Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

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

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