OVO

The Bureau of Public Secrets is now available for consultation.

I can’t say I have much interest in collecting or repairing My Little Pony toys. But I do get excited over good Web design. You too? Check this out.

You can call it yaba or crazy medicine or Hitler’s ecstacy, but please avoid this drug. It is all over Thailand and emerging in the UK but not discussed in the United States. Don’t do it.

ABC News said: “Social scientists have long known that women’s preoccupation with their physical appearances can lead to low self-esteem, eating disorders and other problems. Barbara Fredrickson and her colleagues wondered if it might have an even broader mental effect. So they gathered a group of undergraduate students, 40 men and 42 women, for a test. One at a time, the students were asked to try on either a sweater or a swimsuit in a makeshift dressing room with a full-length mirror. They were told that the idea of the test was to measure whether or not they liked the garment better after wearing it for 15 minutes. So, rather than let those 15 minutes go to waste, they were then asked to take a 20-question advanced math test, supposedly as part of a separate study. When the results were in, the researchers found that the men did about the same on the math test whether they were wearing a swimsuit or a sweater. In fact, the guys did slightly better in swim trunks. The women, however, had significantly lower math scores if they were wearing the swimsuits. The authors published their findings in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.”

George Dvorsky (of Better Humans) writes: “Perhaps it’s time [...] that we made religious fundamentalism a mental and cultural health issue. People should be able to believe what they like, but only so long as their convictions don’t harm others or, arguably, themselves. Fundamentalism, however, breeds fanaticism and often leads to terrible violence, injustice and inequality. If society can force drug addicts into rehabilitation because they’re a danger to themselves and the public, then we should be able to compel religious fundamentalists to undergo treatment as well.” Here here.

The US’ Surveyor probe landed on the moon in 1969. It survived launch, space vacuum, 3 years of radiation exposure, and deep-freeze at an average temperature of only 20 degrees above absolute zero. Of course there were also no no nutrients, water or energy sources available to the probe or anything on the probe that whole time. But when astronauts brought back a piece of the Surveyor, they discovered the terrestrial bacteria Streptococcus mitis – alive – in some of the polyurethane foam insulation. Apparently someone sneezed on the thing before it took off. You can read about this here and there, but as Pete Conrad (look at those eyes!) said, “I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the whole…Moon was that little bacteria who came back and lived and nobody ever said [anything] about it.”

From Carl Sagan, A Life in the Cosmos by William Poundstone:

“One night in St. Thomas, Sagan dined at a remote mountaintop restaurant. The hostess caught his eye. She was an attractive young woman with dark hair and a healthy, tomboyish quality. Her name was Margaret Howe. She told Sagan that she was bored. Her job as a hostess was evenings only. She wanted something else to occupy her on the island.

“Sagan tried to get Howe into bed. Howe rebuffed him, but the meeting had one result: Sagan introduced Howe to anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who was then running the St. Thomas facility. This led to a job and plunged Howe into one of the most unusual experiments of the 1960s.

“In the summer of 1965, Howe lived in the company of “Peter,” a male dolphin, 24 hours a day, six days a week in a simplified flooded house. There are surreal photographs of Howe working efficiently at a desk or chatting on the telephone, eyed curiously by a dolphin as her whole environment is sopping in 24 inches of water.”

And it does get much more strange from there…

“Well, I guess it depends on their age. It’s a stage that you go through. My advice to younger girls would be to recognize that the same thing you’re going through is what every other girl you know is feeling because they all have their little thing that they think is a disability – whether it’s their frizzy, red hair or they think they have a big nose or they think they have two left feet. Whatever it is, physical or inside, knowing you have it can be a disability. It’s realizing that you’re not as different as you think. Really everyone is feeling like they want to change stuff. Just know that it’ll pass and in a few more years you’ll realize that your beauty comes from being different from anyone on this planet. There’s nobody just like you. As they get older, I’d counsel girls to know it’s really a tool that unlocks your full potential. When you accept all the parts of yourself and you like yourself, the sky is the limit. People feed off of confidence. That’s what so incredible about being at this event – everyone walks with their heads held high. They believe in themselves. But you know it didn’t come from winning. The winning came from believing in themselves.”

Aimee Mullins is an athlete, a role model and a fashion model.

“I am so happy I wouldn’t feel gay Christmas caroling, candle and all. Matt is here, John is almost repaired! Oh boy, it’s about to begin. I thought I’d go ahead and share my dad’s perspective on our late-night tendencies. He said to Matt when he arrived “What’s the deal with you vampire kids driving in the middle of the night?” To which Matt replied something about not liking the sun in his eyes. Way to keep our blood-sucking secret safe. Erhm, if I am not careful John’s mom might call us “goth.” Nah, we’re too happy to be Goth. I’m sleepy, good morning!”

What does Patrick Moore (the co-founder of Greenpeace) have to say about The Skeptical Environmentalist? “When Bjorn Lomborg published The Skeptical Environmentalist he must not have been prepared for the onslaught of comment, both personal and professional, that has erupted in the popular and scientific press. Whereas the popular media have generally reported positively on the 500-plus page analysis of the global environment, the scientific press in North America has been negative to the point of personal insult. It is very clear that extreme environmentalists are deeply threatened by the breath of fresh air Lomborg brings to the debate.

“Among the most scathing of the attacks on Lomborg was an 11-page editorial in the January 2002 edition of Scientific American. With the rather high-handed title “Science Defends itself Against the Skeptical Environmentalist” the editorial declared the book a “failure” and invited four prominent environmentalists to do their worst to discredit Lomborg and his analysis.

“Scientific American did not give Lomborg any opportunity to respond to his critics, even though they gave him a copy of the editorial before it went to press. They said they would give Lomborg one page in a future edition to reply to 11 pages of full-on attack. Lomborg’s response was to publish the text of the Scientific American article on his own website and to intersperse it with a detailed response to every point raised by his critics. Scientific American then threatened to sue Lomborg over copyright.

“Does Scientific American really think that they will lose readership because Lomborg has posted a response to a publication that is already off the newsstands? I believe they acted out of political motivation and are purposefully stifling Lomborg’s efforts to defend himself. And I don’t blame Lomborg for giving in to such a huge organization when threatened with legal action. (If you go to Lomborg’s website www.lomborg.com and look under Critiques you will find he has removed the offending text, thus gutting the effectiveness of his response.)

“I think we should defy Scientific American’s blatant attempt to muzzle Lomborg. Anyone who reads his response to the Scientific American attack will have to agree that it is thoughtful and thorough. Here is a link to the entire response complete with Lomborg’s comments.

“I don’t necessarily agree with every word of Lomborg’s impressive book, but that is not the issue here. The environmental movement has become riddled with extremism, misinformation, misguided priorities and downright deception. It is wonderful that this dogmatic conceit is now being effectively challenged. Let’s put some wind in Lomborg’s sails!”

More than a thousand giant jellyfish with bodies the size of washing machines have turned up on the central coast of Japan. The species is called stomolophus nomurai. They’re about a metre (three feet) wide and weigh up to 150kg (330 pounds).

Did you ever hear about the “Edelweißpiraten” (‘Edelweiss Pirates‘)? Low-income boy (and girl) street gangs in Nazi Germany who smoked, drank, camped, hiked, listened to jazz, had sex and beat up Hitler Youth for fun, not ‘for class struggle’ or ‘anti-fascist’ reasons. There were hundreds to thousands of them and a dozen or so were hung in public as a warning to the rest. But you sure don’t hear about them now. Those youngsters weren’t ‘clean’ in the way that the White Rose group was.

Use these lovelies in a collage to make me feel uncomfortable. Thanks.