A real walk about.
This week Der Spiegel has an article commemorating the 50th anniversary of the introduction of pedestrian Don’t Walk/Walk signals to East Germany…
Continue reading… “Pedestrian signals from around the world”
Student loan defaults continue to grow and the worst is yet to come
The student loan default rate for fiscal 2009 surged to 8.8%, up from 7% in 2008.
Two years ago critics warned that government-backed student loan defaults would rise. The question was how soon would taxpayers feel the pain. This month, the U.S. Department of Education provided part of the answer when it reported that the default rate for fiscal 2009 surged to 8.8%, up from 7% in 2008.
Continue reading… “Student loan defaults continue to grow and the worst is yet to come”
iPhone peripheral turns phone into Geiger counter
How hot is your house?
Scosche’s RDTX is a radiation detector for your iPhone. Seriously, it turns your iPhone into a Geiger counter—you just attach the wand to your iPhone and the RDTX will tell you the radiation levels around you…
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Brain rejects negative thoughts
No negative thoughts here!
Good news: your brain is hardwired for good news
Bad news: your brain is hardwired for good news
Why don’t people stop smoking even after hearing bazillion public service messages that doing so will give them cancer? Why do people get married even though the rate of divorce is 50%?
Neuroscientists have the answer: it’s because the human brain rejects negative thoughts (and yes, sometimes to the detriment of the brain’s host)…
Continue reading… “Brain rejects negative thoughts”
A brief history of the spork
Is a spork the best of both worlds?
The Spork is a confusing utensil that in theory has the scooping and liquid-holding properties of a spoon combined with the food-stabbing features of a fork. However, with the spoon part too shallow to hold an acceptable amount of soup, and tines too short and stubby to properly penetrate anything firmer than a canned peach, the spork has become one of the longest standing jokes in culinary history…
Continue reading… “A brief history of the spork”
Private colleges cutting tuition costs
Seton Hall University is offering discounts up to 66% on tuition.
Discounted programs and other ways to save are being offered by a growing number of private colleges and universities. Students and families have been turned off by the potential six-figure tuition bills from private colleges. So some are cutting their prices.
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Essays on the trap of US student debt
A growing problem.
Reclamations, a journal published by University of California students, has published a special, timely pamphlet called “Generation of Debt,” on the trap of student debt in America. Young people in America are bombarded with the message that they won’t find meaningful employment without a degree (and sometimes a graduate degree).
Meanwhile, universities have increased their fees to astronomical levels, far ahead of inflation, and lenders (including the universities themselves) offer easy credit to students as a means of paying these sums (for all the money they’re charging, universities are also slashing wages for their staff, mostly by sticking grad students and desperate “adjuncts” into positions that used to pay professorial wages; naturally, the austerity doesn’t extend to the CEO-class administrators, who draw CEO-grade pay).
Continue reading… “Essays on the trap of US student debt”
Blind man trained to be a scuba diver along with his white stick
Underwater exploring in a whole different way.
Despite being blind from birth, Robert Ainsley-Raffel has never let his disabilities stop him achieving his ambitions. He is already well on the way to becoming a qualified plumber, and even trains his own greyhound. Now the 25-year-old from Hexham is training as an underwater diver. Robert passed his dive theory test with a flying 100% mark and is now looking forward to his first open water dives en route to a full Ocean Diver qualification…
Continue reading… “Blind man trained to be a scuba diver along with his white stick”
Single dose of ‘Magic Mushrooms’ hallucinogen may create lasting personality change, study suggests
New value found in psilocybin activities.
A single high dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called “magic mushrooms,” was enough to bring about a measurable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants in a new study, according to the Johns Hopkins researchers who conducted it…
12 Books that have (ironically) been banned in the U.S.
September 24th through October 1st is Banned Books Week.
Talk about an easy subject to research! It might have been easier to write up a “books that have never been banned anywhere” list. The banning of books seems so ridiculous, simplistic, and stupid to most of us. But man, in all his Jeckyll and Hyde glory, will all-too-often, when trying to solve a problem, come up with a solution much worse. This is “the 29th annual Banned Books Week” The week is used to condemn censorship and “thought police.”
O.K., let’s take a look at a brief (in the scheme of these things) list of books that have been (ironically) banned here in the U.S….
Continue reading… “12 Books that have (ironically) been banned in the U.S.”
The Visible Barbie Project
Did you ever wonder?
The Visible Barbie Project is part of the Foundation for Unnatural Research’s long-range plan for advancing the state of human knowlege of things that no normal person would ever think to wonder about.
The project began with the acquisition of a suitable marked-down subject at a nearby toy store and ended approximately six hours later, not including the time required to pick out the bits of hair that got stuck in the bandsaw.
The cause of the subject’s markdown was unknown, but we didn’t care; all that mattered was that the gross physical anatomy of the body was intact…
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Scientists can now extract, record and return information to the brain
Information is now moveable in the brain.
This is uncanny: A Tel Aviv University team lead by Professor Matti Mintz have developed a synthetic cerebellum that can receive sensory inputs from the brain, analyze them, and return information to other parts of the brain!
The device is now working in rats, and has effectively restored lost brain functions caused by damaged tissue. However, the most important thing is that this proves that brain-to-machine communication can work in a bi-directional way, with a machine getting information from the brain, analyzing it and then talking back to the brain. As Mintz puts it…
Continue reading… “Scientists can now extract, record and return information to the brain”
