Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. (…)

The percentage of committed opinion holders required to influence a society remains at approximately 10 percent, regardless of how or where that opinion starts and spreads in the society.

{ ScienceBlog | Continue reading }

paintings { 1. Hippolyte Delaroche, Louise Vernet, Wife of the Artist, on Her Deathbed, 1845 | 2. Fragonard, The Reader, ca.1770-72 }

{ Physicists Recreate ‘End Of Time’ in Lab | full story }

In the months after the collapse of the credit market in the fall of 2008, The New York Times was forced to take drastic measures to stay afloat: In January 2009, it granted Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú purchase warrants for 15.9 million shares of Times Company stock for the privilege of borrowing $250 million at essentially a junk-bond interest rate of 14 percent. Two months later, in a move redolent with uncomfortable symbolism, the company raised another $225 million through a sale-leaseback deal for its headquarters. Add on double-digit declines in both circulation and ad pages and the trend lines looked increasingly clear: The New York Times was doomed.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the graveyard. Though the Times’ circulation dipped during the crash years, much of the lost revenue was made up for by doubling the newsstand price, from $1 to $2—evidence, the paper insisted, that its premium audience understood the value of a premium product. In March, after several years of planning and tens of millions in investments, the Times launched a digital-subscription plan—and the early signs were good. In fact, less than 48 hours before my interview, the Times announced it would finish paying back the Carlos Slim loan in full on August 15, three and a half years early. When they were released last week, the company’s second-quarter financial results showed an overall loss largely owing to the write-down of some regional papers, but they also contained a much more important piece of data: The digital-subscription plan—the famous “paywall”—was working better than anyone had dared to hope.

{ NY mag | Continue reading }

When looking at a picture of many trees, young people will tend to say: “This is a forest.” However, the older we get, the more likely we are to notice a single tree before seeing the forest. In a new study published in the July-August issue of Elsevier’s Cortex, researchers have found that these age-related changes are correlated with a specific aspect of visual perception, known as Gestalt perception.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

Dear Investor,

When you only do one thing, you do it well.

Need to send a contract to a client? I will fax it. Want to submit a proposal to a client? I will fax it. Want to send a birthday party invitation to a client? I will fax it.

I Will Fax Anything specializes in the sending and receiving of faxes… and that’s it.

Want to surf the Internet? Find a library. Looking for a ream of paper? Go to Staples. Want to loiter? Go home. I am not your friend.

Last week a man came into the Oak Forest I Will Fax Anything and asked for a small pepperoni pizza and a side of Crazy Bread. I don’t sell pizza. I only charge people for faxing things.

{ Dennis O’Toole | Continue reading }

For men, significant predictors of infidelity are personality variables, including propensity for sexual excitation (becoming easily aroused by many triggers and situations) and concern about sexual performance failure.

For women, relationship happiness is paramount. Women who are dissatisfied with their relationship are more than twice as likely to cheat; those who feel they are sexually incompatible with their partners are nearly three times as likely.

{ University of Guelph | Continue reading }

photo { Judy Linn, Patti, left tit | Judy Linn, Photographs of Patti Smith, 1969-1976 | A muse named Patti Smith | NY Times }

related quote { ‘I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself.’ –Kant }

Changes in relationship formation and dissolution in the past 50 years have revealed new patterns in romantic relations among young adults. The U.S. Census indicates that young people are choosing to marry later and cohabitating more often than past generations. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that people in their 20s are redefining dating by engaging in “stayover relationships,” spending three or more nights together each week while maintaining the option of going to their own homes. (…)

Jamison found that “stayover relationships” are a growing trend among college-aged couples who are committed, but not interested in cohabiting.

Jamison found that couples who had a stayover routine were content in their relationships, but did not necessarily plan to get married or move in together.

“As soon as couples live together, it becomes more difficult to break up,” Jamison said. “At that point, they have probably signed a lease, bought a couch and acquired a dog, making it harder to disentangle their lives should they break up. Staying over doesn’t present those entanglements.”

{ University of Missouri | Continue reading }

photo { Thatcher Keats }

Like the ampersand, the ‘@’ symbol is not strictly a mark of punctuation; rather, it is a logogram or grammalogue, a shorthand for the word ‘at’. Even so, it is as much a staple of modern communication as the semicolon or exclamation mark, punctuating email addresses and announcing Twitter usernames. Unlike the ampersand, though, whose journey to the top took two millennia of steady perseverance, the at symbol’s current fame is quite accidental. It can, in fact, be traced to the single stroke of a key made almost exactly four decades ago.

In 1971, Ray Tomlinson was a 29-year-old computer engineer working for the consulting firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman. Founded just over two decades previously, BBN had recently been awarded a contract by the US government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency to undertake an ambitious project to connect computers all over America. The so-called ‘ARPANET’ would go on to provide the foundations for the modern internet, and quite apart from his technical contributions to it, Tomlinson would also inadvertently grant it its first global emblem in the form of the ‘@’ symbol.

{ Shady Characters | Continue reading }

related { There are several theories about the origin of @ | Merchant@florence wrote it first 500 years ago }

Global warming seems inevitable. So maybe we should stop trying to prevent it and start finding ways to live with it — through adaptation.

{ Ode | Continue reading }

photo { Alan Grillo }

craigslist > des moines
Jogging Partner
Date: 2011-05-26, 9:09PM

I am looking for a person of athletic build to help me get in shape.

I hate exercising with passion so the plan of action is this: I ingest Rohypnol [you supply the roofies as I don’t know where to purchase them] and you strap my body to yours [limbs to limbs using velcro] and take me along on a jog. Three nights a week. If you’re capable and interested, E-mail me so that we can discuss the fee.

Location: Des Moines, IA

{ Craigslist | Continue reading }

photo { Jacques-Henri Lartigue }

In January of 2007, the Washington Post asked world-renown violinist Joshua Bell to perform the 43-minute piece Bach piece “Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin,” in the L’Enfant Plaza subway station – one of D.C.’s busiest subway stations – during the heart of rush hour.

Joshua Bell was used to performing in front of sold out crowds, filled with ambassadors and state leaders, in the finest concert halls across the globe. He is generally considered one of the best violinists alive, and his talents pay him substantial dividends.

However, as over a thousand morning commuters passed by Joshua Bell on that cold morning in January, his credentials were humbly irrelevant. To everyone’s surprise, The Post found that, “of the 1,097 people who walked by, hardly anyone stopped. One man listened for a few minutes, a couple of kids stared, and one woman, who happened to recognize the violinist, gaped in disbelief.” Many were expecting Joshua Bell to cause music pandemonium with his free subway appearance, but his performance garnered no more attention than any other street musician.

Gene Weingarten, the author of the piece, went on to win a Pulitzer prize, but psychologists and laypeople alike were left asking the same question: why didn’t people stop and listen?

{ Why We Reason | Continue reading }

Although human love is a complicated and long journey, scientists consistently find that the release of a specific neuropetide—oxytocin—may kick start these feelings right away in courtship. In fact, for the past few decades researchers have referred to oxytocin as the “love hormone,” and credit its release as the glue that ties humans to their loved ones.

Oxytocin’s cupid effect is not specific to romantic love, but rather various forms of pro-sociality. Pregnancy and labor are times when a woman naturally experiences surges of oxytocin, which may facilitate mother-infant bonding. In males, administering oxytocin has been shown to increase trust, understanding, and even enhance empathy in males with social deficits. Nonetheless, oxytocin is best known for keeping us monogamous, or “pair bonded” as the scientists say. (…)

While oxytocin may enhance positive emotions and pro-sociality with the people we care about, it may also contribute to negative views and behaviors towards people to whom we are not close.

{ BrainBlogger | Continue reading }

painting { Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Sleeping Woman, 1897 }

Illegal markets differ from legal markets in many respects. Although illegal markets have economic significance and are of theoretical importance, they have been largely ignored by economic sociology. In this article we propose a categorization for illegal markets and highlight reasons why certain markets are outlawed. We perform a comprehensive review of the literature to characterize illegal markets along the three coordination problems of value creation, competition, and cooperation. The article concludes by appealing to economic sociology to strengthen research on illegal markets and by suggesting areas for future empirical research. (…)

Markets are arenas of regular voluntary exchange of goods or services for money under conditions of competition (Aspers/Beckert 2008). The exchange of goods or services does not constitute a market when the exchange takes place only very irregularly and when there is no competition either on the demand side or on the supply side. Markets are illegal when either the product itself, the exchange of it, or the way in which it is produced or sold violates legal stipulations. What makes a market illegal is therefore entirely dependent on a legal definition.

When a market is defined as illegal, the state declines the protection of property rights, does not define and enforce standards for product quality, and can prosecute the actors within it. Not every criminal economic activity constitutes an illegal market; the product or service demanded may be too specific for competition to emerge, or it may simply be business fraud. Since illegality is defined by law, what constitutes an illegal market differs between legal jurisdictions and over time.

{ Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies | Continue reading | PDF }

In 2006, archaeologists exhumed the remains of the legendary 18th century castrato, Carlo Maria Broschi, better known as Farinelli.

As a boy, Farinelli showed talent as an opera singer and, when their father died young, his elder brother Riccardo made the decision to have Farinelli castrated, an illegal operation at the time, in order to preserve his voice.  Farinelli became quite famous by the 1720s and sang daily until his death at the age of 78.

An analysis of the bones has just been published in the Journal of Anatomy, with the most salient finding being that Farinelli’s castration led to hormonal changes that likely caused him to develop internal frontal hyperostosis (or hyperostosis frontalis interna, depending on what side of the Atlantic you’re from), a thickening of the frontal bone in the cranial vault that is found almost exclusively in postmenopausal women.

{ Kristina Killgrove | Continue reading }

Fatter and fewer German nudists as numbers dwindle.

Unhappy that a Lafayette Road car dealer wouldn’t take back the van he bought on Monday, David Cross drove “the lemon” back after closing on Tuesday and crashed it into six cars parked on the lot for sale. “I hit the first $25,000 car I could see,” Cross told the Herald. “I didn’t hit a car under $20,000.”

Motorcyclist lands in car’s rear seat after crash.

Archeologists discovered 700 curious tunnel networks in Germany, and about 500 in Austria. Their purpose remains a mystery.

Why do people eat less when they have big forks?

Marriages are happier when wives are skinnier than husbands.

Why People Avoid the Truth About Themselves.

When humans draw things, most of the time the product is something that wouldn’t easily be confused with a photograph. Why humans can’t draw.

Scientists have found a previously unseen particle.

We are more willing to do bad if we have recently done good. We also think we get more excuses to do bad if our group is good.

Linguistic diversity and traffic accidents.

How do viruses hijack our brains to make us vomit - and can we stop it?

The brain does not just mirror the emotions of others. We share the actions, sensations and emotions of the people around us.

Scientists discover how best to excite brain cells.

Clocks tell time in numbers—and so do our minds, according to a new study. In two experiments, scientists found that people associate small numbers with short time intervals and large numbers with longer intervals—suggesting that these two systems are linked in the brain.

Has the Internet become an external hard drive for the brain?

A new breed: Highly productive chickens help raise Ugandans from poverty.

The full moon indicates impending danger from lion attack, a University of Minnesota study shows.

Subtle word change affects election participation.

A new study by MIT political scientists adds to this body of research by details which types of citizens are most influenced by candidate appearances, and why.

During warfare in the 15th century, soldiers wore steel plate armour, typically weighing 30-50kg. The French may have had a better chance at the Battle of Agincourt had they not been weighed down by heavy body armour, say researchers.

Physicists have created a “hole in time” using the temporal equivalent of an invisibility cloak.

When consumers taste a chocolate bar they think is made in Switzerland, they’ll prefer it over one supposedly made in China, according to new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. But if you tell them where it’s from after they taste the candy, they’ll prefer the Chinese chocolate.

Spotify, the Swedish streaming service, about to make its U.S. debut, may be the industry’s best shot at remaining profitable and relevant.

Personally, I find the term “in the cloud” pretentious and annoying. Don’t they just mean “online?”

The Pentagon, the IMF, Google, and others have been hacked. It’s war out there, and a cyber-weapons industry is exploding to arm the combatants.

How Hackers Stole 24,000 Files From The Pentagon.

Microsoft posts $250K reward for Rustock botnet herders. First bounty since 2009, when Microsoft offered cash for Conficker’s makers.

How to Hide From Annoying People on Google+.

A Conversation with Josh Harris. Internet entrepreneur reveals some details about his latest project.

Why Netflix Raised Its Prices.

How Ray Dalio built the world’s richest and strangest hedge fund.

Professor Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv University’s study, based on an examination of 50 years of market volatility in 10 stock markets in seven different countries, demonstrates that a smart stock market portfolio takes into account both negative returns and the dynamics of psychological volatility.

Context Sensitivity with Neural Networks in Financial Decision Processes.

When New York crassly mismanaged its financial affairs, the president’s response was famously paraphrased as “Ford to City: drop dead!” When Greece was guilty of similar mismanagement the reaction of the ECB and the European Commission was “how can we help?”. American lessons in how to run a single currency.

National Debt Ceiling Explained in One Graphic.

In all of 2010 regulators seized 157 banks. There were 140 bank failures in 2009. More: Regulators shut down two small banks in Florida and one in Colorado, bringing to 58 the number of U.S. bank failures this year, well behind last year’s pace.

The pathology of collecting. Is it a noble instinct or a destructive desire?

Charles Saatchi has remade the British art market three times, most famously by championing young British artists such as Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas. But was he lucky or did he have true vision? And more importantly can he do it again?

In 1907, Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient.

The Typo Eradication Advancement League uses Sharpies, dry-erase markers, chalk, paste-on letters, and Wite-Out to correct errors displayed on signage nationwide.

What’s a Metaphor For?

This is series of informal essays about Apocalypse Now that argues that the movie as a whole takes the from of a classic rite of passage as described by Durkheim and van Gennep. Particular attention is given to the opening montage, the trip into the jungle for mangoes, the sampan massacre, the final parallel killings of Kurtz and the caribao, and parallels between characters.

Young media and tech workers flock to neighborhoods such as Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Chelsea, where many of their employers are also moving their offices. These tenants also demand high-tech amenities such as ubiquitous wireless internet access, movie screening rooms and, in one case, a Wii room.

As of 2011, are we, as a nation, using significantly less paper than, say, 20 years ago?

How to make an omelet.

6 Mind-Blowing Discoveries Made Using Google Earth.

Obscure and Valuable Keyboard Shortcuts.

Stanford sudoku.

The interior of the H.R. Giger Museum Bar is a cavernous, skeletal structure covered by double arches of vertebrae that crisscross the vaulted ceiling of an ancient castle.

Mice.

Beauty Salon, 1950s. [video]

New York panoramas, 1902-1913.

Oversized ambient advertising, Times Square, 1955.

Marilyn Monroe’s latest kick is yoga, 1956.

Morrissey talks about his youth, 1985 and The Smiths interviewed during rehearsals for Meat Is Murder Tour, 1985.

Destroyer… Creator…

8 Filthy Jokes Hidden in Ancient Works of Art.

He could not fly very well because…

Windtunnel choreography. [Thanks Ben]

World’s fastest Lego Rubik’s cube solver.

San Diego Comic-Con.

Enter to win.

Skittles, Newlyweds. [Thanks G!]

Scalp hair grows, on average, at a rate of about half an inch per month, and shampoos or vitamins have not been shown to noticeably change this rate. Hair growth rate also depends upon what phase in the cycle of hair growth one is actually in; there are three phases:
• anagen is the growth phase;
• catagen is the involuting or regressing phase;
• telogen, the resting or quiescent phase.

Scalp (different hair color and follicle shape affects the timings of these phases):
• anagen phase, 2–3 years (occasionally much longer)
• catagen phase, 2–3 weeks
• telogen phase, around 3 months

Eyebrows, eyelashes, arms, legs, etc:
• anagen phase, about 30-45 days
• catagen phase, 3–4 weeks
• telogen phase, about 9 months

{ Wikipedia | eMedecine }

related { What’s the purpose of pubic hair? }

photo { Chad Muthard }

Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. (…)

If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. (…)

The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given.

{ Bertrand Russel, The Value of Philosophy, 1912 | Continue reading }

photo { Richard Avedon }

If you ask doctors what is the worst part of their jobs, what do you think they say? Carrying out difficult, painful procedures? Telling people they’ve only got months to live? No, it’s something that might seem much less stressful: administration.

We tend to downplay day-to-day irritations, thinking we’ve got bigger fish to fry. But actually people’s job satisfaction is surprisingly sensitive to daily hassles. It might not seem like much but when it happens almost every day and it’s beyond our control, it hits job satisfaction hard.

{ 10 Psychological Keys to Job Satisfaction | PsyBlog | Continue reading }

artwork { Christian Schad, Operation, 1929 }