The most valuable supply of worthlessness on the web
Who says kids can’t be taught? Some kids were taught about healthy eating, and then asked to sell candy and chips for a fund-raiser. Apparently, the kids thought that wouldn’t be right.
The North Side Elementary students said selling the chocolate bars and potato chips went against what they were taught in school about healthy eating. They were raising money for a field trip to Washington D.C.
[tags]Health yeating, Education[/tags]
My wife never believes me when I tell her this, but gaming can be good for you. On average, it seems that gamers can tune out distractions better than non-gamers.
Before you assume gadgets and video games fry the minds of the future, consider this: Canadian researchers are finding evidence that the high-speed, multitasking of the young and wireless can help protect their brains from aging.
A body of research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. Just as people fluent in two languages learn to suppress one language while speaking the other, so too are gamers adept at shutting out distractions to swiftly switch attention between different tasks.
[tags]Gaming, Games[/tags]
A task we all need to undertake from time to time. Lifehacker has an illustrated guide to cleaning the innards of your computer.
[tags]Clean, cleaning[/tags]
Well, according to this preliminary study in Great Britain.
However, research published in the journal Education 3 to 13 has found that pupils who use interactive programs cannot remember stories they have just read because they are distracted by cartoons and sound effects.
[tags]Edutainment, Computer learning[/tags]
In a twist on conventional wisdom, there appears to be some benefit from a marijuana-like drug, which can in fact spur new brain growth. That sounds much better than the normally believed killing of brain cells now, doesn’t it?
In the stoner stereotype, pot smokers and dying brain cells go hand in hand. However, new research suggests the situation may be more uplifting than that. A drug that functions as concentrated marijuana does may spur neurogenesis, the process by which the brain gives birth to new nerve cells.
[tags]Science news, marijuana, drugs, brain cell growth[/tags]
I’ll just snip the start of the article:
The laws of physics seem to allow time travel, but no one has had much hope of building an actual time machine because it would take such exotic conditions and materials.
[tags]Time travel, physics, time machine[/tags]
Cool article at Science News on some of the science behind beer. Turns out there’s a reason so many beers come in brown bottles. The article, titled “A skunk walks into a bar…“, is pretty interesting.
[tags]Science, beer, chemistry[/tags]
Awesome (and long) article at The New Yorker about the problem with generalizations. The main thrust of the article is about the good and bad of pit-bull bans and dog attacks. But it also speaks on drug smugglers, the ongoing reduction in crime in New York city, the problems with profiling, and terrorists.
One of the more interesting tidbits I got out of the article is that in temperment tests, pit bulls on average score better in temperment test than beagles, Airedales, bearded collies, and all but one variety of dachshund. In other words, the pit bull is on average a better pet than any of those dogs, as far as temperment goes. The real problem, as explained quite nicely in the article, has more to do with the owner than with the dog.
In about a quarter of fatal dog-bite cases, the dog owners were previously involved in illegal fighting. The dogs that bite people are, in many cases, socially isolated because their owners are socially isolated, and they are vicious because they have owners who want a vicious dog. The junk-yard German shepherdâ€â€which looks as if it would rip your throat outâ€â€and the German-shepherd guide dog are the same breed. But they are not the same dog, because they have owners with different intentions.
The whole article is worth reading for all the good information about dogs. Plus, how often do you read a serious article from a somewhat serious publication that uses the word “flibbertigibbet” any way?
[tags]Pit Bull, dog attacks, generalizations, profiling[/tags]
If you are a gamer, why aren’t you reading The Escapist? Go now. I’ll wait.
[tags]Games, gaming,The Escapist[/tags]
Wow, how to make a sensible headline for this one. I’ve not posted about this story before, but enough other sites have that I think most regular web surfers now know at least a little about this story. Recently, there have been a number of edits to Wikipedia pages regarding a number of Senators. Most of the edits have been made to remove facts about the Senators that could be viewed negatively. The part that made the story big is that these edits have been coming from an IP address assigned to the Senate. Now, Wikinews has taken the time to backtrack a lot of what’s gone on and determine who made what edits in many cases. The write up of how they tracked this back, and what changes were made is quite interesting, in my eyes. Of course, since Wikinews is also a wiki, I wonder how many edits to this story we’ll see?
Staff members of the offices of United States Senators, using Senate-linked IP addresses, have been editing Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that allows any of its users to edit its content. In some cases, they have removed negative facts about Senators from the articles.
Using the public history of edits on Wikipedia, Wikinews reporters collected every Senate IP which had ever edited on Wikipedia as of February 3 and examined where the IPs came from, what they edited, and of what those edits consisted. IP, or Internet Protocol, addresses are unique numbers electronic devices use to communicate with each other on an individual basis.
[tags]Wikipedia, Wikinews, Senate[/tags]
It’s surprising to me, but the logic seems sound. Apparently, Toshiba is going to acquire Westinghouse for $5.4 billion.
Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. said Monday that it was buying nuclear plant builder Westinghouse Electric Co., the U.S.-based unit of the British government’s British Nuclear Fuels PLC, for $5.4 billion.
[tags]Toshiba, Westinghouse, Nuclear power[/tags]
Always nice to see someone write about what is good about gaming.
[tags]Gaming[/tags]