“It may sound like sexual prejudice, but it seems that men’s much-debated ability to navigate slightly better than women applies in virtual environments as well as the real world. And on average, says Microsoft computer scientist Mary Czerwinski, men are quicker to create a mental map of an environment and orient themselves within it.” —Women…
“Investigators now have the strongest evidence yet that the space shuttle Columbia’s left wing was critically punctured during liftoff, when falling debris started the fatal chain of events that led to the breakup of the shuttle when it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere…” —Shuttle Doomed at TakeoffABC News)
“Although bell curve distribution is still considered normal, a surprising number of economic and social phenomena now seem to follow a different arc. Instead of being high in the center and low on the sides, this new distribution is low in the center and high on the sides. Call it the well curve.” Daniel H.…
“Many people who were classified as feebleminded would now be called mildly retarded, learning disabled, or simply underachievers. Although the eugenicists saw the Buck family as a pedigree of degeneracy, many would now say that they had few problems a bit of money, education, and opportunity would not have solved. Their only sin was to…
“The arctic rodents called Lemmings are well known for their periodic mass suicides by collectively swimming into the sea and drowning, or at least the Norway lemmings do. This is probably caused by environmental pressures usually from over population…” —Mass SuicideHolology) Actually, the cause of this behavior is more likely to be Disney employees hurling…
“A team of cold-hearted, killjoy scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory callously announced Monday that the likelihood of complex life on Mars is ‘extraordinarily low,’ dashing the hopes of the public just like that.” —Mean Scientists Dash Hopes for Life on MarsThe Onion)
“It is very puzzling that in a country where a 12-year-old knows baseball statistics, adults don’t know the simplest statistics about tests, diseases, and the consequences that may cause them serious damage. Why is this? One reason, of course, is that the cost benefit computations for doctors are not the same as for patients. One…
“Former astronaut Sally Ride says before Columbia exploded, the U.S. space agency may have gotten too used to foam breaking off the fuel tanks and striking the shuttle’s thermal protection system. | Investigators believe hard foam insulation falling from the external fuel tank during launch may have damaged the shuttle’s wing. The spacecraft broke apart…
“The findings prove that the world experienced a Medieval Warm Period between the ninth and 14th centuries with global temperatures significantly higher even than today. | They also confirm claims that a Little Ice Age set in around 1300, during which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the world has begun to warm up again…
“Just as Old Testament prophets called for conversion and repentance, doctors have to ‘convert’ patients away from smoking, obesity, stress, alcohol and other indulgences… As prognosticators, doctors foretell what is going to happen if patients don’t change their way of life. The prophet role provides power over people. Some doctors consciously avoid it. They encourage…
“A teenager’s website hoax about a killer virus that is sweeping Hong Kong sparked panicked food buying and hit financial markets on Tuesday, forcing the government to deny it would isolate the entire territory.” —Website Hoax Fans Virus Panic Wired)
“At this writing, SARS appears to have killed 49 people out of 1323 afflicted according to the World Health Organization, a death rate of less than four percent. In Hong Kong, that alleged ‘worst medical disaster’ has killed ten people out of 316 known victims. But since this only takes into account those ill enough…
“Dennis Jerz asked me a question about the length of time it takes for a Google query to be performed. We resolved this with a series of 50 tests to determine an answer.” Elwyn Jenkins —Google Search Speeds: Overpopulation and Underpopulation ComparedMicrodoc News) Thanks, Elwyn.
“In much of the 20th Century, there was a widespread denial of the existence of human nature in Western intellectual life, and I will just present three representative quotations. ‘Man has no nature,’ from the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gassett. ‘Man has no instincts,’ from the anthropologist and public intellectual Ashley Montagu. ‘The human brain…
“THE world’s biggest rubber band ball has been dropped from an aeroplane a mile up… Experts thought the ball would bounce hundreds of feet into the air.|Instead, it created a massive crater…” —This is Very DumbicWales)
“The year 2000 marked a turning point, with the population’s ‘momentum’ becoming negative; there will be fewer parents in the next generation than in this one.” —Europe Shrinking as Birthrates DeclineTimes) This is a straightforward summary of an article to be published in Science. It might have been a more interesting article if it interviewed…
The world’s first brain prosthesis – an artificial hippocampus – is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing. | The prosthesis will first be tested on tissue…
“[H]abitual early exposure to TV violence is more strongly linked with aggression later in life than other factors often cited as leading causes, such as IQ, social-economic status and parental TV viewing.” Peter Calamai —New warning on TV violence: Early viewing, adult aggression linked; Study criticizes entertainment industryThe Star) Here’s a nice touch, that you…
“Phrases like the population bomb and the population explosion breed racism. Few Americans know that, on average, woman round the world have less than three children each. They don’t breed like rabbits. And by 2050 a majority of the world’s population will be likely to live in countries with fertility levels below what demographers regard…
NASA has released an orbital image from an impact crater on the Yucatan Peninsula, reportedly from the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs: “The existence of the impact crater, Chicxulub, was first proposed in 1980. In the 1990s, satellite data and ground studies allowed it to gain prominence among most scientists as the long sought-after “smoking…