Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

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A Survivor of the Deadliest Tornado in U.S. History Tells Her Tale

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
tri-state-tornado

The ghoulish, ongoing tornado storm in the midwest comes a few days before the anniversary of the Joplin, Missouri, tornado disaster, which leveled 25 percent of the city and killed nearly 200 people on May 22, 2011. However, memories can prove short—even for events like Joplin and this week's mile-wide twisters. In 1925, the worst tornado disaster in history hit the upper Midwest. The Tri-State Tornado still holds records for spending the longest time on the ground, where it left a swath 219 miles long. It killed nearly 700 people. "You know, I can’t remember that it lightninged and ... Read More

The Science of Psychics

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
fortune-teller

There is this deeply affecting part in the movie version of A Christmas Carol—OK fine, A Muppet Christmas Carol—where Ebenezer Scrooge is carried forward some unspecified number of years through time and set down on the front doorstep of a future Bob Cratchit. The silent, hooded Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come stands behind him, urging him forward with a long and scary finger, watching eyeless-ly as Scrooge reluctantly dissolves through the family’s front door. Inside their home, Scrooge will learn that Tiny Tim has died. Then, taken along again, either forward or sideways in time, ... Read More

Marijuana Buffers Pain of Social Exclusion

May 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
marijuana-blunt

Why smoke marijuana? Users would probably reply that numbed-out bliss is its own reward. But if smoothing out the harsh edges of reality is your goal, what bruises are you attempting to avoid? Newly published research suggests that, at least for some, the answer is: The intense discomfort of social exclusion. “Marijuana has been used to treat physical pain,” reports a research team led by University of Kentucky psychologist Timothy Deckman, “and the current findings suggest it may also reduce emotional pain." Given the drug's long-term health effects, “This may reflect a poor ... Read More

How to Conjure a Ghost to Get a Murderer to Confess

May 16, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
ghost-prisoner

The proliferation of projection technology and electrical gadgets in the 1920s allowed people to conjure spirits. Well, spirits of a mechanical variety anyway. These ghoulish Jazz Age illusions entertained audiences and fooled ardent believers. But some thought that maybe this wave of high-tech ghosts could be put to use beyond the parlor tricks of supposed mystics. The November 1924 issue of Science and Invention magazine proposed using a slide projector and a little smoke to coax a confession out of alleged murderers—a "novel third degree method," as they put it. From the ... Read More

Dolly the Human: Scientists Have Created Stem Cells Through Cloning

May 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
stem-cells

After more than 15 years of failures by scientists around the world and one outright fraud, biologists have finally created human stem cells by the same technique that produced Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996: They transplanted genetic material from an adult cell into an egg whose own DNA had been removed. The result is a harvest of human embryonic stem cells, the seemingly magic cells capable of morphing into any of the 200-plus kinds that make up a person. The feat, reported on Wednesday in the journal Cell, could re-ignite the field of stem-cell medicine, which has been hobbled by ... Read More

Someone Else Owns Your Genes

May 14, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
gene-patent

On April 15, in the case of The Association for Molecular Pathology vs. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the United States Supreme Court heard arguments questioning the legitimacy of patents on human genes. A genetic testing company, Myriad Genetics, has patent claims on two human genes that influence a person’s risk for breast cancer. Myriad is being sued by a conglomerate of physicians, scientists, and patients who argue that Myriad has illegitimately patented a product of nature. While the lawyers and Justices delved into the arcana of patent law and molecular biology, many of the rest of us were ... Read More

Unable to Grasp Alternative Viewpoints? Chill Out.

May 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
perspective

Having trouble coming to terms with a contrary colleague or disgruntled member of the family? Do you just seem to be talking past one another? Your first impulse might be to sit down and talk things out over a cup of coffee. Bad idea. Newly published research suggests warm temperatures inhibit our ability to get beyond our own egocentric perspective and see things from a different point of view. “We show that perspective-taking is enhanced when participants are exposed to cooler rather than warmer temperature cues,” writes a research team led by Claudia Sassenrath of the ... Read More

How Will I Survive the Cicada Invasion?

May 10, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
cicada

As you've surely seen, the East Coast is preparing for a pending cicada invasion. And by "preparing," I mean "hyperventilating in front of a computer screen." Sure, everything happening remotely close to New York always gets blown out or proportion—that big gray cloud you just Instagrammed is going to release water, which is called "rain"; everyone will be fine—but, I mean, there are going to be a lot of cicadas, like multiple-hundreds per person. Despite the pending invasion of these mutating alien-shrimp pods, you're all probably going to be fine. Probably. To get the low-down on what ... Read More

Nikola Tesla Would Not Approve of Your Online Viewing Habits

May 10, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
nikola-tesla-corner

Since March 11, a 2 minute, 4 second rap smackdown pitting eccentric genius Nikola Tesla against more mercantile electric genius Thomas Edison has gotten 13,952,858 people to watch it (as of the time of this writing). Not bad for a feud that reached its peak in 1897. Tesla, though, hated to waste time—even for sleep—so he probably would not have approved of the 474,397 hours the world's collective eyeballs have spent watching this video alone. Nor of the electrical use—5,692.7 kilowatt hours of electricity used by YouTube's servers, or approximately enough to power an American household ... Read More

The Mystery of John Titor: Hoax or Time Traveler?

May 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
time-travel

This is our planet’s bleak future: a second Civil War splinters America into five factions, leaving the new capital based in Omaha. World War III breaks out in 2015, starting with Russia and the U.S. trading nukes and ending with three billion dead. Then, to top it all off, a computer bug delivers where Y2K sputtered, destroying our world as we know it. That is, unless an audacious time traveler successfully traverses the space-time continuum to change the course of future history. In late 2000, that person signed onto the Internet. A poster going by the screennames “TimeTravel_0” ... Read More