Too funny!
It’s Friday – it’s late and I need a laugh.
Look in to my eyes – not around the eyes.
Next time Derren Brown asks you to stare in to his eye’s it could be because he’s madly in love with you.
Scientists have found that men who find women extremely attractive look into their eyes for an average of 8.2 seconds. A man who lets his eyes linger on her for around four seconds is less interested, researchers found.
The researchers from Radboud and Vrije University in Holland and Queen’s University in Ontario believe that men use physical attractiveness to gauge whether a potential partner is healthy and fertile.
The study analysed the behaviour of 115 students as they chatted to actors and actresses who had been selected for their looks. According to the researchers the differnce in man and women’s gazes could be based on evolutionary factors.
Telegraph (Thanks Ray)
Ghostly results are out
The results of Richard Wiseman’s hugely successful research in to ghost photographs are out. He didn’t use the ones we submitted of the many ghosts here in the basement and put it down to an “overweight fool in a dress”. Phillis…
Masterpiece Yourself
Get the pose right and there’s a lot of fun to be had over at Masterpiece yourself – because let’s face it DB fans are all beautiful! (and Coops looks amazing as a woman!)
Bible Flood theory debunked
I know, I know – this may be like shooting fish in a barrel but it’s educational – it shows how sediment is formed so you’ll darn well watch it. It also shows you the level some creationists will go to just to defend the absurd theories they own and you find out how chalk was made.. and stuff…!
One in six psychiatrists has tried to ‘turn gays straight’
Psychotherapists are offering to help “cure” gays and lesbians of their homosexuality without any evidence that such treatment is beneficial or safe. One in six said they had tried to turn gays straight, or reduce their gay or lesbian feelings, even though the mainstream medical view is that this is impossible.
The idea that homosexuality can be cured has a long and dubious history and the disclosure that a significant minority of therapists and doctors still think it is possible is “worrying”, Professor Michael King, of the University College Medical School, said. “Heaven knows what they do. We didn’t attempt to ask them because there is no evidence that anything works. We didn’t expect it to be happening at this rate and we are really rather concerned. It ought to stop. It is distressing and harmful and there is absolutely no evidence it works,” he said.
Eye Of The Beholder: Beauty And The Brain
Researchers Surprised To Find Men And Women Use Their Brains Differently To Appreciate Beauty, Scientists Say. Men process beauty on the right side of their brains, while women use their whole brain to do the job, researchers report in Tuesday’s electronic edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
They even explain it differently. Novelist Margaret Wolfe Hungerford: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Essayist David Hume: “Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” Researchers were surprised by the finding. ”It is well known that there are differences between brain activity in women and men in cognitive tasks,” said researcher Camilo J. Cela-Conde of the University of Baleares in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. “However, why should this kind of difference appear in the case of appreciation of beauty?”
The answer seems to be that when women consider a visual object they link it to language while men concentrate on the spatial aspects of the object, Cela-Conde said in an interview by e-mail. He noted, however, that this doesn’t explain why – and how – the human capacity to appreciate beauty evolved.
Magicians, the new scientists
Fascinating article exploring the potential role of the magician in the study of Neuroscience. Can their expertise in manipulating human perception and awareness help us further understand how our brains work?
Thanks to Jay Fuller (@DepthDeception) for this one
Body illusions: Leave your body behind
Under normal circumstances, your sense of self is firmly anchored inside your body. Sometimes, though, something goes awry, the connection between body and self breaks down and you have an out-of-body experience.
Such moments occur when brain function is disturbed, such as after a stroke or epileptic seizure, or while on drugs. In 2007, however, two research teams independently reported ways of inducing an out-of-body experience in the lab in normal healthy people.
The techniques differ slightly, but both involve feeding volunteers video images of themselves from an unusual perspective while applying tactile stimulation, somewhat like the rubber hand illusion.
New Scientist (Thanks Katherine)
Animated optical illusions
You’ve all seen the standard optical illusion – but I’ve never seen one that animates.
Animated Optical Illusion! – For more funny videos, click here
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