drego: the unrequited narcissist

Short answer: “17 mph would be the low end.”  Long answer, with physics: read more…

(source: Wired)

“Surrounded by technology and urbanity though we may be, the human brain remains profoundly hard-wired to respond to animals. When people are shown pictures of animals, specific parts of the amygdala — a structure central to pleasure and pain, fear and reward — react almost instantly. Put another way, glimpsing a bird at the feeder or a shark on Animal Planet, or even a plankitten, could invoke cognitive tricks inherited from ancestors who walked on four legs in shallow water.”  Read more…

(source: Wired)

“The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change? The short answer from scientists is that they are still trying to figure it out. But many of them do believe that hurricanes will get more intense as the planet warms, and they see large hurricanes like Irene as a harbinger.”  Read more…

(source: New York Times)

“Over the last two weeks, two interesting copyright-related stories have appeared in online news reports. Both involve big media companies and small users, but not in the way we usually expect. In both instances, the large media companies “pirated” content instead of the users, and they seem to get away with it. This begs the question; is copyright only for the Big Guys?”  Read more…

(source: TorrentFreak)

“A few days after NATO planes began bombing Libya, Moammar Gadhafi spoke to the nation he had ruled for more than four decades….The speech may have been Gadhafi’s attempt to emulate Winston Churchill’s stirring oratory during the London Blitz, which was credited with maintaining national resolve…. However much Gadhafi hoped to inspire his people as Churchill did, he had a problem he couldn’t overcome: narcissism.”  Read more…

(source: philly.com)

“Eating chocolate could benefit the heart, a study finds, possibly lowering heart disease by 37%…. But before you dash to the supermarket to buy that five-pound bag of M&Ms, the study authors caution about eating chocolate with abandon. After all, they point out, chocolate isn’t exactly calorie-free…. [A]ll chocolate is not created equal, and eating too much of the stuff that’s filled with fat and sugar can put on pounds, possibly upping the risk of high blood pressure and diabetes — the very stuff that can lead to cardiovascular problems.”  Read more…

(source: LA Times)

“Is severe childhood obesity a life-threatening form of abuse that justifies removing a child from his or her parents? Doctors, lawyers and child welfare experts have grappled with this question in recent years, and the debate was renewed this summer by a high-profile commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital Boston, and Lindsey Murtagh, a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health, argued that when children are near death due to morbid obesity, state intervention should be considered.”  Read more…

(source: LA Times)

“The percentage of adult Internet users using sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn is now 65 percent, up from 61 percent a year ago, according to a report released Friday by the Pew Research Center. Accounting for the percentage of adults who don’t use the Internet at all, that still means that half of all Americans now use social networking sites, Pew researchers said.”  Read more…

(source: PC Magazine)

“Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.”  Read more…

(source: Reuters)

“For years, researchers have published papers that associate chronic stress with chromosomal damage. Now researchers at Duke University Medical Center have discovered a mechanism that helps to explain the stress response in terms of DNA damage.”  Read more…

(source: DukeHealth.org, via Slashdot)

“Research done by a CSUN psychology professor, Dr. Delinah Hurwitz, suggests that people overuse Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking websites because of an addiction to endorphins released in the body during the process of posting.”  Read more…

(source: Daily Sundial)

“The ever-growing avalanche of lawsuits against BitTorrent users in the United States may have reached a turning point. The makers of The Expendables have voluntarily dismissed their case against 23,322 alleged BitTorrent users who they accused of illegally downloading and sharing their film. This means that the once-largest BitTorrent lawsuit ever is finally over, and it could signal the beginning of the end for the entire scheme.”  Read more…

(source: Torrent Freak)

“Tulane University scientists have discovered a novel bacterial strain, dubbed ‘TU-103,’ that can use paper to produce butanol, a biofuel that can serve as a substitute for gasoline. They are currently experimenting with old editions of the Times Picayune, New Orleans’ venerable daily newspaper, with great success.”  Read more…

(source: PhysOrg.com)

“Conservatives are so easy to anger these days. Even the most insignificant statement can set off their tempers. If you want to enrage a conservative, I suggest saying the following:”

1. A Socialist wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.
2. Jesus healed the sick and helped the poor, for free.
3. Joseph McCarthy was an un-American, witch hunting sissy.
4. Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were traitors.
5. The South lost the Civil War, get over it.
6. The Founding Fathers were liberals.
7. Fascism is a right-wing trait.
8. Sarah Palin is an ugly cow (said to conservative males).
9. The Earth is round.
10. Reagan raised taxes eleven times as President.

Read entire list…

(source: Addicting Info) 

“The recording industry doesn’t have the most respectable history when it comes to lawsuits. Between asking for millions for trivial acts of piracy, and asking potentially for trillions in more serious cases, they’ve shown that they’re not only completely disconnected from reality, but totally unheeding of the actual effects of their litigation. So it’s not surprising to see them tilting at yet another windmill.”  Read more…

(source: TechCrunch)

“Android is growing at a phenomenal rate thanks in part to the many hardware options available to phone shoppers. Now Android is at an inflection point, with both phones and tablets on the market. With all this variance in hardware, and a growing application ecosystem, fragmentation is more of a concern than ever before for the users.”Read more…

(source: ExtremeTech)

“Within my community, I am promoting the thought that good passwords really should be called ‘good pass words’ - that they can easily be formed by the combination of four or more apparently random words in a memorable way”  Read more…

(source: Infosec Island, via Current)

“Rats infected with the parasite Toxoplasma seem to lose their fear of cats – or at least cat urine. Now Stanford researchers have discovered that the brains of those infected, fearless male rats show activity in the region that normally triggers a mating response when they meet a female rat. But that does not necessarily mean the rats find cats sexually appealing. It’s a trick that Toxoplasma plays to have the rats eaten by cats, a clever manipulation of rat behavior that is part of the parasite’s reproduction scheme.”  Read more…

(source: Stanford University News)

The ‘New Yorker’ writer [Malcolm Gladwell] argues that — claims about Iran to the contrary — social media will never spark a social revolution. But it’s ideal for armchair activists…. “Such revolutions came about, as did the 1960s civil rights protests in the U.S, through actual networks of influential friends and acquaintances — not the ‘weak ties’ that make up our Twitter and Facebook cliques. Social networks are ‘enormously resilient and adaptable in low-risk situations,’ but are almost useless as a catalyst for genuine change.”  Read more…

(source: The New Yorker, via The Week)

“Mount your smartphone in the dash of your car and it could join a network of smartphones that watch traffic lights and tell you how fast to drive to get to the next traffic light without wasting gas. Researchers from MIT and Princeton say the technology, called SignalGuru, helped drivers cut fuel consumption by 20%”  Read more…

(source: ExtremeTech)

“Take a piece of paper. Crumple it. Before you sink a three-pointer in the corner wastebasket, consider that you’ve just created an object of extraordinary mathematical and structural complexity, filled with mysteries that physicists are just starting to unfold.”  Read more…

(source: Wired)

“New research suggests that taking medicine for ear infections might be related to a reckless appetite.”  Read more…

(source: The Week)

“As part of an emerging international trend to try to ‘civilize the Internet’, one of the world’s worst Internet law treaties—the highly controversial Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Cybercrime—is back on the agenda.”  Read more…

(source: Electronic Frontier Foundation)  

“The spin was that David Plouffe and Bill Daley would, if nothing else, bring fresh perspectives to these admittedly grueling and thankless jobs. But they appear to have given Obama bad advice at nearly every turn.”  Read more…

(source: The Daily Beast)

“Bad news for anyone who was looking to rent the latest episode of Top Gear from iTunes, as Apple has quickly and quietly removed their 99¢ television rental option today.”  Read more…

(source: TechCrunch)

“IBM Research has just set a world record in data storage by building a drive array capable of holding 120 petabytes. It was done at the request of an unnamed research group that needs this unprecedented amount of space for running simulations of some sort…. How did they do it? Well, the easy part was plugging in the 200,000 individual hard drives that make up the array.”  Read more…

(source: TechCrunch)

“As wireless nodes become cheaper and more common, our electronic networks will expand to include many of the non-electronic things you really care about: your missing pants, a new shoelace, and the city’s best produce stand.
”  Read more…

(source: Discover Magazine)

“In the rolling Berkeley hills, under a dome that once housed its Nobel-Winning predecessor, lies the Advanced Light Source: an X-Ray generating system one billion times brighter than the sun.”  Read more…

(source: Gizmodo)

“Much stronger measures are needed to halt the growing obesity epidemic, according to public health academics. They say the [British government] is failing to act because it fears being seen to impose “nanny state” policies.”  Read more…

(source: The Telegraph)

“What makes a tweet, blog post, or ad campaign go viral? According to one of two recent studies, one of the best ways is to inspire awe in the reader. And if that fails, well, tick them off.”  Read more…

(source: PC Magazine)

“Sad people are apparently better than happy people at face recognition, an upside to being down in the dumps that is yielding insights into how mood can affect the brain. The findings, based on experiments involving college students, could help lead to better treatments for depression, psychologists say.”  Read more…

(source: Mother Nature Network)

“Homes are responsible for 23 percent of the energy used in the US and 18 percent of carbon emissions. In cities like Chicago, where the temperature can vary by 100 degrees, heating and cooling bills can be bank-breakers. But it doesn’t have to be this way.”  Read more…

(source: Wired)

“In a tragic moment for Steve Jobs, there is a bright spot: Tim Cook, who will succeed Jobs as Apple’s CEO, is an incredibly thorough and detail oriented boss who has revolutionized the way computers are assembled and steadily held the confidence of Apple’s employees and partners. He is also, as we reported in January, destined to become an icon for gay advancement.”  Read more…

(source: Gawker)

“The man who gives voice to Geoff [Peterson, Craig Ferguson’s robot sidekick] is actor/comedian Josh Robert Thompson and he is in control of everything Geoff does — whether it’s his voice, a surprise sound effect, or the movement of Geoff’s head and arm…. Nothing between Geoff and Ferguson is scripted.”  Read more…

(source: Herald Dispatch, via Twitter)

“A few months ago the U.S. Copyright Group (USCG), who pioneered the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the United States, were themselves sued for fraud, abuse and extortion.”  Read more…

(source: Torrent Freak)

“Both men and women are likely to pack on a few extra pounds after they get married. That modest figure is an average—it also includes married folks who gain or lose a significant amount of weight upon tying the knot. And according to a new study, marriage is linked to a heightened risk for major weight gain among women. For men, the pounds come a little bit later: after the divorce.”  Read more…

(source: Good, via BuzzFeed)

“Researchers from the University of Wisconsin Madison are working on a system that might be able to pull as much as 20W from your strut…. Yes, theoretically, you could charge your iPad or power a whole low-power computer of some kind just by walking around.”  Read more…

(source: TechCrunch)