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What do you get when you combine "honesty is the best policy" with "Do as I say, not as I do"? Here’s an interesting study showing that parents lie to children surprisingly often:
"We are surprised by how often parenting by lying takes place," said study researcher Kang Lee of the University of Toronto, Canada. "Our findings showed that even the parents who most strongly promoted the importance of honesty with their children engaged in parenting by lying."
Lee and colleagues acknowledge that their work is preliminary, bringing to the forefront an issue that is rarely studied. They are not sure the implications of parental lying, but suggest such tall tales could give kids mixed messages at a time when they are trying to figure out how to navigate the social world.
Lies could also harm parent-child bonds, said study researcher Gail Heyman of the University of California, San Diego.
It could even keep children from learning certain rules. "If I am always lying to the child in order to get the child to do X, Y, or Z, then they have never learned why they should do X, Y, or Z," said Victoria Talwar of McGill University in Montreal, who was not involved in the current study. "If it’s constantly being used, [lying] may be preventing learning opportunities for the child."
The argument of Mac vs PC (or more accurately, Mac vs Windows) is as old as time itself – that is, if time started in 1984, the year that the Mac was introduced.
Sure Windows is bad. Awfully bad (I’m looking at you, Vista) but according to Charlie Brooker of The Guardian, there is something worse than Microsoft’s operating system: the cult of Mac worshippers!
Consequently, nothing pleases them more than watching a PC owner struggle with a slab of non-Mac machinery. It validates their spiritual choice. Recently I sat in a room trying to write something on a Sony Vaio PC laptop which seemed to be running a special slow-motion edition of Windows Vista specifically designed to infuriate human beings as much as possible. Trying to get it to do anything was like issuing instructions to a depressed employee over a sluggish satellite feed. When I clicked on an application it spent a small eternity contemplating the philosophical implications of opening it, begrudgingly complying with my request several months later. It drove me up the wall. I called it a bastard and worse. At one point I punched a table.
This drew the attention of two nearby Mac owners. They hovered over and stood beside me, like placid monks.
"Ah: the delights of Vista," said one.
"It really is time you got a Mac," said the other.
"They’re just better," sang monk number one.
"You won’t regret it," whispered the second.
But never fear, dear Mac lovers, Microsoft is trying to brew its own cult by using Windows 7 Launch Parties propaganda: Link
Researchers have taken another look at the famous Whitehall study of over 18,000 middle-aged London men and found that a single measurement of three factors predicted mortality better than any other measures. Those with the three risk factors, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking, had three times the risk of death from cardiovascular problems and a life expectancy that was ten years shorter than those without the three risk factors. The men were examined in 1967-1970 and followed for 38 years. The 4811 surviving subjects were reexamined in 1997.
Dr Robert Clarke (University of Oxford, UK) and colleagues report their findings online September 17, 2009 in BMJ. And when they used more extreme categorization of risk factors, including body-mass index (BMI), diabetes mellitus/glucose intolerance, and employment grade, life expectancy differed by up to 15 years.
Clarke says there has been uncertainty about the limits of life expectancy and the relevance of cardiovascular risk factors for its prediction. “What is unique about this study is the prolonged follow-up; it enables us to put a figure on the life-limiting effects of these risk factors,” he told heartwire.
(image credit: Flickr user Thomas Hawk)
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Amazing 1900′s green creativity from John Krubsack who decided to grow chairs! It took him eleven years to bend and graft stems and brances of elder trees into the shape of a
chair before it was ready for ‘harvesting’. Krubsack is said to have said the chair was ‘cemented by nature’.
Link – via cakeheadlovesevil
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
Marine biologist and blogger "WhySharksMatter" has created a list of four things everyone needs to know about sharks. Full of thought-provoking facts and cool pictures of sharks, this post will be interesting to the ocean lover in all of us.
“Human beings are better off with sharks than we are without sharks, and we are in danger of losing them forever… but you can help!”
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
Hmmm, this t-shirt outlet might not be the place to buy gifts for loved ones, but if you are a fat guy and proud of it, you’ll find a shirt to love. There are also shirts for big women and for women who love fat guys. Link -via Buzzfeed
This ad for Freebord skateboards has skateboarders flying down the streets of San Francisco in the dark to connect glowing Tetris shapes. I have to wonder where the awesome outtakes are!-via Digg
Most of us think of sweet produce as fruit and not-sweet garden foods as vegetables, with the exception of the tomato because that’s been argued over so much. But which plant foods are scientifically fruits, and which are vegetables?
A fruit — a ‘true fruit’ — is one where all tissues are derived from the plant ovary and this alone. This includes peas. Whereas strawberries, for example, also include some of the flesh from the peg that holds the ovary, disqualifying them from fruit status. The apple gets its carpels involved as well as the ovary, leading to a kinky pome. ‘True berries’ are also ‘true fruits’, but not the other way round. Grapes, currants (red and black), elder- and gooseberries are all proper upstanding berries which will not deceive you or smuggle themselves into your house in pies before stealing your silver while you sleep.
Whatever you call them, you should have five servings a day, and eat a variety of different whatever-they-ares. Link -via Scribal Terror
The Mainichi Daily News (Japan) reports that a college student has developed a robot that can be partially controlled through a neural interface. Taku Ichikawa of the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo hooks up electrodes to his head and then concentrates on certain images that serve as command prompts:
The control of the robot through reading neural signals — technology Ichikawa helped to develop for a hands-free wheelchair project — requires the operator to imagine a set of movements many times a day. During research into the wheelchair, the developers tied particular movements with particularly clear mental images, allowing users to command the chair without any previous training. For example, if a user could imagine badminton very clearly, that could become the command for forward.
Link via Popular Science | Image: Mainichi Daily News
Wrap you your baby, safe and secure, in the tentacles of Cthulhu with this crocheted baby blanket. It was created by Craftster user Fickle Pegasus for her husband’s co-worker’s son. Velcro tabs at the end of the tentacles help secure baby toys or, I suppose, the child itself.
The Madagascar Institute is a Brooklyn-based art collective that “that specializes in large-scale sculptures and rides, live performances, and guerilla art events.” The artists are especially fond of attaching jet engines to large sculptures and improbable vehicles. Most recently, they made a two-person carousel powered by small jet engines. The action in the above video starts at the 1:23 mark.
Andy Woodruff noticed that Ohio has 88 counties, the same number as keys on a piano. So he went to work on a map application that assigns a note to each county. You can play a song on the map (a couple of songs are plotted out for you) or reassign the notes based on census data such as population, number of rental houses, or median age. You can even hear what a route from one place to another sounds like! Link to map. Link to the story behind it. -via the Presurfer
A 13-year-old macaw flew fifty feet up into a tree and was too scared to fly down. Emma Hooper of Botley, England believes that Cleo flew away because she was distressed at moving to a new home. When the RSPCA refused to come, Hooper called to rent a hydraulic lift, but was told it wouldn’t be available until the next day. Hooper stayed by the tree all night long.
“I felt so helpless. It was awful, the worst feeling in the world.
“I took out a chair and blanket but I was getting strange looks from people driving by.
“They looked very confused when I said my bird was stuck up in the tree.
“I ended up driving my car around the corner and parked next to the tree. It was warmer and I felt safer but I still got no sleep.
The cherry picker arrived at 7:30 AM, and Cleo was finally brought down. She had spent 16 hours on the same branch. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: SOLENT)
Growing up singing together has its advantages! This post looks at thirteen different sibling acts that made it big, with videos of each.
Often our brothers and sisters are the first people we sing and play music with, so if it works well, it’s only natural to continue to sing and play with them. The tonal similarity of siblings’ voices allows for the building of beautiful harmonies, which can explain the success of the music made by siblings.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Peachi.
A sheet of paper may be nothing more than a medium upon which you scribble notes and doodle the occasional design, but to a paper artist it represents something that can be folded, twisted and turned into anything. Check out the work of ten talented paper artists, each with their own unique style.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
So many podcasts out there, but so little time. Here are fifteen in particular that are worth your time and will make you a better informed citizen of the world. Links include TED Talks, the Naked Scientists, a couple frm NPR and the BBC, and the greatest thing on radio, This American Life:
The show’s incredible value was recently on display when it tackled the housing crisis and economic collapse with two episodes entitled “The Giant Pool of Money” and “The Giant Pool of Money Part 2?. TAL excels at taking the esoteric and making them understandable – relatable even – to the average Joe.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by redsfaithful.
This completely hilarious montage of circa 1987 video dater men was featured on Boing Boing yesterday, and as one commenter mentioned, the guy at 3:34 was a dead ringer for Seth Green. Upon second viewing, I noticed that the guy at 2:27 looks and sounds like Seth Rogen.
That got me thinking. Is the Seth Green guy really Seth Green, filmed recently? Slipped into a montage of real 87 vid-daters? And if that is Seth Rogen, is it also current footage with makeup, because if it was really him he’d be about 5 years old in 1987. It seems odd that two Seths appear in one seemingly random new (old) funny video.
Anyway, aside from that, there’s lots of funny to be found in this new viral gem. Hard to pick a favorite, but the Goddess guy/ Bon Jovi afficionado is impressive.
Photo credit: Seth Rogen by Philkon; Seth Green by David Shankbone.
The last week in September is Banned Books Week. To mark the event, an interactive map has been created that shows requests for removal of books from public libraries and school libraries for the period 2007-2009. The map is created from cases reported to and documented by the American Library Association.
The image above is a screencap. The interactive map itself can be accessed at this link.
The ALA also has a listing of the top ten most frequently challenged books for 2008.
The Lumière brothers began producing moving pictures in the 1890s; this short of “The Serpentine Dance” required each frame of the film to be hand-colored.
Several links for this video indicate that it was produced in 1899, although the dialogue by the narrator implies a date of “1913.” The dance is in the style of “Butterfly Girl” Loïe Fuller, who used billowing skirts to create a serpentine dance for the Follies-Bergere; interestingly she is reported to have used multicolored and changing lights to illuminate her skirts during the performance – the effect that this video presumably is trying to recreate.
YouTube link, via Kottke.
Brandon Keim writes in Wired that scientists are getting closer to reconstructing images that duplicate what the brain actually sees through visual input. Though it’s not actually brain-reading, it’s a small step in that direction:
To construct their model, the researchers used an fMRI machine, which measures blood flow through the brain, to track neural activity in three people as they looked at pictures of everyday settings and objects.
As in the earlier study, they looked at parts of the brain linked to the shape of objects. Unlike before, they looked at regions whose activity correlates with general classifications, such as “buildings” or “small groups of people.”
Once the model was calibrated, the test subjects looked at another set of pictures. After interpreting the resulting neural patterns, the researchers’ program plucked corresponding pictures from a database of 6 million images.
Image: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Did you know that today is World Rabies Day? Well, now you do. Our pal Asylum blog has a neat post about rabies trivia, including these gems:
People who get rabies don’t go vampire.
Somewhat surprisingly, we could find no evidence that the spastic delirium brought on by this horrible plague has caused a person to start biting others with his suddenly deadly teeth/saliva combination. (This may be because rabid patients are often tied down.) However, in the low-budget horror flick "I Drink Your Blood" a band of hippies are tricked into eating rabies-infected meat pies. They proceed to turn the table on the townsfolk by wreaking delirious havoc that would seem by the film’s title to include vampirism.The only person who has ever really survived rabies may simply be immortal.
There is only one fully-documented case of a person surviving rabies without severe brain damage. In 2005, a teenage girl from Wisconsin was induced into a coma right after the onset of symptoms in hopes that partially shutting off her brain (and feeding her medication) would give her immune system time to produce antibodies to fight the virus. After six days under, and many more in the hospital, Jeanna Giese emerged with only slight brain damage, and now lives a normal life. Subsequent attempts to replicate this procedure have failed.
Link – Thanks Alex!
Japanese artist Mio I-zawa created this mechanical tumor that grows and throbs as your computer operates. The harder your computer works, the larger it grows. From the blog Pink Tentacle:
Equipped with a series of motors and pneumatic actuators, the mechanical tumor pulsates gently when the CPU load is low. When the CPU load is high, the tumor’s air compressor is activated, causing the lump of flesh to inflate. The size of the tumor fluctuates according to the CPU utilization rate, giving the user a very tangible reading of the computer’s stress level.
Video at the link.
Photo: Australian Center for Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity, University of Adelaide
Does it seem like science is discovering new species left and right lately? After the discovery of the Cat Ba Leopard gecko, bristleworm that eats only dead whale bones, a ghostshark with sex organ on its head, scientists discovered not one, not one hundred, but 850(!) previously unknown blind and pale creatures living in underground lakes and caves:
The species found in these underground habitats were mostly blind and lacking pigment due to the environment in which they live. Above is an amphipod, a shrimp-like crustacean. Of the water-dwelling creatures found, crustaceans represented about seventy-five percent of the new species.
These otherworldly inhabitants of the subterranean outback have adapted to their light-less environments, sometimes by evolving past the need for eyes. They navigate using vibration and chemical senses.
Above is captioned: a crustacean that has fangs connected to secretory glands, from the stygofauna at Cape Range, Western Australia. This is a very primitive group of crustaceans, previously only known from the northern hemisphere.
Link | More details at LiveScience
Life Magazine has a hilarious post up featuring what they consider to be the 30 dumbest inventions of all time. When you look through the list, filled with things like the shower hat to the right, you actually start to get an appreciation for things like the Snuggie.
Almost all of the inventions are from the sixties or before, so it’s not too shocking that many of them involve cigarettes, including a method for a couple to share a smoke and one for a person to smoke a whole pack at once -oh joy!
Talk about junk in your trunk (sorry, but I just had to). An Italian man was arrested after a routine police stop ended up with authorities seizing over 1700 animals in his trunk. Included in the bust were 216 parakeets, 300 white mice, 150 hamsters, 30 Japanese squirrels, six chameleons and over 1,000 terrapins, a type of turtle.
It seems he was going to sell the rare critters, but they have instead been given to local zoos.
So. Three decades after he fled Los Angeles, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland.
In 1977, Polanski pled guilty of "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor" to avoid being charged with rape by use of drugs (he gave alcohol and quaaludes to the then-13-year-old female model he was doing a photo shoot with) and sodomy, amongst other charges. He fled the United States before his sentencing and has been avoiding traveling to countries that could extradite him ever since. The victim has since forgiven him and settled a civil suit against Polanski for an unspecified amount.
Granted, the Polanski case was tawdry. It was filled with celebrity, sex, drugs and violence (not to mention charges of ethical misconduct of the judge presiding over the case). In short, it was the stuff of Hollywood. So the media frenzy of the arrest was not unexpected. But what surprised me was the diplomatic row that ensued when both France and Poland (Polanski is a dual citizen of both countries) protested Polanski’s arrest.
Is rape of a minor not a serious offense in those two countries? How about fleeing and being a fugitive from the law (while not exactly hiding – Polanski continued to direct award-winning films even with warrants outstanding)? Was the arrest outrageous, as journalist Anne Applebaum wrote in a column for The Washington Post? Or was it justice finally being served?
What do you think of the whole drama?
[poll=12]
The melting clock in Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory is a familiar icon. One can purchase analog and digital versions of these clocks, hand-crafted by artists, but it is also possible to create one at home by recycling an old vinyl LP and following a series of simple directions…
Step 2: Preheat your oven to 220F/100C and toss in the record for a couple minutes. When it’s thoroughly flopping about, yank it out and run to a table to do the next step. Run! It hardens quickly!
Full directions are at Instructables, via Anything and Everything.
Modern musicians are frequently believed to be stupid airheads who couldn’t hold down any “real” job. But in reality, there are a lot of intelligent rock stars. Some musicians are even geniuses – and not just when it comes to music composition. These musicians are not only intelligent, they have also used their knowledge to get college degrees or in their secondary professions.
Brian May of Queen isn’t your average rock and roll supernova. He was named the 39th Greatest Guitarist of All Time by Rolling Stone, but he’s also great at something else – astrophysics. May graduated from the Imperial College of London with an honors degree in physics and Mathematics. He then went on to obtain a doctorate in both departments, when Queen exploded into rock and roll stardom. While he gave up his schooling for the band, he did not stop working with physics and published a few academic papers while in the group.
More recently, he printed a book entitled Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe in 2006. In October of 2007, he completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics. His thesis was titled A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud. The month after, he was appointed Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.
Greg Graffin was an anthropology and geology double-major from UCLA. He went on to obtain a master’s degree in geology from the school and then earned a Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell University. Throughout this entire time, he was singing and touring with Bad Religion, a band he helped form when he was only 15.
Although he’s still playing with Bad Religion, Graffin also teaches Life Sciences at UCLA. He has also written two books, one a series of correspondences between himself and historian Preston Jones titled Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? A Professor and Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity, the other is being released in 2010 and is titled Anarchy Evolution. According to a recent Twitter post, he is also be involved with an upcoming television series, called “Punk Professor.”
Source Image Via The Toad [Flickr]
Anyone familiar with the punk band The Descendents knows of the nerdy caricature that has come to serve as the band’s logo. That drawing is based on the band’s lead singer, Milo Aukerman. Fans may also recognize the name of the group’s first album, ‘Milo Goes to College.’ The album was named because Milo was actually going to college at UCSD at the time.
His affection for learning caused the band to go on a number of temporary hiatuses while he returned to school. Eventually, Aukerman earned a Ph.D in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Even after graduation, the band continued the cycle of reuniting and separating as Milo kept returning to the band and then his career in biochemistry. The group is currently dormant, but with their history, most fans still hold out hope that Milo will come back soon.
Tom Scholz is the founder and guitarist for a little band called Boston. But before he ever even started the group, he received a master’s degree at MIT in the field of mechanical engineering. He was working as a senior product design engineer for Polaroid when he decided to try his hand at rock.
After Boston took off, Tom created his own music technology company, Scholz Research & Development in 1980. In 1995, he sold the company to Dunlop Manufacturing, who continued to produce the company’s most famous product, the Rockman guitar amp. The amp was designed by Sholz himself and still is manufactured with his signature on each unit.
The lead singer and co-founder of the Offspring, Dexter Holland graduated as valedictorian of his high school before he moved on to college. He then moved on to USC where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in biology and Master’s degree in molecular biology. When the Offspring took off, he actually left his doctoral program in Molecular Biology at USC in order to focus on the band. Unrelated, but also interesting, Holland is also a licensed pilot and hot sauce entrepreneur. His hot sauce, Gringo Bandito, has even been picked up by Albertsons.
Dexter isn’t the only smart guy who’s played in the band though. James Lilja played drums with the band for a few years before returning to his medical calling – in gynecology. If you thought it was strange to have a punk rock professor in LA, just imagine visiting a rock star gynecologist in San Jose.
Sources #1, #2, Image of Dexter Via Jack Shepler, Rock Music Review [Flickr]
After leaving Iron Butterfly, bassist Philip Taylor Kramer obtained a degree in aerospace engineering. He then began working on the MX missile guidance system for a US Department of Defense contractor. After that, he began working on facial recognition systems, advanced communications and fractal compression systems for CDs. In 1990, he opened a business, Total Multimedia, with Micheal Jackson’s brother, Randy, where they specialized on data compression techniques for CDs. Kramer also worked on a project started by his father that would discredit Einstein’s theories. Part of his research involved a transmission project that could result in communications that went faster than the speed of light.
His disappearance in 1995 sent conspiracy theorists aflutter and remained a complete mystery for four years. It started when he drove to the LA airport to pick up an investor who never showed up. Kramer then made a number of phone calls from his cell phone, including one to the police where he said, “I’m going to kill myself. And I want everyone to know O.J. Simpson is innocent. They did it.” He was never heard from after this and the mystery ended up appearing on Oprah, America’s Most Wanted, Unsolved Mysteries and a Skeptic magazine article depicted the number of conspiracy theories surrounding his disappearance.
His body was finally uncovered in 1999, when photographers looking to shoot old car wrecks at the bottom of Decker Canyon in Malibu discovered his minivan with his remains inside. The death was officially ruled a suicide based on his phone calls made that day, but conspiracy theories still rage on.
The guitarist for such classic bands as Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers is also a self-taught expert on weaponry systems. After a lengthy studying period at home, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter decided to demonstrate his knowledge on the subject by writing a five-page paper that proposed the ship-based anti-aircraft Aegis missile be converted into a missile defense system. After he gave the paper to California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Baxter’s career as a defense consultant began.
In 1995, he was elected chairman of the Civilian Advisory Board for Ballistic Missile Defense, a position he still holds. Through work with that project, he was awarded consulting contracts with the Missile Defense Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, Science Applications International Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. He has also joined the NASA Exploration Systems Advisory Committee.
Baxter believes his unique way of looking at terrorism is what has allowed him to do so well in the industry, “We thought turntables were for playing records until rappers began to use them as instruments, and we thought airplanes were for carrying passengers until terrorists realized they could be used as missiles. My big thing is to look at existing technologies and try to see other ways they can be used, which happens in music all the time and happens to be what terrorists are incredibly good at.” Next time you’re wondering if the country is doing everything it can to keep you safe, remember that someone nicknamed “Skunk” is on top of it. It may not help comfort you, but at least you might giggle about it.
Source Image Via NASA (yes, that NASA)
-Lionel Richie has a degree in economics from Tuskegee.
-Art Garfunkel has a Masters from Columbia in both history and math.
-Tracy Chapman has degrees in anthropology and African studies from Tufts University, where she was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts.
-Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave has a degree in social studies from Harvard. After leaving the music world, he settled down and began teaching history.
Dogs will occasionally follow children home, especially when the child encourages it. In this case, the dog bonded to Suryia the orangutan and the facility is now stuck with Roscoe. This cute clip is from the National Geographic show Unlikely Friends. -via Huffington Post
“Hey There Cthulhu” is a love song by the The Eben Brooks Brand, from their 2007 album Karaoke Bash Vol. 3. It is about a man expressing his tender love for the Dark One and his yearning for annihilation.
“I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog-Sothoth” is a take on the classic Christmas song “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and is presented by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. It’s from their album A Very Scary Solstice. On that same album you can find “Oh Cthulhu“, which is a take on the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah”, sung by the Dagon Tabernacle Choir.
Via The Corner
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