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Muji's going to start selling hole-punches that knock out patterns that can be threaded between two Lego bricks. They go on sale in a week, and open up many possibilities for crafty Lego extensions. LEGO for MUJI Paper and Block Sets (via Make) Previously:USB devices stuffed into legos -- Boing Boing Gadgets - Boing Boing Frank Lloyd Wright Lego -- Boing Boing Gadgets - Boing Boing Patching ancient walls with legos - Boing Boing Lego arms-dealer - Boing Boing...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=5f8e2a6b7e7f0e70c43ac20b2f9d7e5bp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=5f8e2a6b7e7f0e70c43ac20b2f9d7e5bp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Coming soon to a science fiction plot near you: with the right software, a plain-jane webcam can be a 3D scanner. It's a project from Qi Pan, a PhD candidate at Cambridge University Engineering Department. ProFORMA: Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition (via Futurismic) Previously:Homemade 3D printer goop made from maltodextrin costs 1/50 of the ... Baby brain scanner photo - Boing Boing Live nude supermodel scanning online: Naomi Campbell - Boing Boing Boing Boing: More live 3D Naomi Campbell on Mon. Jan. 29...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=0dfdfd10372741399e35fd61cb4820f3p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=0dfdfd10372741399e35fd61cb4820f3p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Let's blow up the moon

Photographs of residents in their tiny flats in Hong Kong's oldest public housing estate

Michael Wolf took 100 photos of people living in Hong Kong's oldest public housing estate. Each flat is 100 square feet. Almost every room has the same kind of metal bunk bed. They almost all have a TV, electric fan, and rice cooker. I looked at all 100 photos. Here's the creepiest room. Here's the most cluttered room. Here's the tidiest room. Here's the most spartan room. Michael Wolf 100 x 100 (Thanks, Lookforthewoman!)...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=65192d9a44acd0b495455c76957add2fp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=65192d9a44acd0b495455c76957add2fp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Matt Logue's "Empty Los Angeles" photography book

A Klingon Christmas Carol

An after-Thanksgiving treat for the whole family... Scrooge has no honor, nor any courage. Can three ghosts help him to become the true warrior he ought to be in time to save Tiny Tim from a horrible fate? Performed in the Original Klingon with English Supertitles, and narrative analysis from The Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology. Playing November 27 through December 13 at Minneapolis' Mixed Blood Theater. No really, this is for serious. (Thanks Joel!)...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=d6b36404a457b5efb58741b2a229c769p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=d6b36404a457b5efb58741b2a229c769p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Mishap at the Electrical Substation

As a little kid, I used to think electrical substations would make really awesome jungle gyms. This video helpfully demonstrates why 5-year-old Maggie was an idiot. This is the Eldorado Substation near Boulder City, Nevada. What you're seeing: A substation like this one is connected to long-distance transmission lines and electricity has to be very high voltage to travel on those. The substation "steps up" the voltage so the electricity can travel. Everything at a substation is hot, in that shock the bejeezus out of you sense. So that maintenance can be done, substations are built with switching functions that allow you to disconnect and reconnect various parts of the system in modular sort of way. The big, crazy spark in this video happened when some of the switching mechanisms failed. The Arcs 'n Sparks page at Stoneridge Engineering explains what happened next......br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a03ac95a9b2743be17aac5c158bedf9ep=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a03ac95a9b2743be17aac5c158bedf9ep=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Humans are domesticating themselves with smaller brains as a result

Marginal Revolution posted the following excerpt from Jeremy Taylor's book titled Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes that Make Us Human. I think we have to start thinking about the idea that humans in the last 30, 40, or 50,000 years have been domesticating ourselves.Â If we're following the bonobo or dog pattern, we're moving toward a form of ourselves with more and more juvenile behavior.Â And the amazing thing once you start thinking in those terms is that you realize that we're still moving fast.Â I think that current evidence is that we're in the middle of an evolutionary event in which tooth size is falling, jaw size is falling, brain size is falling, and it's quite reasonable to imagine that we're continuing to tame ourselves.Â The way it's happening is the way it's probably happened since we became permanently settled in villages, 20 or 30,000 years ago, or before. Jeremy Taylor's brain is not yet too small to notice that our brains are becoming smaller...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a91f0c14cdd73d025e8bd69b74c795f6p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a91f0c14cdd73d025e8bd69b74c795f6p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Rats in the urban ecology

(CC-licensed image by Flickr user laverrue) Gregory Glass is a disease ecologist -- he studies the relationship between pathogens and hosts. A professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Glass's laboratory is Baltimore's urban underbelly, where he hangs out with beefy sewer rats. Apparently, Baltimore is a hotbed of rat research. I wonder if Glass has encountered any Rat Kings. From Smithsonian: Glass has been following the secret lives of wild Norway rats â€“ otherwise known as brown rats, wharf rats, or, most evocatively, sewer rats -- for more than two decades now, but Baltimore has been a national hotspot for rat studies for well over half a century. The research push began during World War II, when thousands of troops in the South Pacific came down with the rat-carried tsutsugamushi disease, and the Allies also feared that the Germans and Japanese would release rats to spread the plague... Glass â€“ who started off studying cotton rats in the Midwest â€“ traps the animals with peanut butter baits and monitors the diseases they carry. (Hantavirus, once known as Korean hemorrhagic fever, and leptospirosis â€“ which can cause liver and kidney failure â€“ are of particular concern.) Lately heâ€™s been interested in cat-rat interactions. Cats, he and his colleagues have noticed, are rather ineffectual rat assassins: they catch mainly medium-sized rodents, when they catch any at all. This predation pattern may actually have adverse effects on human health: some of the deceased mid-sized rats are already immune to harmful diseases, while the bumper crops of babies that replace them are all vulnerable to infection. Thus a higher proportion of the population ends up actively carrying the diseases at any given time. "Crawling Around with Baltimore Street Rats" Previously:Massive rat in China - Boing Boing How rats think - Boing Boing Huge rat discovered in Indonesia - Boing Boing Rats are ticklish! - Boing Boing...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c9ee6aedd5914bfeea79e9d716dfc2a4p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c9ee6aedd5914bfeea79e9d716dfc2a4p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Man to marry his video game girlfriend this Sunday

Last month, I wrote about a Japanese husband who confessed to his wife that he had a virtual girlfriend, a character from an addictive Nintendo DS game called Love Plus. Now, another man is planning to hold a wedding ceremony with his Love Plus girlfriend this coming Sunday. The man, who calls himself SAL9000, was so in love with Nene Anegasaki that he decided to marry her and take her on a honeymoon to Guam. Of course, this means that he literally just took his Nintendo DS to Guam... while there, he took photos, livecast their adventures on popular video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga, and documented their adventures using the augmented reality iPhone app Sekai Camera. In any case, the guy plans on having a public reception in Tokyo this Sunday. It will be livecast on Nico Nico Douga, but in case you miss it, we'll be bringing you an update early next week. Stay tuned! via IT Media News (Japanese) Previously: Advisor: My husband has a virtual girlfriend Love in 2D (New York Times Magazine)...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=d18b6f9528d5841b9e3b98c774ce50dfp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=d18b6f9528d5841b9e3b98c774ce50dfp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Spray Paint The Walls: The Story of Black Flag

[Click for larger image.] I was lucky enough to see Black Flag play live a number of times in the '80s, around the time Glen E. Friedman shot the photo that graces this book's cover. I was an underage teen sneaking into grownup punk clubs, high on moshpit fumes (and, truth be told, lots else). The band, and that subculture that surrounded them, changed my life. Spray Paint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag explores the history of one of the most important bands, if not the most important, in American punk history. Snip from observations by writer Joe Carducci, who was long associated with SST Records (some links added): "[The book is] very well reported and assembled by Brit music writer Stevie Chick, author of the better of the recent Sonic Youth books. Neither Greg Ginn nor Henry Rollins sat for interviews but their voices are included from earlier interviews, and more importantly Chuck Dukowski spoke to Chick - a first I believe. The story, laid out from the band's earliest practices in 1976 to its end ten years later, makes a far more dramatic book than the usual shelf-fillers with their stretch to make the empty stories of various chart-toppers sound exciting and crucial and against the odds. " Spray Paint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag (Amazon, book comes out later this month) Here's a related post on photographer Glen E. Friedman's blog. You may also be interested in some of Carducci's own writings on the subject of music and fandom....br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a0cf83756e7c44166a6552b8f65d5e43p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a0cf83756e7c44166a6552b8f65d5e43p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Big Bird cakes disasters

Getting meaningful things done using "fixed-schedule productivity"

Cal Newport, a post-doc at MIT who writes the blog Study Hacks, has an interesting method of getting important work done. He calls it "fixed-schedule productivity." The idea, in a nutshell, is this: "Fix your ideal schedule, then work backwards to make everything fit â€” ruthlessly culling obligations, turning people down, becoming hard to reach, and shedding marginally useful tasks along the way." Newport works between 8:30 and 5:30 on weekdays only, yet he gets a lot done: This past summer, for example, I completed my PhD in computer science at MIT. Simultaneous with writing my dissertation I finished the manuscript for my third book, which was handed in a month after my PhD defense and will be published by Random House in the summer of 2010. During this past year, I also managed to maintain my blog, Study Hacks, which enjoys over 50,000 unique visitors a month, and publish over a half-dozen peer-reviewed academic papers. Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich wrote about Newport and a few other people who use similar techniques to get a lot of meaningful work accomplished in 40 hours a week or less. I think they are onto something -- ever since I had kids (which gave me fewer hours in the day to work, and also put a start and end time on my day) I've been much more productive. Time management: How an MIT postdoc writes 3 books, a PhD defense, and 6+ peer-reviewed papers â€” and finishes by 5:30pm...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9390b940dc7153665333f62bc27f7c54p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9390b940dc7153665333f62bc27f7c54p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Beard worn as cage around head

Brilliant meteor over Utah

A gorgeously glowing meteor flew over Utah on Wednesday night, alarming some citizens and delighting others. The image above is from a security camera at the IMFT plant in Lehi, Utah. From KSL-TV, were you can also see some video of the fireball: Clark Planetarium Director Seth Jarvis said the stony meteorite was probably traveling 80,000 miles an hour when it hit our atmosphere. He said it happened 100 miles up in the air; so despite the brightness, Utah was never in any danger. "These collisions can do damage, but they are extremely rare; and literally once in a century do you observe something that's actually doing damage," he said. Witness Andy Bailey said, "Oh, it lit up the whole sky, like almost brighter than the day. It was bright." Don White was in Wyoming and told KSL Newsradio for a moment he suspected a nuclear strike. "With something that brilliant and that fast, it was like, whoa, did we just get hit or something? It would have been some bigger noise I guess if a nuclear device had gone off," he said. "Meteor lights up early morning sky, alarms Utahns"...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=46254569f8abc71dcd2812b1f4bf1de0p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=46254569f8abc71dcd2812b1f4bf1de0p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Chuck Prophet documentary

My film director pal Scott Compton just finished shooting a documentary about singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet. Scott and collaborator John Behrens joined Prophet and his band in Mexico City earlier this year where the group recorded Â¡Let Freedom Ring!, an album of "political songs for non political people." My favorite Prophet quote from the trailer: "I walk into the (recording studio's) control room and I could not believe what I saw -- I was looking at a studio that is totally state-of-the-art... for 1957." So with a background of earthquakes, H1N1 hysteria, power outages, sirens, and corrupt police, the band plugged in their instruments and set to work. "The best thing about Prophet as a film subject," Scott told me, "is that even as things fell apart around him, he always was looking for the bright side of the mayhem." I can't wait to watch the whole film, slated for completion by March. I'll see Scott later today when he'll be directing a Boing Boing Video interview I'm doing with Swell Season, aka Glen Hansard and MarkÃ©ta IrglovÃ¡ from the film Once. They're performing tonight at Oakland's Paramount Theatre....br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9a1aab68c167a9051d961fa80b712ac3p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9a1aab68c167a9051d961fa80b712ac3p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Cigar box ukulele kit

Yesterday I received a surprise package in the mail: a cigar box ukulele kit from Papa's Boxes (which sells kits for four different ukuleles and a 5 string banjo, all based on cigar boxes). It looks like it has everything needed -- a cigar box, strings, hardware, glue, drill bits, and even a piezoelectric buzzer for an acoustic/electric pickup. The parts are all labeled and everything looks like it's been put together with loving care. The neck is pretty much finished, with fretboard and frets already in place. That means it ought to be pretty easy to make with just a few standard tools, like a drill and a screwdriver. I think this will be my Thanksgiving weekend project! Papa's Boxes...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a3c5a10424b1699631ae89b7d66c0ab1p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a3c5a10424b1699631ae89b7d66c0ab1p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Demi claims missing hipflesh is for real. But $5,000 says it's Moore photoshopping.

Photographer Anthony Citrano recently pointed us to a possible Photoshop Disaster on the cover of W magazine's December issue, in which Demi Moore (aka @mrskutcher) appeared to be missing a chunk of flesh from her hip. This reminded me of the Ralph Lauren debacle. Many blogs and news sites picked the item up. Over at Jezebel (they posted about it before BB), W magazine fessed to having altered the image, but "nothing out of the ordinary." Yesterday, Mrs. Kutcher herself tweeted, "Here is the original image people my hips were not touched don't let these people bullshit you!" Anthony Citrano replies: "I feel bad that Demi is on defense - she should not have to defend other people's mistakes; W Magazine should be addressing this rather than her." Citrano offers $5,000 to the charity of her choosing if the image she tweeted is provably the unretouched original. Citrano's full reply and details on the thrown-down-gauntlet follow. All of this, by the way, IS VRY SRS BIZNESS....br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=f847381f9e4ef16a5b0e581f3913bfcbp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=f847381f9e4ef16a5b0e581f3913bfcbp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Google puts a stop to tooth-whitening, belly-flattening scumbags

The Big Money reports that Google has made a "minor shift in its policy that has major implications." Instead of banning scammy ads for bogus teeth whiteners and stomach flatteners, Google will now ban the advertiser itself, "effectively neutering the advertiser's ability to shift from one ad and shell site to another." Think of it like the struggle between the police and a graffiti vandal. Up until now Google has only been erasing the tags after they've been put up. Going forward, they're going to take away his spray cans and put a GPS collar on him, making sure he never does it again. It would be a principled stand by any company, but especially by Google because of its position in the market. I worry, though, that the rest of the industry won't pay attention. On this issue, Google might be a leader without any followers. Google Does Non-Evil Thing: Bans White Teeth, Flat Stomachs...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=d20817f6f80c787fb0541731615f9457p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=d20817f6f80c787fb0541731615f9457p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Taste Test: natto, gooey fermented soy beans

In Japan, we eat soy all the time. For breakfast we have rice with natto and miso soup with tofu; for dinner we pop edamame into our mouths in between chopsticks-full of vegetables sauteed in soy sauce. I always assumed it was good for you, until I came to California and my health-conscious American friend told me that soy was actually really bad for you. So which is it? Natto spaghetti Ingredients: packet of natto, soy sauce, butter, chopped scallions, nori seaweed, spaghetti Boil the spaghetti in a pot. Open the natto packet and mix the ingredients (it usually comes with some mustard and a soy-based sauce) together. Once the spaghetti is cooked and drained, toss it in butter and soy sauce, then place the natto, scallions, and seaweed on top. Here's what we know about soy: unprocessed, it's a great source of digestible protein and has tons of vitamin B, calcium, and folate mdash; all things that are good for you. It also contains isoflavones, and here's where things get tricky. Some studies prove that isoflavones are beneficial, while others have shown that it promotes breast and prostate cancer. Soy has also been called out as an agent of brain cell aging and thyroid dysfunction, too. In her recent book The Jungle Effect, San Francisco-based physician Daphne Miller mdash; who studied low cancer rates in Okinawa extensively mdash; writes: While Okinawans take in over 80 percent of their soy in a relatively unprocessed form as tofu, edamame, soy flour, soy milk, or miso, people in the United States eat a similiar percentage of their soy in a processed form. Our soy foods are heated, mashed, and denatured to create a vast array of substances ranging from Tofurky to fillers for tuna fish to ice-cream sandwiches... while whole foods offer valuable protection, concentrated or denatured derivatives of these foods are having the opposite effect. The bottom line, at least for now, seems to be that good soy prevent cancer and bad soy might promote cancer. Good soy = tofu, soy sauce, miso, natto, edamame. Bad soy = soy protein powder, energy bars made with soy, fake hot dogs, tofurky. A lot of Western people think natto mdash; fermented soy bean mdash; is gross because of it's gooey texture and stinky smell, but it's one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast. It's filled with protein and great for a post-workout snack, too. If you're still iffy about it, why not combine the foreign with the familiar and cook some natto spaghetti? The slippery texture of the pasta cuts the gooeyness a little, and in my opinion this is a gentle way to ease natto into your culinary life. Every installment of Taste Test will explore recipes, the science, and some history behind a specific food item. Images via Jasja Dekker's Flickr and Gaku's Flickr Previously: Taste Test: togarashi Taste Test: persimmon Taste Test: red kuri squash...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=0072ceac7d3f03f4341bdd7025e45302p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=0072ceac7d3f03f4341bdd7025e45302p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

A programmer's lament on the Apple App Store

Please release me: Mario, MinMe Mini Squadrons, DigiDrives Captain Successors

EFF takes on Volomedia's stupid attempt to patent podcasting

A company called Volomedia just got the US Patent Office to grant them exclusive rights to patent podcasting. Say what? The Electronic Frontier Foundation is fighting, and is putting out a call for help for all the O.G. podcasters out there. Paging Dave Winer and Adam Curry! Snip: The Volomedia patent covers "a method for providing episodic media." It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years. Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners. Right now, just about anyone can create their own on-demand talk radio program, earning an audience on the strength of their ideas. But more costs and hassle means that podcasting could go the way of mainstream radio -- with only the big guys able to afford an audience. And we'd have a bogus patent to blame. In order to bust this patent, we are looking for additional "prior art" -- or evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use before November 19, 2003. In particular, we're looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes. You can read the entire prior art request here, and if you have something that could help, please send it to podcasting_priorart@eff.org or fill out the form on our Volomedia page. EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent - And We Need Your Help (thanks Peter Kirn)...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=7285307e1d23464c110ed9615f2e48ecp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=7285307e1d23464c110ed9615f2e48ecp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Seth Godin rants on faux science and irrationality

Unemployment stats in the USA just got worse

America's official national unemployment rate is now 10.2%. But there are more sad numbers in the Bureau of Labor Statistics's October report, out today. Jobless rate in some states is higher. Michigan's the most grim: 15.1 percent. Nevada: 13.0, Rhode Island: 12.9, California: 12.5, South Carolina: 12.1. Over the year, rates are up in all 50 states and in D.C. Among cities, Detroit's tops. 30%. The actual, practical toll of unemployment is worse when you count the underemployed and those on the streets and off the grid....br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=310029ba92c663959e6785f4d4fc824dp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=310029ba92c663959e6785f4d4fc824dp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/

Evolution Among the Cannibals

The South Fore people of Papua New Guinea used to eat their dead relatives' brains as a sign of respect, passing on the deadly prion disease kuru--a relative of mad cow disease--in the process. But long before the Fore stopped the tradition on the advice of scientists in the 1950s, evolution was already at work. Less than 200 years ago, according to New Scientist, a member of the Fore was born with a gene mutation that protected against kuru. They passed it to their children. Because having the mutation helped you live longer (and, thus, have more children), it quickly spread through the Fore population. Today, several Fore families descended from people who took part in the brain-eating rituals owe their existence to the reality of evolution. (Via Mind Hacks.)...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a27565850958266a8e51e1666beb1d12p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a27565850958266a8e51e1666beb1d12p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/