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Researchers asked 179 Canadian college students to answer the following three math questions:1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? ____cents 2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? _____minutes3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? _____daysFrom Relatively Interesting:After completing the quiz, the students were asked about their innate religiosity, religious beliefs, and beliefs in supernatural entities (like God, angels, and Satan).The results?The more religious the students were, the less likely they were to have demonstrated effective analytical reasoning on the three questions. Conversely, the better the students did on the questions, the less likely they were to have strong beliefs.Religious people tended to give the intuitive answers to the questions, and non-religious people gave the analytic answers.Most of the theists I know would be able to correctly answer these questions. Math puzzle inventor Martin Gardner was a theist and would have been able to answer these questions in an instant.

David Luke, a University of Greenwich psychology lecturer and researcher of high weirdness, has a new book out with the compelling title of Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience. Based on the blurb, it sounds like an absolute trip:A psychonautic scientific trip to the weirdest outposts of the psychedelic terrain, inhaling anything and everything relevant from psychology, psychiatry, parapsychology, anthropology, neuroscience, ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, biochemistry, religious studies, cultural history, shamanism and the occult along the way.Staring the strange straight in the third eye this eclectic collection of otherworldly entheogenic research delivers a comprehensive and yet ragtaglledy scientific exploration of synaesthesia, extra-dimensional percepts, inter-species communication, eco-consciousness, mediumship, possession, entity encounters, near-death and out-of-body experiences, psi, alien abduction experiences and lycanthropy. Essentially, its everything you ever wanted to know about weird psychedelic experiences, but were too afraid to ask…"Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience" (via Daily Grail)

Crunchy shell tacos are delicious, but also challenging. They have a hair-trigger tendency to blow up when you bite them, causing the filling to spill out. Patrick Allan of Lifehacker has discovered the best way to improve your odds of having a happy taco experience.Take your first bite at the end of the taco. I recommend the classic “taco neck” method. Then follow up with the next two smaller bites labeled above, making your way toward the center. Now, spin it around and repeat the process on the other side. Eventually you’ll be left with two big bites in the center, and the shell should still be intact. Enjoy those last few moments of tasty taco bliss. Alternatively, if you take really big bites, you can replace 2 and 3 with just “2,” replace 4 with “3,” replace 5 and 6 with “4,” and replace 7 and 8 with just “5.”We make tacos about once a week. One of our best purchases was a set of stainless steel taco holders.

I bought this for my daughter for her birthday and we both it. It's a $10 transparent padlock that lets you see the inner workings as you poke them with lockpicking tools. Amazon stopped selling low-priced lock-picks but they are dirt-cheap on eBay. Buy one for yourself, and another for your favorite juvenile hacker.

A gang of robbers with hammers was no match for the polycarbonate-laminated glass at this jewellery store in Malaysia

"Escaping Prison with Dungeons & Dragons" is a moving, 10-minute documentary about prisoners who used tabletop role-playing games to survive their incarceration. (more…)

When Drew Magary was much younger he gave John McCain’s Presidential campaign $5. He regrets it. McCain "has always been a big talker," write Magary in GQ, "but when it comes to the actual meat-and-potatoes voting process, he falls in line."Snip:Everyone should realize that John McCain is the perfect American lie, a man who professes to be noble and fair and just while being none of those things. He served his country honorably in combat, but in no other fashion. And he serves out his time in the Senate, and here on planet Earth, as a pathetic enabler. Never the lion; always the sheep. For seventeen years, gullible people have been waiting for him to make his face turn, to make some grand defiant move for the sake of God and country. But that was always just clever branding on his part, and today should serve as a cold slap in the face to anyone who still thought he might have that kind of political courage left in him. He's a fucking disgrace.Image: Jim Greenhill

This simulation, called The Evolution of Trust starts with a variation of the prisoners' dilemma. You can choose to put a coin into a slot. Another person has the same choice on a different machine. You can't communicate with the other person. The only thing you know is this: if the other person put a coin in their slot, you will receive 3 coins. And if you put a coin in your slot, the other person will get 3 coins. What's the best strategy? Trust is falling. Why? And how can we fix it?My interactive guide to the game theory of trust is now OUT!👉 https://t.co/2x7BfWehpJ 👈 pic.twitter.com/AjDBJ0w6OB— Nicky Case (@ncasenmare) July 25, 2017Case 1: other person inserts coin. If you put a coin in the slot, you will have a net gain of 2 coins. If you don't put a coin in the slot you will gain 3 coins. So the best thing to do is not put a coin in the slot.Case 2: other person doesn't insert coin. If you put a coin in the slot, you will have a net loss of 1 coin. If you don't put a coin in the slot you lose nothing. So the best thing to do is not put a coin in the slot.In either case, it's to your advantage not to put a coin in the slot. But what happens when you play several rounds of the game with the same person? Are there better strategies? Yes, and this excellent interactive simulation by Nicky Case walks you through them in an entertaining way. It's a great introduction to game theory.From the simulation:Game theory has shown us the three things we need for the evolution of trust: 1. REPEAT INTERACTIONS Trust keeps a relationship going, but you need the knowledge of possible future repeat interactions before trust can evolve. 2. POSSIBLE WIN-WINS You must be playing a non-zero-sum game, a game where it's at least possible that both players can be better off -- a win-win. 3. LOW MISCOMMUNICATION The level of miscommunication can't be too high. And when there's a little bit of miscommunication, it pays to be more forgiving.Our problem today isn't just that people are losing trust, it's that our environment acts against the evolution of trust.

Archaeologists excavating a Hittite city on the border of Turkey and Syria found a broken jug that, upon restoration, revealed a smiley face. At 3,700-years-old, it could be the oldest smiley face drawing ever found. From Smithsonian:According to ​Zuhal Uzundere Kocalar​ at Turkey's state-run news service, the Anadolu Agency, the researchers did not notice the smiley face until restorers put the fragments of the round, off-white jug with a small handle and short neck back together.“We have found a variety of cubes and urns. The most interesting of them is a pot dating back to 1700 BC that features an image of a 'smile' on it,” Nicolo Marchetti, an archaeology professor at the University of Bologno in Italy, tells Kocalar. “The pot was used for drinking sherbet [sweet drink]. Most probably, [this depicts] the oldest smile of the world.”

Your Roomba vacuum cleaner collects data about the size and geometry of your home as it cleans and transmits that data back to Irobot, Roomba's parent company -- and now the company says it wants to sell that data to companies like Apple and Google. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiwYsYNh3aoBruce Sterling: *THEY DON’T LOOK countercultural cliche-dramatic, they don’t have beatnik berets or bongos. You wouldn’t look at them twice in New York City, but there’s still something subtly off about them. I think it’s that plethora of pens in Ginsberg’s untucked shirt." (more…)

The American "productivity paradox": technology keeps marching, but the amount of profit generated by the average worker's average hour is stagnant. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCubFBrxIxEThere's a wealth of found-comedy in watching this gang of armed, helmeted robbers try in vain to smash the glass in this Malaysian jewelry store in Jalan Besar, Sungai Buloh: the hammers bounce off the fantastically tough glass, whose resilience is positively otherworldly, while the otherwise beautifully choreographed robbery (which includes some pretty snazzy outfits!) founders. (more…)

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.PLEASE DO JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, irrelevant insights, giveaways, and much more. ALSO DO NOT NEGLECT TO PURCHASE Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”Filled with wild twists and funny dialogue” -Publishers Weekly) Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

The TREBLAB X11 Earphones are versatile, offer great sound, and are currently $32.99 in the Boing Boing Store.These Bluetooth earbuds are a great workout companion. They’re totally sweat proof and their ear-fins keep them snugly in place during high activity — something that Apple’s AirPods can only do if you were blessed with precisely the correct ear size. Whatever that is. The TREBLAB X11's also feature passive noise cancellation and wireless HD audio for excellent sound quality during music playback, and crystal-clear phone calls with the integrated mic.While it might not seem like the biggest deal, being able to switch between devices without digging through a bunch of bluetooth sync settings is a godsend. It makes you want to use them with everything. Thankfully, they have 6 hours of battery life, so you likely won’t need to charge them more than once a day.The TREBLAB X11 Earphones are available here for $32.99.

Adding some white lines or a cutout to an animated gif produces a cool 3D effect. From the Split Depth Gifs subreddit.[via Reality Carnival]

The U.S. Senate, aided by Trump's second in command, has voted to begin debate on the GOP's plan to destroy Obamacare. (more…)

Kerry Knudsen is curator of lichens at the University of California. He is profiled in Matthew Killip's short film. Knudsen's intense passion for the beauty and mystery of lichens is thrilling. The Atlantic has an article about Knudsen, called The Ex-Anarchist Construction Worker Who Became a World-Renowned Scientist. (more…)

Farewell, Flash. Adobe's once-dominant multimedia format that powered so many restaurant websites and early interactive web games will be mothballed at the end of 2020, the software company said Tuesday. (more…)

As Senators vote on proceeding to debate the secret Trump/GOP health care plan aka Obamacare repeal plan *they haven't even seen,* protesters in the senate chambers and outside shouted “Kill the bill, don't kill us.” (more…)

This beautiful photograph was shared by Redditor iam4real.

There are no good reasons, and a lot of bad ones, that your dog can be vaccinated for Lyme disease but you can not. Profiteering and vaccination fears have teamed up to leave humans defenseless from a terrible malady.WBUR shares the story:For Dr. Stanley Plotkin, a prominent vaccine scientist, Lyme disease is personal. His son, Alec, collapsed from a slow heart rate when he was 39, brought down by a rare heart complication from Lyme.His son survived, but the incident helped cement Plotkin's resolve to pursue a human vaccine against Lyme disease. Using his bully pulpit as an emeritus professor of infectious diseases at the University of Pennsylvania, he’s taken his case from The New York Times to the New England Journal of Medicine, in which he called the lack of Lyme protection "the worst recent failure to use an effective vaccine."That’s because we used to have a vaccine for Lyme, called LYMErix, but it was pulled from the market. Now, the only family member who can get a Lyme vaccine is your dog.LYMErix had some problems. It required three doses at $50 each, and they were not covered by insurance -- so involved some inconvenience and out-of-pocket money. Despite a good safety record in clinical trials, some people experienced what they thought were side effects and sued SmithKline Beecham, the manufacturer. In 2002, SmithKline pulled the vaccine, after only four years on the market. (More on the history of the Lyme vaccine here.)While the official line is that poor sales led the vaccine's maker to pull it, most experts think the specter of lawsuits was a key factor. Though an FDA panel ultimately found no link between the vaccine and arthritis, SmithKline settled lawsuits making that claim. And by then, the vaccine was already dead.That cautionary tale still reverberates at companies developing new potential Lyme vaccines. "When I talk to manufacturers, they essentially ask me: 'Will it happen again?' " Plotkin said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F5G_fqo-yMLadder lockdown is a metal tray with super-grippy patches on its underside; set it down on any surface (including ice!) and then set your ladder's feet in the tray and cinch it in place and the ladder won't "kick out" and injure you and your loved ones. (more…)

Chuck Schumer is trying to reconcile the neoliberal and left wing factions in the Democratic party by offering a slate of policies that are supposed to appeal to both sides: some ($15 minimum wage) are solid, but one recommendation is so face-palmingly dumb that it's almost impossible to believe they made the cut. (more…)

Defcon, the hacker and security conference, is coming to Caesar's Palace this weekend (I'm speaking!), and that means that the hotel needs to start thinking hard about the security of its systems, likely to be targeted both in earnest (by people who want to spy on attendees) and in jest (by attendees who want to prank their fellows by announcing that they've compromised everyone's systems). (more…)

Trump relitigated the 2016 election, boasted about his inauguration crowds, and told other inappropriate fabulisms to a crowd of children at the 2017 Boy Scout Jamboree today, because nothing matters anymore. “The hottest people in New York were at this party. A lot of successful people were there. And I was invited to the party, I was very young...”As you watch, and read the transcript, remember. The audience is primarily children. Could have been me mis-hearing, but I could swear he mis-speaks, "their road to American sex." (more…)

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis criticized officials at the Pentagon for spending $28 million on forest camouflage-patterned uniforms for Afghan National Army soldiers. Only 2.1% of Afghanistan is covered by forests. (more…)

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former CEO Exxon-Mobil, is thinking about quitting his job because he is fed up with Trump, according to CNN.Tillerson has a growing list of differences with the White House, including a new debate over Iran policy and personnel. His frustration is hardly a secret and it has spilled out publicly at times. But friends sense a change of late.For weeks, conversations with Tillerson friends outside of Washington have left the impression that he, despite his frustrations, was determined to stay on the job at least through the end of the year. That would allow time to continue efforts to reorganize the State Department and would mean he could claim to have put in a year as America's top diplomat.But two sources who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity over the weekend said they would not be surprised if there was a "Rexit" from Foggy Bottom sooner that that.Images: Office of the President-elect / Gage Skidmore

Poet Brian Bilston wrote this delightful poem above describing, and embodying, the Fibonacci sequence in which each every number after the first two in a series is the sum of the preceding two numbers.(via @pickover)

One stormy morning in 1880, naturalist John Muir set out to explore a glacier in Alaska's Taylor Bay, accompanied by an adventurous little dog that had joined his expedition. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the harrowing predicament that the two faced on the ice, which became the basis of one of Muir's most beloved stories.We'll also marvel at some phonetic actors and puzzle over a season for vasectomies.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

This 20-minute documentary is definitely worth a watch. It follows Burning Man's fascinating history from its "humble countercultural roots on San Francisco’s Baker Beach" to "the world-famous desert convergence it is today." If you've ever been to the big event in the Black Rock Desert, I guarantee it'll give you a greater appreciation and understanding of it.The film, titled City of Dust: The Evolution of Burning Man, was created by Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada for its current exhibition of the same name. Never-before-seen photographs, artifacts, journals, sketches, and notebooks reveal how this temporary experimental desert city came to be—and how it continues to evolve.The show is open now until January 7, 2018 and boasts an impressive roster of speakers and events including talks with Burning Man co-founders Marian Goodell, Larry Harvey, Michael Mikel and Harley K. Dubois. After the exhibit ends in Reno, it heads to Washington, D.C. to be housed at Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery for its "No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man" show from March 30 through September 16, 2018.photo by Stewart HarveyPreviously: Eat Fuck Kill, the legend of the playa's first meme

In addition to benefiting from excellent feng shui, the family harvests about 15 kilograms of honey each year from their bee housemates, who showed up on the day of a wedding. (more…)

Buoy and Canoe were in bad shape when they were rescued, but they bounced back thanks to the Pacific Marine Mammal Center. Watch this heartwarming footage of the pair getting released back into the ocean. (more…)

Someone on a crane captured this stunning video of a full circle rainbow. Unfortunately most of us never get a chance to see circle rainbows because the ground interrupts. Here's an explanation from Phil "Bad Astronomy" Plait in Slate:...To see a rainbow, you face away from the Sun (180°), then look about 42° away from that point (180°–138°). The drops in an arc along that angle will then bend the light back toward you, and you get a rainbow, with the colors spread out a bit because they bend by different amounts.Oh, wait. Did I say “arc”? Because technically, any raindrop 42° away from the anti-solar point (ooh, fancy science-speak again) will bend the light back to you. We see rainbows in the sky because in general the ground is close to you. When we look up toward the sky we see for a long way, and there are lots of raindrops along your eyeline that can add their light together to make the rainbow. When you look down, the ground gets in the way, there aren’t as many drops, and you don’t see a rainbow.(via DIGG)(image above via WoahDude)

Using a $14.99 app called Filmic Pro, French indie director Michel Gondry shot his charming new short film, Détour, entirely on an iPhone 7 Plus. According to Europe1, Apple financed the project to show the quality of its phone's video capabilities. Follow the adventures of a small tricycle as it sets off along the French roads in search of its young owner.Here's some behind-the-scenes videos showing some of tricks Gondry used in the film:https://youtu.be/aPdwbvJCqfYhttps://youtu.be/DuDUqqFzELkhttps://youtu.be/sIW5qChZJPghttps://youtu.be/ZXgyX6cc5eEhttps://youtu.be/2jYI10yT07chttps://youtu.be/vInEUWuRq_Q(Open Culture)

Namibian desert Hotrod ants have evolved to tiptoe around to avoid baking to death in the unrelenting sun. But other dangers lurk, like these terrifying real-life sarlacc pits created by antlions. (more…)

Ken Sturdy, a decorated survivor of the Battle of Dunkirk, attended the Calgary premiere of Christopher Nolan's new film that chronicles the skirmish's history.Now 97, Mr. Sturdy was just 20 years old when he fought at the Battle of Dunkirk during World War II. At the premiere of Dunkirk, a teary-eyed Mr. Sturdy told Global News, "I never thought I would see that again. It was just like I was there again."He continued, "I cried because it's never the end...As the human species, we are so intelligent. We do astonishing things. We fly to the Moon but we still do stupid things."(reddit)

The Memory Hole has set up a page dedicated to the many tweets Anthony Scaramucci deleted shortly after being named Trump's Communications Director. (more…)

Boxer Conor McGregor recently wore this custom pinstripe suit with a subtle "Fuck You" pinstripe. Now you can sport this handsome suit yourself! From tailor David August, the made-to-measure 3-piece wool suit is $6500, perfect for people with "fuck you" money in their bank account. Produced in an exclusive woven Super 130's wool in navy twill, this pinstripe effect is created with explicit fighting words presented in a vertical repeat. This couture label suit features details like:French-facing constructionStacked 'kissing' working buttons on sleeve cuffpurple camouflage silk lining1/16" hand-stitched detailingtwo-button, side vent jacketVest available in single- or double-breasted (image shown with double-breasted vest)Numbered and signed by David August HeilLimited quantities"Limited-Edition 'Eff You' Pinstripe 3-Piece Wool Suit Made-to-Measure" (via Uncrate)

In steelworker parlance, a cobble is a bit of steel that catches on a roller during manufacturing. Cobbles cause the molten steel coming out of the furnace to back up and snake wildly around. This guy was lucky to be uninjured after a close call with a cobble. (more…)

It's a shame that these didn't exist when my daughter was a little girl. I think she would have loved playing with them. Why? Because these unusual dolls have removable organs.Designed for 4 to 12 year olds, Anatomic Anna and Andy are the brainchildren of a London-based homeschooling mother who wanted to further her kids' STEM education but could only find anatomical models made for medical students. So, she made her own.Through her company, Little Boffins - Learn Through Play, she's kickstarting the two dolls. One doll, either male or female, costs £50 (about $64). By the way, I couldn't help but notice that they resemble American Girl dolls. So, I checked their height. Like AG dolls, Anna and Andy also stand 18" tall. Given that, I'm guessing AG doll clothes will fit this gut-spilling duo too.Thanks, Joyce!(BabyCenter)

The Standing Rock protesters were an unprecedented coalition of indigenous peoples, veterans, and activists of every stripe, and they faced down vicious mercenaries who targeted them with "anti-terrorist" tactics. (more…)

Robbo writes, "A number of so-called scientific journals have accepted a Star Wars-themed spoof paper. The manuscript is an absurd mess of factual errors, plagiarism and movie quotes. We know this because Neuroskeptic wrote it and posted about it on the Discover Magazine site. The paper was about Midi-chlorians and attributed to Dr Lucas McGeorge and Dr Annette Kin. Neuroskeptic takes us through the process used to create the bogus paper and the varied repsonses from the half-assed 'peer review' journals who accepted the work." (more…)

Many of us who play fantasy and sci-fi roleplaying and tabletop miniature games struggle with our ability to paint minis so that they look halfway decent on the table. Getting me to paint my minis is like getting 8-year-old me to eat his broccoli. I'm something of a perfectionist and I look at a lot of pro painted miniatures, in gaming magazines and online. My miniatures never look as good as what I see, so it's an effort for me to even bother. But also being a perfectionist, I wouldn't think of "gaming in the nude" (playing with unpainted miniatures). And so I press ahead, and try to do at least a little painting every night.My pal, James Floyd Kelly, who I wrote about previously when he launched his new dungeon crafting channel, Game Terrain Engineering, was in a similar boat of not being happy with his painting chops. So, he decided to buy the Reaper Miniatures Learn To Paint Bones Kit and record a series of videos of him painting the three minis that come in the kit. It's really encouraging to watch the series and to see how much his painting improves over the three videos and three miniatures. Bolstered by that improvement, Jim plans on now getting the next kit in the series, the Layer Up Bones Miniatures Learn to Paint Kit and to paint (and hopefully document) those three miniatures.https://youtu.be/vX4--iJvz5whttps://youtu.be/WYaQCb1noVQhttps://youtu.be/WCAGMYY3TRYAlso: Here's a list of beginner painting tips that I ran into recently. These are all of the same tips that I share with people. I would also add great lighting. I just broke down and finally got one of those swing-arm magnifying florescent lights and it makes me feel like I've been painting in the dark up until now. Jimmi recommends a wet palette and I couldn't agree more, now that I finally have one of those. Thinning your paints and building up paint in layers makes a huge difference in achieving great results. A wet palette helps keep the paints properly thin for you. Here's the wet palette that I got, based on a friend's recommendation. I love it.

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There are three more stops on my tour for Walkaway: tomorrow at San Diego Comic-Con, next weekend at Defcon 25 in Las Vegas, and August 10th at the Burbank Public Library. (more…)

The U.S. government today said that Americans will be prohibited from traveling to North Korea because of an elevated risk of "long-term detention" in the country, where an American student was jailed last year while traveling there, and later died. (more…)

CNN reports that special counsel Robert Mueller III has asked the staff of President Donald Trump's White Supremacist House to preserve all documents that may be related to a meeting organized by Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., at which he'd been promised dirty info hacked from Hillary Clinton by the Russian government. (more…)

Usually we only get to see what a rocket launch looks like from ground level. (more…)

The Department of Agriculture's chief scientist oversees more than 1,000 scientists in 100 research facilities: Trump's pick to run the agency is Sam Clovis, a climate-denying talk-radio host who not only lacks any kind of scientific degrees -- he didn't take a single science course at university. (more…)