mistypedURL - Everything

Flashed Face Distortion Effect Makes Ordinary Portraits Look Hideous

Thu, 24 May 2012 22:41:59 +0000

If you ever create a slideshow of portraits, you might want to avoid showing them aligned side-by-side with a gap in between. The video above shows a crazy optical illusion that researchers have dubbed the “Flashed Face Distortion Effect”. By flashing ordinary portraits aligned at the eyes, the human brain begins to compare and exaggerate the differences, causing the faces to seem hideous and ogre-like. Researcher Matthew Thompson writes,

Like many interesting scientific discoveries, this one was an accident. Sean Murphy, an undergraduate student, was working alone in the lab on a set of faces for one of his experiments. He aligned a set of faces at the eyes and started to skim through them. After a few seconds, he noticed that some of the faces began to appear highly deformed and grotesque. He looked at the especially ugly faces individually, but each of them appeared normal or even attractive.

Here’s a second video showing the same thing:

(via Matthew Thompson via HuffPo)

EmailShareThis

via petapixel.com

Make sure you stare at the cross so that the faces are in your peripheral vision. I noticed them becoming two-dimensional, almost cartoonish, as well as being distorted.

This was my yesterday

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:47:45 +0000

via phdcomics.com

No meeting though, that’s today.

Poor Planning

Thu, 24 May 2012 01:08:44 +0000

I pity the fool who decides to relax at that table, study materials out and laptop plugged in.

Imagine, Sharing a Day with Your Hero

Sun, 20 May 2012 05:04:59 +0000

Additional notes from the author:

If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time

Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla. Ben’s also got a book out which is packed full of awesome.

There’s an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It’s corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life.

The drunk history of Tesla is quite awesome, too.

X-rays: just to clarify, Tesla did not discover x-rays, but he was one of the early pioneers in its research.

Cryogenic engineering: I’m referring to the cryogenic engineering that has to do with using liquified air to cool a coil and reduce its electrical resistance (Patent No. 11,865), not freezing people and waking them up in the future so they can fight Wesley Snipes.

Transistor: Tesla’s influence on the modern transistor can be found in patents 723,188 and 725,605. (a better explanation here)

Radio: Tesla was the nicest geek ever until he decided to sue Marconi a few years later. 8 months after Tesla died, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Marconi’s patents on the invention of radio. So Tesla eventually won that battle, although he was dead by then.

Tesla VS Edison: I could write a novel on the differences between Tesla and Edison, but seeing as how this comic is already huge I decided to leave many things out. For instance, Edison killed cats and dogs, but Tesla loved animals and had a cat as a child. Originally Tesla wanted to be a poet, but after getting zapped by static electricity from his kitty he was inspired to study the effects of electricity. One could vaguely construe that Tesla’s cat was responsible for the second industrial revolution, which arguably makes it the most awesome cat who ever lived.
Edison believed that fossil fuels were the future and that there were enough resources in South America to provide for the next 50,000 years. Tesla believed that renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, solar, and wind power were the future. This is remarkable because in the 1890s there was no such thing as “going green,” so Tesla’s ideas on conservation were very forward-thinking at the time.

Lastly, a big thank you to Jane C. Daugherty for proofreading this article for me. If you want to learn things from the most awesome librarian this side of the North American tectonic plate, follow her on Twitter.

via theoatmeal.com

Nikola Tesla, literally Tony Stark in real life, reminds us that visionary, multitalented geniuses can and do exist. Nikola Tesla Day, July 10, also happens to be my birthday. Sometimes I imagine I get to give him a high five.

Coriander is My Friend

Fri, 18 May 2012 23:37:55 +0000

Insight into the hate of cilantro, the herb of the coriander plant

The Body Odd – Who hates cilantro? Study aims to find out
BOING BOING |
http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com /_news/2012/05/16/11719087-who-hates-cilantro-study-aims-to-find-out

—

http://pulse.me

Homemade Pesto

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:13:15 +0000

For all those "not impressed" by my earlier efforts, this is made with pan-roasted garlic, red peppers, parmesan and ricotta cheeses, and fresh herbs.

The Man and His Film – Short Directed by Mark

Fri, 11 May 2012 08:18:38 +0000

via vimeo.com

Awesome short film directed by my brother Mark.

Forgetting my lunch

Mon, 07 May 2012 20:08:24 +0000

Left my lunchbox at the house, forcing me to leave the basement lab and stroll through the sunshine…was there a complaint in here?

Repressive Conservatism

Thu, 03 May 2012 17:31:30 +0000

Throughout history, conservative groups have ascribed to a particularly irksome idea: If they do not want to do something, nobody else should be able to do it either. Thus, conservatives attempt to use the state to coerce people to conform to a specification or to prohibit something entirely.

Why does this keep happening? How does the mere ability to engage in something invalidate or abridge a conservative lifestyle? Regardless of whether or not something exists, individuals are free to chose not to participate. They can even attempt to convince others to join them in abstaining.

Instead, there is a constant effort by conservatives to eradicate from the world that which they decry. To me, this suggests a fear that the belief system itself is insufficiently convincing and thus needs outside help to be implemented. If it was so desirable in actuality, people would be motivated to follow it, and the Very Bad Thing would eliminate itself.

Chart: The illustrated history of you being screwed by people like Mitt Romney

Thu, 03 May 2012 03:51:15 +0000

A cold dose of the facts.

Chart: The illustrated history of you being screwed by people like Mitt Romney
DAILY KOS | MAY 2, 2012
http://pulse.me /s/8PdBI

Source: TPMDC Quick and dirty, folks. Basically, the upper line represents the value of your work. The lower line represents … read more

—

http://pulse.me

Half-Life: Origins (Live Action)

(author unknown) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:22:32 +0000

I favorited a YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV7zh2jxXjU Click here to watch Freeman's Mind: Episode 39 (Half-Life Machinima) Half-Life: Origins (Live Action) Half-Life Origins is an independent short by Infectious Designer. Everyone remembers the ...

One Year in Washington

(author unknown) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:53:54 +0000

I favorited a YouTube video: A lot can change in one year. ...Even in Washington. In 2012, we will elect a President, not a party. Join us.

Evil social networks

Charlie Stross — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:42:23 +0000

(UPDATE: Greetings to our friends from Hacker News. If you want to join in the discussion and haven't posted here before, please read the moderation policy first. (This is a moderated forum.))

"If you're not paying for the product, you are the product."

In the past I've fulminated about various social networking systems. The basic gist is this: the utility of a social network to any given user is proportional to the number of users it has. So all social networks are designed to tweak that part of the primate brain that gets a dopamine reward from social activity — we are, after all, social animals. But providing a service to millions of customers is expensive, and your typical internet user is a cheapskate who has become accustomed to free services. So most social networks don't charge their users; they are funded indirectly, which means they've got to sell something, and what they've got to sell is data about your internet usage habits, which is of interest to advertisers.

So the ideal social network (from an investor's point of view) is one that presents itself as being free-to-use, is highly addictive, uses you as bait to trap your friends, tracks you everywhere you go on the internet, sells your personal information to the highest bidder, and is impossible to opt out of. Sounds like a cross between your friendly neighbourhood heroin pusher, Amway, and a really creepy stalker, doesn't it?

Meet Klout. (Yes, that's their wikipedia stub. No, I am not going to link to them.)

[ Klout ] ... provides social media analytics that measures a user's influence across their social network. The analysis is done on data taken from sites such as Twitter and Facebook and measures the size of a person's network, the content created, and how other people interact with that content. Klout recently added LinkedIn, Foursquare, and YouTube data to its algorithm.

Sounds harmless enough, at first read. Unfortunately, it isn't.

Klout operates under American privacy law, or rather, the lack of it. If you created a Klout account in the past, you were unable to delete it short of sending legal letters (until November 1st, when they kindly added an "opt out" mechanism). More to the point, Klout analyse your social graph and create accounts for all your contacts without asking them for prior consent. It also appears to use an unwitting user's Twitter or FB credentials to post updates on their Klout scores, prompting the curious-but-ignorant to click on a link to Klout, whereupon they will be offered a chance to log in with their Facebook or Twitter credentials. So it spreads like herpes and it's just as hard to get rid of. Is that all?

No, that isn't all. Let me fire up a sandboxed browser instance and cut'n'paste a little bit of Klout's terms and conditions:

By accessing the Klout website ("Site") or using the services offered by Klout ("Services") you agree and acknowledge to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree to these Terms, please do not access the Site or use the Services.

Got that? You don't need to open an account for Klout to assert that they own you; just looking at their T&Cs is enough. Now for the privacy policy:

... we may use your contact information to market to you, and provide you with information about, our products and services, including but not limited to our Service [ note that "not limited to" clause -- cs. ] ... When you visit the Site, our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website ("Log Data" ). This Log Data may include information such as your IP address, browser type or the domain from which you are visiting, the web-pages you visit, the search terms you use, and any advertisements on which you click ... Klout may use both session cookies and persistent cookies to better understand how you interact with the Site and our Service, to monitor aggregate usage by our users and web traffic routing on the Site, and to improve the Site and our services [ services to who? Answer: the folks who pay Klout money ] ... We engage certain trusted third parties to perform functions and provide services to us, including ... direct marketing campaigns. We will share your personally identifiable information with these third parties ... [ there, they said it ] ... The Site is not directed to persons under 18 [ because that's about the only privacy-protected class in US law ].

Now let's look at something else.

Here in the civilized world we have a fundamental right to privacy. Klout, by its viral nature (and particularly by tracking people without their prior consent) is engaging in flat-out illegal practices. Don't believe me? Well, here in the UK activities relating to the processing of personal information are governed by the Data Protection Act (1998), a law enforced by the Information Commissioner's Office.

As we saw earlier, Klout assert that they have the right to collect information about you and conduct direct marketing campaigns if you visit their website. For those of us who are not lawyers, here is the ICO's conditions for processing personal data:

One of the conditions for processing is that the individual has consented to their personal data being collected and used in the manner and for the purposes in question.

...

Consent is not defined in the Data Protection Act. However, the European Data Protection Directive (to which the Act gives effect) defines an individual's consent as:

"... any freely given specific and informed indication of his wishes by which the data subject signifies his agreement to personal data relating to him being processed".

The fact that an individual must "signify" their agreement means that there must be some active communication between the parties. An individual may "signify" agreement other than in writing, but organisations should not infer consent if an individual does not respond to a communication — for example, from a customer's failure to return a form or respond to a leaflet.

...

Consent obtained under duress or on the basis of misleading information does not adequately satisfy the condition for processing.

Klout are flagrantly in violation of UK data protection law. Their terms and conditions, and their privacy policy, are riddled with loopholes that permit them to resell personal data. They violate Principle 1 of the Act ("the individual who the personal data is about has consented to the processing"). Arguably, they violate Principle 2 of the Act ("be clear from the outset about why you are collecting personal data and what you intend to do with it" — no prior notification to people they hold data on is made). The amount of personal data Klout collects is excessive (see Principle 3), they show no sign of complying with Principle 4 of the Act ("take reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of any personal data"), and they may well be in breach of Principle 5 (that personal data must be deleted after it is no longer required for the purpose for which it was collected). They violate Principle 6 of the Act ("right to prevent processing for direct marketing; right to object to decisions being taken by automated means"). They violate Principle 8 of the Act (personal data is exported from the EU without due compliance with EU privacy regulations). Shockingly, Klout might actually be in compliance with Principle 7 of the Act governing information security ("you must have appropriate security to prevent the personal data you hold being accidentally or deliberately compromised") but it's hard to tell.

It kind of puts my objections to Google+ into perspective, doesn't it?

Anyway: if you sign up for Klout you are coming down with the internet equivalent of herpes. Worse, you risk infecting all your friends. Klout's business model is flat-out illegal in the UK (and, I believe, throughout the EU) and if you have an account with them I would strongly advise you to delete it and opt out; if you're in the UK you could do worse than send them a cease-and-desist plus a request to delete all your data, then follow up a month later with a Freedom of Information Act request.

Dear tea party, we are not your enemy

rss@dailykos.com (Mark Sumner) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:00:05 +0000

A Voice From the 1%

(author unknown) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 01:30:34 +0000

Shared by SteelWolf
Read the whole thing.

The impetus behind the Occupy Wall Street movement - a vague sense that the rich are getting ever richer while everyone else suffers - was confirmed by a recent report from the Social Security Administration showing that while total employment and average wages remained stagnant, the number of people earning $1 million or more grew by 18% from 2009 to 2010. Those figures give real substance to the "We are the 99%" slogan, yet Republicans continue to insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that if anything those "job creators" deserve an even greater share of our national income. The Tea Party, meanwhile, has launched its own "53%" movement, inexplicably rallying the working class to the defense of the wealthy. The one group rarely heard from in this rancorous debate is the 1%, whose incomes and taxes are its focus. I am one of them, and here is my perspective, which may surprise you.

The Price of Plutocracy

Kevin Drum — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:34:30 +0000

Profits up for Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:03:32 +0000

Protect IP Act Breaks the Internet | Everything Is a Remix

(author unknown) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:43:27 +0000

Utilize the Stockdale Paradox to Help Achieve Personal Growth [Brain Hacks]

David Galloway — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Missions accomplished. For real.

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:41:35 +0000

Commonwealth Fund grades nation's health system performance, and it's not good

SteelWolf — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 06:58:37 +0000

Shared by SteelWolf
So much for "best in the world."

Via Sara Kliff, the Commonwealth Fund has released its annual national score card on the U.S. health system performance. The overall score for 2011 is 64 out of a possible 100, a three point loss from last year.

Here's a graphical snapshot:

(Click here for a full-sized view.)

And the overall assessment, which isn't pretty.

U.S. health system performance continues to fall far short of what is attainable, especially given the enormity of public and private resources devoted nationally to health. Across 42 performance indicators, the U.S. achieves a total score of 64 out of a possible 100, when comparing national rates with domestic and international benchmarks. Overall, the U.S. failed to improve relative to these benchmarks, which in many cases rose. Costs were up sharply, access to care deteriorated, health system efficiency remained low, disparities persisted, and health outcomes failed to keep pace with benchmarks. The Affordable Care Act targets many of the gaps identified by the Scorecard. [...]
Of great concern, access to health care significantly eroded since 2006. As of 2010, more than 81 million working-age adults—44 percent of those ages 19 to 64—were uninsured during the year or underinsured, up from 61 million (35%) in 2003. Further, the U.S. failed to keep pace with gains in health outcomes achieved by the leading countries. The U.S. ranks last out of 16 industrialized countries on a measure of mortality amenable to medical care (deaths that might have been prevented with timely and effective care), with premature death rates that are 68 percent higher than in the best-performing countries. As many as 91,000 fewer people would die prematurely if the U.S. could achieve the leading country rate. [...]

Performance on indicators of health system efficiency remains especially low, with the U.S. scoring 53 out of 100 on measures that gauge the level of inappropriate, wasteful, or fragmented care; avoidable hospitalizations; variation in quality and costs; administrative costs; and use of information technology. Lowering insurance administrative costs to benchmark country rates could alone save up to $114 billion a year, or $55 billion if such costs were lowered to the level in countries with a mixed private–public insurance system, like the U.S. has.

The lack of improvement on many health system indicators—such as preventive care, adults and children with strong primary care connections, and hospital readmissions—likely stems from the nation's weak primary care foundation and from inadequate care coordination and teamwork both across sites of care and between providers. These gaps highlight the need for a whole-system approach, in which performance is measured and providers are held accountable for performance across the continuum of care.

There is some good news. The lower right quadrant on that graph (click here to see it full size) shows that some regions are reducing hospital readmissions under Medicare, and thus showing significant savings. Control of high blood pressure has improved significantly since 2000 and smoking rates are still steadily declining.

Some of the gaps found in this year's study will be addressed by the Affordable Care Act, most significantly by providing access to health insurance which will in turn provide more access to care. Some of that access to care is still questionable, however, particularly if Medicaid ends up being significantly cut in ongoing deficit, debt and budget negotiations. But the ACA should also prompt and reward more effective and efficient delivery of care, which will help close more of these gaps.

Wall Street Loses Its Immunity

(author unknown) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:09:44 +0000

Shared by SteelWolf
Keep protesting!

How dare the protesters criticize Wall Street?

Bitcoin implodes, falls more than 90 percent from June peak

contact@timothyblee.com (Timothy B. Lee) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:45:00 +0000

Rabbit-Hole Economics

(author unknown) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:46:26 +0000

Shared by SteelWolf
Truth.

Tuesday’s Republican debate opened the door on a fantasy world where nothing looks or behaves the way it does in real life.

Mountains of Mental Disorders

Neuroskeptic — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:25:00 +0000

This is a story about a man who lived in a house. Here it is:

The house was a lovely thatched cabin, situated in a wooded valley between two little hills, set against the spectacular scenary of a snow-capped mountain. He'd been born there, and he'd lived there all his life.

One day, there was a knock on the man's door. He opened it to find two official-looking people carrying clipboards, with serious expressions on their faces.

"Hello, sir. We are officials from the Ministry of Mountains. Sorry it took us so long."
"Oh... excuse me?", the man replied, puzzled.
"We're very sorry we didn't get here earlier."
"I'm afraid that I don't know what you mean. I wasn't expecting any..."
"Hmm. Let me explain. The Ministry of Mountains exists to help people who live on mountains. So, you see, we're here to..."
"Ask for directions to the mountain? It's about 10 miles down the road. Just look up - you can't miss it."

The official looked unamused.
"No. We're here to help you, sir."
"Help you to cope with the rigors of mountain living!" the other chimed in, helpfully.
"But... I don't live on a mountain."
"I'm afraid you do. Look - " and the first official unfolded a large map. "Do you agree that there is a mountain, here?" and she pointed to a spot 10 miles down the road.
"Yes. Actually I just told you about i..."
"...and, do you agree that you live - here?"
"Of course, but..."

"So you do live on the mountain. The very ground beneath our feet right now is part of that mountain nearby."
"No it's not." The man protested. "This is a valley, miles away. I mean just look outside. We're clearly not on a mountain now, are we?"
"How old fashioned. That's what we used to think. But, thanks to advances in geology, we now appreciate that these hills and valleys are merely a part of the mountain."
"Yes!" the other said, whipping out a textbook and becoming increasingly enthusiastic. "You see, a mountain is merely a mass of rock, and this rock extends underground for a considerable distance... It's impossible, really, to draw a line on the map and say categorically, this side is mountain, this isn't. So 'mountains' are an arbitrary construct. 'Hills' are likewise just protrusions of the underlying mountain and..."

The man was even more confused now. "Umm... well, I suppose, technically...but..."
"...so yes, so you do live on a mountain. And we know that this is very difficult. You're exposed to all kinds of dangers like blizzards, altitude sickness, avalanches..."
"Not really. It's nice here. It doesn't even snow most years."
"That's unlikely. You agree that mountains have blizzards and avalanches? Right. And you earlier agreed that there's no dividing line between you and a mountain. So logically..."
"Er..."
"So you are in danger! Don't worry, though. We're here to help. To start off with, we're going to reinforce your house with six tons of cement, to protect you against rockfalls. The construction crew will arrive tomorrow morning. Now, as for those blizzards..."
The man had had enough of this.
"This is absurd. Now look - there is a guy who really does live on top of the mountain in a rickety old shack. Old Grandpa McHermit. He might actually need your help. I don't. Get out! And if I see anyone with a bag of cement tomorrow morning, I'll shove it right up their..."

---

As you may have guess, this story is a metaphor. There is a movement in psychiatry at the moment, away from a 'categorical' view of mental illness towards a 'spectrum' view. Mental disorders are not things you either have or don't - defined according to some arbitrary cut-off. Rather, they're things that everyone has, to some degree.

This has already happened, or is happening, to autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, and more.

Now, the "spectrum" or "dimensional" approach has much to recommend it. It's true that diagnostic cutoffs are arbitrary. It's true that the categorical approach doesn't capture the true degree of variation that real people display.

My worry is that these new "spectra" are, in practice, merely the old categories, just bigger. We still think of people as being ill or not-ill, although we may call it on the spectrum or off it. Worse, we still think of "ill" in the same way as we used to i.e. as referring to the most severe end of the spectrum. The only difference is that we've expanded the old category of "ill" to cover more people.

This is evident in the fact that we still use the old categorical labels. It's the autism (or schizophrenia or bipolar) spectrum, even though "autism", in the old sense of a discrete disorder, is now supposed to be just one extreme of that spectrum. Yet the point about an extreme is that it's unusual, so why call it that?

We don't call the rainbow the red spectrum. We don't call height the midget spectrum. We don't call hills part of the mountain spectrum.

The point is, we really think of color and height and altitude as spectra, not as approximations to an extreme point, and that's good, because they are. Now it might well be possible to think of autistic or bipolar traits in the same way - but not if we call them autistic and bipolar traits. And not if we just rename them, while keeping the mental associations the same.

Not unless we can find a way of referring to what's currently called the autism spectrum without making anyone think of autism when they hear it. Similarly for "bipolar" and all the rest. Until we get to that point, there's a real risk that "spectra" will just be big categories.

Edit: This post has been very kindly translated into Hebrew over at the alhasapa.com blog.

If my brain was an imaginary friend

(author unknown) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:52:07 +0000

Shared by SteelWolf
Hahaha.

A comic about memory, bagels, and my Great Aunt Marlene.

View

Ben Goldacre: Battling Bad Science

(author unknown) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:36:12 +0000

I favorited a YouTube video: http://www.ted.com Every day there are news reports of new health advice, but how can you know if they're right? Doctor and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre shows us, at high speed, the ways evidence can be distorted, from the blindingly obvious nutrit...

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City | NYC General Assembly - StumbleUpon

(author unknown) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 05:07:34 +0000

Mercedes SLS AMG Roadster

(author unknown) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:40:41 +0000

Shared by SteelWolf
Lovely

Our top-down road test in one of the best-looking, best-performing cars available

When Mercedes introduced the SLS in 2009, the Gullwing coupe dropped jaws and turned heads with its retro inspiration and powerful guts. The move also firmly staked its claim toward the future expression of the brand. Designed at the same time but only now available, the SLS Roadster brings the thrill of a convertible to this already near-perfect driver's car—along with a few new additions.

We had a chance to check the new model out first-hand when Mercedes invited us to France's sunny Côte d'Azur to spend a day-and-a-half in the supercar (which I shared with good friend Jean Aw from Notcot). Driving from Monaco into Italy, up to Col du Brouis and back down to St. Jean Cap-Ferrat made for an idyllic itinerary to experience driving with the top down at its most chic.

What's so impressive about the car is everything. Respectful of its heritage in the coveted 1950s 300 SL Roadster, the SLS also firmly represents all that Mercedes-Benz has to offer. It incorporates some of the most sophisticated engineering and technology available, yet is both easy and an absolute pleasure to drive. The interior perfectly balances sport, luxury and comfort. Both sinner and saint, while many other cars and supercars achieve many of the same levels and worthy praise, few bring it together so seamlessly and perfectly. (Though the Ferrari FF comes to mind).

The Roadster shares all of the same technology and equipment as the Coupe. Its lightweight aluminum construction, seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission and AMG 6.3 liter 571-horsepower V8 engine all makes for the same 0-60 time of 3.6 seconds. The more rigid body is only 60 pounds heavier than the Gullwing, impressively retaining the same performance (and most of its trunk space).

New options to the Roadster are a much welcomed AMG Ride Control and a very impressive set of Internet-enabled performance functions called AMG Performance Media, which reside in a tab of the car's on-board computer system. A kick-ass Bang & Olufson sound system is also available, and includes a 250 watt subwoofer. Another feature I liked (though didn't need to try) is the Airscarf neck vent, which blows hot air to keep you warm for off-season, top-down driving (heated seats are also available).

Ride Control lets you select from three preset suspension and transmission variations: Comfort, Sport (stiffer, higher performance ride) and Sport+, even more firm and tuned for the highest-performance conditions. This is really helpful for traveling most comfortably from urban traffic to the countryside, freeways or track. It also adjusts the sound of the engine and exhaust from a purr to one of the best sounding roars I've heard—the consensus among other journalists there as well.

Want to see how many Gs you're pulling on the track? The Performance Media option, an Android-based mobile platform, provides high-speed Internet access (when the car isn't moving). Multiple racing-inspired screens show real-time temperatures, performance, tire pressures, lateral and linear acceleration and a host of track-related functions. This section is seamlessly integrated into the rest of the car's system, which itself is well-designed and intuitive to use. As you'd expect, the car is highly customizable, including custom paint colors.

Rumored to start around $200,000 and available at Mercedes dealerships, this beauty may be unattainable for most of us, but its exceptional design is something we can all enjoy.

How To: Use vinegar to diagnose cervical cancer

(author unknown) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:35:01 +0000

Shared by SteelWolf
In case you didn't see this one already.

In developing countries, a new, inexpensive treatment allows nurses to spot pre-cancerous lesions on a woman's cervix and remove them—without needing a medical lab, and without surgery. It has huge implications for women's health, because cervical cancer kills 250,000 women every year.

In fact, before pap smears became commonplace, cervical cancer killed more American women than any other sort of cancer. But in places where the pap smear isn't practical, this new technique can help. From the New York Times:

Nurses using the new procedure, developed by experts at the Johns Hopkins medical school in the 1990s and endorsed last year by the World Health Organization, brush vinegar on a woman’s cervix. It makes precancerous spots turn white. They can then be immediately frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide, available from any Coca-Cola bottling plant.

... Dr. Bandit Chumworathayi, a gynecologist at Khon Kaen University who helped run the first Thai study of VIA/cryo, explains that vinegar highlights the tumors because they have more DNA, and thus more protein and less water, than other tissue.

It reveals pre-tumors with more accuracy than a typical Pap smear. But it also has more false positives — spots that turn pale but are not malignant. As a result, some women get unnecessary cryotherapy. But freezing is about 90 percent effective, and the main side effect is a burning sensation that fades in a day or two. By contrast, biopsies, the old method, can cause bleeding.

Via Robyn Lloyd