This is soooo coool ....

If only I had maths teachers who could make maths this simple and fun; perhaps I would not have been so frightened to do chemical engineering and be making gobs of moneh.

I ... have no words ...

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Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

But you gotta admit, this is super cool.

Reality check for elementary schoolers ...

Scrooge, much?

*buries my giggles in my facepalm*



Seriously, I would like to think I am just like the last kid. Just keep smiling in the face of misanthropy!

What they never tell you ...

I have always been a bit of a science geek. I did well enough in high school that they pushed me to science stream and I entertained delusions of being an otorhinolaryngologist (ear nose and throat specialist).

Needless to say I'll bet many students have ideas of science as illustrated in the top panel. If they are daft enough (like me) and go into post-graduate research, then they'll discover the truth (as seen in bottom panel).

Thinky thoughts

We grew up bombarded by images; stills and videos, in our media saturated world. I am sure many of us are skeptical about the idea of subliminal messages and how we are manipulated to buy, to believe, to act, by a group of nameless and faceless people driving media corporation.

But how many of us believe that pretty girls cannot do maths? How many of us believe that blondes are hotter than brunettes? How many of us obsess over what a female senior administrator look like rather than how well she can do her job?How many of us believe that women are emotional, conniving jerks? If you ever entertained such thoughts, please watch the video below.



If you have mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, I hope you rethink your stance.

There is hope!

... in the face of freaky people who don't believe in science.

Totally WTF.

Hugh! Hugh! Hugh!

Tonnes of Hugh Laurie and a new-found fear of hospitals coming up once you finish watching this video.

*grin*

Join the revolution!

The green one, m'dear.

(Video under cut for sheer NSFW-ness)

How David ate Goliath

In nature, size sometimes do not matter. It's all about your strategy (bite location, poison etc). In the case of ground beetles, it takes bite location, sheer cussedness to hang on to a wildly bucking prey and poison to fell the stronger and bigger toad.

Don't click on video if you do not want to see nature red in tooth and claw. As in live consumption of prey by said beetle. You have been warned.



Ah, Toad. R.I.P.

Courtesy of New Scientist.

You are what you read?

At least, according to Markus Appel, an associate professor at the Johannes Keppler University of Linz, Austria. He conducted an experiment where the subjects read a really dumb story about a really stupid fellow and then gave them a general knowledge test. It looked like those who read the tale of the idiot did worse at the general knowledge test than those who didn't. It was not known whether the test subjects were daft to begin with.

                                                                             
If that is so, will reading urban fantasy make me into a supernatural monster?

Anyway, who cares what is the capital of Libya?

Saying it ...

... with fans?

Apparently, Georgian flirtation is a lot more subtle than we believe.



Ah, the fickleness of young love ...

(Stolen from Two Nerdy History Girls)

I do NOT have ADD!

(stolen from here)

My fondness for opening multiple tabs in my Firefox browser has NOTHING to do with ADD (attention deficit disorder), thank you very much. Nor my tendency to be working on 4-5 items simultaneously. It's not because of my ferret-like attention span that .... oohh! Sparklies!

... made me jump from subject to subject.

It's just that I have too much brain.

*grin*

That's right. The little grey cells (to quote Msr. Hercule Poirot) of my left superior parietal cortex (the part of the brain that is roughly three finger span behind my left eye) are just too plentiful.

Trust me. Scientists said so.

However, this does not mean that I am any cleverer (hah!). In fact, it actually means that "a greater volume of grey matter may indicate a less mature brain, perhaps reflecting a mild developmental malfunction".

Erk.

How can this be fixed?

Apparently, the team who wrote the paper is working on stimulating the mega-brain area by "placing electrodes on the head to deliver an unnoticeable electrical current to the immediate area".

Unnoticeable electrical current, yeah right. Now pull the other leg.

Time for your electroconvulsive therapy, m'dear.

Hell is other people

Existential angst, Star Wars style. In French, no less.

(Stolen from Two Nerdy History Girls)



Happy 34th birthday, Star Wars!

How do you measure love?

Apparently it is possible to estimate the value of Love using basic algebra of need, perhaps some calculus, maybe a bit of the geometry of innocence, and a lot of wishful thinking.

You start with:

        (Love - 0) / No limit

And other mathematical gobbledygook that I don't understand (since I was this close to flunking Additional Mathematics) ...

Which leads to the conclusion:

1. Love is infinite if X is finite.
2. Love is indefinite if X is zero.
3. Love is infinitely negative if X is negative.
4. Love is imaginary if X is imaginary.

Who says scientists aren't arty?

Don't believe me? Watch this.

Happy Birthday, Carl Linnaeus!

Carolus Linnaeus made pigeon-holing and characterising animals and plants to an elevated science. In honour of his 300th birthday, a group of scientists in Sweden decided to throw a party to celebrate it. It took 3 years to organise (any wedding planner given this kind of time-line would run screaming into the night).

Have a look at the party here. It is super awesome.

Stuff that makes you apoplectic

Apoplexy is a very popular word in historical romances (one of the genres that I devour like a chocoholic inhales Godiva). Some guardian/father/members of nobility/etc will be in an apoplectic fit over the harum scarum adventures of our intrepid hero/heroine. Apoplexy can also mean stroke, which is one of the major causes of death and disability the world over.

Hence, it behooves us to know what can cause stroke and make sure we reduce our risk factor as much as possible. The usual ones are quit smoking, maintain a healthy weight, etc etc, but do you know what are the most common activities that leads to an apoplectic fit?

Drinking coffee. Sex. Being angry.

Straining while on the porcelaine throne (aka straining to shit). Blowing your nose. Shock.

The poor snow leopard could have had a stroke!

Don't believe me? Read it here.

This means that if you want to live longer, don't have sex, eat lots of fibre and keep your mucus to yourself.

OMG! This is severely cool!

The nerd in me is amazed by the amount of work that had gone into this game. If you are interested in how addictive substance of abuse act on the brain or just want to torment some lab mice, go here!

Who is afraid of the Internet?

Beautiful, beautiful animated video that makes you smile, and then think. It may be a little long, but definitely worth clicking.



A lot of people are saying that the uprising in Tunisia and Egypt was largely successful because of the Internet. Connectivity helps to fan the fervour amongst those protesting and garner support to their cause. An Egyptian man even named his daughter Facebook as a tribute to the social networking site.  

But are we naive in thinking that the Internet is so powerful?

The Internet is value neutral; but like a sword, the wielder can both cut and also BE cut. It can be used as a tool by the activists; but by the same coin, the authorities working to stamp out dissidence can also use it to track, identify and contravene the efforts of the activists.

But  as Evgeny Morozov pointed out, when the Internet is primarily used to download bootleg entertainment material (all right, porn, dammit) and to tell/troll your friends of your "noteworthy" activities, the likelihood of the "democratic change" extolled by the cyber-utopians are about as real as the Farmville corn you harvest.