surprise

Hearing prayer shuts off believers' brain activity


David Pescovitz at 9:22 AM Monday

When some religiously devout people hear a charismatic healer speak the word of god , the regions of their brains involved in skeptical thinking and vigilance appear to shut down. Uffe Schjødt of Aarhus University in Denmark and his colleagues scanned the brains of Pentecostalists while they listened to recorded prayers from non-Christians, "ordinary" Christians, and a healer. The brain activity changed only in response to prayers they were told came from the healer. According to Schjødt, the same deactivation may occur in response to the words of physicians, parents, politicians, and other charismatic leaders. The researchers published their results in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. From New Scientist:
Parts of the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, which play key roles in vigilance and scepticism when judging the truth and importance of what people say, were deactivated when the subjects listened to a supposed healer. Activity diminished to a lesser extent when the speaker was supposedly a normal Christian.
Schjødt says that this explains why certain individuals can gain influence over others, and concludes that their ability to do so depends heavily on preconceived notions of their authority and trustworthiness.

Pee Wee's Playhouse meets the apocalypse, complete with zombies in ROSE 3-D

Posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 21:30:59 GMT by: quietearth
Posted under: zombie movie apocalyptic news horror comedy
I think I just had a wet dream. John Skipp is planning a 3d horror comedy which is described as "Pee Wee's Playhouse meets Night of the Living Dead". Do I really need to say more? Wait, read the synopsis:
48 hours into the undead apocalypse, one woman has managed to stay on the air. She's a hot ex-mental patient with a message of hope, a baseball bat, and her puppet friends.
Welcome to "Rose's Place": where the songs, skits, and rescue stations run all night long or at least until the zombies get in.
F*** YES! They've raised about a third of the money they need, so go to their homepage and help out!
Someone take money from all those bull**** Hollywood remakes and get this one done, NOW!

Horrifying

The Deepwater Horizon disaster Maggie Koerth-Baker at 6:55 PM Monday Americablog has a breathtaking series of photos, taken by a DOE contractor, that show the final hours of the Deepwater Horizon.
Also worth taking a look at: The Times-Picayune's animation of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which shows the blob growing and shifting on the waves.

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Tribeca: 'Freakonomics' Dream Team Talks About the State of Documentary

by Christopher Campbell May 2nd 2010 // 3:03PM



Filed under: Documentary, Independent, Tribeca, Magnolia, Festival Reports, Politics, Cinematical Indie







The all-star directorial team behind Freakonomics stopped by the SoHo Apple Store in NYC Friday to talk with indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez about the making of this new anthology documentary, which had it's world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this weekend. Joined by author Stephen Dubner, whose same-named best-seller is the basis of the film, the six acclaimed documentarians and three producers also got into a discussion of the general state of non-fiction filmmaking in the first decade of the 21st century. This non-promotional part of the discussion caught my interest most, primarily because there could be no documentary "dream team" without the rise in popularity and esteem for documentary cinema that's occurred over the past ten years.

Without this surge, how else would Alex Gibney, Morgan Spurlock, Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady, Eugene Jarecki and Seth Gordon all be renowned enough to be specifically sought after by producer Chad Troutwine for a non-fiction compilation akin to his successful fiction anthology, Paris, Je T'Aime? And how is it that such a film becomes one of the hottest tickets of the fest, as the prestigious event's closing night film? The full reason may not be easily determined, but with so many brilliant representatives of non-fiction cinema together in one place, it couldn't hurt to start a conversation bent on unraveling this

Free market mayhem

While it was thought that the shut off devices that BP did have were more than adequate obviously they were not. Several different back up devices make sense for such an important function. Both Brazil and Norway think it is important enough to mandate their use.

There will be a huge price to pay for the spill now threating the gulf. It is much cheaper to purchace congressmen then to curtail production with safeguards or forethought. BP will not be barred from drilling for oil in the gulf. If previous behavior is to be a guide they will porably be granted more profitable leases.

Just Wrong

My friend Jonathan Koshi, who is Hawaiian, posted his recipe for Spam Musubi. Koshi says, "Over the last 30 years the Spam Musubi has indelibly stamped itself on the local Hawaii menu. They are great snacks, highly mobile, and filling." Here are the ingredients and equipment list, from Notes From The Zeitgeist

I need this !

Wall-mountable washing machine

Lisa Katayama at 7:27 AM Thursday Electrolux's design lab has come up with a great new concept for a wall-mountable washing machine. It would save so much space!
Link [via Inhabitat]

Unicorn Meat


Rob Beschizza at 7:19 AM Wednesday

This canned meat product from ThinkGeek costs $10 and is an 'excellent source of sparkles.'

cool

What has brought this Star Trek wonder scanner to life is Raman spectroscopy: a quick, easy, and non-invasive tool that tells users in seconds what something really is at the molecular level. Recent improvements in technology have shrunk the once expensive, unwieldy tabletop device into an array of smaller, more commercially viable Raman scanners, such as the handheld drug detector by DeltaNu, which costs $15,000 and is being tested by police departments in several states. About 1,000 portable devices that identify hazardous materials are also in use. Within 10 years, DeltaNu expects its handheld devices to be in every police squad car in the country, as ubiquitous as the breathalyzer.

Following our list of quotes from St Thomas Aquinas, this is the second in our series of famous quotes from great atheists and great religious minds. Here are 15 quotes from some of the greatest atheist minds in history.
1. Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night — Isaac Asimov

2. I don’t believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life. — Andrew Carnegie
3. All thinking men are atheists. — Ernest Hemingway
4. Lighthouses are more helpful then churches. — Benjamin Franklin
5. Faith means not wanting to know what is true. — Friedrich Nietzsche
6. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. — George Bernard Shaw
7. Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. — Kurt Vonnegut
8. I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. — Frank Lloyd Wright
9. Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. — Denis Diderot
10. A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. — Samuel Clemens
11. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud
12. Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. — Edward Gibbon
13. The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. — Ferdinand Magellan
14. Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. — Woody Allen
15. It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous. — Gloria Steinem

Screamsheet, a cyberpunk zine from 1988


Mark Frauenfelder at 11:45 AM Saturday

I am cleaning out the garage, and I came across a xeroxed copy of Screamsheet, a "Publication of Cyberpunk International" from 1988.
It includes "ruminations and convolutions on the substance of Cyberpunk" by Dr. Odd, A Cyberpunk Vocabulary, the results of a contest to find the "worst opening paragraph of a Cyberpunk novel," and reviews of Cyberpunk books and articles.
I scanned it and saved it as a PDF. I'm sorry that some of the text is cut off, but that's what

Archie comic to introduce gay character


Last Updated: Friday, April 23, 2010
9:40 AM ET Comments79Recommend45CBC News

Archie and the gang will meet Kevin Keller, the venerable teen comic's first openly gay character, this fall. (Archie Comic Publications Inc.)

Riverdale's first openly gay character is set to join Archie and the gang at Pop's Chocklit Shoppe this fall, the publisher of the venerable comic book has announced.



On Sept. 1, the comic Veronica #202 will introduce Kevin Keller, a newcomer who catches the eye of the titular raven-haired beauty and sometimes Archie love interest in the full-issue story Isn't it Bromantic?



According to Archie Comic Publications, "Kevin Keller is the new hunk in town and Veronica just has to have him... Mayhem and hilarity ensue as Kevin desperately attempts to let Veronica down easy and her flirtations only become increasingly persistent."



"The introduction of Kevin is just about keeping the world of Archie Comics current and inclusive," Archie Comics co-CEO Jon Goldwater said in an online posting Thursday.



"Archie's hometown of Riverdale has always been a safe world for everyone. It just makes sense to have an openly gay character in Archie comic books."

The Keller character is part of an overall commitment to stay relevant with today's teens, the publisher said.
Last year, Archie Comic Publications caused a stir with a six-issue storyline that purportedly saw the perennial fence-sitter Archie Andrews finally choose between girl-next-door Betty Cooper and wealthy heiress Veronica Lodge.
In the meantime, Archie is in an interracial relationship: the current issues have him dating Valerie, the bassist from the girl group Josie and the PussycatsRead more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2010/04/23/archie-veronica-gay-kevin.html#ixzz0lwN2zdME

only buttheads drink here

Rectum-themed bar
David Pescovitz on April 20, 2010 9:44 AM 41 Comments

The BarRectum was an actual bar built inside a giant anatomical model representing the human digestive system, from tongue to anus. Dutch design firm Atelier Van Lieshout created it several years ago for the Vienna Museum Quarter. From the project description: BarRectum, Arsch Bar, Asshole Bar, Bar Anus. While the translations sound different, the form is universally recognizable. The bar takes its shape from the human digestive system: starting with the tongue, continuing to the stomach, moving throug

Living "paintings"


David Pescovitz at 10:46 AM April 20, 2010





Alexa Meade, 23, is a Washington, DC-based artist who paints on top of her subjects and puts them in real life settings. (No, you can't see the pixels. This is real.) From Meade's artist statement:



The reverse trompe l'oeil series is Alexa Meade's spin on reality. Alexa has invented a painting technique that makes 3 dimensional space look flat, blurring the lines between illusion and reality.

Typically a painting is an artist's interpretation of the subject painted onto another surface. In Alexa's paintings, she creates her artistic interpretation of the subject directly on top of the subject itself. Essentially, her art imitates life - on top of life.



By wrapping her subject in a mask of paint, she skews the way that the core of

Scary Clown

too much time on his hands

Crayon rockets


Maggie Koerth-Baker at 10:50 AM Monday

Rocketry hobbyist John Coker created an 8-pack of rockets, designed and painted to mimic those crayon packs your folks used to buy you back in grade school. They were first launched back in 2004. On Coker's site, you can see all kinds of neat design notes that take you through the process of creating a novelty projectile. It's not quite a how-to, but it's still pretty nifty.

Kai was outraged by the conviction of Dr Peter Watts, the Canadian science fiction writer who got out of his vehicle while crossing back into Canada to ask a US border guard why his car was being searched, and was clubbed, gassed, charged with a felony, and left in wet clothes in an unheated cell overnight during a snow-storm. So Kai made this sign warning unwary travellers of what they might expect the next time they cross into Canada at Port Huron. I've checked with Peter (who is awaiting sentencing) and he's OK with this being posted.

The unicorn taxidermy above is up for auction right now at Duke's Auctioneers as part of the "Brading Collection of Taxidermy, Waxworks, Costume and Similar Items." The collection is from the Isle of Wright museum Brading The Experience. Also on the block: a flying cat, a taxidermy "Yeti," a "Wooly Pig," and a slew of other curiosities. From the Daily Mail:

So how did these taxidermies first find their way on to the sleepy Isle of Wight?
Legend has it that they were originally collected by a mysterious academic in the late 1800s called Professor Copperthwaite. Somehow, the story goes, his collection found its way into the hands of an antique dealer based somewhere in the North of England, who then sold them on to Graham Osborne-Smith, the man who opened the museum on the Isle of Wight in 1965.

Professor Copperthwaite was said to have had a thick, curly grey beard, wore long-tailed coats and pinstripe trousers and travelled the world collecting the strange, deformed animals.

ewwwwww...

Nose-dwelling leech


David Pescovitz at 10:44 AM Friday
Researchers have discovered a species of leech that has a "particularly unpleasant habit of infesting humans," most notably in people's noses. The team of scientists published their study of this animal in in the Public Library of Science. The "clinical presentations" are not for the faint-of-heart. From PLoS:
A new genus and species of leech from Perú was found feeding from the nasopharynx of humans. Unlike any other leech previously described, this new taxon has but a single jaw with very large teeth. Phylogenetic analyses of nuclear and mitochondrial genes using parsimony and Bayesian inference demonstrate that the new species belongs among a larger, global clade of leeches, all of which feed from the mucosal surfaces of mammals.This new species, found feeding from the upper respiratory tract of humans in Perú, clarifies an expansion of the family Praobdellidae to include the new species Tyrannobdella rex n. gen. n.sp., along with others in the genera Dinobdella, Myxobdella, Praobdella and Pintobdella. Moreover, the results clarify a single evolutionary origin of a group of leeches that specializes on mucous membranes, thus, posing a distinct threat to human health.

10 More Common Faults in Human ThoughtShare This- Published April 12, 2010 by Nikki - 146 Comments This list is a follow up to Top 10 Common Faults in Human Thought. Thanks for everyone’s comments and feedback; you have inspired this second list! It is amazing that with all these biases, people are able to actually have a rational thought every now and then. There is no end to the mistakes we make when we process information, so here are 10 more common errors to be aware of.


10 Confirmation The confirmation bias is the tendency to look for or interpret information in a way that confirms beliefs. Individuals reinforce their ideas and attitudes by selectively collecting evidence or retrieving biased memories. For example, I think that there are more emergency room admissions on nights where there is a full moon. I notice on the next full moon that there are 78 ER admissions, this confirms my belief and I fail to look at admission rates for the rest of the month. The obvious problem with this bias is that that it allows inaccurate information to be held as true. Going back to the above example, suppose that on average, daily ER admissions are 90. My interpretation that 78 are more than normal is wrong, yet I fail to notice, or even consider it. This error is very common, and it can have risky consequences when decisions are based on false information.





9 Availability Heuristic
The Availability heuristic is gauging what is more likely based on vivid memories. The problem is individuals tend to remember unusual events more than everyday, commonplace events. For example, airplane crashes receive lots of national media coverage. Fatal car crashes do not. However, more people are afraid of flying than driving a car, even though statistically airplane travel is safer. Media coverage feeds into this bias; because rare or unusual events such as medical errors, animal attacks and natural disasters are highly publicized, people perceive these events as having a higher probability of happening.

8 Illusion of Control
Illusion of Control is the tendency for individuals to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they clearly have no influence on. This bias can influence gambling behavior and belief in the paranormal. In studies conducted on psychokinesis, participants are asked to predict the results of a coin flip. With a two-sided fair coin, participants will be correct 50% of the time. However, people fail to realize that probability or pure luck is responsible, and instead see their correct answers as confirmation of their control over external events.
Interesting Fact: when playing craps in a casino, people will throw the dice hard when they need a high number and soft when they need a low number. In reality, the strength of the throw will not guarantee a certain outcome, but the gambler believes they can control the number they roll.





7 Planning Fallacy

The Planning fallacy is the tendency to underestimate the time needed to complete tasks. The planning fallacy actually stems from another error, The Optimism Bias, which is the tendency for individuals to be overly positive about the outcome of planned actions. People are more susceptible to the planning fallacy when the task is something they have never done before. The reason for this is because we estimate based on past experiences. For example, if I asked you how long it takes you to grocery shop, you will consider how long it has taken you in the past, and you will have a reasonable answer. If I ask you how long it will take you to do something you have never done before, like completing a thesis or climbing Mount Everest, you have no experience to reference, and because of your inherent optimism, you will guesstimate less time than you really need. To help you with this fallacy, remember Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Interesting Fact: “Realistic pessimism” is a phenomenon where depressed or overly pessimistic people more accurately predict task completion estimations.





6 Restraint Bias

The Restraint Bias is the tendency to overestimate one’s ability to show restraint in the face of temptation, or the “perceived ability to have control over an impulse,” generally relating to hunger, drug and sexual impulses. The truth is people do not have control over visceral impulses; you can ignore hunger, but you cannot wish it away. You might find the saying: “the only way to get rid of temptation is to give into it” amusing, however, it is true. If you want to get rid of you hunger, you have to eat. Restraining from impulses is incredibly hard; it takes great self-control. However, most people think they have more control than they actually do. For example, most addicts’ say that they can “quit anytime they want to,” but this is rarely the case in real life.

Interesting Fact: unfortunately, this bias has serious consequences. When an individual has an inflated (perceived) sense of control over their impulses, they tend to overexpose themselves to temptation, which in turn promotes the impulsive behavior.


5 Just-World Phenomenon

The Just-World Phenomenon is when witnesses of an injustice, in order to rationalize it, will search for things that the victim did to deserve it. This eases their anxiety and allows them to feel safe; if they avoid that behavior, injustice will not happen to them. This peace of mind comes at the expense of blaming the innocent victim. To illustrate this, a research study was done by L. Carli of Wellesley College. Participants were told two versions of a story about interactions between a man and a woman. In both versions, the couple’s interactions were exactly the same, at the very end, the stories differed; in one ending, the man raped the woman and in the other, he proposed marriage. In both groups, participants described the woman’s actions as inevitably leading up to the (different) results.
Interesting Fact: On the other end of the spectrum, The Mean World Theory is a phenomenon where, due to violent television and media, viewers perceive the world as more dangerous than it really is, prompting excessive fear and protective measures.





4 Endowment Effect
The Endowment Effect is the idea that people will require more to give up an object than they would pay to acquire it. It is based on the hypothesis that people place a high value on their property. Certainly, this is not always an error; for example, many objects have sentimental value or are “priceless” to people, however, if I buy a coffee mug today for one dollar, and tomorrow demand two dollars for it, I have no rationality for asking for the higher price. This happens frequently when people sell their cars and ask more than the book value of the vehicle, and nobody wants to pay the price.
Interesting Fact: this bias is linked to two theories; “loss aversion” says that people prefer to avoid losses rather than obtain gains, and “status quo” bias says that people hate change and will avoid it unless the incentive to change is significant.





3 Self-Serving Bias
A Self-Serving Bias occurs when an individual attributes positive outcomes to internal factors and negative outcomes to external factors. A good example of this is grades, when I get a good grade on a test; I attribute it to my intelligence, or good study habits. When I get a bad grade, I attribute it to a bad professor, or poorly written exam. This is very common as people regularly take credit for successes but refuse to accept responsibility for failures.
Interesting Fact: when considering the outcomes of others, we attribute causes exactly the opposite as we do to ourselves. When we learn that the person who sits next to us failed the exam, we attribute it to an internal cause: that person is stupid or lazy. Likewise, if they aced the exam, they got lucky, or the professor likes them more. This is known as the Fundamental Attribution Error.





2 Cryptomnesia
Cryptomnesia is a form of misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination. Also known as inadvertent plagiarism, this is actually a memory bias where a person (inaccurately) recalls producing an idea or thought. There are many proposed causes of Cryptomnesia, including cognitive impairment, and lack of memory reinforcement. However, it should be noted that there is no scientific proof to validate Cryptomnesia. The problem is that the testimony of the afflicted is not scientifically reliable; it is possible that the plagiarism was deliberate and the victim is a dirty thief.
Interesting Fact: False Memory Syndrome is a controversial condition where an individual’s identity and relationships are affected by false memories that are strongly believed to be true by the afflicted. Recovered Memory Therapies including hypnosis, probing questions and sedatives are often blamed for these false memories.


1 Bias Blind Spot
The Bias blind spot is the tendency not to acknowledge one’s own thought biases. In a research study conducted by Emily Pronin of Princeton University, participants were described different cognitive biases such as the Halo Effect and Self-Serving Bias. When asked how biased the participants themselves were, they rated themselves as less biased than the average person.
Interesting Fact: Amazingly, there is actually a bias to explain this bias (imagine that!). The Better-Than-Average Bias is the tendency for people to inaccurately rate themselves as better than the average person on socially desirable skills or positive traits. Coincidentally, they also rate themselves as lower than average on undesirable traits.
Bonus Attribute Substitution
This is a bonus because it attempts to explain cognitive biases. Attribute substitution is a process individuals go through when they have to make a computationally complex judgment. Instead of making the difficult judgment, we unconsciously substitute an easily calculated heuristic (Heuristics are strategies using easily accessible, though loosely related, information to aid problem solving). These heuristics are simple rules that everyone uses everyday when processing information, they generally work well for us; however, they occasionally cause systematic errors, aka, cognitive biases