Best way ever
to hammer in a nail.
The
truth about tweets and earthquakes.
Possible
scientific explanation for near-death experiences.
About
the longevity revolution:
Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now.
China
is offering to bring its expertise in high-speed rail to California. (This made me laugh quite a bit.)
The “father of the pc”
has died.
More.
Useful post
about cyberbullying and the law.
Scientists disrupt people’s moral judgements
with magnets.
Countries with tolerant attitudes
tend to be happier and healthier.
Ranking countries by murder rate: 23 countries have higher murder rates than the US, Oz is 43rd, Kiwiland 52nd.
About
a new portal for aid data.
UK windfarms
are under-performing.
Lockheed is patenting
into quantum radar.
More.
Mapping
the global growth in mobile phones. Post
with lots of links on spread of, and developing world markets in, mobile phones.
Arguing that government funding
has corrupted science (pdf).
The US
has raised concerns with the Rudd Government over its internet censorship plans.
A case
of out and in Wikipedia.
The book The Spirit Level on the effects of inequality has caused some interest: critical reviews
here,
here and especially
here.
About our innate tendency
to be religious:
We believe in the supernatural because we believe in the natural and we cannot discriminate between the two. We create gods because we are natural-born supernaturalists, driven by our tendency to find meaningful patterns and impart to them intentional agency. The gods will always be with us because they are hard-wired into our brains.
Marxism works off the same impulses.
About survey evidence that people who identify as (US) liberals
are less honest than those who identify as conservatives. Study finds that those who buy “green” products
are more inclined to behave badly:
Dieter Frey, a social psychologist at the University of Munich, said the findings fitted patterns of human behaviour. "At the moment in which you have proven your credentials in a particular area, you tend to allow yourself to stray elsewhere," he said.
The
study (pdf).
Study of the preferences of young women finds
masculinity is at a discount in healthy countries:
In the Face Lab study, women with the weakest masculinity preferences tended to live in some of the healthiest countries: Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Austria. Other countries in the study with low masculinity preferences are Romania, Greece and New Zealand. Women with the weakest masculinity preferences of all lived in Belgium, a country considered to have one of the best publicly funded health-care systems in Europe (alongside Denmark and the Netherlands in the health-care index).
Meanwhile, women with the strongest masculinity preferences tended to hail from the countries with higher disease and mortality rates and some of the poorest scores on the health-care index: Mexico, Brazil, Bulgaria and Argentina. (The researcher included only white subjects to control the experiment, and Asian and African nations were not included in the study.)