Nepenthe

Supercharging the brain Better than coffee? Last year, Nancy Jo Wesensten, a research psychologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, compared the effects of three popular alertness drugs—modafinil, dextroamphetamine and caffeine—head to head, using equally potent doses. Forty-eight subjects received one of the drugs, or a placebo, after being awake for 65 hours. The researchers then administered a battery of tests. All of the drugs did a good job restoring wakefulness for six to eight hours. After that, says Dr Wesensten, the performance of the subjects on caffeine declined because of its short half-life (a fact that could be easily remedied by consuming another dose, she points out). The other two groups reached their operational limit after 20 hours—staying awake for a total of 85 hours. ~ Read more on The Economist , still refreshingly free from registration requirements

Los pasaportes con RFID empezarán a funcionar a primeros de año en EE.UU. y, probablemente, se tratará también del primer chip espía que los españoles padeceremos en nuestras propias carnes (es decir, en nuestras privacidades). Si hay que meter los datos personales en un chip se meten, pero ¿por qué hacerlo precisamente en un chip que puede ser leido por cualquiera y a distancia? ¿Por qué no en un documento similar a cualquier tarjeta inteligente, que requiera contacto y sólo pueda ser leído por el funcionario de aduanas? En definitiva: ¿por qué correr riesgos adicionales?. Schneier lo dejó muy claro hace muy pocos días: interesa controlar esos datos sin que el portador lo sepa; es decir: interesa espiarnos... Pues bien; hoy sabemos más detalles. En los 64Kb de memoria del dichoso chip irán grabados nada menos que los siguientes datos: nombre, dirección, fecha y lugar de nacimiento, y fotografía digital del portador. Y todo ello -además- sin cifrar, para no tener que compartir c...

«Farenaite 7/17 Acerca do realizador americano Michael Moore, há várias opiniões muitas vezes contraditórias. Há os que acham que é um realizador de talento justamente reconhecido pela Academia de Hollywood (que, de vez em quando, lá vai acertando) e os que vêem nele um activista político “liberal” (o que se chama nos Estados Unidos às pessoas a que cá chamamos “de esquerda”) que sacrifica a arte aos seus ideais e não olha a meios para transmitir a sua visão pessoal dos acontecimentos que retrata sem preocupações com objectividade e isenção. Há também os que misturam elementos das duas correntes de opinião. Pessoalmente, não me preocupa saber quem tem razão. Vi o último filme de Michael Moore recentemente e não me surpreendeu a forma feroz como George W. Bush é atacado e que não pode justificar os arremedos inquisitoriais dos que, por lá, na terra da liberdade e da democracia por excelência, quiseram censurar o filme. São assuntos deles e eu não tenho nada que me meter. É verdade q...

A test for the next generation of Twenty Questions :-)

What is it that defines the language of the moment? Is it that curious word CHAV, virtually unknown until this year and used to describe loutish young people exhibiting COUNCIL ESTATE CHIC? Or is it the creeping of text and chat-room language into every aspect of our written life? Are our favourite TV programmes and SLEBS now directing our choice of words? Or are they all SHTUPID? Word on the SHTREET is that this is the latest trend in pronunciation. Grammar, too, is on the move - or are you SO not liking that? A WORD A YEAR However short its life, each word tells a tale about its environment. larpers and shroomers selects a single word born in each year of the 20th century and the opening years of the 21st. Each of them says something about the preoccupations of their time, including DEMOB in 1920, RACISM in 1935, BIG BROTHER in 1949, BEATNIK in 1958, MINISKIRT in 1965, TOY-BOY in 1981, HAVING IT LARGE in 1993, and SEXING UP for 2003. The dates of CHEESEBURGER or MOBILE PHONE...

The seven types of Short-Story 1 The event-plot story This term was coined by the English writer William Gerhardie in 1924 in a short, fascinating book he wrote on Chekhov. Gerhardie uses this appellation to distinguish Chekhov's stories from everything that preceded him. Up until Chekhov, all short stories, virtually without exception, were event-plot ones. In these stories the skeleton of plot is all important, the narrative is shaped, classically, to have a beginning, middle and end. The revolution that Chekhov set in train - and which reverberates still today - was not to abandon plot, but to make the plot of his stories like the plot of our lives: random, mysterious, run-of-the-mill, abrupt, chaotic, fiercely cruel, meaningless. The stereotype of the event-plot story is the "twist-in-the-tail" famously developed by O Henry but also used widely in genre stories - ghost stories (WW Jacobs, for example) and the detective story (Conan Doyle). I would say that today its...

Ger m ans do have a sense of humour :-)

TM: I've noticed in The Following Story , Fernando Pessoa reappears, as he does in a number of your books. What is the attraction that people feel in general to Pessoa, and what do you yourself feel? CN: Well, he did something that many of us would like to do, only, if we were to do it now, it would be like an imitation: to invent all the writers within the writer that you already yourself are. That is, to divide your personality and create fictional people who write real books. I believe this is the most fictional thing you can do. Remember that famous line by Marianne Moore: "Real gardens with imaginary . . ." No. "Imaginary gardens with real toads in them." I mean to have imaginary poets that write real poems. Fantastic. No passports, but they produce books. TM: And the wonderful sadness of The Book of Disquiet , an endless reiteration of sadness and every possible approach to it. CN: He drank himself to death. But he left twenty-seven thousand ...

"The British call our 'lazy Susan' a dumbwaiter, which the revolving servitor was called in America until relatively recently. It is said that the first use of the term dates back to about 75 years ago when the device was named after some servant it replaced, Susan being a common name for servants at the time. But the earliest quotation that has been found for lazy Susan is in 1934, and it could be the creation of some unheralded advertising copywriter. Therefore, 'lazy' may not mean a lazy servant at all, referring instead to a hostess too lazy to pass the snacks around, or to the ease with which guests can rotate the device on the spindle and bring the sections containing different foods directly in front of them." From the "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997). The Phrase Finder

Mystery of Moving Eyes Solved The mystery of why eyes in certain paintings and photographs appear to move has been solved: it has to do with how we perceive two and three dimensions, a new study finds. According to a paper published in a recent issue of the journal Perception by James Todd, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, and his colleagues, the optical illusion "is in the misleading information provided by the picture," Todd said. No matter what angle you look at a painting from, the painting itself doesn't change, since it's on a flat surface. The patterns of light and dark remain the same. But three-dimensional objects, in life, change with the way light falls on them as viewers move around the object. "When observing real surfaces in the natural environment, the visual information that specifies near and far points varies when we change viewing direction," Todd said. He added, "When we observe a picture o...

EL BULLI Os mais cépticos dirão que é culpa dos tempos mediáticos que vivemos, outros que é a prova de que o star system chegou à cozinha. Mas a verdade é que um restaurante discreto e confortável, numa pequena cala catalã, onde se chega por uma estreita estrada, a muitos quilómetros dos grandes centros urbanos, é hoje um local de peregrinação para gastrónomos dos quatro cantos do mundo. E para se conseguir um dos seus 50 lugares é preciso reservar com um ano de antecedência. Por muito que saibamos da importância das equipas e de outros factores da restauração, a verdade é que por trás do êxito globalizado do El Bulli está fundamentalmente um cozinheiro catalão, Ferran Adrià, de 42 anos, cujo nome é hoje reconhecido por todo o mundo civilizado como sinónimo de vanguardismo culinário. Por tudo isto, uma ida ao El Bulli deve ser contada na primeira pessoa, e é isso que hoje, excepcionalmente, farei. Tinha lá estado há cinco anos, numa experiência extraordinária que até hoje recordo...

Una web con ilusiones ópticas interesantes . Tened cuidado, yo estuve mareado un rato después de visitarla... Y aquí una que me volvió loco: el color de la casilla A es el mismo de la casilla B. Podéis comprobar los valores hexadecimales si, como yo, no terminasteis de creéroslo ;-)

A Kinder, Gentler Khan F or years the more robust souls here at National Review have prided themselves on being to the right of Genghis Khan. Now, however, comes Jack Weatherford, a professor of anthropology at Macalester College, to make the case for a kinder, gentler Genghis in his revisionist history of the fast rise and quicker fall of the Mongol Empire. Blessed with an eye for the main chance, and a capacity for killing friends and family at propitious moments, the boy born in 1162 as Temujin dominated his tribe and, by 1204, captained it to triumph over its rivals. As they exerted their majesty over an expanding realm, this shaggy steppe-chieftain and his descendants became the emperors of kings. Genghis sportingly offered enemies a choice: surrender or die. If they decided to fight, the khan was as good as his word, and they died — all of them, men, women, and children — but those who elected to pay fealty to the conqueror lived in peace under Mongol protection. The pr...

Jacques Derrida Dies Jacques Derrida, 74, originator of the diabolically difficult school of philosophy known as deconstructionism, died Oct. 9, the office of French President Jacques Chirac announced. French media reports said that the cause was pancreatic cancer and that he died at a Paris hospital. Mr. Derrida (pronounced "deh-ree-DAH") inspired and infuriated a generation of intellectuals and students with his argument that the meaning of a collection of words is not fixed and unchanging, an argument he most famously capsulized as "there is nothing outside the text." An immensely influential thinker, Mr. Derrida's seminal idea permeated college campuses during the 1960s, '70s and '80s. "Deconstruction" has become one of the few terms that, like "existential" a generation or two earlier, has escaped from dense philosophical and literary papers to pepper modern culture, from movie reviews to government policy pronouncements...

The Ultimate Pink Floyd Quiz: 1 – What was Arnold Layne’s hobby, and where did he end up as a result of it? 2 – Which Pink Floyd album can be seen in the Stanley Kubrick movie, A Clockwork Orange ? 3 – Which Pink Floyd song has 36 different drummers playing on it? 4 – How many different types of animals have been named in the lyrics of Pink Floyd songs? 5 – Name the former member of The Groundhogs who performed The Wall live with Pink Floyd. 6 – Which Pink Floyd band member has appeared on every Pink Floyd record? 7 – Which Floyd album was blasted into space with Soviet cosmonauts in 1988 and orbited the earth aboard the MIR Space Station? 8 – What alternate title was used for the Pink Floyd album Relics in the EMI tape archives prior to its release? 9 – How is actress Naomi Watts related to Pink Floyd? 10 – Name the one song on The Wall album that features a duet between Roger Waters and Richard Wright. 11 – What US band did Pink Floyd stay with during their brief US to...

Troubled Germans turn to Lord of the Rings An insight into the current German psyche has been revealed in the country's largest ever poll of favourite books. In a national project that mirrored the BBC's The Big Read, the German public placed The Lord of the Rings at the top of their most loved literature. The list of prized publications, in which the Bible ranked second, offers a glimpse into a German public which, according to some, is desperate to escape its "current air of pessimism". Around 250,000 people took part in Das Grosse Lesen, organised by the television station ZDF to raise the profile of reading in the lead-up to the Frankfurt Book Fair. Perhaps most surprising in the results was the success of New Labour's former darling, Ken Follett's book The Pillars of the Earth, which came third. It made only 33rd spot in the BBC's poll. When asked about the success of his book, Follett told ZDF viewers: "People predicted that a book about t...

From American Leftist : "Below is a small version of an image I made. It's a mosaic composed of the photos of the American service men and women who have died in Iraq. No photograph is used more than three times. Here is a medium-sized version, 800 x 925 pixels. Here is the full-sized version, 1890 x 2209 pixels. I call the image 'War President'": [the links to the different sizes of the mosaic are slashdotted, let us hope they'll be up soon again ] ___________________________________ How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to replace a lightbulb? The Answer is TEN: 1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed 2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed 3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb 4. One to tell the nations of the world that they are either: "For changing the light bulb or for darkness" 5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid ...

Tuna's Red Glare? It Could Be Carbon Monoxide BUYERS of fresh tuna, whether at the sushi bar or the supermarket, often look for cherry-red flesh to tell them that the fish is top-quality. But it has become increasingly likely that the fish is bright red because it has been sprayed with carbon monoxide. The global seafood trade has expanded so much over the last decade that tuna, once a seasonal delicacy, is available year-round. But getting it to consumers while it still looks fresh is difficult. Tuna quickly turns an unappetizing brown (or chocolate, as it is called in the industry), whether it is fresh or conventionally frozen and thawed. Carbon monoxide, a gas that is also a component of wood smoke, prevents the flesh from discoloring. It can even turn chocolate tuna red, according to some who have seen the process. People in the seafood industry estimate that 25 million pounds of treated tuna, about 30 percent of total tuna imports, were broug...

Ah, the joys of geography... The question was " How many hours does it take to go to Japan by car? ". (true story) He didn't know where Japan is, and even bofore that, he didn't know that Japan is an island. And then, I thought. "What kind of world map is pictured in his mind?" This was a beginning to think that it might be fun to gather those mixed up recognitions of countries and visualize it as a world map imagined by the fools in the world. First, the countries are roughly allocated. From now on, countries will be added based on participants' comments. If you "don't know" or "don't even care" about the countries that are added, please submit a comment such as "Huh?" . comment sample: > Tanzania has been added. Huh? If there're many comments or questions like that, relevant country will be downsized or deleted. To the contrary, territory of relevant country will be moved or enlarged if th...