Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I have dug through the Internet this week and uncovered all this science/pop culture goodness. You can find the hundreds of links from previous weeks here.

I have marked the best links with a ∞. Enjoy.

Must Read

∞ Wow. Make sure to read this before week’s end: Your Daughter Died

∞ True memories fade and lies darken. What memory science can tell us about “repressed” memories, viral photos, and more

∞ Nate Silver confuses skepticism and pseudo-skepticism with respect to climate change in his new book–by Michael E Mann

Guess how deep a meteor will penetrate the ground, I’ll bet you guess wrong | Deep Impact: Newtonian Edition

Must Watch

Dotted lines are hard to draw as it is without doing them at light speed

Torturing gummy bears, with chemistry!

C’mon, you wanted to know…The science of “morning wood”

∞ How Many Photographs Have Been Taken?

∞ Good afternoon, do you have 30 minutes to do away with free will? At the risk of “psychological destabilization”

“If Yuri Geller bends spoons with divine powers…he’s doing it the hard way.” Learn to bend spoons!

Required knowledge for anyone interested in psychology: What is the Prisoner’s Dilemma?

[Another] 10 Bets You Will Not Lose

∞ I couldn’t care less that this is a RedBull commercial. Best Rube Goldberg machine. Human power FTW

Science

∞ Huh. Nearly everyone survives a plane crash. I did not know that.

Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

New carnivorous “Harp Sponge” is pretty, has sperm balls aplenty

The Leidenfrost Effect makes water travel uphill, which is pretty cool

I just hurled a meteor made of iron the size of London at the Earth to see what would happen. You can too

∞ “We have found no mental health consequences of abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term…”

Abstract: Children form stereotypes about people based on northern and southern accents

I tend to agree with this important distinction: Children Are Not “Natural” Scientists

∞ Look at this GIF of tadpoles wriggling around in their dad’s mouth. LOOK AT IT

Misleading to call today’s crazy weather the “new normal.” There IS no more normal, no more steady state — only accelerating change.

Everyone loves a good infographic: Your Brain By the Numbers | Scientific American

∞ Finally someone explains the Saturn 5 rocket blueprints in a way I can understand | XKCD

Anthropogenic evolution: Grasshoppers evolve a sound that allows them to be heard over traffic

Why do those cool frogs with transparent bellies have cool transparent bellies?

What is “the pancake syndrome“? Well, it involves you eating bugs

Way more detail than you wanted in the answer to the question “How Long Would It Take to Fall Through the Earth?“

Interesting: The evolutionary adaptivity of religion

∞ I learn so much from these: What if a 100ft diameter diamond hit the Earth at light speed? | XKCD http://t.co/1F035yZw

Can we say a Bigfoot video is a hoax if we can’t exactly replicate it? | The “Jackson Pollock Effect” by Daniel Loxton

You’re just sitting there, playing with dive equipment, and then BAM…Death by Cthulhu http://t.co/5llXbCSa

I downloaded this iPhone app because I like to debunk climate science denial on the go. You should too

See Jesus in toast? Science tells who sees faces in objects. My write up here.

∞ Very interesting: Why Addiction is NOT a Brain Disease

Sweeeeet. Totality!

Eclipse 2012!

Fellow skeptic Bob Blaskiewicz makes it onto BoingBoing exposing the quackery of Stanislaw Burzynski’s cancer cure scam

New transitional fossil points to makos->great whites and not megalodon->great white. Evolution!

A bit more nuance on Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule

Sam Harris with a characteristically sober analysis of the recent “Heaven is Real” claim

Some good tips on sorting through the Internet’s information cesspit from Brian Dunning

∞ Good read, great message | The Key to Science (and Life) Is Being Wrong

Pop Culture

The real political map of the 2012 election makes us look a lot more nuanced than “Red/Blue State”

Watch Mitt Romney’s Facebook Likes Decrease in Real Time

Impressed by Nate Silver last week and want to buy his book? A review from mathematics professor John Allen Paulos

It turns out that most polls this election cycles had a Republican bias. Ah, the “oversampling Democrats” bubble bursts

Funny/Cool/Interesting

∞ The best thing you will see today: GIFs of every single MRI slice of your brain

∞ The best thing you will read today: Some thoughts on being an Internet content creator from The Oatmeal

When you’re right, you’re right: “Crazily extreme fast pianist“

Awesome. Artist 3D prints his skull, takes it to forensic expert for facial reconstruction for a “self-portrait“

The astronomy photo of the day today is *gorgeous*

A scale that maps facial hair and trustworthiness

Beautiful GIF of the whole body. Not MRI, it’s sliced human.

I challenge you not to SQUEE at this nano-octopus

2 possibilities after watching this video: 1. You are amazed by animatronics 2. You are totally freaked out by animatronics

∞ The real story of the abandoned island in Skyfall is fascinating. What an eerie testament to rapid industrialization

Could you capture the original Star Wars trilogy in 3 GIFs?

∞ Is this the greatest letter of all time? YES

If you haven’t seen James Randi’s firery TED talk on pseudoscience, there’s no time like the present

How long would it take for Lake Superior’s water to drain out? Hint: You’d die long before you see the last drop [Audio]

XKCD harnesses spider power

McKayla Maroney: “Did I just do the “Not Impressed face” with the President..?”

Fun pareidolia: Evil plotting boxes…..

You’d imagine that the snake with the largest fangs has a pretty scary skull. You’d be right

That explains his hair… Einstein: “Science, it’s one helluva drug“

I test out my new hipster exoskeleton

My, how photography has changed [Image]

*Awesome* eye-pariedolia here 

If you haven’t already seen this tumblr, what the hell are you waiting for? Hilarious.

Price of 1 gig of storage over time: 1981 $300,000 1987 $50,000 1990 $10,000 1994 $1,000 1997 $100 2000 $10 2004 $1 2012 $0.10

Abandon a bike and watch it for 365 days and you’ll see it slowly vanish, the work of piecemeal criminals

Heh. XKCD solves a classic thought experiment with some common sense

Grad school is like this, but also this GIF is *baller*

This Windows95 tumblr is funny as hell, eerily dark

When free will crashes against irrational rage | SMBC