Yasutada.sudo

In the classroom, I can be formidable: I’ve been known to drill-sergeant lethargic students out of their chairs and demand burpees; I am a master of the I’m Not Mad, I’m Just Disappointed scowl. And yet, when it comes to assigning an end-of-semester letter value to their results, I am a grade-A milquetoast. It’s grading time once again, and I’m a softie as usual: Of my current 33 students, 20 are getting either A’s or A-minuses.

For eons, all manner of animals have lived their lives according to the cycles of the Earth’s rotation on its axis, the moon’s orbit around the Earth, and the Earth’s orbit around the sun. But why do we observe the week? The pattern of living on a seven-day cycle—with one or two of those days set aside for rest—is a relative novelty. Only in the past few centuries, with Western colonization of most of the world, have the majority of human societies adopted it. 

After flourishing in the 20th century, slang is going through a quiet phase. Is it merely dormant or are Australians taking themselves more seriously?

From fair dinkum to advancing fair, Australia is on an interesting linguistic journey. Once known on a global scale for skulling a tinny in the arvo and having no dramas because shell be right, Australias lexicon, it appears, is changing.

Tony Thorne, editor of the recently released Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (fourth edition), says Australian slang is going through a quiet phase after flourishing in the 20th century (particularly the 1960s and 70s). Slang, which by its very nature constantly renews itself, often has a limited lifespan.

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The US Transportation Department today proposed air travelers be given detailed information on the fees they're being charged for each checked bag, advance seat assignments, and carry-on luggage. Read the rest

This news clip from RTR-Japan highlights the art of growing square watermelons. Harvested on the island of Shikoku in Japan, the melons are grown inside of metal boxes that must be checked several times a day by farmers. It’s the kind of necessary care that results in a low yield of the fruit, with around 200 to 300 being grown in the country per year. The method was originally conceived of as a way to improve the transportation and storage of the fruit, but the shape ultimately comes at the expense of taste.

The most important [thing] is geometric accuracy. Shape is much more important than contents.

Sold purely for ornamental reasons, the flesh is often unripened when the melons hit the market.

via WTF Japan Seriously

Playing off the age-old baseball card in the bicycle spokes trick, Turbospoke is a new bike add-on shaped like a motorcycle exhaust that mimics motor sounds. The system still relies on cards — in this case, three waterproof ones with unique sounds — that clap on the bike’s spokes as you ride. The sound is then amplified by the hollow plastic exhaust tube. You can purchase the Turbospoke now through Vat19.

photos via Turbospoke

via The Awesomer

This newly-discovered species of cartwheeling spider, Cebrennus rechenbergi or Moroccan flic-flac spider, is definitely something to see. From ScienceTake, watch it (and the robot that it inspired) take a tumble or two. There’s also another video of the pair in German here.

This creature reminded us of the Golden Wheel spider that is featured in episode one of the BBC’s phenomenal Africa series, but there’s a key difference between them. From The New York Times: 

Another arachnid, the golden rolling spider, exhibits a similar flipping behavior, but can only roll rapidly downhill, with the aid of gravity; the flic-flac spider can do its tumbling uphill, as well as on level ground and downhill. 

In the archives: the Golden Wheel spider, and a few other sand robots – the jumping Sand Flea robot and robot legs made for Mars.

via Tinybop.

How does one of nature’s best ecosystem engineers go about revitalizing the landscapes around them? From PBS Nature, this is how North American beavers build dams.

Related reading at Pawnation: Importance of Beavers in an Ecosystem. Their benefits include creating wetlands, pooling nutrient-rich sediment, filtering water, cutting down trees, and increasing biodiversity.

In the archives: a young moose and beaver live side by side.

Audiophiles rejoice! Audioengine D3 is a digital to audio converter & headphone amplifier, what this means is you can bypass your computers headphone output and send music directly through a USB port for noticeably improved fidelity and a higher output. The quality of most computer headphone outputs isn´t generally very inspiring, so the D3 provides a better option by streaming audio from your computers USB port and directly connecting to your music system or headphones. The D3 DAC is the perfect way to get great-sounding music not only from your computer to headphones but also from your computer to any music system. The D3 also has a sample rate indicator that shows sample rates above 48K so you´ll know you’re getting the most out of your HD music.

Learn more at Audioengine or pick it up from Amazon
Available for purchase in Europe here

Some fine folks over at NPR hand-picked over 300 commencement speeches going back to 1774. Search by name, school, date or theme. I want to hug the person responsible for this.

Go listen!

(via Liz)

Peter Gibson is my new hero, not because he's questioning the existence of non-celiac gluten intolerance. But because he was so willing to repeat, and challenge, his own research.

Are you a runner who shelled out $100 or so for a pair of those funny-looking barefoot shoes, the ones with the individual toe-holders? Were you swayed by claims that your shoes were scientifically proven to "make your feet stronger" and healthier"?

The bad news: you were duped. The silver lining: you're entitled to a partial refund.

Vibram, the company that manufacturers FiveFinger shoes, settled a multi-year, class-action lawsuit brought by customers who were, to put it mildly, dubious of the company's claims that barefoot running shoes could improve health. The shoe manufacturer will pay out as much as $3.75 million to anyone who purchased a pair of their finger-shoes since March 2009.

And it will, perhaps more significantly, Vibram hugely dial back the health claims it's made for years about the benefits of running in its minimalist shoes, which are meant to mimic running barefoot.

"Vibram will not make...any claims that FiveFingers footwear are effective in strengthening muscles or preventing injury unless that representation is true, non-misleading and is supported by competent and reliable scientific evidence," the federal settlement says.

The reliable scientific evidence they require? For Vibram's barefoot shoes, it doesn't exist.

Americans have purchased more than 70 million pairs of barefoot shoes

Sales of Vibram's shoes have skyrocketed lately: one court filing notes that the company has seen an average of 300 percent annual sales growth over the past six years. In 2012, total sales of their FiveFinger shoes were approaching 70 million.

Some of that growth was likely driven by a book that came out in 2009 called Born to Run. There, Chris McDougall wrote about a little-known Indian tribe in Mexico who seemed to have an unusually strong ability to run exceptionally long distances. They also happened to run without shoes.

Thus McDougall's book became a so-called "barefoot manifesto" for runners — although he now says that wasn't totally the point. "People refer to it as a 'barefoot manifesto,'" McDougall told Deadspin in an interview yesterday. "It's not that at all. It's not that I'm championing bare feet; it's just that I'm questioning running shoes — because really the burden of proof is on the running shoe."

Barefoot runners do run differently

The biggest change that barefoot shoes make has to do with when the foot hits the ground. Most runners are heel-strikers — their heel hits the ground first, followed by the rest of the foot. But barefoot runners, research suggests, run differently: they're more likely to be fore-foot strikers, landing on the ball of their foot with the rest of the foot following. You can see the difference between the two in these videos from Harvard researchers:

Some sports researchers argue that landing on the front of the foot can help protect against injuries, because it tends to be a slightly lower-impact encounter with the ground. It "may protect the heel and lower limbs from some impact-related injuries," a 2012 article in the journal Sports Health concluded. And studies do show that the Vibram shoes are pretty good at mimicking the experience of running completely barefoot.

But to switch to the fore-foot pattern that barefoot shoes encourage, there's a trade-off: running with a whole lot less support than traditional shoes offer.

But do they run with fewer injuries?

Vibram has attached a laundry list of health claims to its shoes, detailed in a February 2013 legal complaint:

(1) strengthen muscles in the feet and lower
legs, (2) improve range of motion in the ankles, feet, and toes,
(3) stimulate neural function important to balance and agility,
(4) eliminate heel lift to align the spine and improve posture,
and (5) allow the foot and body to move naturally. At various
times, defendants' website added that wearing FiveFingers would
improve proprioception and body awareness, reduce lower back pain
and injury, and generally improve foot health.

Podiatrists beg to differ. The American Podiatric Medicine Association put out a policy statement back in November 2009 — which they still stand by today — saying that "research has not yet adequately shed light on the immediate and long-term effects of this practice."

"Barefoot running has been touted as improving strength and balance, while promoting a more natural running style," the podiatrists' statement continues. "However, risks of barefoot running include a lack of protection, which may lead to injuries such as puncture wounds, and increased stress on the lower extremities."

There's just not much research right now on how barefoot shoes effect runners. The ones that exist are pretty tiny, like a 2011 study of two very experienced runners who developed stress fractures after switching to Vibram shoes.

Another study, also in 2011, had a slightly larger group of runners switch to Vibram's shoes. Researchers at Brigham Young University studied a group of 36 runners who ran into traditional shoes, and transitioned half of them into Vibram shoes.

They showed that, after 10 weeks of running in the two types of the shoes, about half of the runners who had transitioned to Vibrams had developed an inflammation of their bone marrow, which can be a precursor to a stress fracture. Only one person in the control group had seen a similar change.

Aside from these two studies, there just isn't much research on injury rates in traditional versus barefoot running shoes. Which is why Vibram is going to have to back off its advertising claims of benefits — and shell out a few million dollars to the runners it did promise healthier feet.

For Sigmund Freud, a joke was never just a joke, but a window into the unconscious, laughter an anxious symptom of recognition that something lost has resurfaced, distorted into humor. For Slovenian psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Žižek, jokes function similarly. And yet, in keeping with his commitment to leftist politics, he uses jokes not to expose the hidden terrain of individual psyches but “to evoke binds of historical circumstances hard to indicate by other means.” So writes Kenneth Baker in a brief SFGate review of the recent Žižek’s Jokes, a book-length compilation of Žižekisms published by MIT Press. Baker also points out a defining feature of Žižek’s humor: “Many of Žižek’s jokes preserve or even amplify the vulgarity of their demotic or pop cultural origins.” Take the NSFW joke he tells above at the expense of a Montenegrin friend. Žižek explains the joke as part of his maybe dubious strategy of countering racism with “progressive racism” or the “solidarity” of “shared obscenity”—the use of potentially uncomfortable ethnic humor to expose uncomfortable political truths that get repressed or papered over by politeness.

Some of Žižek’s humor is more trigger-warning worthy, such as his retelling of this old Soviet dissident joke or this “very dirty joke” he reportedly heard from a Palestinian Christian acquaintance. On the other hand, some of his “dirty jokes” replace vulgarity with theory. For example, Žižek likes to tell a “truly obscene” version of the famously filthy joke “The Aristocrats,” which you’ll know if you’ve seen, or only read about, the film of the same name. And yet in his take, instead of a series of increasingly disgusting acts, the family performs “a short course in Hegelian thought, debating the true meaning of the negativity, of sublation, of absolute knowing, etc.” This is perhaps an example of what Baker refers to as Žižekian jokes that are “baffling to readers not conversant with the gnarly dialectics of his thought, which does not lend itself easily to sampling.” Be that as it may, much of Žižek’s humor works without the theoretical context, and some of it is even tame enough for water cooler interludes. Below are four examples of “safe” jokes, culled from website Critical Theory’s list of “The 10 Best Žižek Jokes to Get You Through Finals” (which itself culls from Žižek’s Jokes). “Some of the jokes [in Žižek’s book] provide hilarious insights into Hegelian dialectics, Lacanian psychoanalysis or ideology,” writes Critical Theory, “Others are just funny, and most are somewhat offensive—a characteristic Žižek admittedly doesn’t care to correct.”

#1 There is an old Jewish joke, loved by Derrida…

about a group of Jews in a synagogue publicly admitting their nullity in the eyes of God. First, a rabbi stands up and says: “O God, I know I am worthless. I am nothing!” After he has finished, a rich businessman stands up and says, beating himself on the chest: “O God, I am also worthless, obsessed with material wealth. I am nothing!” After this spectacle, a poor ordinary Jew also stands up and also proclaims: “O God, I am nothing.” The rich businessman kicks the rabbi and whispers in his ear with scorn: “What insolence! Who is that guy who dares to claim that he is nothing too!”

#4 When the Turkish Communist writer Panait Istrati visited the Soviet Union in the mid- 1930s, the time of the big purges…

and show trials, a Soviet apologist trying to convince him about the need for violence against the enemies evoked the proverb “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” to which Istrati tersely replied: “All right. I can see the broken eggs. Where’s this omelet of yours?”

We should say the same about the austerity measures imposed by IMF: the Greeks would have the full right to say, “OK, we are breaking our eggs for all of Europe, but where’s the omelet you are promising us?”

#7 This also makes meaningless the Christian joke…

according to which, when, in John 8:1–11, Christ says to those who want to stone the woman taken in adultery, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone!” he is immediately hit by a stone, and then shouts back: “Mother! I asked you to stay at home!”

#8 In an old joke from the defunct German Democratic Republic,…

a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail will be read by censors, he tells his friends: “Let’s establish a code: if a letter you will get from me is written in ordinary blue ink, it is true; if it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter, written in blue ink: “Everything is wonderful here: stores are full, food is abundant, apartments are large and properly heated, movie theaters show films from the West, there are many beautiful girls ready for an affair—the only thing unavailable is red ink.”

And is this not our situation till now? We have all the freedoms one wants—the only thing missing is the “red ink”: we “feel free” because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. What this lack of red ink means is that, today, all the main terms we use to designate the present conflict —“war on terror,” “democracy and freedom,” “human rights,” etc.—are false terms, mystifying our perception of the situation instead of allowing us to think it. The task today is to give the protesters red ink.

For more of Slavoj Žižek’s witticism, vulgarity, and humorous critiques of ideological formations, political history, and Hegelian and Lacanian thought, pick up a copy of Žižek’s Jokes, and see this Youtube compilation of the politically incorrect leftist philosopher’s humor caught on tape.

via Critical Theory

Related Content:

Slavoj Žižek: What Fullfils You Creatively Isn’t What Makes You Happy

Žižek!: 2005 Documentary Reveals the “Academic Rock Star” and “Monster” of a Man

In His Latest Film, Slavoj Žižek Claims “The Only Way to Be an Atheist is Through Christianity”

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.

Slavoj Žižek Tells Jokes (NSFW) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

The post Slavoj Žižek Tells Jokes (NSFW) appeared first on Open Culture.

At peak performance, 77 percent of the sleepers in a study reported events of lucidity.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "For five years, Professor Frank Bennett, a distinguished legal scholar at Nagoya University School of Law, has been trying to add Bluebook Support to Zotero, the open source citation tool used all over the world.

Read the rest

Procrastination is rarely a positive trait. However, going too far in the opposite direction—over-exerting yourself to get things done as early as possible—can also cause undue physical and emotional stress.

Read more...

Bitelabs wants you to tweet your favorite celeb and ask them to submit to a biopsy so that they can culture salami from their muscle tissue, allowing you to experience celebs in a way you never have before. "The Franco salami must be smoky, sexy, and smooth... The Franco salami’s taste will be arrogant, distinctive, and completely undeniable." Nutritional information: "coming soon." Read the rest

What to give to the people who has already everything?

To congratulate some of the wealthiest people in Czech Republic for their success and wish them an successful year, Forbes sent a very distinctive direct mail: A 24k golden pill. They invited them to swallow the golden pill to find out what Forbes stands for. As the human body doesn’t digest gold, the pill literally makes you sh*t gold.

Pretty gold, err, i mean pretty bold! Would you press the flush?

I DO WANT TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET! - Web’s most shareable and trending content, amazing things you need to see to believe.

In 2006, a gentleman started an alternative healthcare business by flying to an African country and walking barefoot in human poo, in hopes of catching himself a hookworm.

The 56 inhabitants of a small town in Spain whose name translates to "Little Hill Fort of Jew Killers" are not eager to "adopt a different name and finally eradicate a link to the persecution of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition." [NYT]

Suren Gazaryan is a zoologist, a member of the campaign group Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, and a former researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences. This week he was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for Europe. He set out to protect the habitat of cave-dwelling bats that he studies. He wound up having to flee his Russian homeland.

Everybody on the Internet knows animal penises are widely studied by scientists. But vaginas? In 25 years of animal genital research, 49 percent of the studies looked at penises only. Eight percent focused on female genitals. Ed Yong writes about this disparity and the social science surrounding it.

Notice how most "free trials" require you to provide your credit card number? That's so the company can charge you a monthly fee once the trial is over. Read the rest

Japanese police arrested a 27 year old man called Yoshitomo Imura, alleging that he 3D printed several guns and posted videos to Youtube of himself firing it. They say they seized five guns from Imura's home in Kawasaki City. The videos showed that two of these guns were capable of firing rounds -- what sort isn't specified -- through a stack of ten sheets of plywood, and this caused Japanese police to class them as lethal weapons. A Japanese press account has Imura admitting to printing the guns, but insisting that he "didn't know they were illegal."

As I wrote a year ago when 3D printed guns first appeared on the scene, the regulatory questions raised by them are much more significant than the narrow issue of gun control. But there's a real danger that judges, lawmakers and regulators will be distracted by the inflammatory issue of firearms when considering the wider question of trying to regulate computers. Read the rest

Got a pair of smelly sneakers and some cheap vodka? Spray some into your shoes to kill that nasty odor!

Read more...

[Video Link] The fact that I don't understand what they are saying made it more interesting to me, because I paid more attention to their increasingly aggressive body language. (Via Bits and Pieces)

"'Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo' is a grammatically correct sentence in American English.

This video does exactly what it says in the jar, and demonstrates, once again, the preternatural cleverness of our future octopus overlords. (via Kottke)

Kelly Kittell's EnChroma CX Receptor colorblind-correcting sunglasses arrived with the following warning: When first trying on the lens, the unusual appearance of colors may be visually distracting. "It’s a bit of an understatement. The first time I saw brick red I was so overwhelmed I stopped cold. Purple and lavender, where have you been all my life?" Read the rest