Not only that, but presenting people with facts can entrench them further in their beliefs. People willfully ignore facts that don’t correspond to their opinions. “This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates. They already have beliefs, and a set [...]

Touch is both the first sense to develop and a critical means of information acquisition and environmental manipulation. Physical touch experiences may create an ontological scaffold for the development of intrapersonal and interpersonal conceptual and metaphorical knowledge, as well as a springboard for the application of this knowledge. In six experiments, holding heavy or light [...]

Very good ideas, as well as links to noise cancelling headphones, earplugs and a site that has seat maps of all airlines so you can choose the right seat during online checkin John Graham-Cumming: How to sleep on a long haul flight.

Children who returned hostility with hostility appeared to be the most mature, the researchers found. Boys who stood up to bullies and schoolyard enemies were judged more socially competent by their teachers. Girls who did the same were more popular and more admired by teachers and peers, the researchers found. via Bullying ‘can be good [...]

This guy started stealing at 6 and never looked back. Banks, jewelry, skimming, scamming, he’s done it all. Using high-tech gadgets and doing parachuting in or using air ducts, he got in anywhere. A gripping read of a real life Pink Panther style master thief, who made a few too many mistakes and got caught. [...]

A school that has allowed its pupils to start the day an hour later says it has seen absenteeism decline.At Monkseaton High School, in North Tyneside, 800 pupils aged 13-19 have started lessons at 10am since October.Early results indicates that general absence has dropped by 8% and persistent absenteeism by 27%. via BBC News – [...]

Whether they’re plus sized, normal sized or skinny, women will feel bad about themselves whenever they see a model. There really is no pleasing them! Plus Size Models Don’t Raise Self Esteem | The Frisky.

This article is a general primer on how to get players to continuously play your game, which in the world of the MMPORG is a very important element, using a behavioural model. Gamasutra – Features – Behavioral Game Design. This article is a bit more cynical and compares the above techniques to addiction creation and [...]

This guy will dump your girlfriend or boyfriend for a small fee  by phone. He records the call and then puts it on YouTube for the world to hear. IDUMP4U the website where we do all the dirty work for you!.

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good. I wondered whether these four principles could be [...]

Aside from vegetarians killing more animals than meat eaters (sounds strange? Consider how much random killing a combine harvester does), they are also worse for the environment as they require more arable land and the processing of  the foods creates way more greenhouse gasses. Being vegetarian does more harm to the environment than eating meat [...]

It turns out that it is ok to brag, but only if the subject you are bragging about is brought up by another party in the conversation. BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: How to brag.

BA has implemented a policy whereby children are not allowed to sit next to men they don’t know. Flight attendants patrol the aisles and if they find a strange man they start shouting if he doesn’t want to change places. Not only is it sexist, it’s also extremely rude and embarrasing for the passenger. Mirko [...]

This court is legal and runs entirely through the internet, meaning it’s cheaper, fixed price and can dispense justice a whole lot faster than the regular courts. e-Court – De Eerste Nederlandse Online Rechtbank.

It turns out that you can use Google Earth to find whole civilisations in places that people have always thought could never be inhabited by large groups of people. The City of Z or El Dorado has been found this way, it will take archaologists decades to clear it and view it all. Google Earth [...]

But only if you lightly smack them, and you really should stop smacking them after the age of 6 – 11. Smacked children more successful later in life, study finds – Telegraph.

A female scientist was fed up of hearing comments on the parking abilities of women and found that not only do they take 20 seconds longer on average to park, they’re 5% worse at it than men. Men really ARE better at parking… and that’s a woman professor talking | Mail Online.

Using ECoG (electrocorticography) and overlaying electrodes directly on the surface of the brain, scientists can record reactions when letters are flashed on a screen and then play back the letters when that thought pattern is brought up. It’s around 8 letters per minute, but it’s something. There’s also a piece where they translate thought patterns [...]

It turns out that there is a universal human method for doing insurgency, when it comes down to the number of casualties and the timing of events. This pattern is distinct and is based on an approximate power law. Slashdot Science Story | Insurgent Attacks Follow Mathematical Pattern.

First this story: a guy has been sentenced to probation, where the officer gets to spend the next three years deciding if and who he’s allowed to date Wis. teen will need legal permission to date girls – wtop.com. And then we have this story where US soldiers are threatened with jail time if they [...]

Prof Lajeunesse interviewed 20 heterosexual male university students who consumed pornography, and found on average, they first watched pornography when they were 10 years old. Around 90 per cent of consumption was on the internet, while 10 per cent of material came from video stores. Single men watched pornography for an average of 40 minutes, [...]

After many years, book deals and a ITV series, Belle de Jour reveals her identity, Her name is Dr Brooke Magnanti. Her specialist areas are developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. She has a PhD in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science and is now working at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health. She is [...]

Finally an alternative for the crutch! The freedom leg (crummy name) offloads your weight onto its’ structure allowing you to walk vaguely like a normal human whilst not having to kill off the use of an arm. Freedom Leg In Action.

These guys put some people through some basic trust experiments and it turns out that people who are in a recently windex-ed room behave far more morally and are much less likely to exploit other people. Clean Smells Promote Moral Behavior, Study Suggests.

The Lausanne university in Switserland has moved from the software to the reality: they’ve managed to get robots to evolve and learn behaviours, as well as the behaviour to decieve and cooperate through communication (flashing lights) and movement. It’ s a very interesting experiment, showing that robots are getting smarter every day and are now [...]