All the Gulf oil leak news from my most recent Overnight News Digest:Science Saturday.

National Geographic: Satellite Pictures: Gulf Oil Spill's Evolution

See the growth and evolution of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, as viewed from space.
National Geographic: Gulf Oil Spill Pictures: Ten Animals at Risk

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is poised to ( Read more... )

Crossposted to ( Read more... )

Comment on the Tea Party Movement (PDF)

Good concise history of the movement and how the characteristics of its members fit those of both of the kinds of authoritarian personalities that Bob Altemyer has researched. I highly recommend the article and the book as a whole, which can be found here.

I'm a O76-C41-E83-A69-N66 Big Five!!

Openness to Experience/Intellect

High scorers tend to be original, creative, curious, complex; Low scorers tend to be conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative.
You are relatively open to new experiences. (Your percentile: 76)

Conscientiousness

High scorers tend to be reliable, well-organized, ( Read more... )

I ran across this science video, and had a fannish reaction.

Discovery News: Why? Tell Me Why!: Why Do We Fear Death?

Afraid of the dark? Of heights? Of death? This week on Why? Tell Me Why! Kasey-Dee Gardner traces the origins of deep-rooted fear.
This was a good explanation, but it put me in mind of the following signature line from POTC 2 and ( Read more... )

And so are the egos of the traders.

New York Magazine: What If Women Ran Wall Street?
By Sheelah Kolhatkar

Despite what we’ve been led to believe, the market isn’t rational or efficient at all-it’s all about feelings. The major plot points of the crisis largely turned on emotion: Dick Fuld was too egotistical to sell Lehman Brothers when he had the ( Read more... )

Found this of interest because my daughters, who started blogging on LiveJournal when they were teens, were responsible for starting my blogging on LiveJournal. This led to my blogging on Daily Kos (along with the effects of Strikethrough 2007, which was a radicalizing experience) and my writing for Examiner.com. One of my daughters later convinced ( Read more... )

Here's something for both sides to chew on.

Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball Blog on Center for Politics: What Is Wrong With Those Tea Partiers?
Jonathan Haidt, Guest Columnist February 4th, 2010

The truth has triumphed, at least for those attending this week’s Tea Party convention in Nashville: Obama is a socialist fascist communist statist Muslim ( Read more... )

Some of you know that one of my hobbies is studying how abnormal psychology is expressed on the Internet. A few of you even share that hobby with me. One of the things that has struck me is how stereotypical some abnormal behaviors are; different people act in similar ways and say very similar mistakes, even repeating mistakes and delusions made by ( Read more... )

Detroit Science News Examiner: Watch evolution in action among last-minute Christmas shoppers

While other publications have done excellent jobs on this story (I particularly recommend Discovery News' article; they read the original and understood it, as well as getting a variety of quotes from experts about the research), I have to say that what I ( Read more... )