good

Alan Watts on the meaning of life

Alan 'The way of zen' Watts on life as animated by Matt "South" Stone and Trey "Park" Parker [youtube WGoTmNU_5A0] via Richard Wiseman and Stephen Long's Blog.

good

Oystercatcher babies learn like other babies.

Oystercatchers are an example of evolution NOT solving a complex behavioral problem by pre-programming neural circuits at a fine level of detail. This conforms to what we know about how brains develop (Deacon 1997). It is very difficult or impossible to pre-program complex cortical functions such as language, general intelligence,

bad

Break-up or breakdown? You decide!

Here is the transcript on my text-messages yesterday. These were all from me to Tessa and only one of them got a reply (between 22:11 and 0:38) unfortunately I've lost it. During the day I called and wasn't answered numerous times so I left

good

Flowchart to lifelong happiness

I quite agree. "No", "Yes", "I know" Flowchart to lifelong happiness.

good

Dinosaur Comics and no misstake

Dinosaur Comics is my favorite web comic. Imagine Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes at twenty-six rather than six, and as a tyrannosaurus rex rather than a Calvinosaurus . Dinosaur Comics -awesome fun times!.

images

Proof that football is a global(ised) game.

Look at this cool visualisation of world cup 2010 footballers, at the top they are grouped country they play nationally for, at the bottom by then country they club football in. 2010 World Now compare it to the same graph for 1994 That's globalisation for you. via Flowing

images

Napoleon illusion.

Long before the Margret Thatcher illusion there was this double image of Napoleon the captions read: bu?u?n??? ??nbu?p?q     ??? o? bu?ob ??nbu?p?q ?u?u???? ??nbu?p?q - ????nb ?? ? ?u???? ??nbu?p?q Badinguet Allant a la Guerre - Badinguet Revenant Badinguet Going to

images

Atheist scum, 1871 vs 2007

Artist George Cruikshank, 1871 via BibliOdyssey: 1870s Caricatures. Artist Martin Rowson, 2007 via New Humanist magazine

others

Buzz Aldrin on space poo.

Twelve short years ago I was a little obsessed with Buzz Aldrin wetting himself... http://www.onemonkey.org/casparhttp://www.onemonkey.org/caspar/apolloxi.htm But it seems life is odder than anything I might ever call art: Buzz Aldrin Is Not All That Impressed With Walking on the Moon

good

Meaning of Life returns

I am delighted to say that I have finally got my Meaning of life project back online.  Back in 2003, I wrote to every (professional) philosopher in the country (all 643 of them) to ask them about the meaning of life, the universe and everything. This is what I said.

science

Velcro ants can hold down moths 10,000x their weight

If you don't yet subscribe to Not Exactly Rocket Science then you may not have seen these amazing pictures yet. Teams of teeeny-weeny ants gripping hoooge insects on fluffy leaves using teeeny nippers and the 'velcro principle'. [caption id="attachment_787" align="aligncenter&

good

Congratulations, Mrs & Mrs Sigurdardottir-Leosdottir

The best wedding I ever went to had two brides. And that is probably why it was the best wedding I ever went to. I imagine two grooms would do okay too but only because they be homosexual. I can't imagine what a wedding with two straight grooms

words

Efforts to save endangered languages

I clipped this from the web six months ago, clearly intending to say something about it. Never quite got round to it at the time and now I have completely forgotten what that was. But I will post it up here anyway in case I do ever remember. I don&

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You can't do that.. just think of Health and Safety

[youtube W4o0ZVeixYU] Fast lane at Berlin, Alexanderplatz

Uncategorized

Hello brave new world!

Apologies if your rss feeds just went a little mental, I've just migrated my blog from b2evolution to wordpress. I had been meaning to do it for a while (approx. 6-18 months). Never quite got round to it. I thought during the England game would a nice quite

psycho

xmas tip - looking at kittens improves your chance of winning Operation (or Buckaroo)

Viewing cute images increases behavioral carefulness. via neurocritic

science

Aah, Dunlop!

Does scent enhance consumer product memories?

good

(S)-N-[1-(4-Cyclopropylmethyl-3,4-dihydro-2 H-benzo[1], [4]oxazin-6-yl)-ethyl]-3-(2-fluoro-phenyl)-acrylamide

http://www.plosone.org/ar...al.pone.0008251 Or (S)-2 for short. The Acrylamide (S)-2 As a Positive and Negative Modulator of Kv7 Channels Expressed in Xenopus laevis Oocytesfrom PLoS ONE Alerts: Neuroscience by Sigrid Marie Blom et al.

god

Irish bishop is first to quit over child sex abuse scandal - Europe, World - The Independent

http://www.independent.co...al-1836062.html The heads are finally starting to roll in the Irish church.. An Irish bishop flew to Rome yesterday to hand in his resignation after days of angry and intense pressure over his handling of cases of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. Donal

images

moo-hoo!

bad

Day 002

Pic of the day Word of the day - Deuteranomaly Colour blindness not all it seemsbbc news

good

Gaydar - Fitted as standard

http://mindblog.dericbown...t=Google Reader Scientists have previously shown that everyone's got gaydar and now they show we've all got lesdar as well. From the random samples section of the Nov. 27 issue of Science: Can you guess a woman's sexual orientation just

images

Photo - Day 001

the chandelier in the laboratory at home.

science

Higgs in Space!

http://blogs.discovermaga...t=Google Reader A new paper uploaded to the arxiv physics preprint server today: Higgs in Space! via cosmic variance

words

Inherent Vice

[video:youtube:RjWKPdDk0_U] PEnguin have produced a trailer for Thomas Pynchon's latest novel. The voice-over is provided by the man himself. [via Cosmic Variance]