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Researchers Discover Irresistible Dance Moves Screenshot-sm 215

Posted by samzenpus from the gene-gene-the-dancing-machine dept.
sciencehabit writes "To find out if certain dance moves are more attractive to women than others, researchers recruited a bunch of college guys and used motion-capture to create avatars of them dancing. When women watched the avatars (2 videos included in story), the men they found most attractive were those who kept their heads and torsos moving without flailing their arms and legs. The researchers say dancing is thus an honest signal to women of the man's strength and health, just as it is in crabs and hummingbirds, who also move in special ways to attract mates."
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Fat Fingered Sumo Wrestlers Given iPads Screenshot-sm 69

Posted by samzenpus from the 100-finger-slap dept.
The Japan Sumo Association is handing out about 60 iPads to training stables to help the wrestlers communicate because their fingers are too fat to use a regular mobile phone. From the article: "The iPad was chosen because the sumo association believed the device was big enough to cater to wrestler's fat fingers, unlike the smaller keys on mobile phones, according to reports."
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Canadian Cannabis Car Screenshot-sm 120

Posted by samzenpus from the Cheech-and-Chong-already-did-it dept.
sykobabul writes "The CBC is reporting: 'An electric car made of hemp is being developed by a group of Canadian companies in collaboration with an Alberta Crown corporation. The Kestrel will be prototyped and tested later in August by Calgary-based Motive Industries Inc., a vehicle development firm focused on advanced materials and technologies, the company announced.' Leave it to us Canadians to come up with all sorts of uses for cannabis."
Science

Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes After All 269

Posted by Soulskill from the act-now-while-supplies-last dept.
cremeglace writes with this excerpt from ScienceNOW: "You've heard the controversy. Particle physicists predict the world's new highest-energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, might create tiny black holes, which they say would be a fantastic discovery. Some doomsayers fear those black holes might gobble up the Earth — physicists say that's impossible — and have petitioned the United Nations to stop the $5.5 billion LHC. Curiously, though, nobody had ever shown that the prevailing theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of general relativity, actually predicts that a black hole can be made this way. Now a computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole." That said, they estimate the required energy for creating a black hole this way to be roughly "a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum"; though if one of the theories requiring compact extra dimensions is true, the energy could be lower.

Comment Re:On the fence on this (Score -1) 169

by suprslackr420 (#27850859) Attached to: Churches Use Twitter To Reach a Wider Audience

If the Christian bible is open to interpretation, then what good is it? Which parts should be interpreted literally? Which whould be thought of as parables or fables? If I was reading a science book and it said that the Earth was supported on the backs of turtles, that would be the end of my reading this science book (except maybe for giggles).

Exodus and Leviticus are ridiculous in current times, and no one would try to dissuade me from eating shellfish or shaving my beard (well, not Christians anyway). Why, then, should I think of the "lay with another man is abomination" part of Leviticus as the "TRUTH", but ignore most of the rest?

I'm cutting the rant here. Peace be with you.

Comment EHR (Score 0, Interesting) 367

by suprslackr420 (#27747023) Attached to: Why Digital Medical Records Are No Panacea

I work at a large clinic in Illinois. We use Allscripts for our EHR management, which includes everything from prescriptions, med history, dictation of doctor's notes, every single scanned sheet of medical information that exists about the patient (including from outside sources), task list for nurses and receptionists, you name it. It doesn't always work exactly like you want it to (that's what our systems analyst are for), but it works pretty damn well, and I for one would prefer a doctor or nurse to look me up this way, rather than wait for my doctor from ten years ago to fax or snail over my history. That scares me a lot more.

Comment Re:Hmmm.. Another Hollywood Republican comes out? (Score -1) 252

by suprslackr420 (#27267469) Attached to: Battlestar Galactica Hosted At the UN

Overall makeup may be variable but a certain trait or groups of traits may be more prominent in a particular group.

But are you begging the description by defining the group in terms of those very traits?

And anyway, I am not denying that race is largely a human categorical construct. What I am saying, though, that there is still remains some tendencies towards biological differences within those constructs.

Which is precisely why these constructs exist--to illuminate these differences. I still don't know how you think that these constructs and gropus exist without your inference that they exist.

The whole point of my argument is that categorizing things the way we do does not necessarily reflect reality.

That was also the point of my argument.

Comment Re:Hmmm.. Another Hollywood Republican comes out? (Score 0, Informative) 252

by suprslackr420 (#27261441) Attached to: Battlestar Galactica Hosted At the UN

Fact: race is a social construct, or better put, genome variation research does not support the existence of human races (races being defined as genetic subspecies' of humans). Fact: there is more genetic variation within groups thatn there is between groups. This is easily tested: If you are "white," simply go out to a public place, get a "white" person and a "black" person, and all three of you go get DNA tests. There is a high probability that you will share a closer genetic makeup with the "black" person than with the "white" person. I would personally not take offense to the theory that people with a certain amount of melanin share traits, except that it IS NOT TRUE.

For example, you take as given that theere are certain "racial groups" that are more at risk for certain type of diseases. I have to assume that you are referring to sickle-cell anemia, although you might be referrring to Tay-Sachs. Sickle-cell has been shown to correlate with trade routes in Africa, and has no higher occurrence among those with a higher skin melanin content in the regions where it has occurred more frequently.

I don't care if my science comes with a smile, but I insist that it comes with some science.

Comment I finally took the plunge... (Score -1) 293

by suprslackr420 (#27212817) Attached to: Linux Gaining Strength In Downturn

and installed Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex over the weekend. I had been threatening this for many years now, but every time I tried a distro I ran into problems with my wireless USB network adapter. I found some documentation last week for using ndiswrapper to get it to work, and decided that this would really happen this time. Guess what? Ubuntu figured everything out and set up my wireless adapter without anything extra from me. I am happily using Ubuntu on my older Pentium II box, and I have plans to switch my Dual Core with the nice graphics card and big hard drive in the next month. All I can say is, "Finally!"

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