flickering pictures

Insanity is often seen as a tendency to think irrationally, act unreasonably, and distort reality. But could these things actually be good for you? If distorting reality makes you happy, can you really be considered insane? And isn’t “going to your happy place” just the creation of a fictional reality to make […]

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Now I know what you’re thinking: more Montreal bias from Mark. But this isn’t coming from me — it’s science. Well, sort of. Actually not at all.
A joint analysis by the Toronto Sun and beautifulpeople.com — pillars of the research community that they are — has finally produced incontrovertible evidence of what […]

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Much as I hate to admit it.
A new study involving half a million people has found that eating just 4 ounces of red meat or cold cuts each day makes middle-aged and elderly folks 30% more likely to die within a decade. Daily doses of poultry and fish actually decrease your chances of death […]

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After suffering a stroke that he was sure would kill him over the weekend, James Brewer confessed to killing his neighbour way back in 1977. Unfortunately for him, he made a full recovery, and is now in jail facing the death penalty for murder.
The BBC reports:

“He wanted to cleanse his soul, because he thought […]

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Boasting an impressive 51.7 mpg (21.97km/litre) in city driving, the Tata Nano might be the cheapest and cleanest production car in the world. And at $2,000 apiece, India’s roads are going to see a lot of them.
The Nano has five seats, a maximum speed of 60 mph (about 97km/h), twice the fuel efficiency of […]

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FlowingData seems to have gotten itself up and running again, and contrary to my previous post, it features 27 neat-o infographics that explain the worldwide financial meltdown, not 16. Very much worth a look.

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According to these guys, at least.
I’d meant today’s post to be on FlowingData’s 16 excellent graphics explaining the financial crisis in über-simple terms for us regular folk, but their site seems to have imploded under the sheer weight of its own awesomeness and, I suspect, a lot of enthusiastic Diggers. So, here’s one that’s […]

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Mao would be pissed.
Along with a bar and hair salon, the store offers 38,000 square feet of blonde-haired, big-boobed dolls. Despite its location, only 10 per cent of the store’s dolls will look Asian, apparently because of Mattel research that indicates Chinese girls and young women want American-looking Barbies.
The GlobalPost reports:

The plan is to […]

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It’s a pretty blindingly simple design — the Amron Experimental toothbrush has a little groove on the back that directs water from the tap into your mouth. I’m not sure how many people picked one up at the original price — or what’s so experimental about this thing — but if some sucker actually […]

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Remember Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi reporter who last December threw his shoes at George W. Bush, yellng “this is from the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq”? That gesture just earned him three years in prison, and something tells me that if he’d been a white guy tossing shoes at Bush […]

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