Author Archives: Jeff Porten

Brainwave computer interface, for cheap

Live demo of a brainwave computer interface, end user cost of a few hundred dollars. Trainable in eight seconds.

Infographic: Mega Shark

A large number of my friends have waxed rhapsodic over that fine piece of filmic literature, Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. I have not yet seen it, but on the theory that everyone needs to know what the launch speed of an ocean-going shark needs to be in order to take down a commercial plane, I hereby link to this explanatory graphic.

Addendum: The movie stars Debbie Gibson, and apparently is being followed up by Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.

Addendum, part the second: This really needs to reach a wider audience.

1966 La Choy Muppets Ad

Jim Henson as a Mad Man. Kermit in his initial role as Beaker (apparently before his promotion). Muppets with live flamethrowers. An adult woman reacting the way a normal human being would to an eight-foot Muppet (fear for her life). This is pure genius.

Also, the concept of 1,200 cub scouts is terrifying.

Hope to never meet the guy who clicked it.

I’ve received a lot of spam in my lifetime, but still, this one was just jaw-dropping.

This week’s headlines from Yemen

Two headlines that came across my transom today:

Yemen: the Next Afghanistan? (NPR)
Acute hunger in Yemen (BBC)

Maybe it’s just me, but my gut says that if Americans paid more attention to the latter, it might help with the former.

About 85% of People Only Breathe Out of One Nostril at a Time

Science’s next great discovery: men alternate testicles every time they are shot down by a woman at a bar.

Actually, this story is somewhere between extremely fascinating and deeply bizarre:

Most interestingly of all, yet another study published in 1994, showed that when you are breathing through your left nostril, the right hemisphere of your brain will be more active or dominant and vice-verse when you are breathing through your right nostril. This can be a handy thing to know as the right hemisphere of your brain is your “creative/imaginative” side, while the left hemisphere of your brain is your “logical” side. So forcing breathing through one nostril or the other can actually affect the way you think at a given moment.

In the future, Wall Street will relocate to Central Park

The 21st century will prove what we’ve all unconsciously known through the 20th: Manhattan is uninhabitable.

Heat waves like those that baked the Northeast in July are likely to be more frequent and more intense in the future, with their effects amplified in densely built urban environments like Manhattan, according to climate scientists at The City College of New York (CCNY).

“Manhattan is subject to an urban heat island effect because its physical landscape is significantly different from the surrounding suburbs,” said Dr. Jorge Gonzalez.