- Man Raised By Parents Struggling To Adjust To Human Society | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
- Two years after his discovery by a team of developmental psychologists, David Sullivan, a man raised by a pair of mated parents, is still struggling to adapt to normal human society, sources confirmed Friday.
According to researchers at the University of Minnesota, Sullivan, 25, has made significant progress since moving into his own apartment in 2009, but the decades he spent being reared by parents has made joining civilization a desperately difficult task.
"The chances of David ever becoming socialized to the point where he can function normally among humans is very slim,"…
- Sea Monster Battle Seen in Prehistoric Bite Marks | National Geographic News
- A gnawed fossil skull points to "a really aggressive encounter" between two giant dolphin-like reptiles.
- Pink fluffy cat ears – controlled by brain waves | Mind Hacks 2.0 Feed • by vaughanbell
- A Japanese company called Neurowear have created pink brainwave-controlled cat ears for humans.
The company claim that they stand up when you concentrate and lay flat when you relax.
However, as the ears almost certainly pick up on different EEG frequencies which aren’t directly tied to mental states it probably means that they move around largely of their own free will while you have a vague sense of controlling them.
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- Total information war | Mind Hacks 2.0 Feed • by vaughanbell
- Perhaps one of the most important articles yet published on military infowar, propaganda, media influence and PSYOPs has appeared online.
Called ‘Military Social Influence in the Global Information Environment: A Civilian Primer’ – the piece is written by psychologist Sarah King who outlines the theory and practice of US information warfare as it stands today.
Although the piece gives a fascinating and sometimes jaw dropping account of US information operations (replete with examples) it serves as an essential general introduction to how military thinking has moved on from assuming wars are fought with troops on the ground to conceptualising conflict as inseparable from its social impact. …
If you only ever read one article on ‘information ops’ make it this one.
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- Multitasking, redux: New research finds ‘mindset switching’ impacts self-regulation | Cognitive Science Blog
- "Repeatedly switching mindsets can impair executive functioning and cause self-regulatory failures on subsequent tasks."
- Robots Evolve Altruism, Just as Biology Predicts | Wired: Science • by Brandon Keim
- [Eat your heart out, Ayn fucking Rand. -L]
Robots in a Swiss laboratory have evolved to help each other, just as predicted by [Hamilton's] classic analysis of how self-sacrifice might emerge in the biological world. …
Hamilton’s rule is named after biologist W.D. Hamilton who in 1964 attempted to explain how ostensibly selfish organisms could evolve to share their time and resources, even sacrificing themselves for the good of others. His rule codified the dynamics — degrees of genetic relatedness between organisms, costs and benefits of sharing — by which altruism made evolutionary sense. According to Hamilton, relatedness was key: Altruism’s cost to an individual would be outweighed by its benefit to a shared set of genes.
- Hummingbird-Sized Ants Once Roamed Wyoming | Wired: Science • by Susan Milius
- A winged ant queen fossilized in 49.5-million-year-old Wyoming rock…
- CloudMagic Adds Offline Search for Google Account Data | Lifehacker • by Matthew Rogers
- Free Chrome and Firefox extension CloudMagic now indexes content from Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Contacts for offline searching within the browser.
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- ZipCar launches Android App to Help You Own a Car, One Hour at a Time | AndroidGuys • by Ray Walters
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- Einstein was right. Again. | kottke.org • by Tim Carmody
- NASA's just finished an impressive experiment designed to test Einstein's general theory of relativity — specifically the "mass distorts spacetime" part: …
Gravity Probe B's experiment was 47 years in the making, helped spawn 100 PhD theses, and required the invention of 13 brand-new technologies, including a "drag-free satellite."
- Cinco de Mayo/The Battle of Puebla | About.com Latin American History
- France had invaded Mexico, looking to collect on unpaid debts, and a massive French army was marching on Mexico City. On the outskirts of the city of Puebla, valiant Mexicans made a stand, defying the odds and beating the French (at least for a while). ….
- How to mummify a chicken | ABlogAboutHistory.com • by Sevaan Franks
- Boingboing has posted an interesting interview with Thor Carlson, an exhibit developer at the Science Museum of Minnesota who has been experimenting with mummifying chickens.
- Babies Remember Music Heard In the Womb for Up to a Year | Today I Found Out • by Julia
- Recent research at the University of Leicester demonstrated that babies showed a significant preference for melodies played for them frequently during the last few months they were in the womb. Preferences for a familiar melody were shown by babies in a variety of ways including: looking towards the source of the music and by the soothing effects of these pieces of music on the babies, such as their heart rates slowing down significantly upon hearing the tune and the baby calming externally. These same effects were not typically observed when songs were played that the baby had not heard in the womb.
- Viking houses unearthed in Ireland | ABlogAboutHistory.com • by Sevaan Franks
- Construction has unearthed two viking houses in Temple Bar, Ireland.
- Notations 21: Visualizing Music Notation | Brain Pickings • by Maria Popova
- We’re endlessly fascinated by the cross-pollination of the senses, particularly in visualizing music. That’s exactly what Notations 21 explores. …the ambitious 320-page volume by Theresa Sauer and Mark Batty Publishers reveals how 165 composers and musicians around the world are experiencing, communicating and reconceiving music visually by reinventing notation.
[My bookmarks live at delicious.com/camryl. In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Also, signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
The Of interest (Fri, May 6th, 8am) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.