Policy & Politics
omnibrain | December 6, 2010Or is it a 'Holiday' miracle now? Anyway...
Finally, Congress passes a piece of legislation that citizens on both the right and left side of the political spectrum can get behind. Late yesterday, Congress approved the CALM (Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation) Act, which "requires TV advertisers to ensure their ads don't play at a volume louder than regular TV programming." The new bill requires ad makers to use "industry technology" to prevent the volume annoyance from occurring.
I CAN NOT WAIT!
Oh and Obama better pass it. I'll be very upset if he doesn't.
omnibrain | December 23, 2007Why Duck and Cover of course! Check out this great video from the cold war:
omnibrain | December 10, 2007After all, nearly every aspect of our continued existence relies on science, from climate control, to curing existing diseases and preventing new ones. New advances rely on a great deal of funding from the federal government and support from the public at large. Why is it that at best science is an ignored industry when candidates are running for office? The only time science is brought up is in reaction to public religious pressure (stem cell debate) or corporate pressure (global warming).
Maybe Al Gore screwed us! He was one of the only candidates ever to talk openly about and support…
omnibrain | November 14, 2007David Ng from The World's Fair has decided to start another meme.... Here's the lowdown:
Anyway, this meme asks that you come up with your own scientific eponym. What's that exactly? Well, first read this excellent primer by Samuel Arbesman, which basically provides a step by step description of how to do this effectively. Then have a go at your own blog. If all goes well, I'd like to create a page at the Science Creative Quarterly, that collects (and links to) the good ones.
So onto the Higgins-Levinthal Dictum:
Also known as "the why fat smoking republicans are responsible for 9/11 number…
omnibrain | November 13, 2007If you're a regular reader of this blog I'm sure you've realized by now that we never post on global warming. It's not because we don't care.. we do! I promise. It's just that I really don't know anything about the debate at all. Someone could tell me that we had an ice age 29 years ago and I would believe them (well maybe not believe them - but I couldn't refute their argument). I tend to support my fellow bloggers here at Sb's against the global warming denialists but that isn't because I know anything - I just trust their judgment. So when I saw a special report from BBC about the top…
omnibrain | November 13, 2007Just about every election cycle and Superbowl Marco Iacoboni and his lab do some sort of neuroimaging study to determine what people are actually thinking about the political candidates or their teams. Every time these studies come out you can hear the popular press cheering and smiling while you can hear scientists and bloggers cringing in disgust. The most recent study, instead of being published in a peer review journal, was published in the NYTimes. Head over there to give it a read before you continue on.
People cite many reasons to be doubtful of these studies, some complete nonsense…
omnibrain | November 2, 2007Animal rights activists are horrible. I don't like the idea of belittling peoples opinions and treating them like crap but sometimes they really deserve it. Check out this hilarious video of a really stupid animal rights supporter who's ridiculous opinions are used against him to scare the crap out of him.
On a more serious note... head over to The Denialism Blog for the disturbing story of an attack on a scientist by animal rights activists.
omnibrain | October 6, 2007Music education in the United States has typically been one of the first thing to be cut when it comes to balancing the budget. This is a horrible shame since music is one of those things (above any of the other arts) that has a wide ranging effect on peoples intellectual achievement. One of the holy grails in education and psychology is skill transference. Imagine being able to train one ability that positively affects the performance of many many other abilities. Sounds a bit ridiculous eh?! Well, music seem to be one of the only things that can have this effect. Psychologists have…
omnibrain | September 12, 2007Congratulations Russia on your great new bomb that is nicknamed the "dad of all bombs" and is four times more powerful than the U.S. "mother of all bombs."
"The tests have shown that the new air-delivered ordnance is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability," said Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, a deputy chief of the Russian military's General Staff, said in televised remarks.
However! This isn't the exciting part of this momentous discovery!
Unlike a nuclear weapon, the bomb doesn't hurt the environment
The Dad of all Bombs - now with less tree killing!
We here at Omni…
omnibrain | September 10, 2007A torture manual created by psychologists in the 1950s entitled The Manipulation of Human Behavior is freely available online. Included are these scary sounding chapters:
1 The Physiological State of the Interrogation Subject
as it Affects Brain Function 19
Lawrence E. Hinkle, Jr.
2 The Effects of Reduced Environmental Stimulation
on Human Behavior: A Review 51
Philip E. Kubzansky
3 The Use of Drugs in Interrogation 96
Louis A. Gottschalk
4 Physiological Responses as a Means of Evaluating
Information 142
R. C. Davis
5 The Potential Uses of Hypnosis in Interrogation 169
Martin T.…
omnibrain | September 10, 2007According to MSNBC:
A small number of companies have linked health factors to what employees pay for benefits, but the practice is expected to grow now that some federal rules have been finalized, spelling out what's allowed by law. Employee advocates worry that other anti-discrimination laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act won't cover the person who is 20 or 30 pounds overweight.
I can't think of one legitimate reason why people shouldn't be charged more for living an unhealthy life style. After all, the inflated health care costs are in large part due to peoples unhealthy life…
omnibrain | August 16, 2007According to an article in Salon, via Mind Hacks:
The American Psychological Association, the world's largest professional organization of psychologists, is poised to issue a formal condemnation of a raft of notorious interrogation tactics employed by U.S. authorities against detainees during the so-called war on terror, from simulated drowning to sensory deprivation. The move is expected during the APA's annual convention in San Francisco this weekend.
The APA's anti-torture resolution follows a string of revelations in recent months of the key role played by psychologists in the development…
omnibrain | August 6, 2007I've put a voting widget in the side bar over there on the left. It will let you vote once a month until the election (I think). So...vote for your favorite candidate and lets see who wins here at Omni Brain!
I promise... we'll keep our voting system just as secure as Diebold! No need to worry, your votes are secure with us!
omnibrain | August 4, 2007...just kidding! It's nearly every month that a new study comes out showing that abstinence only programs don't do shit. This time a study from Oxford shows, through a meta-analysis of 13 different U.S. trials, that
none of the abstinence-only programmes had an impact on the age at which individuals lost their virginity, whether they had unprotected sex, the number of sexual partners, the rates of sexually transmitted diseases or the number of pregnancies.
One trial did show a short-term benefit with participants reporting that they were less likely to have had sex in the month following…
omnibrain | July 9, 2007Check out the interview Bora scored over at A Blog Around The Clock. Of course it's an interview with a politician so it doesn't really say anything earth shattering ;) But it's well worth checking out.
omnibrain | July 4, 2007There is a great article today on Slate about why the pretty ridiculous idea that vaccinations containing trace amounts of mercury cause autism will never go away. Here's the first little part of the article:
At the recent 12-day hearing into theories that vaccines cause autism, the link between the disorder and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine came across as shaky at best. As for the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which was used in other vaccines, witnesses showed that in all known cases of actual mercury poisoning (none of which caused autism), the dose was hundreds or…
omnibrain | July 2, 2007There has been a whole lot crap floating around the press in the last couple weeks since the trial started that is seeking to link vaccination with higher incidence of autism. Now a survey funded by one of these anti-vaccination groups is correlating, through a random telephone survey, more mental health issues like ADHD with vaccination. So why do you think this correlation exists? Is there a simple way of simply explaining away this correlation (think less pirates = more global warming).
Here's some of the info from medical news today:
The survey, commissioned by Generation Rescue,…
omnibrain | June 29, 2007Are you a politician or currently considering a run for office?
Do you agree with Richard Nixon that drugs are "public enemy number one in the United States"?
Are you worried that smoking marijuana makes you insane, turns you into a violent criminal or causes death?
Do you worry daily about why prohibition failed?
Do you think the War on Drugs is a great idea?
Are you stressed out about these things and need an easy way out? Incarcerex may be for you!
Take a look at this great spoof from drugpolicy.org!
Does your politician suffer from Chronic Re-Election Paranoia (CREEP)? Do you think our…
omnibrain | June 11, 2007We all know, thanks to Dan Simons and Chris Chabris (unless you've been living under a rock), that if we're really paying attention to something we can miss something else entirely... like a gorilla walking into the middle of a room and banging on its chest. Check out the video here. (Clearly this won't work for you now since you know what to look for, but there are some other examples on Dan Simons'' site that you can check out as well.)
In any case ... on to the main story here which is really the complete opposite of Inattentional Blindness. This time the gorilla suit was meant to bring…