Leandro Pereira

Alice Robb examines some research showing that drinking and drugging in adulthood correlate with higher childhood intelligence:

Drawing on the results of the National Child Development Study, which tracked for 50 years all British babies born during one week in March 1958, [evolutionary psychologist Satoshi] Kanazawa found that kids who scored higher on IQ tests grew up to drink larger quantities of alcohol on a more regular basis than their less intelligent peers. He evaluated other factors, including religion, frequency of church attendance, social class, parents’ education and self-reported satisfaction with life, and found that intelligence before age 16 was second only to gender in predicting alcohol consumption at age 23.

In Kanazawa’s model, illicit drugs constitute another evolutionarily novel experience—and he (and others) have also found a link between high IQ and experimentation with drugs. In Kanazawa’s study, the higher a respondent’s IQ before age 16, the more psychoactive substances he or she had tried by age 42. Another study found that 30-year-old women who had earned high scores on an IQ test at age five were more than twice as likely to have smoked weed or used cocaine in the previous year; men who had scored highly on IQ tests as children were 50 percent more likely to have recently consumed amphetamines or ecstasy.

I’ve been tracking down quotes from Robert G. Ingersoll, the subject of Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Great Agnostic: Robert G. Ingersoll and American Freethought.  I’ve been mightily impressed with the man: he was a strident atheist before it was cool (or uncool) to be strident, and as eloquent as Hitchens.  He was also reputed to be of impeccable charm and character. It would do us all good to read more of him, and realize that New Atheism isn’t the first in-your-face form of godlessless. (I presume that’s one reason Jacoby wrote her book.)

Anyway, checking an e-version of Ingersoll’s 1879 book, The Gods and Other Lectures, I found this as the frontispiece:

That’s about as strident as you could get for 1879!

And I must include a relevant quote I’ve used before, from Ingersoll’s 1890 essay God in the Constitution:

“We have already compared the benefits of theology and science. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins—they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of to-day. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of to-day—of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago.

These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars — neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience — and for them all, man is indebted to man.”

On April Fool's Day 2012, ThinkGeek featured the Technomancer Digital Wizard Hoodie among their fake products. Now they've introduced the real thing, a hooded jacket that lights up and makes spell sounds based on the movement of the wearer's arms.

Read more...

Uma dica para VOCÊ, Assasino Atirador de Elite!

Dá uma ligada na cara de surpresa  e realização ao mesmo tempo na cara do atirador. 

Arrancado do Pandyland.net

This Christmas, don't just get presents for your loved ones that make them go "wow". Get them some things that make them say "Whaaaaa!!?" instead! Make it a Christmas to remember - anyone can get cute and pretty gifts, but you can stand out with these 50 Weirdest Christmas Gifts from the NeatoShop. Best of all, they're all under $15!

This weekend only: Save 25% on 800+ items from the NeatoShop in our Weekend Super Sale. Avoid the long lines at the mall and get your Christmas shopping done early!

USA orders $75 and above get free shipping. International orders get 20% shipping discount.

Here are some of our most favorite weirdest NeatoShop items that you can get your loved ones for Christmas:

Undercap

Creepy Horse Man - Dashboard Wiggler

Savory Bacon Sticks

Pickle Bandages

Squirrel Underpants

Tentacle Mustache

Ouch! Voodoo Doll Toothpick Holder

Frozen Smiles Ice Tray

Burger Coaster

Dashboard Eyeball Wiggler

Googly Eyes Luggage Tags

Lickety Spoon

Light Up Eye Ring

Flashing Santa Christmas Ornament

Teatanic Tea Infuser

Devil Duckie Luggage Tags

Put On A Happy Face Creamer

Jacques The Tea Infuser

Wine'o Bottle Caddy

Anime Eyes Sleep Mask

Top It Off - Wine Bottle Stopper

Cold Cold Heart 3D Ice Mold

Deep Tea Diver Tea Infuser

Vinderalls

Squirrel Salt & Pepper Shakers

Snake Oil Soap

Squirrel Coffee Cup

Holiday Mustache

Handlebar Wine Corkscrew and Bottle Opener

Defrosty The Snowman Ice Cubes

Tipsy Squirrel Water Bottle

Gangster Cheese Grater

Talk to the Hand Sticky Notes

Polluted Glass

Wasabi Lip Balm

Great Ideas Napkin Sketchbook

Bacon Mints

Nose Pencil Sharpener

Googly Eye Push Pins

Shark Attack Sucker

Lab Flask Shot Glass

Butter Sucker

Thumb Sucker

Classic Disguise Ornament

Mini Biohazard Tape

Inflatable Cthulhu Arm

Emergency Inflatable Chicken

Switchblade Folding Pocket Comb

Hipster Mustache

Yodelling Pickle

View more Sale & Clearance items over at the NeatoShop

Worthy of a double-take twice over, these convincing wall artworks reveal imaginary depths and amazing arrays of color … all seemingly hidden behind dull peeling paint and inside innocuously crumbling facades.

While he does not say much about himself, 1010 is both a gallery and street artist  in Germany with a passion for surreal figures, geometric illusions and other visual trickery.

While the shapes are simple the shadows are incredibly complex, each layer built up with layers of color and light.

This particular series of optical illusion ‘holes’ spans both sides of his portfolio – smaller-scale works are framed and hung in galleries while larger-scale installations are set in rough exterior urban landscapes.

His other pieces that include characters like birds and snakes are of a similarly simplified style, but their cartoonish nature masks careful color and tone selection as well as time-consuming implementation.

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Street Origami: 30,000 Pieces Folded to Create Colorful Art

An urban art play in multiple acts, this staged installation colorfully spans brick walls, stone steps and wood facades as part of an art festival in Angers, ... Click Here to Read More »»

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Not Photoshopped: New Optical Illusions by Felice Varini

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Frozach Submitted

One of our tipsters just sent us this fascinating story about The Bally Bomber, a single man’s huge undertaking that started back in 1999. It’s a 1/3rd scale version of the B-17G Bomber — and no, it’s not remote controlled, there will be a pilot.

Not familiar with the B-17G? What about its trade name? It’s called the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. This massive bomber was developed back in the 1930′s for the United States Army Air Corps as a combination between the Boeing 247 transport plane and the experimental Boeing XB-15 Bomber.

8680 of the B-17G model were built, but as of September 2011, only 13 of the entire B-17 family remain airworthy. The Bally Bomber is the only known scale replica, and looking through the progress photos it is an absolutely jaw-dropping project. It hasn’t been test flown yet, but they are getting painfully close to its maiden flight.

For more information, you can also check out their Facebook page which seems to be updated on a regular basis.

[Thanks Ryan!]

dolphin-spit:

oswaldofguadalupe:

The Twitter Mandela Hall Of Shame

worth a read

joost5:

and then there’s

so cat, much grumpy

We’ve heard of making remote controlled paper airplanes before, but it looks like someone finally figured out one of the best ways to do it. It’s called the PowerUp 3.0, and it’s a smartphone controlled plane module you can strap to almost any paper plane you make.

[Shai Gotein] is the inventor and is both a pilot and an aviation enthusiast, with over 25 years experience. Back in 2008 he was volunteering to teach Aerodynamics to kids, and he realized how handy it would be to have a small plane capable of indoor flight to explain aviation concepts — so he started designing one. The first iteration (PowerUp 1.0) received the ATA Best Hobby Award, but he didn’t stop there!  Continuing to refine his design, version 3.0 is now controllable via an iPhone or Android device using low-energy Bluetooth communications. This gives it about a 55 meter range, and the tiny battery lasts 10 minutes per charge. The best part is you get to design the plane!

Stick around after the break to see a paper plane do things you’d never expect!

All in all, it’s a reasonably priced toy and looks like a lot of fun, but… Remember the DIY RC Blimp we shared last week? Would it be possible to turn one of the 1:64 scale RC cars into an RC paper plane?

Looking at the looping GIF above you’re probably thinking, oh, another hard drive POV setup… Well… Not quite.

This is one of [Dev's] latest projects, and it is a planetary map that shows the angular positions of all 8 of the major celestial bodies from any given date between 1800 and 2050. It’s also capable of showing analogue clock hands, the phases of the moon, and other simple graphics.

The main unit is a hard disk, but [Dev] milled off many of the features on it to give it a more exposed, purpose-built look. He designed the LED bearing PCB from scratch using EagleCAD, which sits on the back of the drive, with the spindle poking through. It has 8 rings of 5 surface mounted LEDs, which shine through opaque plastic diffuser rings that he printed using Shapeways — they feature small recesses to fit snugly on the board over the LEDs. On the top level is a 1mm thick black disc of some unknown material that [Dev] had sitting around, which now has 8 holes machined into it in the exact position of the LEDs.

A Cortex-M0 drives the LEDs using an LPCXpresso board which allows the LEDs to sit across only one byte of a hardware I/O port. On the software end, each rotation of the disk is segmented into three hundred and sixty 1 degree slices. This system allows him to achieve a circular resolution of 8×360 pixels at 25 frames per second. Not bad for a persistence of vision device!

Stick around after the break to see the rather entertaining demo video of the device.

Released in 1993, the Atari Jaguar suffered from a number of problems – it was difficult to program, had hardware idiosyncrasies, and with the CD drive was vastly overpriced compared to the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation released one year later. Nevertheless, the Jaguar still has a rabid fanbase that counts [10p6] among them, and he’s created what Atari should have released 20 years ago.

In a few forum threads at jaguarsector (login required) and nexgam.de (no login, German), [10p6] goes over his changes to the classic Jaguar + CD combo. He’s stuffed everything inside a new case, cutting down on the amount of plastic from the old enclosure. A proper integrated power supply has been added, replacing the two power supplies used in the original. It’s also overclocked to 32 MHz, compared to the 26 MHz of the stock unit, making this a very powerful system that could have easily competed with the Saturn and Playstation.

[10p6] has an amazing piece of hardware on his hands here, and should he ever want to make a few molds of his new Jaguar, he could put together some sort of kit to replicate this build. He’s still working on finding a model maker and perfecting his case design, but a new, improved version of the Jaguar is something we’d love to see in a limited production.

Reading this nearly killed me…

Many of us tried the old “Two tin cans connected by a string” experiment as kids. [Michael Rainey, AA1TJ] never quite forgot it.  Back in 2009, he built “El Silbo”, a ham radio transmitter powered entirely by his voice. El Silbo is a Double Side Band (DSB) transmitter for 75 meters. While voice is used to excite the transmitter, it doesn’t actually transmit voice. El Silbo is a CW affair, so you should bone up on your Morse Code a bit before building one. Like many QRP transmitters El Silbo’s circuit is rather simple. A junk box loudspeaker is installed at the bottom of the can to convert voice power to electrical power. The signal is passed through a step up transformer, and used to excite a 75m crystal. Two NPN transistors (in this case MPS6521) pass the signal on through a second transformer. The signal is then routed through an LC network to the antenna.

Back in 2009, [Michael] brought El Silbo to the Maine coast in an attempt to make a transatlantic contact. This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds – [Michael] has “crossed the pond” on less power. While the attempt wasn’t successful, [Michael] has made connections as far as 1486km, or 923 miles. That’s quite a distance for simply yelling into a tin can! One of [Michael's] favorite El Silbo stories is a 109KM conversation (QSO) he had with W1PID. [Michael] found that the signal was so good, he didn’t have to yell at all. He reduced power by dropping to his normal speaking voice for the “dits and dahs”. The two were able to converse for 17 minutes with [Michael] only using his speaking voice for power. We think this is an amazing achievement, and once more proof that you don’t need a multi-thousand dollar shack to make contacts as a ham.

[Thanks Bill!]

You can pretty much tell that this is an outstretched hand shown on a large grid of 7-segment displays. But the only reason you have to look twice is because it is a still photo. When you see the video below it’s more than obvious what you’re looking at… partly because the device is being used as an electronic mirror.

In total there are 192 digits in the display. To make things easier, four-digit modules were used, although we still couldn’t resist showing you the well-organized nightmare that is the wiring scheme. Each module is driven by its own discrete Arduino (driving 28 LEDs as they’re apparently not connecting the decimal point). All 48 Arduino boards receive commands from a Raspberry Pi which is running openFrameworks to generate the animations.

Now of course the project was well under way before [Peter] discovered a similar display from more than a year ago. But we’re glad that didn’t stop them from forging ahead and even building on the idea. They added a camera to the display’s frame which lets it mirror back whatever is in front of it.

What popped into our minds was one of the recent entries for the Trinket contest.

[Thanks Eren]