Category: Uncategorized

Facial neurons

Neurons programmed to fire at specific faces may have more effect on conscious recognition of faces than the images themselves. Subjects presented with a blended face, such as an amalgamation of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, had significantly more firing of such face-specific neurons when they recognized the blended or morphed face as 1 person or the other.

Some neurons in the region of the brain known as the medial temporal lobe are observed to be extremely selective in the stimuli they respond to. A cell may only fire in response to different pictures of a particular person who is very familiar to the subject (such as loved one or a celebrity, as in the famous “Jennifer Aniston neuron“), the person’s written or spoken name, or recalling the person from memory.

Peak Flying

In 2008, Singapore Airlines introduced their Suites Class, the most luxurious class of flying that is commercially available. The Suites were exclusive to their flagship Airbus A380, and they go beyond flat beds by offering enclosed private cabins with sliding doors that cocoon you in your own little lap of luxury. The interior was designed by French luxury yacht designer Jean-Jacques Coste and comes along with a plush soft leather armchair hand-stitched by the Italian master craftsmen Poltrona Frau. Perhaps most well-known of all, Singapore Airlines became the first and only commercial airline with a double bed in the sky.

Robots for tastier thai food

The government-financed Thai Delicious Committee will unveil its project to standardize the art of Thai food — with a robot. On a visit to New York she noticed the sanitation inspection system in which letter grades are pasted on restaurant windows, and wondered whether Thailand could develop a similar system to shame Thai restaurants into making tastier food.

yes please. death to gloppy, sugary “thai”.

The 172 decibel sound

On 27 August 1883, the island of Krakatoa let out a noise louder than any made on Earth since. It was heard 4800km away in the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius (“coming from the eastward, like the distant roar of heavy guns.”) Think, for a moment, just how crazy this is. What we’re talking about here is like being in Boston and clearly hearing a noise coming from Dublin, Ireland.

Poverty is fractal

53% of children in the central region of Burkina Faso finish primary school compared with 8% of children in the most remote Sahel region; that’s a gap of 45%. And the worst-off are from the minority Tuareg ethnic group, where only 3% finish primary school. If governments want to improve education and get all children into school, they have to understand the pattern of inequalities that underlie the national figures. Otherwise, they can’t make effective use of resources, public education campaigns, political attention or anything else. The mainstream narrative – about the runaway incomes of the richest people in the richest countries, the absurdities of boardroom pay and tax avoidance and so on – might prick our sense of fairness, but it has only a limited amount to offer the analysis and treatment of extreme poverty. The second, lesser known, inequality story is about the things that keep people poor. This story offers fertile ground for the coalitions and policy agendas that can actually address both poverty and inequality.

Red Mars

the odds of this not sucking are very high. maybe we could get an establishing shot of

Vince Gerardis is moving from Westeros to Mars. The “Game of Thrones” co-executive producer is teaming with Spike TV to develop the scifi series “Red Mars,” an adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy novels.