Lots o’ linky goodness

Found all over the Intarweb and among various posts on my flist. I’ve had these browser windows open, in some cases, for weeks, and so I’m dumping them all here so as to make a record.

Political humor

Conan O’Brien Hates My Homeland. Funny, work-safe, sometimes painfully true.

Different Meanings of Country Flags. Work-safe, funny, and even more painfully true. Ouch!

Science, Tech, and Medicine

Mechanistic link between stress and the development of Alzheimer’s disease

The physiology and processes of aging

Masters student delivers thesis in her underwear–video game controllers you use by feeling up your partner

Keeping a backup copy of your immune system

Milky Way galaxy is eating a small neighborturns out our sun actually didn’t form in the Milky Way. It originally belonged to a small galaxy called the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, which is being devoured by the Milky Way. New Agers are going crazy about what this means for the “energy field” of the planet. [Edit]: The claim that the sun originated in the galaxy being cannibalized by the Milky Way has been debunked.

And while we’re on the subject, here’s a video of a model of the collision between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, due to commence in a couple billion years. This collision is bad news.

Binary calculator made out of wood and marbles–eat your heart out, Alan Turing!

Miscellaneous

Disturbing Sex Toys–funny, possibly not work safe.

Joined at the Brainstem–really bad relationship advice.

The new fad among hyperconservative, literalist Christians: Christian spanking porn. Work-safe. Would Sir like some domestic abuse with his porn today?

A partial list of common English words invented by William Shakespeare

Mingle2Online Dating

38 thoughts on “Lots o’ linky goodness

        • I don’t see anything wrong with talking about what’s on your mind pretty often, but doing so for the explicitly stated purpose of Becoming One with my True Love is kinda… creepy. Overly enmeshed. Identity-diminishing.

          I like to talk with my sweeties a lot because the way we are different is refreshing. Their insights are useful precisely because I never would have thought of things in just that way.

          I’m for talking to explore & validate differences as well as to increase similarities; and I’m for not-talking occasionally to maintain healthy adult boundaries, not to keep secrets.

          What about you? How do you balance connection & independence?

          • Well, I agree with you. As I explained to tacit below, I just don’t see how on earth this exercise can make anyone “Become One with my True Love”.

            I also agree with you on talking a lot. And well, I don’t really balance anything… I don’t have a plan, I let it flow wherever it wants to. Talking a lot just happens naturally, and the “not-talking occasionally”, well, it has never ocurred to me and I would never force myself into it, I am the kind of person that talks (or types ;P) without thinking* and cannot possibly keep my mouth shut. I always thought that, no matter how much damage saying something can do, not saying things can always do more damage, or a worse kind of damage.

            * I just say what comes to my mind without giving a second thought to it. I know my intention is not to harm, and I trust I can explain (or find out with them) why I thought that to anyone I might unintentionally hurt with my words. Of course I don’t do thins kind of talking with anyone, but very close people. I find that to do this is kind of therapeutic, and helps to get to know people more deeply.
            My boyfriend is so not like this, even if I encourage him to talk withouth thinking 5 times before saying something, and it kind of saddens me. I feel we are missing something nice.

        • I can see where the criticism is coming from; the notion that you and your partner should become the same identity is a little skeevy. I tend to choose partners who are not like me, precisely because that difference is one of the things that adds value to the relationship.

          • I guess I just can’t conceive that anyone would really believe you are gonna lose your personality just by sharing your thoughts honestly. The original idea is really not explained in the article, just a summary of it in one phrase, so we don’t know if what this person assumes is what the original person intended. Which I would find, yeah skeevy, and I am inlcined to think (or say, hope) it was more of a methaphor.

            But anyway. I still don’t see how this exercise can possibly affect a relationship so negatively, or well, maybe it can, but perhaps then it would be for the best. Why does this person think that if you would share those thoughts, in, say ten years relationship, you won’t still learn about each other? And why do I give up my person status by sharing my thoughts? they are still mine. If you want to do this exercise, you do it willingly. That’s basically what doesn’t make any sense to me.

            Maybe that’s just me, but I am very curious about how other people’s brains work, and I love to hear about the random, irrelevant, vague, sometimes interesting thoughts and how we jump from one to the other, because it seems to show it pretty well. I am one of those annoying people that ask “what are you thinking” often. Curiosity just kills me!

  1. Heehee. What does it say about me that the first link I clicked is the disturbing sex toys? Anyway, I have the Hello Kitty vibe. Because, I mean, come ON…how cool is that?

    It’s cool to own, but it sucks as a sex toy. I can’t get off with the thing. Maybe it really is for your shoulders.

  2. Heehee. What does it say about me that the first link I clicked is the disturbing sex toys? Anyway, I have the Hello Kitty vibe. Because, I mean, come ON…how cool is that?

    It’s cool to own, but it sucks as a sex toy. I can’t get off with the thing. Maybe it really is for your shoulders.

  3. I don’t mean to rain on your cliche, but I can’t find anything about the Solar System’s origins in that Virginia Tech article. Am I missing something? And if so, where can I find it?

  4. I don’t mean to rain on your cliche, but I can’t find anything about the Solar System’s origins in that Virginia Tech article. Am I missing something? And if so, where can I find it?

  5. I don’t see anything wrong with talking about what’s on your mind pretty often, but doing so for the explicitly stated purpose of Becoming One with my True Love is kinda… creepy. Overly enmeshed. Identity-diminishing.

    I like to talk with my sweeties a lot because the way we are different is refreshing. Their insights are useful precisely because I never would have thought of things in just that way.

    I’m for talking to explore & validate differences as well as to increase similarities; and I’m for not-talking occasionally to maintain healthy adult boundaries, not to keep secrets.

    What about you? How do you balance connection & independence?

  6. I can see where the criticism is coming from; the notion that you and your partner should become the same identity is a little skeevy. I tend to choose partners who are not like me, precisely because that difference is one of the things that adds value to the relationship.

  7. True. There are several other articles, which I didn’t link to, that assert our sun wasn’t originally a member of the Milky Way, which is why the solar system’s plane isn’t aligned with the plane of the Milky Way, as most stellar formations suggest it should be.

    One page that makes this claim is at

    http://news.softpedia.com/news/Our-Solar-System-Comes-from-Another-Galaxy-58331.shtml

    though apparently that claim has now been debunked:

    http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/

  8. I guess I just can’t conceive that anyone would really believe you are gonna lose your personality just by sharing your thoughts honestly. The original idea is really not explained in the article, just a summary of it in one phrase, so we don’t know if what this person assumes is what the original person intended. Which I would find, yeah skeevy, and I am inlcined to think (or say, hope) it was more of a methaphor.

    But anyway. I still don’t see how this exercise can possibly affect a relationship so negatively, or well, maybe it can, but perhaps then it would be for the best. Why does this person think that if you would share those thoughts, in, say ten years relationship, you won’t still learn about each other? And why do I give up my person status by sharing my thoughts? they are still mine. If you want to do this exercise, you do it willingly. That’s basically what doesn’t make any sense to me.

    Maybe that’s just me, but I am very curious about how other people’s brains work, and I love to hear about the random, irrelevant, vague, sometimes interesting thoughts and how we jump from one to the other, because it seems to show it pretty well. I am one of those annoying people that ask “what are you thinking” often. Curiosity just kills me!

  9. Well, I agree with you. As I explained to tacit below, I just don’t see how on earth this exercise can make anyone “Become One with my True Love”.

    I also agree with you on talking a lot. And well, I don’t really balance anything… I don’t have a plan, I let it flow wherever it wants to. Talking a lot just happens naturally, and the “not-talking occasionally”, well, it has never ocurred to me and I would never force myself into it, I am the kind of person that talks (or types ;P) without thinking* and cannot possibly keep my mouth shut. I always thought that, no matter how much damage saying something can do, not saying things can always do more damage, or a worse kind of damage.

    * I just say what comes to my mind without giving a second thought to it. I know my intention is not to harm, and I trust I can explain (or find out with them) why I thought that to anyone I might unintentionally hurt with my words. Of course I don’t do thins kind of talking with anyone, but very close people. I find that to do this is kind of therapeutic, and helps to get to know people more deeply.
    My boyfriend is so not like this, even if I encourage him to talk withouth thinking 5 times before saying something, and it kind of saddens me. I feel we are missing something nice.

  10. “Falcons never hunt and eat other birds” is a falsifiable prediction. It’s falsifiable in the sense that even a single observation can falsify it.

    One of the strongest tools of science is the idea that the best way to test a hypothesis is to recast it as a negative (null) hypothesis. Scientists tend to construct experiments in a way which can falsify the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is “falcons prey on other birds,” then what they might do is recast the experiment in terms of “falcons don’t prey on birds” and then construct an experiment to falsify THAT hypothesis.

    Whether or not falcons eat other birds is a trivial example; as you’ve said, just a single observation is really all it takes to settle that one. It gets a lot more complicated with more sophisticated hypotheses, particularly hypotheses that can only be tested indirectly.

    For example, many religious people wrongly make the claim that the Big Bang model of the universe’s creation is not falsifiable, because we can neither go back in time and observe the Big Bang nor create new universes in a lab. However, the Big Bang model made many predictions which are falsifiable. One of those predictions is that the net energy per unit volume of space should have been extraordinarily high at the moment of theBig Bang, and should have dropped as the universe expanded. This model made a very definite prediction; namely, that the whole of the visible universe today should be flooded with microwave energy at a precisely defined frequency.

    At the time, this was an extraordinarily risky prediction, as no such background energy had been detected. Sufficiently sensitive radio telescopes to pick it up didn’t exist at the time the prediction was made.

    The falsifiable prediction is “If the universe began as a singularity and has been expanding since, then all of space should be filled with a residual background glow whose frequency is a function of the volume of the observable universe.” Looking for background radiation at that frequency and finding it doesn’t prove the Big Bang, of course–people might come up with other explanations for it–but looking and not finding it would certainly tend to disprove the Big Bang.

    When the measurements were made, the predicted background radiation was discovered, at precisely the energy distribution predicted by the model–one of the most profound and compelling experimental observations in the history of science.

  11. “Falcons never hunt and eat other birds” is a falsifiable prediction. It’s falsifiable in the sense that even a single observation can falsify it.

    One of the strongest tools of science is the idea that the best way to test a hypothesis is to recast it as a negative (null) hypothesis. Scientists tend to construct experiments in a way which can falsify the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is “falcons prey on other birds,” then what they might do is recast the experiment in terms of “falcons don’t prey on birds” and then construct an experiment to falsify THAT hypothesis.

    Whether or not falcons eat other birds is a trivial example; as you’ve said, just a single observation is really all it takes to settle that one. It gets a lot more complicated with more sophisticated hypotheses, particularly hypotheses that can only be tested indirectly.

    For example, many religious people wrongly make the claim that the Big Bang model of the universe’s creation is not falsifiable, because we can neither go back in time and observe the Big Bang nor create new universes in a lab. However, the Big Bang model made many predictions which are falsifiable. One of those predictions is that the net energy per unit volume of space should have been extraordinarily high at the moment of theBig Bang, and should have dropped as the universe expanded. This model made a very definite prediction; namely, that the whole of the visible universe today should be flooded with microwave energy at a precisely defined frequency.

    At the time, this was an extraordinarily risky prediction, as no such background energy had been detected. Sufficiently sensitive radio telescopes to pick it up didn’t exist at the time the prediction was made.

    The falsifiable prediction is “If the universe began as a singularity and has been expanding since, then all of space should be filled with a residual background glow whose frequency is a function of the volume of the observable universe.” Looking for background radiation at that frequency and finding it doesn’t prove the Big Bang, of course–people might come up with other explanations for it–but looking and not finding it would certainly tend to disprove the Big Bang.

    When the measurements were made, the predicted background radiation was discovered, at precisely the energy distribution predicted by the model–one of the most profound and compelling experimental observations in the history of science.

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