The lengths.

On February 5, 1945, with World War II in its last desperate months, a German train made its way to the city of Linz. Suddenly, Allied planes swooped in, dropping bombs and derailing it. As the train’s cargo—mail bound for several northern Austrian towns—scattered over the area, a second wave of bombers flew in with a strange payload.

Eight mail bags hit the ground around the train with a thud. Inside each bag were 800 propaganda letters, all addressed to homes and businesses along the train’s route and appropriately stamped. When the train was discovered, German postal workers recovered the bags and delivered the letters without being any wiser about their contents or origins.

Operation Cornflakes had begun.

http://www.businessinsider.com/operation-cornflakes-how-the-allies-got-the-nazi-postal-service-to-deliver-their-propoganda-for-them-2012-3

Really??

This is the worst article I've read from the Globe in a long time.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/robo-calls-get-a-grip-were-canadian/article2359578/

Registering a new website?

The Bodog.com case provides a warning that by using popular dot-com (dot-net, and dot-org) domain names, companies and registrants EVEN IN CANADA are effectively opting-in to U.S. law and courts as part of the package. What does this mean?:
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1140589--bodog-com-case-sends-warning-to-all-canadian-websites
http://www.slaw.ca/2012/02/06/collateral-damage-innocent-users-impacted-megaupload-takedown/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204616504577171060611948408.html
http://torrentfreak.com/its-official-us-demands-extradition-of-megaupload-suspects-120305/

Bill C-10

I suggest watching this 4-minute video, and if it feels right, call a Senator. That's it. Just leave a message. All the info is in the link below. http://www.parl.gc.ca/SenatorsMembers/Senate/SenatorsBiography/isenator.asp

Bill C-30

Including 12 ways to fix Bill C-30.

Supreme Court rules ISPs not subject to broadcast regulations

A coalition formed by the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, Canadian Media Production Association, the Directors Guild of Canada and the Writers Guild of Canada, had argued that ISPs should be treated as broadcasters.

Money well spent.

If you ever wanted to write your representative, this is how to find him or her:

http://www.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/HouseOfCommons/MemberByPostalCode.aspx

The drug industry, in a nutshell

Lu AA12004 is one of the few new (3 in the last decade) anti-depressant drugs about to go to market. They are tested by "Clinical trial".

"If you ask me, this study should have compared the new drug to an SSRI, because they're used much more widely than venlafaxine. ... although there are no fewer than 26 registered clinical trials of Lu AA21004 either ongoing or completed, only one is comparing it to an SSRI. "

http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-antidepressant-old-tricks.html

Pharmacologically, Lu AA21004 is kind of a new twist on an old classic . Its main mechanism of action is inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin, just like Prozac and other SSRIs. However, unlike them, it also blocks serotonin 5HT3 and 5HT7 receptors, activates 5HT1A receptors and partially agonizes 5HT1B.


Basically, the main problem with Lu AA21004 was that it made people sick. Literally - 9% of people on the highest dose suffered vomiting, and 38% got nausea. However, the 5 mg dose was no worse than venlafaxine for nausea, and was relatively vomit-free. Unlike venlafaxine, it didn't cause dry mouth, constipation, or sexual problems.


Yeah. This is what a body needs.

Prague

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The last communication before the Eastern Block

"Please have your papers ready..."

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Ahhh, the traditional exam time posts

So, been on vacation, in reality, for the last couple weeks. But, once again it's exam time, and obviously there some procrastination going on. Among that, there are always a few videos... so let the roll begin!



http://www.ted.com/talks/maya_beiser_s_and_her_cello_s.html

http://www.radiolab.org/2011/may/31/


http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/douglas_adams_parrots_the_universe_and_everything.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/alice_dreger_is_anatomy_destiny.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_cheat.html
Link to her audiobook: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5652331/Why_Him_Why_Her.Helen_Fisher

(The above TED talks all take a bit of time to get going, but they are all GREAT.)

So, I'll leave it at this for now. Anyway, there are tons of pictures and stories being prepared. I'll be traveling until July 9-10th, so there probably won't be (m)any updates until then.

Can you spot a fake smile?

19 out of 20.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/

Most people are surprisingly bad at spotting fake smiles. One possible explanation for this is that it may be easier for people to get along if they don't always know what others are really feeling.

Although fake smiles often look very similar to genuine smiles, they are actually slightly different, because they are brought about by different muscles, which are controlled by different parts of the brain.

Fake smiles can be performed at will, because the brain signals that create them come from the conscious part of the brain and prompt the zygomaticus major muscles in the cheeks to contract. These are the muscles that pull the corners of the mouth outwards.

Genuine smiles, on the other hand, are generated by the unconscious brain, so are automatic. When people feel pleasure, signals pass through the part of the brain that processes emotion. As well as making the mouth muscles move, the muscles that raise the cheeks – the orbicularis oculi and the pars orbitalis – also contract, making the eyes crease up, and the eyebrows dip slightly.

Lines around the eyes do sometimes appear in intense fake smiles, and the cheeks may bunch up, making it look as if the eyes are contracting and the smile is genuine. But there are a few key signs that distinguish these smiles from real ones. For example, when a smile is genuine, the eye cover fold - the fleshy part of the eye between the eyebrow and the eyelid - moves downwards and the end of the eyebrows dip slightly.

Scientists distinguish between genuine and fake smiles by using a coding system called the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which was devised by Professor Paul Ekman of the University of California and Dr Wallace V. Friesen of the University of Kentucky.

How to live forever

In How To Live Forever, a new film launching Friday in New York, director Mark Wexler (Air Force One, PBS-National Geographic) does just that. Ya gotta love Buster, a 101-year-old chain-smoking, beer-drinking marathoner, and Marge Jetton, a 104-year-old iron-pumping Seventh-day Adventist.



Here's Buster:



More clips here.

Song of the Day: Cuff the Duke - Listen to Your Heart

Remember "Song of the Day"? Me neither, but this song has been playing in my mind all day.

http://radio3.cbc.ca/play/concert/Cuff-the-Duke-2009-10-06/Listen-To-Your-Heart

Light is darkened in the rain,
whispers linger and remain.
There you are just wondering who to blame.

Has it passed you by,
like a stranger in a crowd.
All you have are distant memories.

Listen to your heart, baby it'll be okay.
Whoa, listen to your heart, baby it'll be okay.
Whoa, listen to your heart, baby it'll be okay.

You've been looking for your chance,
to get away from it all.
Bu'it's still here while your friends moved on.

Well the time finally came,
but the moment wasn't right.
There you were just feeling left behind.

Listen to your heart, baby it'll be okay.
Whoa, listen to your heart, baby it'll be okay.
Whoa, listen to your heart, baby it'll be okay, okay.

Night is darkening the rain,

whispers linger and remain.

Listen to your heart, baby it'll be okay.

Whoa, listen to your heart, baby it'll be okay.

Whoa, listen to your heart, baby it'll be okay, okay.

--

Gorgeous song. Especially live.

--

And so, naturally, when looking up "Listen to your Heart" on youtube, you get this also awesome song.



Roxette? Very underrated.

oh Dell

Oh Dell. So wanting to participate in Earth day.

Sending a Super Sale promotion out the day after earth day was not enough for you, but you also suggest to "Save Energy and shop online".

Really? Like, energy energy, or laziness energy? I was planning to go into this whole harangue about box stores vs driving assumptions vs delivery services and trucks vs whatever else came to mind at that exact moment, but knowing Dude, you got a Dell's target marketing audience, I'm going to take a Saturday morning break and just assume it's the latter.

Mmmm, yes Dell, show me how you care for that earth...

In preparation for England,

I picked up TomTom's iphone mapping software...

purchased a cheap flashlight from dealextreme, 

... and can't wait to buy one of these hammock tents from MEC for countryside expeditions.

I did check; there are trees in the UK.

I had high hopes for mlb.tv's iphone app but...

Lawyers, doctors, journalists, oh my.

What can't robots do?

Automation of higher-level jobs is accelerating because of progress in computer science and linguistics. Only recently have researchers been able to test and refine algorithms on vast data samples, including a huge trove of e-mail from the Enron Corporation.

“The economic impact will be huge,” said Tom Mitchell, chairman of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “We’re at the beginning of a 10-year period where we’re going to transition from computers that can’t understand language to a point where computers can understand quite a bit about language.”

Nowhere are these advances clearer than in the legal world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html?_r=1&ref=business&pagewanted=all


A typical physician spends most of the day playing twenty questions.
Where does it hurt? Do you have a cough? How high is the patient’s blood pressure? But an expert system can play twenty questions better than most people. An expert system can use the best knowledge in the field, it can stay current with the journals, and it never forgets.

Consider how many people die because physicians forget the basics. Gina Kolata reports on a Medicare program to rate hospitals on the quality of care provided in the treatment of heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia – these three areas chosen because there are standard, clinically proven, treatments that everyone agrees are highly beneficial.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/12/in_praise_of_im.html

Deadspin conceded. They published a follow up, saying that — in this case — the machine did write the better story.

"The image of the robots typing wins me over for sure," says Carmichael. "And on top of that, in some cases, as we've seen with Narrative Science's story, they actually can produce the stronger story."

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/17/135471975/robot-journalist-out-writes-human-sports-reporter?ft=1&f=1001

This robot journalist can explore its surroundings, take pictures, interview people, perform internet searches, and publish online. Ok, I'm about to lose my job.

http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/18/robot-journalist-takes-pictures-ask-questions-publishes-online/

More Kindle, procrastination, etc.

A browser extension "bookmarklet" (chrome, firefox, safari) allows you to send any web article straight to your kindle for later reading at the push of a button.

http://www.klip.me/sendtokindle/

Or, send articles/attachments straight to your kindle with its personal email address (@free.kindle.com). No spam either; all incoming email addresses need to be pre-approved.

Are lawyers really in trouble?

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/managing/strategy/article.jsp?content=20110425_10024_10024

These people obviously haven't heard that the four digit hourly fee ceiling has been broken recently. It is funny though; there is certainly a growing discrepancy between what you are reading and what you are hearing lately. These articles keep coming out one after another all saying exactly the same thing, yet every lawyer I'm talking to, new graduate or established, isn't complaining a lick about a lack of business.

Maybe it is a larger problem in the states, and just like good Canadian journalism, it's unabashedly echoed here. The story du jour. I suspect the problem is also magnified in business centres like Manhattan and Toronto, where once would be corporate lawyers aren't finding what they were promised and don't want to leave their chosen path (or residence), and it is from these business sectors that these articles are focused on and are coming from. In truth, I think the dip in new hires extends to the business sector as a whole (don't tell me it's rebounded), and even corporate jobs by the boatload will soon be available for those those who are born for a Bay Street gig. However, in saying that, as a practicing lawyer in Canada even today, you certainly won't starve.