omnibrain | December 16, 2006So while I was looking around for some pictures I ran across some pretty cool replicas of brain horror movie posters. You can find them here under science fiction.
omnibrain | December 16, 2006
A number of people have noticed that after getting transplants their personality changes - and not only that- their personality changes to reflect the donors personality.
...though she was born and raised in Tucson, she never liked Mexican food. She craved Italian and was a pasta junkie. But three years ago, all that changed for Jaime Sherman, 28, when she underwent a heart transplant at University Medical Center, after battling a heart defect since birth. "Now I love football, baseball, basketball. You name it, I follow it," said Sherman, a psychology student at Arizona State University. "…
omnibrain | December 15, 2006Are you kidding me?
A study of 100,000 drivers finds that the month you were born is far more significant than your age in predicting car crashes.
The study, based on North American driving statistics as gathered by an online insurance quoting service, ranks the likelihood of getting involved in an accident or receiving a traffic ticket -- and both -- based on an individual's astrological sign.
Are you worried about your risks of getting in an accident? You should be if you are a Libra since they seem to crash the most!
Can you think of any reason for these results?
Here's the full list of…
omnibrain | December 15, 2006Ok ok... so nothing to do with brains, much less science, but here's a great video.
I don't know what this says about my sense of humor but I love these guys.
p.s. I found the video here
omnibrain | December 15, 2006It seems warning labels might be popping up in a few more places - one of which is on the inside of clothing for larger people? I wonder if they're going to put pictures on the label? I can't see a warning label doing much good there.
Check out their other recommendations:
Clothes made in larger sizes should carry a tag with an obesity helpline number, health specialists have suggested. Sweets and snacks should not be permitted near checkouts, new roads should not be built unless they include cycle lanes and food likely to make people fat should be taxed, they say in a checklist of what we…
omnibrain | December 15, 2006There is a funny yet interesting article over at Discover magazine about the positioning of the testicles and why they aren't protected a wee bit more.
Here's a little sampler:
The site of human testicles seems a bizarre anomaly from an evolutionary point of view, like positioning the driver of an armored vehicle in a sack strapped to the bumper. If the whole point of the human organism is to pass on genes, why put the repository of those precious genes out front, in harm's way? Why not protect them the way the brain and the heart are protected, with thick bone vaults and, in the brain's case…
omnibrain | December 14, 2006The mind is the most amazing, lying, cheating, charlatan televangelist ever imagined. It is so good at its job though that one 'part' of the mind can construct a completely false reality and then convince other parts that what it has just constructed is the absolute truth. Not only do other parts of the mind believe this information, they make up extra-information just to justify the original reality constructed. The most important questions though are: Why in the world does the mind have to be such a great con artist? And how does it accomplish this?
In a more formal sense, When a world…
omnibrain | December 14, 2006Very very strange- this was so out of the ordinary I felt the need to post it here :)
The world's tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards.
Mongolian herdsman Bao Xishun was called in after the dolphins swallowed plastic used around their pool at an aquarium in Fushun, north-east China.
Attempts to use instruments failed as the dolphins contracted their stomachs.
Guinness World Records list Mr Bao, 54, as the world's tallest living man at 2.36m (7ft 8.95in).
Here's the original story
Thanks for the heads up…
omnibrain | December 13, 2006
Psychology as a science is very new and has had roughly less than 150 years to fill up the shelves of libraries with results. A good number of those shelves have to be filled with wacky ridiculous experiments of all sorts - from Harlow's monkey mother studies to Dan Simons' Inattentional blindness studies (the gorilla walking across the room experiments). So my question to everyone is...
What is the most ridiculous, wacky, or fun study you've ever run into?
omnibrain | December 12, 2006Everyone deserves equal rights under the law right?!
They take this very seriously in Texas, so seriously in fact that a
Texas lawmaker is aiming to allow the blind to hunt. Texas State Representative Edmund Kuempel has introduced a measure that would allow blind people to hunt any game that sighted people can currently pursue.
Thank goodness for Edmund Kuempel and blind justice! (ohhh jeez....)
My friends blind mother has skied and driven motorcycles, which really surprised me - but hunting?
Well if they can be safe - what the hell!
-via slashdot... but here's the original story link
omnibrain | December 12, 2006
I was reading this great post from Shrink Rap about sex with fish:
Being close to our nation's capitol we also sometimes get folks with politician-related delusions. They get arrested while traveling to Washington to confront the "devil-worshipers" controlling the government, or to get in touch with their "relatives" who happen to live in the White House. (Bush and Clinton would be surprised to learn how many patients they've fathered.) Presidential threateners are rare, but do show up occasionally. I understand the Secret Service even has a team that functions as something of an assertive…
omnibrain | December 12, 2006Lonely at dinner?
Give this new product from a Dutch art company a try, it includes a DVD which "will allow a lonesome dinner to become one full of holiday fun and good cheer with dinner companions eating, drinking, and engaging in conversation.
The DVD will feature actors reading out different scripts in other for people to pick out which type of people they would want best."
-via engadget and some other news site
Of course there isn't a video to help you to not feel like an idiot after having a made up conversation with a TV screen.
omnibrain | December 11, 2006Hmm... I know plenty of funny women.... so don't whine to me ;)
"What makes the female so much deadlier than the male? With assists from Fran Lebowitz, Nora Ephron, and a recent Stanford-medical-school study, the author investigates the reasons for the humor gap."
The article also goes on to say how men are more stupid than women...
And this...
If I am correct about this, which I am, then the explanation for the superior funniness of men is much the same as for the inferior funniness of women. Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and…
omnibrain | December 11, 2006For some reason this research sounds like it was done by that short criminal guy from the Princess Bride (you know... the one who gets poisoned?)
Check out this quote from one of the Authors:
"This required a particularly nasty experiment, in which we inoculated colonies with the most virulent disease of honeybees that is known, the dreaded American foulbrood disease," said Seeley.
See the reason for the experiment below the fold...
The reason for the experiment is actually pretty funny in itself. It seems that queen bees can be quite promiscuous - they go out looking for sperm from many…
omnibrain | December 10, 2006Ahh... condoms :) It seems like they've gotten much more protective .... and perhaps a little less - scratchy.
1000 BC
Condom use can be traced back several thousand years. It is known that around 1000 BC the ancient Egyptians used a linen sheath for protection against disease.
100 - 200 AD
The earliest evidence of condom use in Europe comes from scenes in cave paintings at Combarelles in France. There is also some evidence that some form of condom was used in imperial Rome.
1500's
The syphilis epidemic that spread across Europe gave rise to the first published account of the condom.…
omnibrain | December 10, 2006Well since the last ask a science blogger question was something about funny things happening in the lab, I figured I'd post this video off of collegehumor.com (that site where girls write their college name on their breasts for whatever reason)
hmm.. for whatever reason the video doesn't show itself (at least to me), so click on that white void above this text for the video to load.
omnibrain | December 8, 2006You need to get over to eBay and bid on this guy's brain before eBay takes it down ;)
Since I guess it's against their terms of service to sell body parts..haha..
I really want to get a brain in a jar! Where does one go about legally getting one?
Here's the description of the brain for sale:
Near mint condition fully working Creative mind for hire. This Scouse/Argentinian mind comes with both left brain and right brain thinking, making it extremely versatile. At 25 years of age and with 2 years experience, this mind is no stranger to conceptual thinking, after brief stints at: BBH, TBWA,…
omnibrain | December 8, 2006
Meet Bill,
He was born prosopagnosic and he has an online "book" all about his condition.
I haven't had a chance to read much of it but it seems pretty interesting.
I was born with a condition that makes it difficult for me to recognize faces. There is a small part of the brain that is dedicated to that job, and though it is small, when it comes to recognizing faces, it is very very good. In me, that part doesn't work, making me blind to all but the most familiar of faces. To help you understand this, let me compare it to two conditions you are probably more familiar with.
People who are "…
omnibrain | December 7, 2006What would you talk about with an astronaut at the pub? (assuming you've had a few to many).
Some of us New Scientist staffers were idly wondering about the universe in the pub last night - arguing about the "speed of dark" (as opposed to the speed of light) for reasons I'd rather forget - when into the bar walks space shuttle astronaut Mark Kelly, pilot on shuttle Discovery's July 4 mission to the space station.
I'm jealous...the New Scientist crowd got a chance to do this. The Scienceblogger crowd should get to drink with...hmm... I don't know? What science etc. figure would you want to…