In Conversation

Show Notes: Episode 15

The fans continue to support us, the media can’t ignore us, our critics bore us. This convo spits mad heat, so watch yourself.

This Week in Star Trek

Star Trek was Totally Not Gay

Star Trek producerBrannon Braga says he regrets not featuring openly gay characters in the franchise.

“There were people who felt very strongly that we should be showing casually, you know, just two guys together in the background in Ten Forward. At the time, the decision was made not to do that and I think those same people would make a different decision now because I think, you know, that was 1989, well yeah about ‘89, ‘90, ‘91. I have no doubt that those same creative players wouldn’t feel so hesitant to have, you know, have been squeamish about a decision like that.”

In Conversation Gives Back

We want to thank the fans.  Here’s to Cyril Schauland, Alberta Howey, and Aaron Merrill.

You too can get a shout-out by reblogging the show, leaving a comment, writing a review, or suggesting a story.

Weird Science

To Tired for the Truth

“Too tired to tell the truth: Self-control resource depletion and dishonesty” from Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 45, Issue 3, May 2009:

The opportunity to profit from dishonesty evokes a motivational conflict between the temptation to cheat for selfish gain and the desire to act in a socially appropriate manner[…]Results indicate that dishonesty increases when people’s capacity to exert self-control is impaired, and that people may be particularly vulnerable to this effect because they do not predict it.

Beautiful People Have More Daughters

Satoshi Kanazawa, London School of Economics

physically more attractive parents are indeed more likely to have daughters than physically less attractive parents[…]Being physically attractive at age 7 increases the odds of having a daughter by 23% or decreases the odds of having a son by 19%.  Similarly, net of the same control variables, being physically unattractive at age 7 decreases the odds of having a daughter by 20% or increases the odds of having a son by 25%.

Lesbian-Dar

“Female sexual orientation is perceived accurately, rapidly, and automatically from the face and its features” from Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 45, Issue 6, November 2009:

Whereas previous work has shown that male sexual orientation can be accurately and rapidly perceived from the human face and its individual features, no study has examined the judgment of female sexual orientation. To fill this gap, the current work examined the accuracy, speed, and automaticity of judgments of female sexual orientation from the face and from facial features. Study 1 showed that female sexual orientation could be accurately judged from the face and from just eyes without brows and limited to the outer canthi. Study 2 then examined the speed and efficiency of these judgments, showing that judgments of the faces following very brief, near subliminal (40 ms) exposures were significantly better than chance guessing. Finally, Study 3 tested the automaticity of judgments of female sexual orientation by examining the effects of deliberation on accuracy. Participants who made snap judgments of female sexual orientation were significantly more accurate than participants who made thoughtful and deliberated judgments. These data therefore evidence a robust, reliable, and automatic capacity for extracting information about female sexual orientation from nonverbal cues in the face.

Suppression of Information

Egypt Blocking Social Networks

Jared Cohen of Google Ideas said via Twitter:

One Egyptian says, “facebook used to set the date, twitter used to share logistics, youtube to show the world, all to connect people” #jan25

KFC Recipe Leaked

Video Games with Cord Blomquist

Angry Birds is the Shit

When you’re girlfriend won’t give the iPhone back because she can’t stop playing, you know you’ve found a game that isn’t just for gamers.

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Nerd Rage

Litigation is Futile

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), with the cooperation of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, has quietly shuttered 12 torrent websites in the U.S. and at least 39 sites abroad by filing copyright violation complaints with the sites’ hosting providers.

[…]

The specific URLs are not being released because frequently the affected sites will spring up elsewhere online under a different TLD (e.g., TorrentMovies.com becomes TorrentMovies.info).

Releasing the names of the sites would make it much easier for users to find their new URLs in the future.

This news, while interesting and concerning, is a far cry from the70-plus sites shut down by the Department of Homeland Security last November, the culmination of a brewing crackdown effort.

iPad Newspapers!

News Corp.’s iPad-exclusive newspaper, The Daily, will launch next week at an event in New York City.

The company sent an invitation to reporters Thursday morning. The launch will take place midmorning on Feb. 2 at New York’s iconic Guggenheim museum. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch will be at the event, along with Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) Internet services executive Eddy Cue.