My personality according to IBM Watson Personality Insights

I inputted a total of nearly 6000 words of my own original writing from my longer Reddit submissions to /r/futurology and dream report on my website. It seems like a pretty good result to me and gives way more insight than any four letter Myers-Briggs personality test (i.e. INTJ) I've taken before. Though I do spot some huge misses too, like Curiosity 31%?

I'm gonna try and compare it with inputting my MSc thesis next. I'm guessing there will be quite some difference. Maybe not, according to the research you need self reflective words and it was trained on social media such as twitter, blog posts, and forum posts. Makes sense. Gonna be harder to pull another 6000 words out of the Reddit hat.

You can try it for yourself here.
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Een man die verzamelingen verzamelt

Volledige aflevering op uitzending gemist, bevat nog iets meer film van deze fantastische man.

Ben Goldacre on the placebo and nocebo effect

Placebo and nocebo @ wiki.

Looks clothed *Bubbling* looks naked

More Bubbling...

The Rosenhan Experiment

Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again

New York Times - April 11, 2010 As a retired clinical psychologist, Clark Martin was well acquainted with traditional treatments for depression, but his own case seemed untreatable as he struggled through chemotherapy and other grueling regimens for kidney cancer. Counseling seemed futile to him. So did the antidepressant pills he tried. Nothing had any lasting effect until, at the age of 65, he had his first psychedelic experience. He left his home in Vancouver, Wash., to take part in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school involving psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in certain mushrooms. Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs’ potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness. Full story... Psilocybin @ wiki

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

A nice TED Talk. I think Harris makes some good points and is an eloquent speaker.

To know about the Giggle Loop, is to become part of the Giggle Loop!

From the series "Coupling".

total isolation

I remember Pimp-a-lot wanting to try this. Good luck

The Pop-Up Book of Phobias

Also check out the Phobia List (530 phobias). Supposedly they are all real and referenced in literature.

The surprising science of motivation

Some of us had a discussion a while ago, about using incentives and bonuses to motivate people to work harder. Here is a TED talk where Daniel Pink makes the case that incentives and bonuses often don't work or can even be counter-productive. (watch this video Douche)

I'd really like to work at a company that applies the alternative organizational structures as some of the companies he mentions.

BBC Exposes Psychics

The Amazing Color Changing Card Trick

The Answer:

more music charts

Scaring the Shit out of People

Sorry, just a little late for Halloween.

The real difference between liberals and conservatives

"Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most."

High-res video

Benefits of ‘magic mushroom’ therapy long lasting

The benefits for people who have had positive or even mystical experiences induced by the psychedelic drug psilocybin — the psychoactive ingredient in ‘magic mushrooms’ — linger for as much as a year, according to the latest follow-up study of such patients. The study offers more support to those who argue that, when used responsibly, some drugs more commonly taken for leisure can safely be used to relieve the stress associated with severe chronic diseases such as cancer. “This experience has a compelling meaningfulness and spiritual component to it that is strongly conserved over time,” argues the study's lead author, Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. Although only a single dose was administered to the 36 patients in the original study, they reportedly still considered the experience to have valuable after-effects at the time of the follow-up study. A clutch of new studies using psilocybin are now planned or under way in the United States, hoping to alleviate cancer-related anxieties with only one dose that has a lasting, positive outcome for patients. Full article...

Wow a clutch of new studies is planned, very exciting.

Loudness War

The trend of increasing loudness as shown by waveform images of the same song mastered on CD four times since 1983.

wiki The phrase loudness war (or loudness race) refers to the music industry's tendency to record, produce and broadcast music at progressively increasing levels of loudness each year to create a sound that stands out from others and the previous year. This phenomenon can be observed in many areas of the music industry, particularly broadcasting and albums released on CD and DVD. In the case of CDs, the war stems from artists' and producers' desires to create CDs that sound as loud as possible or louder than CDs from competing artists or recording labels.[1] However, as the maximum amplitude of a CD is at a fixed level, the overall loudness can only be increased by reducing the dynamic range. This is done by pushing the lower level program material higher while the loudest peak sounds are either destroyed or severely diminished. Certain extreme uses of compression can cause distorting or clipping the waveform of the recording. Read more...

Why Torture Doesn't Work and What Does

Three Torture Myths

How To Make A Terrorist Cry

There is a documentary about this called Taxi to the Dark Side (imdb) (torrent)

54 wine scholars fail to distinguish white from red

In the first (part II of the article), he gave 54 subjects (students in the wine program at the Bordeaux university, experienced with wine tasting, I believe) two wines, both at room temperature: a white wine and an identical white wine dyed red with flavorless food coloring. The vast majority of subjects described the white wine in typical white wine terms (e.g. pear, apricot, fresh, floral), while they described the red-colored wine in typical red wine terms (e.g. raspberry, black currant, plum, tannic). In the second (part II.2), Brochet gave 57 subjects two identical wines to taste (separated by a week); they were told that one was a Grand Cru and the other a table wine. In fact, the wines were identical. The vast majority of subjects described the supposed Grand Cru with laudatory adjectives (e.g. complex, well-balanced, full-bodied) and described the supposed VdT with critical adjectives (e.g. thin, flat, flawed).