Stephen Hawking will return from the CERN collider today to unveil the new clock at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, England. The unusual clock was designed by inventor John Taylor.
For all its apparent eccentricity, the clock is based on solidly traditional clockwork - unusual in these days of digital electronic clocks. It has taken seven years’ research and construction, incorporates six patented inventions, and is predicted to run for at least 250 years assuming the world lasts that long.
Engineer Stewart Huxley refuses to reveal the secret of its tricks, which include the pendulum occasionally apparently catching and stopping for a heartbeat, and then swinging faster to catch up.
Psychologist John B. Watson had a theory that humans are not afraid of anything until something causes us to fear. To test that theory, in 1920 he went through the process of teaching an infant (known as “Little Albert”) to be afraid.
The researchers’ first order of business was to establish a psychological baseline. They tried exposing the infant to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, and a monkey, and Albert reached for each animal with cheerful curiosity. The researchers brought him items such as masks and clumps of cotton, and he manipulated the objects with interest. They placed a long steel rod behind Albert’s head and struck the metal sharply with a claw hammer, and he flinched with evident distress. The infant’s baseline reactions to these stimuli were duly noted, and two months later the peculiar series of “joint stimulation” experiments was underway.
Of course, the poor child began to show high anxiety when the objects were presented. Dr. Watson had intended to “undo” the phobias by giving Little Albert a pleasant stimulus in the presence of those objects. But he dropped that part of the experiment due to lack of time! No one knows what happened to Albert afterward. Dr. Watson’s research was received with fascination by other psychologists, and no one at the time questioned the ethics of the experiment. Read the whole story at Damn Interesting. Link
How many miles do you do at the office? While you’re making deals or crunching numbers, you may as well be using a treadmill at the same time. Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic started the trend toward treadmills at work by constructing the first treadmill desk. He put a hospital tray overtop a treadmill and added a laptop and a phone headset. He used this to work at walk at the same time.
Enthusiasts began following Dr. Levine's example, constructing treadmill desks that range from sleekly robotic set-ups to rickety mash-ups that could be Wall-E's long-lost kin. But the recent introduction of an all-in-one treadmill desk from Details may inch work-walking into the mainstream, as dozens of businesses invest in the hardware to let their employees walk (and, ideally, lose a little weight) at work.
Since last November, about 335 Walkstations, have been sold nationwide to companies including Humana, Mutual of Omaha, GlaxoSmithKline and Best Buy.
The Walkstation, which Dr. Levine helped develop, costs about $4,000 and comes in 36 laminate finishes with an ergonomically curved desktop. Its quiet motor is designed for slow speeds, said David Kagan, director of marketing communications at Details, a division of Steelcase.
Last Meals Delivery Service in Toronto will bring you a last meal (but only if you live in Toronto). Not your last meal, but the meal someone on Death Row chose as their last. They all cost $20 and must be ordered a couple of days ahead of delivery. You don’t get to pick it out, but when it’s delivered it comes with a DVD to watch and a paper mask of the convict who selected it. Frank at BlogTO tried it out and wrote up the experience.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Possibly someone dressed as a grim reaper or in a prison guard uniform or something equally dramatic opening up a thermal bag with a puff of yellow sulfur-y smoke and handing me a styrofoam container that was eerily cool to the touch. Ideally, I’d've left my $20 (sorry, cash only folks) in an envelope at my front door and after a brief wait the doorbell would ring and the food would appear without any human agency to puncture the veil.
It wasn’t quite like that.
By now i’m sure you’re all just frothy with anticipation as to which lucky (or unlucky) dead-guy I drew. His name was James Hudson Bryant (prisoner #924), convicted of killing 3 people in a dispute over a shared driveway. His last meal included a cheeseburger, a tossed salad, large fries with ketchup, a pile of saltines, an apple turnover and for some reason I can’t really fathom, a pair of brand-new white tube socks. Everything tasted okay; it wasn’t exactly home-made.
David Kalb, a warehouse worker from La Habra, California, won a contest to compete against Lebron James in a game of H-O-R-S-E. Using some bizarre trick shots and benefiting from some lucky misses by Lebron, Kalb managed to win. Via Muttpop.
Add this to the list of potential harmful effects of cell phones: bad sperm qualities!
Keeping a cell phone on talk mode in a pocket can decrease sperm quality, according to new research from the Cleveland Clinic.
"We believe that these devices are used because we consider them very safe, but it could cause harmful effects due to the proximity of the phones and the exposure that they are causing to the gonads," says lead researcher Ashok Agarwal, the Director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine.
McCann-Erickson has produced a beautifully animated but disturbing PSA for the Portuguese organization Quercus {wiki} about global warming. Let the comments begin. Link-Thanks, Mat!
Tomoji Tanabe has seen many birthdays. Today he turns 113! Tanabe is the world’s oldest living man, and the eleventh oldest living person in the world. He celebrated at his home in southern Japan with a visit from the mayor.
“I’m happy,” said Tomoji Tanabe as the local mayor presented him with flowers and a giant tea cup glazed with his name and date of birth. “I’m well. I eat a lot,” he added.
Tanabe, recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest living male last year, eats mostly vegetables and believes the key to longevity is not drinking alcohol.
The former civil servant lives with his son, drinks milk every day and has no major illnesses, although he now writes in his diary only once or twice a month. He used to write on a daily basis.
Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will find out how pop-savvy you are about musical groups that exist only in TV and movies. I scored 50%, because I am a pop-culture failure. Come to think of it, I did pretty well, considering I didn’t know any of the answers! Link
A company called NeuroSky Inc, has built a prototype of a system that reads brain waves and uses them to control a mobile phone! They held a demonstration at CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2008 in San Francisco last week.
The demonstrated applications include: (1) an application to show the degree of brain’s relaxation on the screen of a mobile phone by using a visualizer (2) an application to show the degree of brain’s tension in chronological order after a user solves about 10 arithmetical problems (addition, multiplication, etc) shown on the screen of a mobile phone (3) a game application to move a video game character to an intended place as quickly as possible on the screen of a mobile phone. The more the degree of brain’s concentration, the more quickly the character moves.
As for (1), when a user calms his or her mind on purpose, the curving lines drawn by the visualizer change to various colors. With regard to (2), if an appropriate application is developed, it will be possible to realize a brain training game in which the challenge level changes in real time in accordance with the degree of brain’s tension.
Psychologist John B. Watson had a theory that humans are not afraid of anything until something causes us to fear. To test that theory, in 1920 he went through the process of teaching an infant (known as “Little Albert”) to be afraid. 
How many miles do you do at the office? While you’re making deals or crunching numbers, you may as well be using a treadmill at the same time. Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic started the trend toward treadmills at work by constructing the first treadmill desk. He put a hospital tray overtop a treadmill and added a laptop and a phone headset. He used this to work at walk at the same time.
Add this to the list of potential harmful effects of cell phones: bad sperm qualities!
Tomoji Tanabe has seen many birthdays. Today he turns 113! Tanabe is the world’s oldest living man, and the eleventh oldest living person in the world. He celebrated at his home in southern Japan with a visit from the mayor.
A company called NeuroSky Inc, has built a prototype of a system that reads brain waves and uses them to control a mobile phone! They held a demonstration at CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2008 in San Francisco last week. 
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