Delusions Of Stature

A blog about nothing.

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As Voyager 1 prepares to make its unobtrusive (and unprecedented) exit from the solar system – making it the farthest human-made object in space – revisit the historic events that made it possible. Just as computing technology had become sufficiently powerful to find a solution to the three-body problem of gravitational physics (in other words, the trajectory followed by an object that is acted on by more than one gravitational body), the planets Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, and Uranus would find themselves in a fortuitous alignment that would not occur again for another 177 years. Thus was the Voyager space program born, marking a new chapter in human space exploration.

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Sixty Symbols, a venture of the University of Nottingham, explains the weirdness of the cosmos, and how the discovery of structure at the scale of 4 billion light years across spells trouble for current cosmological theories. Read more about it, and watch the extended interview.

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The death in 1861 of Patient Tan (so called because that was the only syllable he could produce) heralded the discovery of Broca's Area and set the foundations for neuroscience. Until then, the idea, promulgated by phrenologists, that brain functions were localized to specific areas had been widely discredited. What Broca and others were to discover was that not only was brain function localized, but it was lateralized (that is, confined to only one hemisphere), and that patients could often regain some function with time and practice as other brain regions took up the slack. Today we call this neural plasticity, and it's one of the most exciting areas of brain research.

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Who knows? Maybe you’ll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning!

The gun industry is aggressively targeting "recruitment and retention" efforts at young people. The idea is not only to induct a whole new generation into gun subculture, but to encourage them to serve as gun ambassadors to their peers. Just "get them shooting", one report exhorts, touting innocuous activities like paintball and archery as gateway pursuits that can lead to the ultimate goal, shooting with handguns and assault rifles. Another advises to "start them young", aiming programs at audiences 12 and under.

To that end the gun industry has facilitated gun youth clubs and introduced shooting in other youth groups, such as the tax-deductible Scholastic Shooting Trust Fund whose mission is to endow shooting teams in schools across America. (Act now, and they'll match your contribution!) That's just one of a depressingly long list of youth organizations promoting the use of guns and instilling, its proponents claim, responsibility and self-reliance in children. Whether or not that's secondary to the naked marketing grab such opportunities present is open for debate. Read the whole thing over at the New York Times.

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The brisk North American trade in illegal drugs has its nexus in the border towns of Mexico. This Globe and Mail interactive feature examines the war on drugs through the lens of photojournalist Louie Palu, who spent a year traveling the US and Mexico, often at great personal risk, to document it. (Previously: the war on drugs)

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Dragons: highly plausible. The KKK: community reformers. And the Great Depression? Grossly exaggerated.

So by now you've heard that the earth is 6000 years old and that humans co-existed with dinosaurs. No? Well that's what's taught as fact in some creationist school books. But I bet you didn't realize just how batshit some of their other claims are. And now, thanks to the upcoming documentary to be screened by PBS on Monday, The Revisionaries, you can.

Sample more outrageous idiocy in these excerpts from Louisiana textbooks, and learn how Texas mucked it up for everyone in the first place.

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Immovable object vs. unstoppable force: Not what you think.

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Iran, one of the most socially conservative countries in the world, paradoxically also suffers the highest rate of opiate addiction. Needle use among addicts has fueled an underground AIDS epidemic, whose victims are doubly stigmatized for their addiction and their illness. While partially embracing effective harm reduction techniques, the Iranian government has also curbed drug addiction research and used drug trafficking as a pretext for prosecuting political dissidents. The 2004 documentary Prostitution Behind The Veil, featured above, follows two addicts who turn to prostitution to fund their habit. A powerful Prospect Magazine piece, which ran recently, features the Alaei brothers, jailed in Iran's notorious Evin prison as a result of their AIDS activism. And the 2004 BBC documentary Mohammed and the Matchmaker (parts 1, 2, and 3) chronicles their efforts to forge a community of socially ostracized HIV/AIDS patients.

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Gawker asks, who is the worst person in this New York Times article about diners taking photos of food? It's not the first time the New York Times trend section has come in for ridicule.

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Why hasn't a single Wall Street executive been held criminally liable for the subprime mortgage fraud that shook the economy and sent so many spiraling into bankruptcy? Contrast the current climate of unaccountability with the massive savings & loan scandal of the '80s, where over 800 people saw jail time, one third of them high-ranking executives. In part, it has been an investigative failure: the FBI division overseeing financial fraud saw its numbers dwindle to 200 officers when, in the wake of 9/11, the rest were reassigned to counter-terrorism. And in part, it has been a political failure, amid concerns from the Justice Department and the Obama administration that widespread prosecution would further destabilize the economy. And that's not to mention the regulatory and systemic failure that allowed it to happen in the first place. Watch the Frontline documentary and read the accompanying articles. Then refer to reporter Terri Buhl's investigative reports from The Atlantic, referenced in the documentary.

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On smaller timescales, we are quite good at determining an event's duration, distinguishing between tones that differ by as little as a tenth of a second. But we kind of suck at planning, and consistently underestimate the time it will take us to perform habitual tasks. Our perception of the passage of time affects the use we make of it; polychronic societies, for instance, are said to have a more fluid perception of time than monochronic societies.

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Looking to shed a few post-New Year's pounds? New research suggests that our appetite is driven in part by a subconscious accounting of what we've previously eaten. Scientists tested the hypothesis that memory of previous meals plays a role in adjusting our appetite with an ingenious experiment involving a trick bowl of soup. Subjects were given what they thought was either a large or small portion, but through a series of cleverly rigged valves and tubes, scientists could adjust the amount of soup in the bowl without the subjects' knowledge. What they found was that subjects reported feeling sated based mostly on the amount they actually ate, not the amount they thought they ate. But – and here's the key part – their perception of how much they ate influenced their appetite 2.5 hours later. Subjects who thought they'd consumed a large portion, regardless of how much they'd actually consumed, were less hungry than subjects who thought they'd consumed a small portion, and vice versa. In other words, the amount you think you've eaten influences how hungry you'll be at your next meal. From there, it's kind of a leap to suggest that remembering your last meal will influence how much you consume at the next one. But it can't hurt, before you dig in, to do the calculus, and adjust your portion size accordingly.

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Worst robot job ever? Vomiting Larry has been recruited by U.K. scientists to study the spread of norovirus via projectile vomiting.

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Women who voice opinions online are subjected to a barrage of "sexist, sadistic" abuse and threats of rape and death. And it's having the intended effect: many women's voices have been effectively silenced, and countless others are intimidated from participating in the first place.

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Child marriage is illegal almost everywhere, yet it occurs with disturbing regularity. But the issue isn't as clear cut as you'd think: those who perpetrate it often have the best interests of the child at heart. Often, early marriage can be the most reliable way of providing for a young girl's future in an impoverished society that offers little in the way of viable alternatives for women. Watch National Geographic photojournalists give a nuanced treatment to this complicated issue. Then read the harrowing companion piece here.

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In the past few years, every time one of these tragedies takes place, be it in Arizona, Aurora, Milwaukee or now Newtown, conspiracy theorists instantly take to the internet, with cries of “false flag!” and accusations that the Obama administration either caused or staged the shootings as an excuse to grab our guns and curtail our rights. They offer manufactured “proof” and use the historical examples of other false flag attacks, both real and imagined, as “evidence” that “they” did it before, and will do it again.

Truthers: There are genuine false flag operations, and you're needed to help uncover them. It's just too bad you're so bad at it.

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Every year, around the New Year, there’s an announcement of a major breach. You had an attack on Google by the Chinese government announced in January 2010. In March 2011 there was an attack on RSA, an Internet security company. In December 2011 there was a breach of the Stratfor Global Intelligence Service. Each time it’s been getting bigger and more dramatic. Who knows what attack will kick off the New Year? But there certainly will be one.

Cyber-warfare: Increasingly commonplace, increasingly sophisticated, and increasingly worrisome.

Previously: here, here, and here.