The difference of being human: Morality, Foreign Accents Make Speakers Seem Less Truthful to Listeners, People Initially Overestimate Then Later [...]

Finally, the for reals new stuff

• The difference of being human: Morality


• Foreign Accents Make Speakers Seem Less Truthful to Listeners, Study Finds


• People Initially Overestimate Then Later Underestimate Their Abilities


• Starting at about minute 23 of Episode 27 of the Skeptics with a K podcast is a story about someone with a opening straight into their stomach that never healed over. It's hilarious... but disgusting... but hilarious, and well worth listening to.


• Cosmology with no big bang: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end for background reading go No Big Bang? Endless Universe Made Possible by New Model or Energy Is Not Conserved (Episode 261 of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe)

Kiwi universities slip in world rankings, The ethics of clinical trials for terminally ill cancer patients, 'Magic' process turns kiwifruit into [...]

Now the posts I nautily posted straight to facebook without mirroring here...

• Kiwi universities slip in world rankings (Mel)


• The ethics of clinical trials for terminally ill cancer patients. I particularly found

  I would argue that this is not so big a problem in Phase III clinical trials. These are large randomized studies enrolling significant numbers of patients, in which a new drug is compared with the standard of care. (The reason that new drugs are compared to standard of care rather than placebo in phase III oncology trials is because, under most circumstances, it would be unethical to treat a cancer patient with a placebo.

  interesting. I have heard that the benefit of some surgeries may be due to placebo and I had wondered how medical trials got around this, as the person who was being interviewed said that giving someone sham surgery was unethical.


• 'Magic' process turns kiwifruit into gold (Marcel)


• The Small Schools Myth (James)


• God did not create the universe, says Hawking (Sam)


• Mass Extinctions Change the Rules of Evolution


• Johann Hari: Violence breeds violence. The only thing drug gangs fear is legalisation (The Chard)


• Has Wheat Peaked?


• Origins of the tree of life


• 'Zombie ants' controlled by a parasitic fungus for 48m years (Sagar)


• "Lost" Language Found on Back of 400-Year-Old Letter (Morbit)


• DNA seen through the eyes of a coder (Hamish)


• Arrow's impossibility theorem (Danny)


• Ultraviolet light reveals how ancient Greek statues really looked (Sequoia)


• Complicated Mechanisms Explained in simple animations (Morbid)


• College students with tattoos and piercings: motives, family experiences, personality factors, and perception by others. (Sequoia)


• 1978 Cryptosystem Resists Quantum Attack


• http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10666599">'Mars and Venus' obstacle to education, writer says


• Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures

There were probably others, but I couldn't be bothered going further back.

Software unpatentable, $5 to overthrow the government, free range more toxic, mimicing cats, sapir-whorf evidence, cognitive biases vs gender,[...]

It's been so long. Much catch up to be done... I'll start with the post with the stories that I had started editing in July but never completed.

First something close to my heart. Courtesy of Hamish it turns out that a law was been passed in New Zealand that makes software unpatentable. Also in politics, from the Chard, South Carolina proposed a law allowing anyone wishing to overthrow the US government to register and pay a $5 fee.

From episode 258 of the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe's 'Science or Fiction' segment it turns out of the arguments for free range, that free range eggs contain more toxins than regular ones. At least according to the this study from Taiwan. Although I've never heard the argument made myself I don't find it all that surprising that someone might be making it.

A number of links from Sequoia, of course. First the Wildlife Conservation Society and Federal University of the Amazonas have found a wild cat species mimicing the call of its prey (in this case a monkey). An article about how language influences the way we think (incidentally the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is my favourite lingustics hypothesis, and not only because it reminds me of Worf).

An paper that asks if your part time jobs women out earn men. They seemed not to control for the types of jobs but if put together with arguments like Warren Farrell's on the Wage Gap it's a promising sign that society may be more equal than is easily recognisable.

Researchers inplanted false symptoms. Worth reading. Finally, in what will hopefully be an IgNobel nominee growing clothing using bacteria.

From Lynsey it seems that after Hussein's draining of the Mesopotamiam marshes they are starting to recover and finaly from Nick a study that violent videogames reduce hostility.