Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Were There Robot Librarians in the 1950s?

May 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
fake-robot-librarian

In 1911, Popular Mechanics published some illustrations of things like Joan of Arc at a sewing table, a Civil War soldier being examined by an X-ray machine, and George Washington getting his photograph taken. Titled "Anachronisms of the Future," these pictures were meant to be humorous examples of things that people of the future—like those crazy kids of 2013—might believe had actually happened. On Monday a Twitter pal of mine sent me a link to "Librarian 2.0"—a photo that appears to show a book lending machine or library directory from the 1950s. But a few things about the photo ... Read More

Thinking Cap

May 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
thinking-cap

Decades before Twitter, Snapchat, and viral cat videos, inventor Hugo Gernsback bemoaned the difficulty of concentrating on desk work. Even back in the 1920s, noise from the street and the frequency with which “a telephone bell or a door bell rings somewhere ... is sufficient, in nearly all cases, to stop the flow of thoughts,” he wrote. Even more perniciously: “You are your own disturber practically 50 percent of the time,” always willing to be distracted by the wallpaper’s pattern or a buzzing fly, he warned. Gernsback’s solution, presented in the July 1925 edition of Science ... Read More

Weed Makes Kids Better Drivers, According to Kids

April 25, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
marijuana-car

Teens are teens. They smoke weed—and duuuude—they think it makes them better drivers because, like, my haaaaands are clear bro, and it feels like I'm one with the car—yoooooo—does that say something about the human-industrial-car complex or am I just suuuuuper high, according to a recent survey of high school juniors and seniors from Liberty Mutual. Zachary Tracer—Churnalism disclaimer: Zach is a friend—has the report over at Bloomberg: Thirty-four percent of those who have driven while high say the drug makes them a better motorist, and 41 percent said it had no effect, ... Read More

Churnalism Sorts Original Journalism From Repackaged Press Releases

April 23, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
churnalism

"This is just a repackaged press release." That's one of the most common complaints about the way that most media outlets cover the social and behavioral sciences—and even the hard sciences, really. The primary reason for that? Most working journalists have a limited understanding of many of the subjects they're often asked to write about. I would even argue that this—the ability to explore and report and write about something new every day—is a key motivator for many of us in the profession. (It's certainly why I dumped my early ambitions of working as a particle physicist. Quarks, ... Read More

What Does Your Sneeze Say About You?

April 23, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
baby-sneeze

Are you one of those people who just sneezes out into the open air and then goes about living your life like nothing disgusting just happened? If so, you are sick, and it needs to stop. It also tells me that you are a germ-spraying bio-warhead who either does not concern him/herself with the health of others or delights in the pleasure of other people's immune systems breaking down. But, what does your actual sneeze—the sound, the volume, the frequency—say about you? A Chicago neurologist is trying to figure that out: “Sneezes are like laughter,” says Dr. Alan Hirsch, a ... Read More

10 Lies Planet Earth Is Telling You

April 22, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Earth

Today is Earth Day, some will tell you. (It's also my mom's birthday, you guys.) But if you were going to wish someone a happy birthday—which isn't exactly what Earth Day is, but it's as close as we'll ever get—would you want to send your regards if you knew that person was a conniving, shameless, pathological liar? No, no you would not. So, before you go around wishing "Happy Day!" to this planet we live on, here are some ways the Earth is trying to fool you. 01. Earth is smoother than a billiard ball. Remember that time you thought Earth had "peaks" and "valleys" and "altitude and "sea ... Read More

Creatures of Coherence: Why We’re So Obsessed With Causation

April 19, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
causation

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on RealClearScience, a Pacific Standard partner site. "We are pattern seekers, believers in a coherent world, in which regularities appear not by accident but as a result of mechanical causality or of someone's intention." Daniel Kahneman's words ring true for all of us; humans are creatures of causality. We like effects to have causes, and we detest incoherent randomness. Why else would the quintessential question of existence give rise to so many sleepless nights, endear billions to religion, or single-handedly fuel philosophy? This ... Read More

Why Is He Oblivious to Her Emotions?

April 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
eye

Ladies: Do you often feel misunderstood by men? Do they fail to pick up on fairly obvious nonverbal signals, such as expressions of fear or disgust? Newly published research suggests your perception is entirely valid—but it’s not their fault. A study from Germany finds that men do a much better job of interpreting one vital set of signals—the emotions conveyed by the eyes—when they’re communicating with another man, compared to another woman. “The finding that men are superior in recognizing emotions/mental states of other men, as compared to women, might be surprising,” a ... Read More

Watch America Become Obese and Engulfed by the Ocean

April 11, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
hot-dog-beach

If we don't do anything, we will all be overweight and floating in water, pecked at by seagulls who've leveraged the new conditions to wrestle control of most major American cities from our decaying, decrepit species—or at least that's the takeaway from two things on the Internet today. Over at The Atlantic, James Hamblin put together this graphic of the country's obesity rates as they progressed—maybe regressed is the better word?—from 1990 to 2010. As you can see in the key, the darker-blue and then redder things get, the more obese an area has become. So, plummeting health! But ... Read More

The Dream Recorder (of 1926)

April 11, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
dream-recorder

Last week, new research was published that showed the first objective recording of the contents from a dream. Using an MRI machine and images from the Internet, researchers in Kyoto, Japan, devised a way to decode with some accuracy what people were visualizing while they slept. But scientists and science fiction folk alike have been targeting the elusive dream for capture since at least the 1920s. The cover of the September 1926 issue of Science and Invention magazine included concept art of the "dream recorder" machine. The device wasn't invented by sci-fi publishing pioneer Hugo ... Read More