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NPR is trying to create a list of the best 100 science fiction books. Their audience suggested thousands of titles, which they narrowed to only several hundred, on which you are invited to vote.
Scrolling through the list of great science fiction and fantasy reads below will feel like a journey back in time for some of us, a voyage of discovery for others. But novice or veteran, everyone loves a contest. So, let the voting begin!
Here’s how: Everyone gets 10 votes. Select your top 10 favorite titles, and then scroll down to the bottom of the poll and click “Submit.” Feel free to lobby for your favorites in the comments. We’ll be back in about 10 days with the results.
Even deciding on just ten will be difficult! Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Chris Silas Neal)
Ah, the 19th century, when men wore their manliness right on their faces -or maybe they were just afraid of the barber. Luckily, cameras were around during the US Civil War so that we may still admire the mustaches, beards, muttonchops, goatees, and sideburns of brave battlefield soldiers. Smithsonian presents 24 of these faces, and asks you to vote for the best. Ambrose Burnside actually had a style named after him. John McAllister Schofield made up for being bald on top with a foot-long beard. And I believe Alpheus Williams could hurt someone with his waxed whiskers. Pick your favorite! Link
What is your biggest regret about? A study by Kellogg professor of marketing Neal Roese plotted the results from a telephone survey of 370 American adults and graphed them for our edification. The link has further information on the study besides what’s in this graph. Link -via The Daily What
A poll of 238 presidential experts at the Siena Research Institute has ranked the USA’s presidents. This is the fifth time they have published such a list; the last one was in 2002. For the first time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt came in at number one. The top five are:
1. Franklin D. Roosevelt
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Abraham Lincoln
4. George Washington
5. Thomas Jefferson
President Obama ranks #15. You can see the complete rankings in .pdf form. Link -via J-Walk Blog
I don't particularly like fake acrylic nails, but I can certainly admire the amount of work that goes into making these Kawaii Nails - the latest in Japanese (who else?) nail art.
Take a look: Link - Thanks Tiffany!
Now, I'm curious: Do you find fanciful (yet fake) nails attractive? Let's take a poll:
I know from experience with this blog that redesigns are fraught with uncertainties - new things may break, people fear change and get attached to a particular style, and so on - so I'm watching the Google redesign with particular interest.
Google is rolling out a new look (you may or may not yet see the new design) that's sleeker and, well, different. It's actually their 8th iteration - though previous changes had been subtle that most users didn't even notice. Not this one, though. Marissa Mayer, VP of Search calls it "particularly large and particularly important."
Helen Walters of Bloomberg BusinessWeek has the inside scoop of the redesign process:
Google has long had advanced search capabilities, but they were difficult to find. The goal of redesign eight was to surface them and integrate them into the main results page. Users now get results with an extra column of tools to drill deeper into information. That means a query can be quickly refined to show only results from shopping sites, say, or just videos on a topic, or the latest news results. Add in a new logo and a splash of colorful icons on the left side of the page that guide users through the new options, and the look is noticeably different (right).
Given that the shift of a few pixels can affect Google's profits, why would the company ever mess with the most successful product in the history of the Internet? "The Web is always changing, evolving, and innovating," says Mayer. "It's important even for sites that people use every day and are very familiar with, like Google, to update their look."
Now, without going further into the functionalities of the new Google, let me ask you a simple question:
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Neat Facts About Google
A recent New York Times/CBS News poll about the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy asked the same question in two different ways and got significantly different answers.
The results highlight the importance of wording on the issue. In a test, half of the poll’s respondents were asked their opinion on permitting “gay men and lesbians” to serve, and the other half were asked about permitting “homosexuals” to serve.
The wording of the question proved to make a difference. Seven in 10 respondents said they favor allowing “gay men and lesbians” to serve in the military, including nearly 6 in 10 who said they should be allowed to serve openly. But support was somewhat lower among those who were asked about allowing “homosexuals” to serve, with 59 percent in favor, including 44 percent who support allowing them to serve openly.
The poll was taken by telephone and included responses from 1,084 adults. Link -via Fark
(image credit: Flickr user splorp)
Here’s a study that will surely pour more gasoline into the debate of dog vs cat: turns out that cat owners are more likely to have college degrees than dog owners.
A poll of 2,524 households found that 47.2% of those with a cat had at least one person educated to degree level, compared with 38.4% of homes with dogs.
The study said longer hours, possibly associated with better qualified jobs, may make owning a dog impractical.
Believe what you will, but the study authors made one big error: cats don’t have owners. They have staff
Astronomers are identifying more and more exoplanets, planets that exist in other star systems besides ours. Of the hundreds of exoplanets we know of, the one that most resembles earth is called GJ 1214b. It can be studied because it is only 42 light years away.
Based on its radius and mass — about 2.7 and 6.6 times that of Earth’s — Charbonneau and the other astronomers have calculated GJ 1214b’s density. It appears to be composed of extraordinarily deep oceans, surrounding a rocky core.
The planet’s atmosphere and precise composition remain a mystery, but it’s likely composed of many of the same elements found elsewhere at sites of planetary formation, in swirling disks of dust and gas that have yet to accrete: hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, magnesium, oxygen, carbon.
That list of ingredients raises at least the possibility of life. With an estimated temperature of 370 degrees Fahrenheit, GJ 1214b is an unlikely incubator (Earth’s toughest extremophile, a microbe that lives in deep-sea volcanic vents, maxes out at 284 degrees) but it’s not impossible.
The folks at Wired believe that GJ 1214b deserves a better name, and is taking suggestions and votes for a new name. Of course, Stephen Colbert is high on the list. I voted for Sagan. Link to story. Link to poll. -via Metafilter
The scintillating smell of yummy, oh-so-delicious bacon or the faint smell of throw-up? Well, duh! No wonder we prefer the smell of bacon to newborn baby, according to a survey of thousands of Brits by OnePoll:
TOP 20 SMELLS WHICH MAKE BRITS HAPPY
1. Freshly baked bread
2. Clean sheets
3. Freshly mown grass
4. Fresh flowers
5. Freshly ground coffee
6. Fresh air after rain fall
7. Vanilla
8. Chocolate
9. Fish and chips
10. Bacon frying
11. Roast dinner
12. Babies
13. Lemon zest
14. Lavender
15. Petrol
16. Apple and blackberry crumble in the oven
17. A freshly lit match
18. Roses
19. Party poppers
20. Rubber tyres
Freshly lit match? Petrol? Rubber tires? What's up with that?! Link
A recent poll asked Americans what the most annoying phrase they’ve heard is, and 47% of respondents answered “whatever”. It is believed that this is the actual phrase they found annoying, and not just a dismissive response to the question.
Other candidates for most irritating phrases: “you know” netted 25 percent of the vote; “it is what it is” got 11 percent; “anyway” got 7 percent; and “at the end of the day” ended the day with 2 percent.
Some geographic tendencies also emerged. “Whatever,” for example, is more loathed in the Midwest – where it annoys 55 percent of respondents – than it is in the Northeast, where it bothers 35 percent.
Link -via Simply Left Behind
(image credit: Flickr user Shiny Things)
The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development released a new study ranking the world’s nations by the happiness levels of their citizens. According to the published results, northern Europeans are the happiest people in the world. The top ten are:
1. Denmark
2. Finland
3. The Netherlands
4. Sweden
5. Ireland
6. Canada
7. Switzerland
8. New Zealand
9. Norway
10. Belgium
The US ranked above average. Link to article. Link to slideshow. -via the Presurfer
(image credit: Eddie Gerald/Alamy)
TIME magazine has announced the winner of their World’s Most Influential Person poll.
In a stunning result, the winner of the third annual TIME 100 poll, and new owner of the title world’s most influential person, is Moot. The 21-year-old college student and founder of the online community 4chan.org, whose real name is Christopher Poole, received 16,794,368 votes and an average influence rating of 90 (out of a possible 100) to handily beat the likes of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Oprah Winfrey. To put the magnitude of the upset in perspective, it’s worth noting that everyone Moot beat out actually has a job.
I’m a night owl, and I couldn’t tell you how many times I was told that I could be much more productive if only I switched my sleeping pattern to match that of early risers (I tried, by the way, and all I got was being tired all day long).
Thanks to science, night owls now have the perfect retort to the productivity myth: it turns out that they can actually work longer and focus more than early birds!
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor the brain activity of early birds and night owls who spent two consecutive nights in a sleep laboratory and periodically performed a task that required sustained attention.
The results, reported in the journal Science, suggest that night owls generally outlast early birds in the length of time they can be awake before becoming mentally fatigued.
After 10 hours of being awake, the early birds showed reduced activity in brain areas linked to attention, compared to the night owls. They also felt sleepier and tended to perform more slowly on the task.
On a related note, I’m curious:
[poll=11]
