Finger Length Predicts Speed, Aggression, Smarts and Motivation: "Boys with ring fingers longer than their index fingers run faster, a new study finds.
Finger-length ratios have been related to a host of things good and bad, from fertility and disease vulnerability to test scores and personality traits. In fact, you'll need the digits on both hands, regardless of their length, to count all the correlations that have been made.
Researchers say exposure to testosterone in the womb is behind the speedy kids and their finger-length ratios. The scientists studied 241 boys aged 10 to 17 at a talent-spotting competition in Qatar. Those with longer ring fingers were faster at every stage of a 50-meter sprint race, according to an article in The Telegraph."
Matt's on a different plane ... and it's surreal
Matt's on a different plane ... and it's surreal: "For most, a joystick and Microsoft's Flight Simulator PC software is sufficient, but, over the past 10 years, Sheil has built what Guinness describes as the 'world's most expensive home flight simulator'.
A homebrew version of the $60 million simulators used to train pilots, Sheil's contraption is almost identical to the cockpit of a 747-400.
Thanks to 45 different software programs running on 14 different computers, the simulator allows Sheil to fly to and from 27,000 different airports around the world with breathtaking realism."
Movie Theater Popcorn, It Really Is That Expensive
Movie Theater Popcorn, It Really Is That Expensive: "Here you see a movie ticket and kernel popcorn, as scaled to their price increase over the past 80 years. On your left, 1929. On your right, 2009. Needless to say, things have changed.
In 1929, The Great Depression popularized popcorn as a movie time treat since it was cheap, easy, tasty and somewhat filling. Back then, a bag cost you 5 cents. Now, a (small) bag costs you $4.75. Sure, our new bag is probably a bit bigger, but it's vastly more expensive.
In fact, when adjusted for inflation, popcorn prices* have seen an ironic 666% price increase, while movie ticket prices have increased a more moderate 66%. The above picture tells the story to scale, but just in case you're a bigger fan of numbers:"
Google Voice
Google Voice to offer free calls, centralized number - USATODAY.com: "Google wants to be your phone provider. And to get your business, it has a very enticing offer.
Not only will its new Google Voice service give you free phone calls within the continental U.S., it also assigns you a new phone number that forwards calls to your cellphone and land line. And it transcribes your voice messages into e-mail.
To do all that, you must sign up for a new Google (GOOG) phone number to tie in your other connections.
'We've all got a zillion different phone numbers. This greatly simplifies dealing with all those numbers, and consolidates them into one place,' says Tom Austin, an analyst for researcher Gartner.
Google Voice, announced Thursday, will be available to the public within a few weeks, says Vincent Paquet, a Google senior product manager."
Create a Twitter Background Using PowerPoint
Create a Twitter Background Using PowerPoint: "Who would’ve thought that the presentation app used to lull audiences to sleep could also be used to create an appealing Twitter background? The process is fairly simple and only limited by your imagination and Twitter’s 800Kb upload limit."
10 Common Phenomena Explained
10 Common Phenomena Explained: "We, here at STS, are inquisitive people, and we often ask questions about the world around us. This list has ten explanations of common, every-day things that you probably did not understand. And if you did understand them you’re far cooler than us. Using this knowledge you can impress your friends, family, or romantic interests, because nothing is more attractive to the other sex than knowing how random things work."
15 Microscopic Images from Inside the Human Body
15 Microscopic Images from Inside the Human Body [photography]: "Get up close and personal with your innards with these 15 amazing 3D-body shots. Almost all of the following images were captured using a scanning electron microscope (SEM), a type of electron microscope that uses a beam of high-energy electrons to scan surfaces of images. The electron beam of the SEM interacts with atoms near or at the surface of the sample to be viewed, resulting in a very high-resolution, 3D-image. Magnification levels range from x 25 (about the same as a hand lens) to about x 250,000. Incredible details of 1 to 5 nm in size can be detected."
Apple to debut iPhone OS 3.0 next week
Apple to debut iPhone OS 3.0 next week: "Invites have begun to trickle out for a March 17th Apple event, at which they’ll be debuting iPhone OS 3.0. It has been about 8 months since the release of OS 2.0, and 6 months since Apple missed their self-imposed deadline for background applications.Will background apps be addressed? What about the oft-griped about lack of copy and paste? Will they polish up all those little things we still can’t stand? Tune back in on March 17th at 10 am PST to find out."
Artificial life 'could be created within five years'
Artificial life 'could be created within five years' - Telegraph: "Laboratories across the world are closing in on a 'second genesis' - an achievement that would be one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of all time.
Prof David Deamer, from California University, said although building a new lifeform from scratch is a daunting task he is confident it can happen in five to 10 years."
Operating System Interface Design Between 1981-2009
Operating System Interface Design Between 1981-2009: "guiA Graphical User Interface (GUI for short) allows users to interact with the computer hardware in a user friendly way.
Over the years a range of GUI’s have been developed for different operating systems such as OS/2, Macintosh, Windows, Linux, Symbian OS, and more.
We’ll be taking a look at the evolution of the interface designs of the major operating systems since the 80’s."
One-Third Use a Single Password for Everything
One-Third Use a Single Password for Everything - PC World: "A third of web users have admitted to using the same password for a number of different websites, says Sophos.
According to the security firm, just 19 percent never use the same password twice. Sophos added that three years ago, 41 percent of web users said they used the same password, indicating that just 8 percent of web users have realized the importance of strong, unique passwords."
Monkey gets revenge
Monkey gets revenge on owner who forced him to climb trees for coconuts... by killing him with a well-aimed coconut: "A monkey who tired of being forced to climb trees to pick coconuts killed his owner with a well-aimed coconut.
The owner died immediately from the monkey's throw from the top of a tree in the Thai Province of Nakorn Sri Thammarat, according to the Samui Express newspaper.
The newspaper said that Leilit Janchoom, 48, had beaten the monkey whenever he showed any hesitance to climb a tree."
Apples war on buttons has gone too far with new iPod shuffle
If you ask me, the war on buttons has gone too far. The new iPod shuffle takes a step back in both the usability and compatibility departments. Don’t get me wrong, the new VoiceOver feature is a very clever idea, especially on a device with no screen. But the rest of the changes make me wonder if Apple has placed too high a premium on the product's
read more | digg story
Watch live NCAA basketball on an iPhone
Watch live NCAA basketball on an iPhone: "Live sports are coming to the iPhone.
MobiTV, which offers prime-time TV programming for cellphones, has cut a deal with CBS Sports to show 63 NCAA basketball games in an iPhone/iTouch app for $4.99. The games begin next week, but the App goes on sale Thursday.
The app grants access to all of the CBS Sports NCAA games, and goes one step further than television, says MobiTV senior vice-president Ray DeRenzo."
Want to Rewire Your Brain? Study Music
ABC News: Want to Rewire Your Brain? Study Music: "All those hours practicing the piano pay off big time by biologically enhancing a person's ability to quickly recognize and mentally process sounds that carry emotion, according to a new study.
The study, from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., offers a new line of evidence that the brain we end up with is not necessarily the same brain we started out with.
'We are measuring what the nervous system has become, based on an individual's experience with sound,' Nina Kraus, director of the university's groundbreaking Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, said in a telephone interview."
British angler lands monster stingray in Thailand
British angler lands monster stingray in Thailand: "A British angler – with a dozen helpers – has landed what could be the biggest freshwater fish ever caught with a rod and line, it emerged today.
The giant freshwater stingray, weighing as much as 350kg (772lbs, or about 55 stone), was the size of a garden shed and so cumbersome that Ian Welch had to enlist the aid of 12 other people to get it out of the water.
Welch, a professional fisherman, biologist and columnist for the magazine Angler's Mail, was visiting Thailand to help with a stingray tagging programme when he landed the monster in the Maeklong river. The 45-year-old said he was nearly pulled over the side of the boat when the specimen took his bait."
Prince To Play Four Nights on 'Leno'
Prince To Play Four Nights on 'Leno': "Prince will perform on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno three nights in a row, March 25-27, as he builds anticipation for the March 29 release of two new albums, 'LOtUSFLOW3R' and 'MPLSoUND.' Prince will also perform a fourth night on the 'Tonight Show,' May 28th, in celebration of the end of Leno's run as host of the show.Both CDs, along with a third by new artist Bria Valente, will be available as a three disc set exclusively through Target for a price of $11.98."
A New Low in Drug Research: 21 Fabricated Studies Involving Drugs Such As Vioxx, Celebrex
A New Low in Drug Research: 21 Fabricated Studies Involving Drugs Such As Vioxx, Celebrex: "Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., has asked several anesthesiology journals to retract the studies, which appeared between 1996 and 2008, the WSJ reports. The hospital says its former chief of acute pain, Scott S. Reuben, faked data used in the studies.Some of the studies reported favorable results from use of Pfizer’s Bextra and Merck’s Vioxx, both painkillers that have since been pulled from the market. Others offered good news about Pfizer’s pain drugs Lyrica Celebrex and Wyeth’s antidepressant Effexor XR. Doctors said Reuben’s work was particularly influential in pain treatment and that they were shocked by the news."
5 Failed McDonald's Menu Items
5 Failed McDonald's Menu Items: "Back in the day, you couldn't go wrong with the original McDonald's menu. With two entree choices -- hamburger or cheeseburger -- there wasn't much room to experiment. Nowadays, there are lots of choices.Many introductions to the McDonald's menu have been successful. Take the Big Mac: 'Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun.' Other chart-topping hits include the Egg McMuffin and Chicken McNuggets, which quickly won the hearts of customers and keep fans hooked.
But in 50 years of experiments, there were bound to be some mistakes. Some new items failed because customers just didn't like change. In other cases, a menu item didn't sell due to ineffective marketing or simply because it didn't appease many customers' taste buds. Many concoctions have come and gone from the McDonald's menu, proving that sticking a 'Mc' prefix in a sandwich's name won't make it sell.
We'll explore five flops that went down in flames. Most of them came after the company's founder, Ray Kroc, died. However, the first flop we'll talk about was actually Kroc's brainchild."
Kanye’s LV Sneakers
Kanye’s LV Sneakers - KING-mag.com: "Is anyone else reminded of the episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets to design his own car?"
The world's largest pool
The world's largest pool - Los Angeles Times: "According to Guinness World Records, the man-made 'lagoon' at the San Alfonso del Mar resort at Algarrobo, Chile is the largest swimming pool in the world."
The Silent Minority
The Silent Minority: "There is a minority group in America that is a bigger percentage of the country than blacks or Hispanics. But they are often ignored or derided in public. Almost no politician would ever admit to being one. And they are given no voice in the public arena."
In a Charmed Life, a Road Less Traveled - NYTimes.com
Modern Love - In a Charmed Life, a Road Less Traveled: "Anyone who is in love is living a charmed life, especially if you’ve been in love for many years, through good times and bad. I have been crazy about Linda since the first time I saw her. We always felt we could handle any challenge because we were facing it together. This time we knew we had the will, but the demands were so exhausting, the changes so pervasive, that sometimes we wondered how we would cope."
The Power of Placebo
The Power of Placebo: "“Placebo” is Latin for “I shall please.”
Placebo trials are used to tell researchers whether a tested drug has any healing effect beyond that which occurs a certain percentage of time when people take an inert pill. A patient’s belief in a pill - a supposed medicine, but chemically innocuous - is thought to activate their body’s healing powers.
Do you believe the power of your mind can heal your body?
For years, scientists have looked at the placebo effect as just a figment of overactive patient imaginations. However, by now researchers have discovered that the placebo effect is not “all in patients’ heads” but rather, in their brains."
Placebo trials are used to tell researchers whether a tested drug has any healing effect beyond that which occurs a certain percentage of time when people take an inert pill. A patient’s belief in a pill - a supposed medicine, but chemically innocuous - is thought to activate their body’s healing powers.
Do you believe the power of your mind can heal your body?
For years, scientists have looked at the placebo effect as just a figment of overactive patient imaginations. However, by now researchers have discovered that the placebo effect is not “all in patients’ heads” but rather, in their brains."
Hot air linked to headaches, but how?
Hot air linked to headaches, but how? - CNN.com: "In a new large-scale study published in the journal Neurology this week, researchers found that higher temperatures and, to a lesser extent, low air pressure, influence severe headaches.
But researchers aren't sure how temperature influences headaches, and others say that a slew of other factors could be involved in the connection."
How to Delete Accounts from Any Website
How to Delete Accounts from Any Website - Features by PC Magazine: "Deleting accounts you've created on Facebook, MySpace, AOL, and elsewhere on the Web isn't always easy. Here are the details on leaving 23 services behind."
No matter what you call it—deleting, canceling, removing, whatever—when you want to be rid of an online account, you'll find most sites don't feel obliged to make it too easy for you. So we've cut to the chase as much as possible to give you the links, the tips, and in the worst cases, the fax and phone numbers you need to sever ties. Did we miss a service you want out of? Let us know. And if you've managed to quit a service not in this story, be kind and share your tips.
5 Design Flaws that Ruined Otherwise Smart Gadgets
Bad Product Design - Ergonomics Fails in Consumer Products: "Some gadgets have famously bad designs. The N-Gage gaming cellphone looked like a Chocotaco, and it was nearly impossible to silence the Furby's sadistic squeals without removing its batteries. Thankfully, the days of major companies releasing design trainwrecks are mostly over. That's not to say that every new gadget works the way we want it to. Far from it. Rather, these days, you're far more likely to find a product that almost does it right, but is still plagued by some singular fatal flaw that causes it to be buggy, frustrating, or even physically painful. Here are five recent gadgets whose designs failed in some simple way."
Why Dreams Are So Difficult To Remember
Why Dreams Are So Difficult To Remember: "By listening in on the chatter between neurons in various parts of the brain, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have taken steps toward fully understanding just how memories are formed, transferred, and ultimately stored in the brain--and how that process varies throughout the various stages of sleep."
The 75 Albums Every Man Should Own
The 75 Albums Every Man Should Own: "Kick off Esquire.com's Music Week with our unranked, incomplete, yet highly tasteful and informative list of the records your music collection requires. How many have you listened to?"
Monday, March 9, 2009
Portrait of Shakespeare Unveiled, 399 Years Late
Portrait of Shakespeare Unveiled, 399 Years Late: "On Monday in London, Stanley Wells, the chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, unveiled what he claims is the only picture of William Shakespeare painted during the playwright’s lifetime."
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The secret of long life? It's all down to how fast you react
The secret of long life?: "People's reaction times are a far better indicator of their chances of living a long life than their blood pressure, exercise levels or weight, researchers have discovered.
Men and women with the most sluggish response times are more than twice as likely to die prematurely.
Edinburgh University and the Medical Research Council in Glasgow tracked 7,414 people nationwide over 20 years in a study which appears to confirm the adage that a healthy mind means a healthy body."
Media Images of Alcohol Can Drive You to Drink
Media Images of Alcohol Can Drive You to Drink: "Young men who watched the movie American Pie with accompanying commercials for alcohol were more apt to grab a beer or glass of wine from the refrigerator, compared to those who watched a movie without the drinking prompts.This study shows for the first time the effect of on-screen depictions of alcohol and their influence on consumers’ behavior, said the researchers, who are from Canada and the Netherlands."
A woman named Marijuana plays it straight - and wins
A woman named Marijuana plays it straight - and wins: "Police years ago pulled over a young woman who rushed through an amber traffic light. 'I'm about to arrest this person right now,' the irritated officer radioed to a dispatcher. 'She's telling me her name is Marijuana Pepsi Jackson.'It's the truth. Marijuana and Pepsi are her legal first and middle names, and the Beloit woman embraces them as a symbol of her struggle to succeed and to help other children overcome obstacles.
No Mary or Mary Jane or Mary Wanda for her. It's Marijuana, thank you, she's told bosses, co-workers and friends over the years, and even wore it on nametags at work.
This tall, striking, self-assured, motorcycle-riding woman is a schoolteacher with a master's degree in higher education administration. Soon, she'll start work on her doctorate."
Spider Monkeys
Spider Monkeys: "Spider Monkeys are considered the smartest of the primates, they can adapt to new surroundings and have even been known to use primitivetools, such as a rock to break a nut or a stick to pull a fruit over to them that they can't reach. Spider Monkeys live in groups of 15-25 individuals during the night and evenings but during the day, the break out into sub groups of 2-8 in search for food and adventure. This behavior is only found in one other species of monkey the Chimpanzee. The chimp our our nearest realitive to the primate family. Females tend to leave the groups when they hit puberty and join other groups of Spider Monkeys, the males tend to stick with the one family group."
Thank You For Teaching
Thank You For Teaching: "My friend abruptly stopped walking as we approached a street corner just outside of New Orleans’ French Quarter. It was the day before Mardi Gras and the sidewalks hummed with stumbling revelers, drinks-in-hand. Hints of live jazz made their way lazily from the banks of the Mississippi River a few blocks away. The friend, a Teach for America middle school teacher in New Orleans, turned to me and said, “That’s one of my students.”"
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