Show Notes: Episode 22b

New format: link bonanza.  Enjoy!

This Week in Star Trek

Tyler Perry wants J.J. Abrams to call him about ‘Star Trek 2’

Hey, review us on iTunes.

Nerds on Tech

Holy Shit: Apple Profits up 95%

Double Holy Shit: Apple is Tracking Us All

Intel Producing Android Device Processors

Weird Al snubbed by Lady Gaga, but Not Really

Cloud Burst: Amazon Bites It, Takes Down Reddit

Weird Science

Aussies Invent Rearden Metal

Giant Omni-Slime Eating Titanic May Teach Humanity the Meaning of Love

Arm Chair Psychologists

Measuring Your Weness

Your God Makes You a Jerk

Our Awesome Governments

Nuclear Roomba

Defense Plans Put on Public Website for Like the 4000th Time

Nerd Rage

New York Times has 100,000 Subscribers, But Some Only Paid $0.99

Trashed: Stories Dragged to the End of the Dock

Surfboards Made of Garbage

Salt Water Batteries

Ginger Rapist

Singing for WikiLeaks

Further Reading

The Storied History of Canada & Its Slow March Toward Luke-Warm Freedom

Episode 18: Show Notes

This week we roll out like Anderson Cooper. You guessed it, we’re keeping them honest. Also, Cord is re-watching “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” The whole damned thing.

This Week in Star Trek

Star Trek Script Close to Completion

Ever since J.J. Abrams’ 2009 reboot of Star Trek scored $385 million at the box office, Paramount, as well as fans, have been waiting for a sequel script to be delivered.Initially, screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci revealed that the script could arrive by the summer of 2010, at which point Kurtzman admitted that he, Orci, and co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof were “halfway through the story”. Last December, Kurtzman admitted that the writers finally “have broken the story,” but offered no timeline for when the script would be finished.

But just this week, however, Orci said this on Twitter: ”aiming to turn in first full draft of Star Trek in six weeks or so.”

In Conversation Gives Back

Special thanks to @mandolosophy for the sweet shout-out on Twitter. Hey, review the show.

Our first international text came in from Peter Snyder. No need to re-review the show.

Nerds on Tech

From Jeopardy Champ to Dr. Watson

Global data storage calculated at 295 exabytes

“The study, published in the journal Science, calculates the amount of data stored in the world by 2007 as 295 exabytes. The researchers calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 60 technologies from PCs and and DVDs to paper adverts and books[…]Scientists calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 60 analogue and digital technologies during the period from 1986 to 2007. They considered everything from computer hard drives to obsolete floppy discs, and x-ray films to microchips on credit cards.”

That amount of data breaks down to:

• 1.2 billion average hard drives.
  
• 13 layers of books covering the entire United States
  
• A stack of CDs that would reach beyond the moon

Daily data broadcasted by human beings, not necessarily stored, is estimated at around two zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is 1000 exabytes). That’s the equivalent of 175 newspapers per person, per day.

“The study also pinpoints the arrival of the digital age as 2002, the first year worldwide digital storage capacity overtook analogue capacity.”

Weird Science

Why are some people more likely to get skin cancer on the left side of their body?

Answer: That’s where people sit when they drive.

Armchair Psychologists

Can Television Be a Substitute for a Real Friend?

Yes. A series of studies published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology examines the Social Surrogacy Hypothesis, which posits that parasocial relationships in favored television programs can provide the experience of belonging. 

“Study 1 demonstrated that people report turning to favored television programs when feeling lonely, and feel less lonely when viewing those programs.

“Study 2 demonstrated that experimentally activating belongingness needs leads people to revel longer in descriptions of favored (but not non-favored) television programs.

“Study 3 demonstrated that thinking about favored (but not non-favored) television programs buffers against drops in self-esteem and mood and against increases in feelings of rejection commonly elicited by threats to close relationships.

“Finally, Study 4 demonstrated that thinking about favored television programs reduces activation of chronically activated rejection-related words. These results yield provocative preliminary evidence for the Social Surrogacy Hypothesis.”

Does a musician’s clothing affect how much we like their music? 

Yes, and overly revealing clothing makes us think they’re gross.

Are men really more open to casual sex than women?

YES!

“[In] experiments, conducted in 1978 and 1982, male and female confederates of average attractiveness approached potential partners with one of three requests: “Would you go out tonight?” “Will you come over to my apartment?” or “Would you go to bed with me?” The great majority of men were willing to have a sexual liaison with the women who approached them. Women were not. Not one woman agreed to a sexual liaison. Many possible reasons for this marked gender difference were discussed. These studies were run in 1978 and 1982. It has since become important to track how the threat of AIDS is affecting men and women’s willingness to date, come to an apartment, or to engage in casual sexual relations.”

Do we judge others based on attractiveness? 

YES!

“Experiment 1 (n = 2639) investigated selection of scholarship applicants and demonstrated that a pro-attractiveness bias held only for selection of opposite-sex scholarship applicants; no such bias was observed for highly attractive same-sex applicants.

“Experiment 2 (n = 622) investigated evaluations of prospective job candidates and demonstrated again that pro-attractiveness bias was observed only for opposite-sex candidates; participants discriminated against highly attractive same-sex candidates.”

Our Awesome Governments

New York Release Legal Guide to the Apocalypse

“Quarantines. The closing of businesses. Mass evacuations. Warrantless searches of homes. The slaughter of infected animals and the seizing of property. When laws can be suspended and whether infectious people can be isolated against their will or subjected to mandatory treatment. It is all there, in dry legalese, in the manual, published by the state court system and the state bar association.”

Internet Freedom Abroad and Wiretapping at Home

Secretary Clinton: “I urge countries everywhere to join the United States in our bet that an open internet will lead to stronger, more prosperous countries.”

Clinton’s speech came a day after the House voted to extend to December 8 three controversial domestic spy provisions of the Patriot Act. And Customs officials seized 18 more internet domains without giving the pirate website owners a chance to challenge the forfeiture.

What’s more, the Obama administration on Thursday is expected to testify before a House subcommittee about the need to expand the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which already requires telcos and internet access providers to have wiretapping capabilities. The FBI wants Congress to demand that same requirement for encrypted e-mail services like Blackberry, and also wants that for social networks and peer-to-peer messaging networks like Skype.

Help Us Grow

Review us on iTunes.

Nerd Rage

Russian Baby Gymnastics

A video of a woman swing her baby around by the arms and legs was removed from YouTube recently because several viewers found it offensive and disturbing. But Oleg Tyutin, a psychotherapist, has been practicing this uniquely Russian form of “baby gymnastics” for over 20 years. He trains young moms to do the same and claims that “It makes infants more open, more sociable, more relaxed. It also helps them develop more quickly.” One of the mothers Tyutin has trained, when hearing about criticism of the practice, remarked that “People in Europe are used to raising their children in over-sanitised conditions, they’re scared of everything.”

Show Notes: Episode 17

This week, we celebrate the victory of the World Champion Green Bay Packers, and pulling back ever so slightly from the brink of nihilism.

This Week in Star Trek

Shatner Gets Even Heavier

William Shatner is intent on recording a metal album[…]the Star Trek actor will have plenty of experienced help on hand, with members of Deep Purple and Queen guesting on the album according to LA Weekly.

And Shatner is still milking his sci-fi past with all the tracks to have a ‘space’ or ‘flying in space’ theme.

In Conversation Gives Back

We are nothing without our fans. Nothing.  So, thanks to Aaron Merrill for suggesting a Nerds on Tech story, Kyle M. for letting us know that folks at The Daily are good people, Elisabeth McCaffrey for suggesting a Weird Science story this week, and our theme-song composer Pete Snyder for giving us two Weird Science stories as well as some funny feedback.

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

@cordblomquist tweets about the show, so give a re-tweet!

Nerds on Tech

Wired Gets Personal

A few selected readers have received an ultra-personalised cover of this months Wired magazine (UK edition). Wired digged up some personal information on the web of each person and printed this on their own personalised cover.

Wired’s statement: “…many of us are unaware how data we post only for social reasons can later be used for other purposes”

Up in Them iPhone Guts

The location and design of the RF components—EMI (electromagnetic interference) shields, connector locations, even board layout—is changed. They redesigned the vibrator—a seemingly minor item, but it takes up a large amount of space inside the phone. My tester said that the “Verizon vibration was quieter, a little softer to feel, and made a better sound on the table.” (No, I’m not making a ‘That’s what she said’ joke.)

The real news is that the chipset also supports both GSM and CDMA, suggesting “universal” models may be forthcoming.

 Armchair Psychologists

Sexy News is Good News, or Is It?

from Communication Research:

The experimental study reported here employed one of the most compelling visual cues of female sexual attractiveness (low waist-to-hip ratio) to test the influence of news anchor sexualization on audience evaluations of her as a professional and their memory for the news that she presents. Male participants saw the sexualized version of the anchor as less suited for war and political reporting. They also encoded less news information presented by the sexualized than her unsexualized version. Conclusions were drawn in line with evolutionary psychology expectations of men’s cognitive susceptibility to visual sex cues.

Women participants, on the other hand, did not vary across conditions in their assessments of the anchor’s competence to report on war and political news. Moreover, they encoded more news information presented by the sexualized than unsexualized anchor condition.

Good Vibrations

from The Journal of Sexual Medicine:

The prevalence of women’s vibrator use was found to be 52.5% (95% CI 50.3-54.7%). Vibrator users were significantly more likely to have had a gynecologic exam during the past year (P < 0.001) and to have performed genital self-examination during the previous month (P < 0.001). Vibrator use was significantly related to several aspects of sexual function (i.e., desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, pain, overall function) with recent vibrator users scoring higher on most sexual function domains, indicating more positive sexual function.

Weird Science

One Flu Vaccine to Rule Them All

A new flue vaccine would:

target proteins inside the flu virus that are common to all types of flu instead of being tailored to match individual strains, according to researchers at Oxford University.

The technique has never been tested on humans before and could be used to prevent around a billion people a year contracting the disease, including the variant swine flu.

This means that there would no longer be an annual rush to create new vaccines, at great expense, to match different strains as they develop.

Totally Gross Grossness

To make artificial blood vessels the team took smooth-muscle cells from fresh corpses and cultured them on tubular scaffolds made of a material called polyglycolic acid. Grown this way, smooth muscle secretes collagen, a structural protein that is, among several other things in the body, an important component of the walls of blood vessels.

Kickstarting Synthetic Biology Through Film

This new perspective comes from engineers turning their attention from other fields towards biological sciences and the structures of DNA. They see DNA as programmable code, cells as systems built of genetic circuits, and biology as a platform from which manufacturing systems can be created.

Synthetic Biology is a new approach to genetic engineering. It can make E. Coli bacteria smell like fresh rain, turn sunlight into gasoline, make concrete buildings heal themselves, or goats produce spider silk in their milk. These are strange technologies certainly, but these examples help demonstrate what is possible and already happening with the tools of synthetic biology.

See more at KickStarter.com

Our Awesome Governments

Senate Seating Assignments

from the National Bureau of Economic Research:

In this paper we demonstrate that personal connections amongst politicians, and between politicians and firms, have a significant impact on the voting behavior of U.S. politicians. We exploit a unique database linking politicians to other politicians, and linking politicians to firms, and find both channels to be influential. Networks based on alumni connections between politicians, as well as common seat locations on the chamber floor, are consistent predictors of voting behavior.

Less Smoking, More Drinking & Driving

from The Journal of Public Economics

Using geographic variation in local and state smoke-free bar laws in the US, we observe an increase in fatal accidents involving alcohol following bans on smoking in bars that is not observed in places without bans. Although an increased accident risk might seem surprising at first, two strands of literature on consumer behavior suggest potential explanations — smokers driving longer distances to a bordering jurisdiction that allows smoking in bars and smokers driving longer distances within their jurisdiction to bars that still allow smoking, perhaps through non-compliance or outdoor seating.

Help In Conversation Grow

Review us on iTunes.

Nerd Rage

There’s no reason to be mad this week.  Aaron Rodgers is the Super Bowl MVP.  The Packers did it.  Done.