.
Escaping through the hole reportedly made by Flight 77, she saw no signs of an aircraft – no seats, luggage, metal, or human remains. Her watch (and other clocks nearby) had stopped at 9:30-9:31 a.m., seven minutes before the Pentagon was allegedly struck at 9:38 a.m.
The 9/11 Commission reported that “by no later than 9:18 a.m., FAA centers in Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Washington were aware that Flight 77 was…
BP Asks To Resume Gulf Coast Drilling
Some (who don’t speak Chinese) say that the Chinese word for “crisis” also means “opportunity”. Well, no one creates cris-portunities like BP does. Via the Boston Globe:
BP has asked US regulators for permission to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, two company officials said yesterday.
The petition comes less than 15 months after a rig BP leased there exploded, causing a huge oil spill and killing 11 workers.
[One] other official said, “We’re making progress but it’s not a yes yet.’’ Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity because talks on a possible agreement were continuing.
Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was halted last summer after the accident involving BP’s Macondo well, which spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean. The ban was lifted in October.
Royal Dutch Shell won approval on Wednesday to drill off the coast of Louisiana on the condition that rigorous new safety standards were…
The Commodore 64 Is Back!
Ripping a move from the playbook of German auto manufacturers Volkswagen (the Beetle) and BMW (the Mini), the new owner of early home computer staple the Commodore 64 is revamping the brand but keeping the looks of the original. Nick Bilton reports for the New York Times:
The new Commodore 64, which will begin shipping at the end of the month, has been souped-up for the modern age. It comes with 1.8 gigahertz dual processors, an optional Blu-ray player and built-in ethernet and HDMI ports. The new Commodore is priced between $250 to $900.
The company’s Web site says that the new Commodore 64 is “a modern functional PC,” and that although the guts of the device have greatly improved, the exterior is “as close to the original in design as humanly possible.” Most people would not be able to visibly tell the old or new versions apart, it says.
“The response has been…
Donald Trump Joins The Birthers
Photo: Gage Skidmore (CC)
In the wake of his announcement of a probable 2012 Presidential bid, the Donald joins the birthers, as reported by AP/Yahoo News:
Real estate tycoon Donald Trump said Thursday he isn’t convinced that President Barack Obama was born in the United States ,but says he hopes the president can prove that he was.
Officials in Hawaii have certified Obama’s citizenship, but “birthers” have demanded additional proof. And Trump, who is weighing whether to seek the Republican presidential nomination, says not all the questions have been answered.
In an interview broadcast Thursday, Trump told NBC News he plans to decide by June whether to run, and said that if he is the GOP nominee, “I’d like to beat him straight up,” not on the basis of the question of where Obama was born.
Trump insisted he didn’t introduce the citizenship issue, but he isn’t letting go of it either. Since he was…
How Kurt Cobain And Layne Staley Attained Intravenous Enlightenment
Two of the most influential musicians of the 90s simply faded away on opioid dreams. From RockStarMartyr.net:
It is an interesting coincidence that the respective coroners’ reports for Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley place both of their deaths on April 5, and that they were born within six months of each other just before the Summer of Love—although these two Seattle icons made dramatically different exits. Kurt went out with a bang in 1994, while Layne slowly faded away, finally disappearing completely in 2002.
They were suffering saints in my formative, pube-sprouting years, and I enshrined their brooding images in my superstar iconography. Inspired by their rock n’ roll fantasies, I steeled my will against the Christ to whom eunuchs bow, tasted 31 flavors of fucked up, and my grandmother even gave me an old maroon cardigan to match my long blond hair. The result was the long-awaited loss of my virginity to an avid…
Glenn Beck Leaving His Fox News Show
Is he even too crazy for Fox News? Linda Feldmann writes in the Christian Science Monitor:
It’s the end of an era: Glenn Beck is leaving his daily talk show on Fox News later this year, he and Fox announced Wednesday. The show, called “Glenn Beck,” had seen a precipitous decline in ratings over the last year, and Mr. Beck’s departure was not unexpected.
Not long ago, the populist rabble-rouser of the right and self-described “rodeo clown” was flying high. Beck began at Fox a little more than two years ago, in January 2009, having jumped from CNN Headline News. Coincidentally, that was right before the birth of the tea party, and he quickly became one of the movement’s leading advocates. In March 2009, he launched the successful 9-12 Project, which sought to promote patriotic values. And last August, he drew tens of thousands of people from around the country to a…
Are Teens Into Music More Likely To Be Depressed?
Photo: Nishauncom
Which came first, the music or the depression? They say classical music boosts your baby’s brain activity. And music has been known to soothe the savage beast. Now music may play a hand in your teenager’s depression. Via PsychCentral:
The link between media exposure and adolescent emotional health continues to be a hot research area. In a new study, researchers found that teens who spend more time listening to music, rather than reading books, are more likely to be depressed.
Researchers said this study was unique as it sampled the behaviors of study participants in real time using a technique called ecological momentary assessment.
The method is more reliable than standard surveys and helped researchers recognize this large association between exposure to music and depression, said Brian Primack, M.D., Ed.M., M.S., assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Pitt’s School of Medicine, who led the study.
Some 106 teens were involved in the…
