Saturday, October 20, 2007
BBC NEWS | Africa | S African reggae star shot dead
The South African reggae musician, Lucky Dube, has been shot dead in front of his children in Johannesburg during an attempted car hijacking.
(tags: africa activism crime south_africa police)
Earthquake experts: Hayward Fault is a ‘tectonic time bomb’
Studying layers of soil in a trench they dug near the Fremont BART station (in San Fransico) , earthquake experts have made a startling discovery: The Hayward Fault has had a big earthquake every 140 years, on average, since 1315.
And this Sunday mark
(tags: long_emergency earthquake emergency [...]
Thursday, October 18, 2007
From American Scientist Online comes a review of two new books which look very interesting.
Most people would not expect a scientist to speak of love, except perhaps in terms of endorphins or pheromones. And who would want to hear love reduced to that? Is the heart but a pump and not the seat of [...]
Thursday, October 18, 2007
From Scientific American:
It is not the cartoons that make your kids smack playmates or violently grab their toys but, rather, a lack of social skills, according to new research. “It’s a natural behavior and it’s surprising that the idea that children and adolescents learn aggression from the media is still relevant,” says Richard Tremblay … [...]
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Emotionally, the best may be yet to come - Los Angeles Times
Researchers are finding that older people are many times happier than their younger counterparts. Life experience, passage of time and emotional stability appear to be driving factors.
(tags: health emotion emotions psychology psychiatry Neuroscience science)
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
From Mind Hacks: PR for the self: managing identity on social networks:
“The New Atlantis magazine has an intriguing article that considers the social effects of sites like MySpace and Facebook and discusses how we are increasingly using these tools to carefully manage our public image - something that was previously only a concern for [...]
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
The New Yorker serves up a brilliant article this week on how fMRI scans of people in a “vegetative state” have revealed astonishing evidence that many have an active mental life, and some might argue may actually be conscious.
The findings are having powerful effect on not just the diagnosis of individuals with brain injuries, but the very concept [...]
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Here is a fascinating article from Wired about the use of DNA analysis to determine the likely race of criminal suspects.
On July 16, 2002, a survey crew from the Department of Transportation found Pam Kinamore’s nude, decomposing body in the area along the banks of the Mississippi known as Whiskey Bay, just west of Baton Rouge. [...]
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Bible belter - Times Online
Christopher Hitchens has successfully taken the case against God to the heart of America, writes Richard Dawkins
(tags: religion behaviour evolutionary_psychology evolution culture spirituality cults politics)
From The New Scientist Blog
They say the meek shall inherit the earth, but these experiments with emotional computer programs (pdf) suggest it may actually be the neurotic. And that they’ll probably take it rapidly by military force.
The Austrian researchers want games to be more engaging by having emotional, not just coolly calculating, computer players. Instead [...]