10 Ways Our Minds Warp Time
The mind does funny things to our experience of time. Just ask French cave expert Michel Siffre.
In 1962 Siffre went to live in a cave that was completely isolated from mechanical clocks and natural light. He soon began to experience a huge change in his experience of time.
When he tried to measure out two minutes by counting up to 120 at one-second intervals, it took him 5 minutes. After emerging from the cave he guessed the trip had lasted 34 days. He’d actually been down there for 59 days. His experience of time was rapidly changing. From an outside perspective he was slowing down, but the psychological experience for Siffre was that time was speeding up.
But you don’t have to hide out in a cave for a couple of months to warp time, it happens to us all the time. Our experience of time is flexible; it depends on attention, motivation, the emotions and more. The 10 listed in the following article are: Life-threatening situations, having fun, the stopped clock illusion, tiredness, regulating emotions, hypnosis and drugs, your age, negative feelings, body temperature and your own individual “tempo”.
For full explanations of all 10 head over to PsyBlog
The (new) World’s Shortest Man
Move over, Edward Nino Hernandez, there’s a new smallest man in town. Junrey Balawing of Zamboanga del Norte, who turns 18 today, measures only 24 inches from head to foot lying down and just over 23 inches standing up.
Balawing, the eldest of four siblings, is not only the shortest living man, but the shortest living man in history, the Guinness World Records said.
Happy Birthday dude.
More at Neatorama
Contortionist hid in luggage so he could steal from other bags
A man has been arrested in Spain after curling up inside a large suitcase that was placed in an airport bus cargo bay and sneaking out to steal from other people’s luggage.
A police official in the north-eastern Catalonia region said on Thursday that the man arrested last week was very thin.
Also arrested was an accomplice who placed the contortionist thief inside the cargo hold of a bus running from Girona airport to Barcelona, boarded the bus and then retrieved him at the end of the line.
During the 60-mile (100km) ride, the thief would slip out of the suitcase and use a sharp object to pick locks or open zips to steal from bags. Police were alerted by bus passengers who reported items stolen from their baggage.
What is Stuxnet? Excellent infographic animation on the world’s first open source weapon
Conspiracy theory or scary technology future. You decide whilst we sit back and watch some very clever animation.
Police hunt ‘psychic’ after false tip-off about mass grave of children
Police in Texas are investigating a woman who claimed to be a psychic after she sparked an ultimately fruitless hunt for a mass grave of dismembered bodies.
Local officers and FBI agents raided a rural farmhouse in Hardin, north-east of Houston, after receiving the report that it held up to 30 bodies, including children.
After finding nothing, police gave up the search – but not before ”a source” had told CBS news that “a lot” of dismembered children’s bodies had indeed been found at the scene, sparking a global news story.
Liberty county judge Craig McNair, the county’s top elected official, said the sheriff’s office had received two calls from the person. The first came on Monday, directing officers to an address in Hardin, but after officers found nothing the same caller told police on Tuesday that they had the wrong house.
Officers approached the scene of the second tip-off on Tuesday morning and said there was blood on a back door and a foul odour coming from the house, leading to the search warrant.
“We have to take tips like this very seriously,” McNair said.
However the Houston Chronicle has since reported that the calls had come from a woman who claimed to have psychic powers, prompting questions over why police responded so vigorously.
The FBI were summoned and officers scrambled to the home on Tuesday, but not before a source apparently told CBS the bodies had already been found. Local television station KPRC was given the same information and the story was promptly followed up by news agenciesAFP and Reuters.
Before long the news that 30 bodies had been uncovered in a mass grave was leading BBC and Sky News channels in the UK and across the world. The Guardian contributed its own version.
Liberty county sheriff’s captain Rex Evans said authorities took the tip seriously in part because the caller had details about the inside of the house that only someone who had seen it could have known.
He said authorities were working to track her down. They had a name and number.
Asked if he thought the tip was a hoax, Evans said only that police found no bodies or anything to indicate a murder. “We are going to continue our investigation and find out how this individual had this information in the first place,” Evans said, adding that the caller may face criminal proceedings.
Full story at The Guardian
Jack Horner the man who’s making a “Chickenosaurus”
Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his career trying to reconstruct a dinosaur. He’s found fossils with extraordinarily well-preserved blood vessels and soft tissues, but never intact DNA. So, in a new approach, he’s taking living descendants of the dinosaur (chickens) and genetically engineering them to reactivate ancestral traits — including teeth, tails, and even hands — to make a “Chickenosaurus”.
Remembering Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.
During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking centre. He devised a number of techniques for breaking Germanciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.
Turing’s homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, several weeks before his 42nd birthday, fromcyanide poisoning.
An inquest determined it was suicide; his mother and some others believed his death was accidental. On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war.
Svengali London begins, Newcastle Royal tickets now on sale
Derren’s 30 day run at the Shaftesbury Theatre, one of the biggest in London, now begins. JUNE 8th until JULY 16th will be your last chance to see Svengali in 2011. After 73 days of travelling the country the show is at its best and will reside in London for 30 days.
Tickets available here – but please hurry as they are going fast: many dates are already sold out and some others only have a few seats left!
Also announced is the NEWCASTLE THEATRE ROYAL on May 7th 2012. Tickets go on sale (7th July).
Kumaré: A True Film About a False Prophet
American filmmaker Vikram Gandhi made up a guru character and a phony religion, then filmed a documentary as he developed a following. The result raises questions about belief and self.
