Numerous research studies have correlated higher IQs with longer lifespans. Why? One reason could be that smarter people apparently don't do as many dumb things that could kill them early. In Scientific American, Michigan State University psychologist David Z. Hambrick looks at the latest research in cognitive epidemiology:One possibility is that a higher IQ contributes to optimal health behaviors, such as exercising, wearing a seatbelt, and not smoking. Consistent with this hypothesis, in the Scottish data, there was no relationship between IQ and smoking behavior in the 1930s and 1940s, when the health risks of smoking were unknown, but after that, people with higher IQs were more likely to quit smoking. Alternatively, it could be that some of the same genetic factors contribute to variation in both IQ and in the propensity to engage in these sorts of behaviors. Another possibility is that IQ is an index of bodily integrity, and particularly the efficiency of the nervous system."Research Confirms a Link between Intelligence and Life Expectancy"

Business Insider's Jim Edwards got a letter from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch informing him that they'd instructed Twitter to remove two of his tweets on the grounds that they violated B of A's copyright. (more…)

The 82-year-old caller to Brown Deer, Wisconsin police said that she could hear someone in the throes of sexual ecstasy chanting "ISIS is good, ISIS is great" on the 4400 block of Dean Road. (more…)

In a new paper in Science (paywalled), Nicholas J. Matzke from the National University of Australia demonstrates the evolutionary connection between anti-evolution bills introduced into US state legislatures in a series of iterated attempts to ban or weaken the teaching of evolution by natural selection and to promote Biblical creationism in various guises in its stead. (more…)

From 1966, René Jodoin's beautiful minimalist animation of a geometric ballet, "Notes on a Triangle." Jodoin, who died earlier this year, was founder of the National Film Board of Canada's animation studio. "Note on a Triangle" was only one of several films meant as an introduction to geometric forms. See more here.

"Test conducted in 1946 where a human subject was exposed to blasts of air. The test was performed at (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, now the) NASA Langley Research Center's 8 ft High Speed Tunnel."(from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, cleaned up by Quickfound)

Ah, the power of music. Original trailer below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhInIOKwGXU

https://vimeo.com/42372767With New Year's Resolution season on the doorstep, it's time for end-of-year articles about self-improvement, and despite the cliche and improbability of that species of endeavor, I'm recommending that everyone read "Secrets to Long Haul Creativity." (more…)

The Interapp from Tel Aviv's Rayzone Group is an intrusion appliance that uses a cache of zero-day exploits against common mobile phone OSes and is marketed as having the capability to infect and take over any nearby phone whose wifi is turned on. (more…)

"Bro network" an (unfortunately named) open/free IDS that turns all your network traffic into events that can trigger scripts you write. As Nat writes, "Good pedigree (Vern Paxson, a TCP/IP elder god) despite the wince-inducing name." (more…)

John and Julie Gottman are a husband and wife psychologist team who run a hugely successful couples therapy practice that encompasses books, seminars, research, and one-on-one sessions. In a massive, engaging essay, Eve Fairbanks describes how their love inspired their work, and what she learned when she followed their teaching. (more…)

To enter Nanogenmo, you have to write a program that generates a novel, then post it, along with the novel and the training data used to produce it. 500 teams' entries have been posted to Github. (more…)

The plaintiff-friendly East Texas district has long been patent trolls' favorite place to file lawsuits, but one was so egregious that even their favorite judge has not only shut it down, but awarded costs against them.Ars Technica's Joe Mullin reports that US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, "who hears more patent cases that any other federal judge," ordered that eDekka's behavior was exceptionally bad and that the it should pay the legal fees of the companies it sued.…until this order was issued, Gilstrap had never before ordered any patent plaintiff to pay up for filing massive numbers of lawsuits, even after it became the easier to win such awards after the Octane Fitness case.These changes in the patent trolling landscape made the court's friendliness to them seem more explicit. Perhaps it just took a while to sink in?

It has only nine pieces, but each is a sprawling, intersecting fractal nightmare: "you can provide people with the solution and they still can't solve it."The creations of Oscar van Deventer (check his youtube channel for all his puzzle designs) you can buy them at Laser Exact for fifty euros.It's weirdy satisfying watching the pieces disappear into the pattern:

My Canon 9000 died last year after many years of infrequent but dutiful service. The Epson SureColor P600 isn't just an upgrade on cheaper wide-format photo printers; the prints are significantly better than the aging model that it replaced.At $720 on Amazon, it's significantly more expensive than even well-reviewed photo inkjets, but the upgrade rationale is clear: large 13"-wide (e.g. 13x19" or A3) fine art and photo prints of "exhibition" quality. It's for artists and photographers who want to sell copies of their work without trusting it to third-party services and without compromising on print quality—but who aren't churning prints out at a pace where dropping four-figures on a large-tank commercial model makes sense. It uses nine 25.9ml ink cartridges (each are about $35 to replace), though not all will be used on every paper type (switching between photo and matte blacks is automatic, but triggers a cleaning of the black feed that apparently costs about a dollar's worth of ink.)It's 22 x 30 x 17 inches and about forty pounds, so you'll need space for it. It also has a touch-sensitive screen, which seems superfluous, but does ease the UI nightmare that printer setup usually is.A wide variety of art and other specialty finish papers are offered by Epson. A note of caution: the Mac instructions tell you to set it up with Bonjour, but if you do, the print dialog doesn't have any of the Epson-specific options. When setting it up, wait until it autodetects the "IP" connection and pick that one instead. It comes with a roll-feeding attachment: think 13"-wide signs or panoramas, as long as you please. I've had it about six months without a problem, including a two-month spell without use: no clogs!Output's been impeccable. The blacks in particular are noticeably richer and deeper than the model it replaces, a fact confirmed by other reviews. I haven't looked much at recent models from competitors such as Canon, though. Print speed's good, about three minutes a print. Don't forget that if you switch between matte and glossy, it'll spend five minutes or so flushing the black feed.Need more technical details? This particularly in-depth review cautions that "the days of massive leaps in performance with almost all new printer (and camera) models are behind us" but that, as I found, it's a worthwhile upgrade on older models.Finally, if you're committing to gear like this, figure out the color management stuff and don't use shit third-party ink.Epson SureColor P600 [Amazon Referral Link]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM71NPrb5iMHere's your chance to give back to the Internet's library of everything, home of the Wayback Machine, and friend to all Internet people, everywhere. They're livestreaming until 12h Pacific today. If you're in San Francisco, you can also drop by 300 Funston and join the audience.

The City of London Police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit's breathless press-release about their raid on a "gang suspected of uploading and distributing tens of thousands of karaoke tracks online" obscures the truth: they busted three middle-aged dudes who loved singing, so they hunted down otherwise unavailable tracks and shared them with other karaoke fans, not making a penny in the process. (more…)

If you’re a tech professional—or looking to become one—this is the bundle for you. Earn up to 93 certificates in project management, finance, IT, agile and scrum, data and analytics, quality management, and Microsoft. eduCBA’s courses offer the most pertinent certification topics for techies, like SQL Server Training and Excel, CFP training, SAS Base Programmer trainer, a hacking training course—and much, much more. There’s no excuse not to become an expert on any of these topics: eduCBA is the one-stop shop for all of your tech certification needs. (more…)

The Omnibus Budget Bill passed this week, and Paul Ryan managed to cram the domestic mass surveillance law CISA into it, but that's just the appetizer in a banquet of corrupt DC horsetrading embodied in 2,000+ pages that indicts the entire US legislative system. (more…)

The US government has tried to apply its arms export control rules to 3D model files that describe firearms, and declare that publishing those files is the same thing as exporting guns, and is therefore prohibited. Whatever you think about 3D printed guns, love 'em or loathe 'em, that's a terrible way to deal with them. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca6mWRkcSd0Yasuo Amano, webmaster of the Hey Presto blog often creates specialized versions of magic tricks devised by the Tenyo company of Japan based on the seasons or holidays. I guess he must be a Star Wars fan because, in honor of the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, he has combined a number of Tenyo's magical effects into Star Wars themed fun.

These are the "walking palm trees" of Ecuador. Each year, they could walk as much as 20 meters. Slower than the Ents from Lord of the Rings but, well, real.“As the soil erodes, the tree grows new, long roots that find new and more solid ground, sometimes up to 20m,” Peter Vrsansky, a palaeobiologist from the Earth Science Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratislava, tells the BBC. “Then, slowly, as the roots settle in the new soil and the tree bends patiently toward the new roots, the old roots slowly lift into the air. The whole process for the tree to relocate to a new place with better sunlight and more solid ground can take a couple of years.”Tragically, the incredible Sumaco Biosphere Reserve where they live is being chopped down. “This [cutting] is a shame, as Ecuador is one of the world countries with the highest partition of protected areas," Vransky says, But the trees can’t walk fast enough to escape the chainsaw and the machetes backed by current legislation."

The welded scrap-metal bugs of Green Hand Sculpture are gorgeous, intricate, labor-intensive, and therefore expensive, but surely worth ever cent: Preying Mantis, Holly Blue Butterfly, Woodlouse, Peacock Butterfly and the Peacock Butterfly (chainsaw variation). -

The Star Wars fever is alive and well, and it’s time you joined in on the fun. These extremely high-quality posters will elevate any room in your house to a true fandom tribute. The materials are archival-quality with crisp colors that pop.Printed on 100 lb white polar paper for a professional touch100-year archival qualityArtwork designed by Devin SchoefflerHere's the Rebel Fighter Print: Here's the Snowy Walker Print: And the Swamp Encounter Print:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMU5nhpb4LETwo of our happy mutants: the science writer Stephen Johnson and the oblique strategist Brian Eno on the nature of art, literature, and science. (more…)

Lifelock, the tragicomically awful identity-theft protection service, has settled the FTC's suit against it, agreeing to pay a $100M fine for violating its 2010 promise to end its deceptive advertising practices. (more…)

“Elliot likes to tear up cardboard boxes.” (more…)

A man from El Salvador who survived over an entire year lost at sea is reportedly being sued for $1 million over accusations he ate the other occupant of his boat. The grieving family of his shipmate, who died one way or the other on the ill-fated voyage, claims the survivor survived by cannibalizing his companion. (more…)

Early this morning, FBI agents arrested pharma-hedge-douche Martin Shkreli for securities fraud at his apartment in NYC; Reuters photographers were on-hand at the arrest to photograph his "perp-walk" in handcuffs. (more…)

Jazz pioneer Charles Mingus (1922-1979) had a secret recipe for eggnog that by all accounts was delicious, and incredibly potent. He shared the recipe with biographer Janet Coleman who published it in her book Mingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs. Here's the brew below, followed by Mingus's "Moanin'."Charles Mingus's Egg Nog* Separate one egg for one person. Each person gets an egg.* Two sugars for each egg, each person.* One shot of rum, one shot of brandy per person.* Put all the yolks into one big pan, with some milk.* That’s where the 151 proof rum goes. Put it in gradually or it’ll burn the eggs,* OK. The whites are separate and the cream is separate.* In another pot- depending on how many people- put in one shot of each, rum and brandy. (This is after you whip your whites and your cream.)* Pour it over the top of the milk and yolks.* One teaspoon of sugar. Brandy and rum.* Actually you mix it all together.* Yes, a lot of nutmeg. Fresh nutmeg. And stir it up.* You don’t need ice cream unless you’ve got people coming and you need to keep it cold. Vanilla ice cream. You can use eggnog. I use vanilla ice cream.* Right, taste for flavor. Bourbon? I use Jamaica Rum in there. Jamaican Rums. Or I’ll put rye in it. Scotch. It depends.See, it depends on how drunk I get while I’m tasting it."CHARLES MINGUS' SECRET EGGNOG RECIPE WILL KNOCK YOU ON YOUR ASS" (Village Voice, thanks Jordan Kurland!)https://youtu.be/WyOlc8BaR0A

"Why should we base the validity of all of our life's beliefs on a theory?" I'm not even sure what that question means, but the UC Berkeley student who asked it to Dr. White didn't look pleased by his fact-based answer.From Wikipedia: Timothy Douglas White is an American paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most famous for his work on Lucy as Australopithecus afarensis with discoverer Donald Johanson.

Rob beat me to the blog this morning with a post about Star Wars Minus Star Wars, a stupendous video in which Kyle Kallgren retells the entire story of the first Star Wars movie with footage that either inspired George Lucas or was inspired by him after the movie's release. (more…)

The Intercept has obtained a secret government catalog that law enforcement agencies use to source even-more-secret cellular spying devices, mostly variants on the Stingray/Dirtbox, which pretend to be cellular towers in order to harvest the subscriber details of all the people within range (up to an entire city, for the airplane-mounted Dirtboxes). (more…)

About 16 percent of Americans identify Bernie Sanders as their top choice for the next president; Trump is preferred by about 11 percent of the population -- Sanders is nearly 50% more popular than Trump, but Trump outperforms him in press headlines by as much as 23:1. (more…)

Ole Vlad's figured out how to troll the west: celebrate corrupt, populist strongmen who brazenly lie while fronting for the rich and powerful. (more…)

Scarfolk (previously) is the English country town that is caught in a perpetual ten-year loop from 1970-1980; in 1977, while the rest of the world was getting Kenner Star Wars toys, Scarfolk's children were treated to a line of Star Wars medical equipment from the good people at PalliativeToy. (more…)

When someone complains on Facebook about an unsatisfactory experience at particular business establishment, there's a chance that Ben Palmer and Nick Price will respond as if they were representatives for that business. The duo are currently having fun calling themselves Chipolte (sic) Grill and trolling people who think they are communicating with official spokespersons of the hygiene-troubled restaurant.And just for fun, here's one where they made fun of mega-rich televangelist Joel Osteen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sIThe Extra Credits video series has a great segment on Sesame Credit, the Chinese government's public-private "reputation economy" that uses your social media postings, purchases and known associates to assign you a public score rating your citizenship and reliability. (more…)

https://youtu.be/2GHx8s837O8The AP description says, "Surveillance video shows a man allegedly driving his pickup truck into the lobby of an Oklahoma hotel." And the employees in the lobby allegedly didn't like it when they were almost murdered.

America's 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act made it easy to censor the Internet: under the statute, you can make virtually anything disappear by claiming, without evidence, that it infringes your copyright, and there are almost no penalties for abuse. (more…)

There's a widespread understanding that the vaccine-autism link and climate denial are bullshit, but there are plenty of widespread science myths that are repeated by people who should know better, from the idea that early screening lowers cancer mortality to the idea that the human population is growing exponentially. (more…)

Or you can just buy one from dandelionpaperweights.com or Amazon for $80. The dandelion bloom, with parachute-like seeds, that are about to disperse, was captured in a crystal clear dandelion paperweight. The glass-like half globe, allows the dandelion seed head to be viewed from all sides. Each dandelion seed puff, also known as a dandelion clock, is hand-picked. Due to the nature of the product, each paperweight is unique, with no two being identical, making it a very special gift.They even have a blog, though there have been no updates since 2014's "Dandelions are delicious."DUPE: Previously

Drug entrepreneur Martin Shkreli, 32, made himself infamous by hiking the price of life-saving generic pill from from $13.50 to $750. If you suspected that such a sterling human being might have fingers in other pies, you're not alone, as he's now been arrested on securities fraud charges.Bloomberg's Christie Smythe and Keri Geiger write that the past is catching up with him.The federal case against him has nothing to do with pharmaceutical costs, however. Prosecutors in Brooklyn charged him with illegally taking stock from Retrophin Inc., a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it to pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. He was later ousted from the company, where he’d been chief executive officer, and sued by its board.In the case that closely tracks that suit, federal prosecutors accused Shkreli of engaging in a complicated shell game after his defunct hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, lost millions. He is alleged to have made secret payoffs and set up sham consulting arrangements. A New York lawyer, Evan Greebel, was also arrested early Thursday. He's accused of conspiring with Shkreli in part of the scheme.The BBC describes him as The most hated man in America, but that doesn't get to the heart of it. There's a perfect compatibility between a new breed of completely unguarded narcissist and the ever-shallower way news is presented. The sweet spot might not last long, but while it does last, expect more Shreklis.

The Entertainment Software Association has been documenting how women now comprise almost half of the gaming population in U.S., but the Pew survey highlights persistent differences in how they are gaming. Not only do boys play more, they tend to be networked gamers; 55% of boys play with friends online at least once a week, compared to 25% of girls. And to top it off, boys seem to have a lot more fun playing games online. They say they feel connected to other online gamers at higher rates than do girls who game online (84% versus 62%).Plenty of folks are concerned about videogames promoting violence and antisocial behavior, but we need to pay more attention to what kids miss out on by not engaging in the positive social aspects of gaming. For example, while investigating links between videogames and violence, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson discovered that boys who don't game at all showed the highest risk of getting into fights. These days, video games are what boys do together, so if they aren't gaming, it means they might not be part of the boys' club. While it's not exactly basketball or football, being a great League of Legends player or Minecrafter can be a source of peer status. In Silicon Valley, coders bond on weekends through the After Hours Gaming League and the angst over who gets invited to high status Settlers of Catan games is reminiscent of elite old boys' networks' bonding over golf and tennis.In addition to conferring social benefits, gaming can be a gateway into science and technology related interests, skills, and careers. Progressive researchers and game developers have long sought to make games more attractive to girls for this reason. The recent firestorm over Gamergate recapitulates these concerns over gender representation in the gaming industry. The National Academy of Sciences released a report in 2011 that argued that educators should do more work to tap computer games as an avenue to science learning and interests. (more…)

A Baltimore judge declared a mistrial Wednesday after jurors were unable to reach a verdict in the case of Freddie Gray, who died after suffering severe injuries while in police custody.After three days of deliberations, a hung jury was announced for all the charges filed against William Porter, the officer charged with manslaughter, reckless endangerment, second-degree assault and misconduct in connection with Gray's death.Gray, who was arrested after running from police in April, died after his neck was broken inside the back of a police van, which made multiple stops after picking him before heading to the station. He was not seat-belted in the van and Porter allegedly refused to get him medical care.Five officers were charged over Gray's death, but NBC News reports that the case against Porter was deemed by prosecutors to be their strongest and an indicator of their chances of success in the other trials.Over the past two days, the jury of four black women, three black men, three white women and two white men gave signals that they were locked in tense discussions. On Tuesday they told Judge Barry Williams that they were deadlocked and he sent them back to deliberate.Earlier on Wednesday the jurors asked for a transcript of witness testimony — a request the judge denied. Shortly after, jurors let the court know that they were hung.

Follow @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.Please join Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE, for early access to comics, and more. And/or buy Ruben Bolling’s new book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

The LAPD received 1,356 complaints of "biased policing" (AKA racial profiling) from 2012-2014, but after investigating them, the investigating officials decided that their co-workers had done nothing wrong -- ever. (more…)

It's hard to make sense of the politics of Star Wars (a Senate whose electees include senators that represent government agencies; an elected princess who calls a no-confidence vote, etc), but the more you think about Luke's "hero's journey," the more it starts to resemble the "radicalization" process that we're supposed to be watching out for to keep us all safe from ISIS. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=637&v=MCI4bUk4vuMIf the only answer to "a bad guy with a gun" is "a good guy with a gun," we are totally screwed. (more…)