omnibrain | August 7, 2007You've played the game.... now see the movie - Minesweeper!
Funny stuff....
Thanks Davemeister Rozovskiramadamadingdong!
omnibrain | August 7, 2007From Gary O:
Harvard and MIT researchers have finally addressed a question that has long been puzzling mankind: "If you were a New World monkey, would you rather listen to Russian lullabies or German techno?" In the September issue of Cognition, Josh McDermott and Marc Hauser report finding that both cotton-top tamarins and common marmosets clearly prefer the lullabies. A follow-up experiment concludes that the monkeys actually prefer silence over Russian and German lullabies, as well as Mozart.
Of course no primates (including humans) enjoy listening to Gary Yodel. Here's Gary at Big Bend…
omnibrain | August 6, 2007I've put a voting widget in the side bar over there on the left. It will let you vote once a month until the election (I think). So...vote for your favorite candidate and lets see who wins here at Omni Brain!
I promise... we'll keep our voting system just as secure as Diebold! No need to worry, your votes are secure with us!
omnibrain | August 6, 2007It was only a matter of time until someone created a sex toy for dogs.
From the description:
A dog is an animal with an enormous sexual appetite which can't be controlled. Many methods consist in artificial ways to stop dogs inborn caractere. These methods like castration or meds are going against the nature laws.
So... is this a joke?
omnibrain | August 4, 2007...just kidding! It's nearly every month that a new study comes out showing that abstinence only programs don't do shit. This time a study from Oxford shows, through a meta-analysis of 13 different U.S. trials, that
none of the abstinence-only programmes had an impact on the age at which individuals lost their virginity, whether they had unprotected sex, the number of sexual partners, the rates of sexually transmitted diseases or the number of pregnancies.
One trial did show a short-term benefit with participants reporting that they were less likely to have had sex in the month following…
omnibrain | August 1, 2007Ok ok... they do have a sense of humor but... age related cognitive decline has led to many older adults not getting 'the joke'. In a study by Wingyun Mak and Brian Carpenter, Ph.D. , of Washington University they discovered that
Humor comprehension in older adults functions in a different fashion than humor comprehension in younger adults. The researchers studied older adults from a university subject pool as well as undergraduate students. The subjects participated in tests that indicated their ability to complete jokes accurately as well as tests that indicated their cognitive…
omnibrain | July 30, 2007So freaking cool (and freaky)...Via Neatorama and Curious Expeditions.
It is a remarkable bit of irony, that finger. Venerated, kept in reliquary, subjected to the same treatment as a Saint. But this finger belonged to no Saint. It is the long bony finger of an enemy of the church, a heretic. A man so dangerous to the religious institution he was made a prisoner in his own home. It sits in a small glass egg atop an inscribed marble base in the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, or the History of Science Museum in Florence, Italy. On the shelf next to the middle finger of his right hand…
omnibrain | July 30, 2007I discovered this pretty neat blog via boingboing today (at least that's where I think I found it). This illustration seems to show something that is strangely like an fMRI machine... well with fire instead of magnets, bricks instead of plastic, and smoke instead of a computer analyzing brain images...ohh and instead of the brain images it gives direct insight into the semantic content of the brain.
Check out the BibliOdyssey blog for many many more great illustrations.
P.S. Click on the picture for a larger version.
omnibrain | July 29, 2007Here's another interesting book from the "Review copies of books Steve gets in the mail from publication companies, like Prometheus Books, that love bloggers" series If you've read this book please let us know what you think in the comments section.
Todays book is The (Fabulous) Fibonacci Numbers.
Book Description:
The most ubiquitous, and perhaps the most intriguing, number pattern in mathematics is the Fibonacci sequence. In this simple pattern beginning with two ones, each succeeding number is the sum of the two numbers immediately preceding it (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ad infinitum).…
omnibrain | July 29, 2007There's a great Flickr slide show with some brilliant LOL Philosophers right here.
Here's one of my favorites:
And a link to a few LOLScientists was brought to my attention recently. Check them out here.
omnibrain | July 28, 2007Here begins another new series at Omni Brain. This one is called, Review copies of books Steve gets in the mail from publication companies, like Prometheus Books, that love bloggers, Long enough title for you?
I actually don't have time to read anywhere near all of these books so I'm going to give you the Amazon shtick ;) These books really do look interesting and are definitely worth checking out! If you've read them please let us know what you think in the comments section.
Our first book is... Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise Moral Judgments?
Book Description:
In a…
omnibrain | July 27, 2007Since we're talking about panicking about drugs today, complements of Robot Chicken:
omnibrain | July 27, 2007Stop smoking pot immediately! You WILL go CRAZY!!! Panic!
The study by Zammit and colleagues, published in the medical journal the Lancet, reanalyzed data from seven long-term studies on psychotic illnesses and marijuana involving 61,000 participants.
The researchers filtered out about 60 factors, such as preexisting mental illness and the use of other illicit drugs, and considered IQ and social class, to try to isolate the effect of marijuana, Zammit said.
Most of the studies that were analyzed indicated a range of increased risk for frequent users from 50% to 200%, with the average being…
omnibrain | July 23, 2007Ok ok... I'll do it too.....
$4725.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating
Mingle2 - Free Online Dating
omnibrain | July 23, 2007This weeks article is again from the Book Review section of the NYTimes on April 28, 1890. Admittedly, I'm not very familiar with the history of Physiognomy so I am learning about it a little bit today as I post this. It is essentially Phrenology of the face, even more ridiculous and can be used for racist conclusions more readily. From Wikipedia:
Physiognomy (Gk. physis, nature and gnomon, judge, interpreter) is a theory based upon the idea that the study and judgement of a person's outer appearance, primarily the face, may give insights into their character or personality. The term…
omnibrain | July 18, 2007Peter Giancola & Michelle Corman of the University of Kentucky have determined why drunks at the bar get into fights. Here's how they did it and the pretty nifty results:
The scientists tested this idea on a group of young Kentucky men. Some of the men drank three to four screwdrivers before the experiment, while others stayed sober. Then they had them all compete against another person in a somewhat stressful game that required very quick responses. Every time they lost a round, they received a shock varying in intensity. Likewise, when they won a round they gave their opponent a shock…
omnibrain | July 16, 2007Wow... I knew that many animals had herpes and if you want to get a herpes free lab animal it costs many times what a 'normal' herpes carrying animal does. But wow... Chlamydia in Koalas?! Maybe some of you bio people out there can tell us whether it's the same Chlamydia humans carry. So basically If I go to Australia and nail a koala - can I catch it and give it to my sheep?
Here's the exciting details on how Australian scientists are going to protect the koala population from STD's.
Professor Peter Timms, from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said chlamydia was a…