Cool Stories Not Worth Their Own Thread II - Coolness In Measured Dosage

[Monsterzuma]

Yogurt diet leads to ‘swaggering’ mice with larger testicles

Researchers who recently undertook a study with mice in hopes of confirming earlier reports that eating yogurt can help prevent age-related weight gain have discovered a number of unexpected side-effects in their rodent subjects.

First, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists realized that the yogurt-eating mice had shinier, silkier, and thicker coats than the non-yogurt-eating control mice. Then they noticed that the male mice were walking with a “mouse swagger,” which turned out to be due to testicles that were 5% heavier than those of mice fed a standard mouse diet and a full 15% heavier than those of mice forced to live on high-fat, low-nutrient junk food.

And finally they conducted mating experiments and found that yogurt-eating males “inseminated their partners faster and produced more offspring,” while yogurt-eating females gave birth to larger litters and were more successful in raising them to the age of weaning.

Researchers Susan Erdman and Eric Alm have not yet determined the source of yogurt’s ability to enhance rodent sexuality, but they told Scientific American that they “think that the probiotic microbes in the yogurt help to make the animals leaner and healthier, which indirectly improves sexual machismo.”

A team of Harvard researchers has already begun investigating whether yogurt can also improve semen quality in human males and reports that “so far our preliminary findings are consistent with what they see in the mice.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/04/yogurt-diet-leads-to-swaggering-mice-with-larger-testicles/

 

[Monsterzuma]

Mexican Drug Lord Officially Thanks American Lawmakers For Keeping Drugs Illegal

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera reported head of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, ranked 701st on Forbes' yearly report of the wealthiest men alive, and worth an estimated $1 billion, today officially thanked United States politicians for making sure that drugs remain illegal. According to one of his closest confidants, he said, "I couldn't have gotten so stinking rich without George Bush, George Bush Jr., Ronald Reagan, even El Presidente Obama, none of them have the cajones to stand up to all the big money that wants to keep this stuff illegal. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say, Gracias amigos, I owe my whole empire to you."

According to sources in the Mexican government, President Calderon is begging American officials to, in the words of reggae great Peter Tosh, legalize it. "Oh yeah," said an official close to the Mexican president, "Felipe is going crazy. He's screaming at everybody who comes in, 'Why don't they make this sh*t legal already! You're killing me here!' Look, everyone knows, when you have Prohibition, you create gangsters. And the more you prohibit, the more gangsters you make. El Chapo is hero now to all those slumdogs who want to be millionaires. Kids in the street, when they play games, they all want to be El Chapo, the baddest man in the whole damn town."

Meanwhile, many speculate that rich and prominent Mexican families are in cahoots with American businessmen in the alcohol industry, wealthy industrialists who launder the unprecedented profits from the drug business with their legitimate enterprises, and lawmakers who get gigantic kickbacks and payoffs to make sure that these drugs remain illegal, so they can remain rich, fat and happy. According to sources on both sides of the border, tens of millions of dollars in payoffs and kickbacks are stashed in Swiss banks every year, blood money from the brutal business made possible by a corrupt system supported by laws that don't, and have never, worked.

Rather than putting El Chapo and his kind out of business by modernizing outdated laws and in the process making billions of dollars from taxing drugs (as is done with cigarettes and alcohol), United States government has spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars chasing its tail, and offered a $5 million reward for the capture of El Chapo. Many have said that the offer is unofficially: Dead or Alive.

Meanwhile, as an epidemic of murderous violence rages on the Mexican-US border, and the American government wastes boatloads of badly needed money on the illegal drug business which results from the Prohibition laws, El Chapo is laughing all the way to the bank. "Whoever came up with this whole War on Drugs," one of his lieutenants reports he said, "I would like to kiss him on the lips and shake his hand and buy him dinner with caviar and champagne. The War on Drugs is the greatest thing that ever happened to me, and the day they decide to end that war, will be a sad one for me and all of my closest friends. And if you don't believe me, ask those guys whose heads showed up in the ice chests."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/david-henry-sterry/mexican-drug-lord-officia_b_179596.html

 

[Monsterzuma]

Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep

In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness.
A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests. The discovery's first application will probably be in treatment of the severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.
The treatment is "a totally new route for increasing arousal, and the new study shows it to be relatively benign," said Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a co-author of the paper. "It reduces sleepiness without causing edginess."

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/sleep_deprivation

 

[Monsterzuma]

10 Stubborn Body Myths That Just Won’t Die, Debunked by Science

Myth 1: Body Hair Grows Back Thicker When You Shave It

Myth 2: Calories Counting Is All That Matters for Weight Management and Health

Myth 3: You Need Eight Hours of Sleep Per Day

Myth 4: Reading in Dim Light Ruins Your Eyes

Myth 5: Urinating on a Jellyfish Sting will Sooth the Pain

Myth 6: Your Slow Metabolism Makes You Fat

Myth 7: You'll Catch a Cold from Cold (and Wet) Weather Conditions

Myth 8: More Heat Escapes Through Your Head

Myth 9: You Can Cure a Snake Bite by Sucking Out the Poison

Myth 10: It's Dangerous to Wake a Sleepwalker

http://lifehacker.com/5873922/10-stubborn-body-myths-that-just-wont-die-debunked-by-science

More info on each myth in the link.

 

[CommonKnowledge]

Why men shouldn't write advice columns.

Spoiler :

 

[Monsterzuma]

That was pretty good advice actually.

 

[Monsterzuma]

Oil rig workers make nearly $100,000 a year

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It may be dangerous, difficult work, but oil drillers are well compensated for the job: In 2011 the average salary for rig workers and other industry personnel was $99,175.

That number includes fat paychecks for the highly skilled, like $235,586 for a "drilling consultant" and $139,868 for a "reservoir engineer", according to Rigzone, an industry information provider that compiled the figures.

But even for someone with less than a year's experience the average wage was $66,923.

A roustabout, one of the lowest workers on a rig who performs general maintenance and physical labor and requires little prior training, made $34,680 -- the median wage for all American workers.

The high wages are being fueled by a surge in demand for drilling experts as the industry becomes increasingly technical and a drilling boom in the United States, Brazil and elsewhere. Plus, many drillers are retiring -- a phenomenon in the industry known as "the great crew change" that's only expected to accelerate over the next decade.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/10/news/economy/oil_workers/index.htm

 

[Monsterzuma]

Pentagon Course Taught "Total War" Against Islam

New details have been revealed on a military course recently cancelled by the Pentagon for teaching senior military officers the United States is at war with Islam. According to course materials obtained by Wired magazine, the class instructor — Army Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley of the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia — taught that the United States will need to fight a "total war" against the world’s Muslims to protect the nation. Dooley also instructed that the United States should "[take] war to a civilian population wherever necessary" and apply the "the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki" to Islam’s holiest cities, bringing about "Mecca and Medina[’s] destruction." Dooley also told his pupils, "By conservative estimates, a staggering 140 million [Muslims] ... hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit [to Islam]." In addition, Dooley’s course declared international laws protecting civilians are "no longer relevant" in the fight against Islam. A presentation from July 2011 declared: "This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction." Finally, Dooley instructed his students, "Remember — we are at war. Act like it. You are part of a resistance movement, not a social club." Dooley’s course was suspended last month, but he remains on staff at the college.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/11/headlines#51110

 

[Monsterzuma]

GIANTS
There’s an evolutionary ‘island rule’ that says, when on an island, small animals tend to get bigger and big animals tend to get smaller. Giant bunny Nuralagus Rex* lived on the island of Minorca about 5 million years ago and was around 6-10 times larger than an average rabbit. Lack of predation allows that.

The 3 million year old Bear Otter was even more giant than todays giant otter (though there is no word on who was cuter**). Changing environmental conditions have rid us of many awesome prehistoric giants, and in the case of the bear-otter those changing conditions just might have been our own ancestors outcompeting them. Those Australopithecus afarensis jerks were meat-greedy.

But as cool as giant bunnies, otters, sloths, and even giant beavers may be, they are nothing compared to some other mammals that used to roam the earth. The largest known land mammal was the 18 ft tall 33 ft long rhino ancestor Paraceratherium. Truly dinosauric you may say. But actually there are various evolutionary limitations that put a cap on maximum mammal growth, stopping even the giants from ever truly achieving, in size, what the dinosaurs did. The mythic Amphicoelias fragillimus for example, might have reached up to 200 ft. Positively mind boggling, which is why dinosaurs will never actually go out of style, no matter how many feathers they tack on the T-rex.

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This post was brought to you by Ununpentium (Uup).

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*best pet rabbit name ever.
**actually scientifically speaking, the cutest otter is the Sea-otter.

http://sci-ence.org/dont-look-up/

 

[Monsterzuma]

Why fiction is good for you
The psychologists Mar and Keith Oatley tested the idea that entering fiction’s simulated social worlds enhances our ability to connect with actual human beings. They found that heavy fiction readers outperformed heavy nonfiction readers on tests of empathy, even after they controlled for the possibility that people who already had high empathy might naturally gravitate to fiction. As Oatley puts it, fiction serves the function of “making the world a better place by improving interpersonal understanding.”

Follow-up studies have reached similar conclusions. For example, one study showed that small children (age 4-6) who were exposed to a large number of children’s books and films had a significantly stronger ability to read the mental and emotional states of other people. Similarly, Washington & Lee psychologist Dan Johnson recently had people read a short story that was specifically written to induce compassion in the reader. He wanted to see not only if fiction increased empathy, but whether it would lead to actual helping behavior. Johnson found that the more absorbed subjects were in the story, the more empathy they felt, and the more empathy they felt, the more likely the subjects were to help when the experimenter “accidentally” dropped a handful of pens — highly absorbed readers were twice as likely to help out. “In conclusion,” Johnson writes, “it appears that ‘curling up with a good book’ may do more than provide relaxation and entertainment. Reading narrative fiction allows one to learn about our social world and as a result fosters empathic growth and prosocial behavior.”

http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-29/ideas/31417849_1_fiction-morality-happy-endings/3

 

[Monsterzuma]

The Loneliest Whale in the World
Song of the Sea, a Cappella and Unanswered

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: December 21, 2004

magine roaming the world's largest ocean year after year alone, calling out with the regularity of a metronome, and hearing no response.

Such, apparently, is the situation faced by a solitary whale, species unknown, that has been tracked since 1992 in the North Pacific by a classified array of hydrophones used by the Navy to monitor enemy submarines.

The animal is called the 52 hertz whale because it makes a distinctive stream of sounds at around that basso profundo frequency, just above the lowest note on a tuba.

Its sonic signature is clearly that of a whale, but nothing like the normal voice of the giant blue or the next biggest species, the fin, or any other whale for that matter, said Mary Ann Daher, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod.

Ms. Daher is part of a team built by Dr. William A. Watkins, a pioneer in marine mammal acoustics who died in September, that has spent years trying to eavesdrop on the largely hidden lives of whales.

In the current edition of the journal Deep-Sea Research, members of this team report that all signs are that the sounds come from a single animal, whose movements "appeared to be unrelated to the presence or movement of other whale species."

The 52 hertz whale may be maturing, since its voice has deepened slightly over time, Ms. Daher said. A gallery of sounds, including the call of 52 hertz, can be heard at www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/spectrograms.html.

Team members and other experts have proposed a host of explanations for the whale sounds, among them that the animal is malformed or, most likely, is a hybrid of a blue whale and another species.

Ms. Daher said that as word of the paper has spread, she has gotten a host of e-mail messages, some from whale lovers lamenting the notion of a lonely heart of the cetacean world. Some messages have come from deaf people speculating that the whale might share their disability.

Dr. Kate Stafford, a researcher at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, said there were reasons to believe that the whale was healthy.

"The fact that this individual has been capable of existing in that harsh environment for at least these 12 years indicates there is nothing wrong with it," she said. But she agreed that there was something poignant about the finding.

"He's saying, 'Hey I'm out here,' " she said. "Well, nobody is phoning home."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/science/21whal.html?_r=3

 

[Monsterzuma]

It's long been speculated that pirates and sailors would wear eye patches so they could see better below deck. They'd keep the eye patch on in the light, then when they went into the dark, they switched the eye patch over to the other eye. The one that had been under the eye patch for awhile would be well adjusted to the dark and they'd be able to see much better.

http://lifehacker.com/5888104/think-like-a-pirate-to-see-better-in-the-dark

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Love the pirate story

 

[Monsterzuma]

This Is Your Brain On Sugar: Study in Rats Shows High-Fructose Diet Sabotages Learning, Memory

A new UCLA rat study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain, hampering memory and learning -- and how omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the disruption. The peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology publishes the findings in its May 15 edition.

"Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a professor of integrative biology and physiology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science. "Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515150938.htm

 

[Monsterzuma]

Computing experts unveil superefficient 'inexact' chip

Researchers have unveiled an "inexact" computer chip that challenges the industry's dogmatic 50-year pursuit of accuracy. The design improves power and resource efficiency by allowing for occasional errors. Prototypes unveiled this week at the ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers in Cagliari, Italy, are at least 15 times more efficient than today's technology.

Spoiler :

This comparison shows frames produced with video-processing software on traditional processing elements (left), inexact processing hardware with a relative error of 0.54 percent (middle) and with a relative error of 7.58 percent (right). The inexact chips are smaller, faster and consume less energy. The chip that produced the frame with the most errors (right) is about 15 times more efficient in terms of speed, space and energy than the chip that produced the pristine image (left). Credit: Rice University/CSEM/NTU

http://phys.org/news/2012-05-experts-unveil-superefficient-inexact-chip.html

 

[Monsterzuma]

Why shampoo is bad for you, and homemade shampoo recipe

Shampoo, in the sense that we know it today, was only introduced in the late 1900s. Before that, people used the same bar of soap to wash their bodies and their hair. Once the distinction of hard and soft water was introduced, it was discovered that the bar soap didn’t work well on hair in hard water. So shampoo was invented with the sole purpose of being able to wash hair in hard water.

Today, shampoo is made with so many chemicals that your hair and body don’t know how to handle them. Your hair is naturally coated with oil from your scalp. It helps keep your hair clean, and in a totally natural state, you really don’t need much soap, if any, to clean your hair. However, the chemicals in shampoo coat your hair, and make it difficult for the oils to keep your hair naturally clean. So your body releases more oil. Then you need more shampoo to strip it away. And more oil, and more shampoo, and so on in a really nasty cycle that leaves you dependent on shampoo.

Conditioner is used to balance out the pH in your hair, but still acts the same way that chemical shampoo does. It leaves chemical residue on your hair and strips the natural oils away. Your body does not like either substance.

By switching to these alternatives (recipes below), your body transitions back to its natural state. The ‘shampoo’ strips off the chemicals, and leaves the hair clean and natural so that your body will naturally oil it just enough for you. The ‘conditioner’ balances the pH in your hair without coating it with more chemicals, and you are left with naturally clean, easily controllable hair.

Recipes inside the article.

http://www.examiner.com/review/why-shampoo-is-bad-for-you-and-homemade-shampoo-recipe?CID=obinsite

 

[W|M]

FLASH MOB!

 

[Monsterzuma]

Why Foxes Are Better Forecasters Than Hedgehogs

From his perspective as a pyschology researcher, Philip Tetlock watched political advisors on the left and the right make bizarre rationalizations about their wrong predictions at the time of the rise of Gorbachev in the 1980s and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. (Liberals were sure that Reagan was a dangerous idiot; conservatives were sure that the USSR was permanent.) The whole exercise struck Tetlock as what used to be called an “outcome-irrelevant learning structure.” No feedback, no correction.

He observes the same thing is going on with expert opinion about the Iraq War. Instead of saying, “I evidently had the wrong theory,” the experts declare, “It almost went my way,” or “It was the right mistake to make under the circumstances,” or “I’ll be proved right later,” or “The evilness of the enemy is still the main event here.”

Tetlock’s summary: “Partisans across the opinion spectrum are vulnerable to occasional bouts of ideologically induced insanity.” He determined to figure out a way to keep score on expert political forecasts, even though it is a notoriously subjective domain (compared to, say, medical advice), and “there are no control groups in history.” – The Long Now Foundation

Ted presentation video inside.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/05/why-foxes-are-better-forecasters-than-hedgehogs-2/

 

[Monsterzuma]

Here Is the Full Inequality Speech and Slideshow That Was Too Hot for TED

Yesterday, National Journal's Jim Tankersley introduced us to Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist from Seattle, whose speech at the TED University conference was deemed "too politically controversial to post on their web site." Last night, NJ produced the full slideshow to accompany the full text of the speech. Here they are.

...

We've had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like me don't create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an eco-systemic feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That's why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.

So here's an idea worth spreading.

In a capitalist economy, the true job creators are consumers, the middle class. And taxing the rich to make investments that grow the middle class, is the single smartest thing we can do for the middle class, the poor and the rich.

Thank You.

See slides and full speech here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...nd-slideshow-that-was-too-hot-for-ted/257323/

 

[Cutlass]

See slides and full speech here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...nd-slideshow-that-was-too-hot-for-ted/257323/

I've been saying that for years, and no one's been listening.