Posted March 19th, 2010
Plastination:
For several years von Hagens and his team experimented using smaller squid, and found that the fragility of the skin needed a slower replacement process than other animal specimens.
Some 1500 litres of silicone later, the plastination of the giant cephalopods was completed in January.

Posted March 19th, 2010
This would worry me, if the liquid ban weren’t already useless.
The reporter found the security flaw in the airport’s duty-free shopping system. At Schiphol airport, passengers flying to countries outside the Schengan Agreement Area can buy bottles of alcohol at duty-free shops before going through security. They are then permitted to take these bottles onto flights, provided that they have the bottles sealed at the shop.
Mr Stegeman bought a bottle, emptied it and refilled it with another liquid. After that he returned to the same shop and ‘bought’ the refilled bottle again. The shop sealed the bottle in a bag, allowing him to take it with him through security and onto a London-bound flight. In London, he transferred planes and carried the bottle onto a flight to Washington DC.
The flaw, of course, is the assumption that bottles bought at a duty-free shop actually come from the duty-free shop.
But note that 1) it’s the same airport as underwear bomber, 2) reporter is known for trying to defeat airport security, and 3) body scanners would have made no difference.
Watch the TV program here.

Posted March 19th, 2010
Just found out today that there is a Church of the Jedi, that they ordain ministers and you can get married by them . Sometimes people just amaze me with their awesomeness. Seriously, the creativity and whackiness that we have as a race is something…(read more)
Posted March 19th, 2010
Interesting research:
Psychologist Jeremy Ginges and his colleagues identified this backfire effect in studies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2007. They interviewed both Israelis and Palestinians who possessed sacred values toward key issues such as ownership over disputed territories like the West Bank or the right of Palestinian refugees to return to villages they were forced to leave?these people viewed compromise on these issues completely unacceptable. Ginges and colleagues found that individuals offered a monetary payout to compromise their values expressed more moral outrage and were more supportive of violent opposition toward the other side. Opposition decreased, however, when the other side offered to compromise on a sacred value of its own, such as Israelis formerly renouncing their right to the West Bank or Palestinians formally recognizing Israel as a state. Ginges and Scott Atran found similar evidence of this backfire effect with Indonesian madrassah students, who expressed less willingness to compromise their belief in sharia, strict Islamic law, when offered a material incentive.
[...]
After giving their opinions on Iran?s nuclear program, all participants were asked to consider one of two deals for Iranian disarmament. Half of the participants read about a deal in which the United States would reduce military aid to Israel in exchange for Iran giving up its military program. The other half of the participants read about a deal in which the United States would reduce aid to Israel and would pay Iran $40 billion. After considering the deal, all participants predicted how much the Iranian people would support the deal and how much anger they would feel toward the deal. In line with the Palestinian-Israeli and Indonesian studies, those who considered the nuclear program a sacred value expressed less support, and more anger, when the deal included money.

Posted March 18th, 2010
I wasn?t really planning to do a ? Spam of the Day? every day, but this one got through all of the filters today and I found it interesting enough to share. This one combines the use of: E-mail spoofing (the E-mail ?from:? field used my own address,…(read more)