Has Greg been conjuring up some Merlin-level fog in Brisbane?
- Oldest mine in the Americas found.
- Bronze age battle site unearthed on German river bank.
- Turkish dam threatens town that dates back to the bronze age.
- Inca success in Peruvian Andes ‘thanks to llama dung’.
- Seven new Mayan archaeological sites discovered in Yucatan.
- Hoard of Roman coins unearthed at Colchester dig.
- Chapter 5 from King Arthur’s Children: Mordred.
- Amazon tribe has no concept of time.
- New method confirms dark energy.
- The Thermodynamics Of An Intelligent Living Universe.
- SAGE’s latest genetically engineered knockout: $95,000 lab rats.
- Once-in-a-generation storm batters Saturn, and offers scientists an unprecedented view.
- Soyuz undocking brings photo op: Iconic images of the shuttle joined to a completed International Space Station will be snapped Monday night.
- Aboard the ISS, it’s a beautiful world.
- You bug me. Now science explains why. Annoying: The Science Of What Bugs Us is available at Amazon US & UK.
- Apple is a religion — according to your brain.
- How to spot a psychopath: From Broadmoor to boardroom, they’re everywhere, says Jon Ronson, in an exclusive extract from his new book The Psychopath Test (Amazon US & UK).
- Ulcer bacteria may contribute to development of Parkinson’s disease.
- Online dating secrets, as revealed by math majors.
- Cellphone use decreases men’s fertility: study.
- The man who saw the future: How the sci-fi writer Geoffrey Hoyle predicted 2011’s technologies in 1972.
- Bees are in trouble – but there is a way to help.
- How a jab of gel could be the surgery-free solution to your back pain.
- Unnatural amino acids combine with HGH to make for better therapy. Sounds scary.
- Biopunks tinker with the building blocks of life.
- Weird Science exonerates booze, blames testosterone for bad driving.
- Dutch “Iceman” controls body through meditation.
- Fisheries collapse in a pattern unlike that seen on land.
- Sea-level fright as Oz climate report goes public.
- Aussie climate scientists go gangsta in video. View it on YouTube.
- Children growing weaker as computers replace outdoor activity.
- Children suffer in classrooms with poor acoustics.
- Rogue gene: An extended family of 5,000 in Colombia, half of whom carry a gene that causes very early onset Alzheimer’s, is taking part in a new drug trial that doctors hope will lead to a cure for sufferers worldwide.
- How much of the Internet are you missing because of filters? We may not be seeing what others who visit the same website and do the same search are seeing.
- TED Talk: What the Internet knows about you.
Quote of the Day:
Left to their own devices, [internet] personalization filters serve up a kind of invisible autopropaganda, indoctrinating us with our own ideas, amplifying our desire for things that are familiar, and leaving us oblivious to the dangers lurking in the dark territory of the unknown.
In the filter bubble, there’s less room for the chance encounters that bring insight and learning. Creativity is often sparked by the collision of ideas from different disciplines and cultures. Combine an understanding of cooking and physics, and you get the nonstick pan and the induction stovetop. But if Amazon thinks I’m interested in cookbooks, it’s not very likely to show me books about metallurgy. It’s not just serendipity that’s at risk.
By definition, a world constructed from the familiar is a world in which there’s nothing to learn. If personalization is too acute, it could prevent us from coming into contact with the mind-blowing, preconception-shattering experiences and ideas that change how we think about the world and ourselves.
Eli Pariser, in the TED Talk What the Internet knows about you. Pariser’s book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You is available at Amazon US & UK.
