5 Mind Blowing Things Crowds Do Better Than Experts There's nothing stupider than a crowd. Take an average, intelligent person and put him in an emergency and he'll likely remain calm and await instructions. Put him in a crowd and he'll start screaming, looting and overturning cars. Right? Well ... not really. "Crowdsourcing" is one of those business buzzwords that actually represents something very simple: letting crowds of strangers do your work for you. #5. Obviously, no random StarCraft or Tower Defense-playing teenager is going to know more about military strategy than a trained professional with combat experience. But what if you created a war game that mimicked the "rules" of actual war -- the units have the same capabilities of actual units, the map is similar to an actual map and all of the real-world complications have to be dealt with. It would be like Ender's Game, but with more homoerotic subtext. It's not just some war gamer geek's dream -- the military is betting on it. The U.S. Wikipedia"Shit, it's boobsmcgee900!" #4. #3.
6 Adorable Cat Behaviors With Shockingly Evil Explanations There seem to be two kinds of people in the world: those who don't understand cats, and those who think cats are kind of douchebags. Unfortunately for cat lovers, science has kind of come down on the side of that second group. Research has revealed that a lot of the quirky and even cute things your kitty does are actually signs that your cat is kind of a dick. Meowing to Imitate a Baby Human Cats have many different ways of communicating, but the meow is every cat's go-to vocalization when it wants to tell us something; be it, "I'm hungry," "pay attention to me" or "I just took a dump, go clean it up." A recent study has shown that people subconsciously can tell the difference between a pleading or soliciting meow and a run of the mill, casual one just by listening to sound clips taken from different felines in different situations. In fact, further studies have proven that a cat's cry for food or attention shares a remarkable similarity in frequency to a baby's cry. And guess what?
California woman swears off mirrors for a year Kjerstin Gruys likes her legs now — and the feel of her cheeks as she applies makeup. Even perfumes smell better, she says, since she stopped looking in mirrors six months ago. Last March, the 28-year-old PhD student embarked on a year-long project, banning herself from gazing at her own reflection — no mirrors, no reflective surface at all. Denied access to her own reflection Gruys says she has become happier with her own appearance. She’s paying less attention to her soft tummy, which used to consume her. And she’s started to admire her strong legs, earned from years of running. Gruys, who suffered from eating disorders in high school and college, blames mirrors for many body image issues. Too many women are obsessed with their image, she says, quoting a British study that revealed that women spend the equivalent of five days each year staring, often critically, at their own reflection. She later posted on her blog, “At some point my dress search stopped being fun.
Pemba Flying Fox (Other Names: Pemba Island Fruit Bat or Flying Fox, Zorro Volador de Voeltzkow) Pteropus voeltzkowi Status: Vulnerable Contents 1. Profile The Pemba flying fox is a large fruit bat weighing 400 - 650 g (0.9 - 1.4 lb). The Pemba flying fox is found only on Pemba Island, Tanzania. Habitat loss from deforestation is a major concern, since the last fragments of natural forest are now in danger of disappearing (Seehausen 1991). Tidbits *** The Pemba flying fox does not appear near human settlements unless large trees are fruiting. *** The Pemba flying fox is the only bat species endemic to an African country (Altringham 1996) *** Flying foxes are so-called because of their fox-like faces. *** Most flying foxes eat fruit and are also called fruit bats. *** Pemba Island is home to 4 species of Old World fruit bats (Megachiroptera). Status and Trends IUCN Status: Countries Where the Pemba Flying Fox Is Currently Found: 2004: Occurs in Tanzania (Pemba Island) (IUCN 2004). Population Estimates: Weight: Diet:
6 Things You Won't Believe Animals Do Just Like Us Being a human is a pretty sweet gig, all things considered. We've got opposable thumbs so dexterous they could start their own Cirque du Soleil troupe and brains so ripped our skulls can barely contain them. But before you grab your dog and give him a triumphant "IN YOUR (FAITHFUL, ADORABLE) FACE!" you should know that some of the traits and behaviors that make us human are also demonstrated by other animals. Animals that apparently think they're people. #6. What to name a baby is one of the first things that expecting parents obsess about. GettyAll babies look alike, even Theobold Pimpmeister here. And more than that, individual names also make humans special. "Never mind, Christine. Except the talking animals depicted in Disney movies aren't so far off the mark, at least when it comes to a few select species. Wait, what? Dolphins, crows, primates and parrots have all been observed using unique calls when they want the attention of specific members of their groups. Getty"GWAAK! Getty"Hi!
: freegan.info 6 Beneficial Things They Made You Stop Doing in School It's easy to think of a classroom as a battle of wills between kids who want to dick around all day and teachers who actually want to make them learn. But it's not that simple. A lot of the things that will get you yelled at in a classroom are, in fact, beneficial to learning. They're just really annoying to other people (and the teacher). Consider this the next time you hear ... #6. Getty Teachers must look at the cell phone as the modern plague on their profession. Getty"You can have it back at the end of the semester, if it doesn't sell on eBay." But teachers have a reason to hate texting above even other high-tech time-wasters like portable games. Everybody should stop and take a deep breath, because texting actually improves both your language skills and your ability to pay attention in class. Getty"Holly balls, I understand calculus!" Wait, What? Yes, you read that right. Mark van LaereIt's not Hemingway, but it is a form of literacy. Sounds counter-intuitive? #5. Right. #4.
How To… Embed This Infographic <a href= "><img src=" title="10 How Tos" alt="How To Infographic" border="0" class="nopin" /></a><br />Source: <a href=' title='Interesting Facts'><a href=' title='Interesting Facts'>Today I Found Out</a></a> 1) How to drastically increase the life of your shaving razor Before or after you shave (I prefer before so that the blades are dry), place your jeans on a hard flat surface; then run the razor up the pant legs about 10-15 times quickly; then repeat running it down the pant legs 10-15 times quickly. The threads on the jeans then will very effectively both fix any tiny bends in the blades that inevitably happen and will also sharpen the blades on your shaver cartidge. 2) How to make your teeth whiter Baking soda makes a good teeth whitener. 1.
8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance The ruling elite has created social institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance.Bruce E. LevineAlterNet Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination. Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. How exactly has American society subdued young Americans? 1. There was no tuition at the City University of New York when I attended one of its colleges in the 1970s, a time when tuition at many U.S. public universities was so affordable that it was easy to get a B.A. and even a graduate degree without accruing any student-loan debt. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. The fear of being surveilled makes a population easier to control. 7. 8.
The Acceleration of Addictiveness July 2010 What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they're all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors. Most if not all the things we describe as addictive are. And the scary thing is, the process that created them is accelerating. We wouldn't want to stop it. No one doubts this process is accelerating, which means increasing numbers of things we like will be transformed into things we like too much. [2] As far as I know there's no word for something we like too much. The world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago. The next 40 years will bring us some wonderful things. Most people won't, unfortunately. These two senses are already quite far apart. Societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new things. As knowledge spread about the dangers of smoking, customs changed. It took a while though—on the order of 100 years. In fact, even that won't be enough. Most people I know have problems with Internet addiction. Notes
5 Insane Ways Words Can Control Your Mind On some level we already know that language shapes the way we think. We're automatically more afraid to fight a guy named Jack Savage than somebody named Peewee Nipplepuss, even if we've never seen either of them before. It's totally illogical, but you probably run into an example of that every day, and don't notice it. While we tend to think words are just sounds we make to express ideas, science is finding that language is more like a fun house mirror, warping what we see in mind-blowing ways. Speaking English Makes Us More Likely to Blame People Let's say your roommate Steve is jumping on your bed. How will you answer? Keep in mind, Steve pulls this shit all the time. The answer largely depends on what language you speak. Stanford scientists did experiments on this, by having speakers of various languages watch videos featuring, in various situations, people breaking eggs or popping balloons, sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident. "Maybe it's a kid-friendly version of Jackass?"
The NASA Space Pen In this week's Friday funny, journalist and author Eugene Byrne looks at an amusing urban legend much beloved of engineers, and frequently used in management seminars because of its powerful moral about overcomplicated solutions. The story In the 1960s, the story goes, NASA realised that astronauts would need a special pen for recording data, instrument readings etc. when in space. This pen would have to be capable of writing upside-down, in zero gravity, and in extremely high and low temperatures. NASA enlisted some of the finest minds in the country and set them to work. The truth Initially, American astronauts used pencils, too, but they weren't popular. It was actually an American pen manufacturer, Paul C Fisher (1913-2006) who came up with the solution in 1965. True, it did cost around a million dollars to develop, but that was all Fisher's money.