Revolutionary Error

There’s all this fuss about a majority of Americans labeling themselves “Pro-Life” for the first time, but the headlines don’t reflect what’s actually going on.

~23% of Americans think abortion should always be illegal
~22% of Americans think abortion should always be legal
~54% of Americans think abortion should be legal with some restrictions

That means that there are a lot of “pro-lifers” who think abortion should be legal at least under some circumstances. What exactly those circumstances are is going to be an important distinction, but it looks now like the largest group is in favor of a more restrictive policy. Those numbers haven’t shifted too much in the past year except that a few more extremists have moved toward the middle.

So why the apparent discrepancy between the pro-life/pro-choice lables and the opinions on the legality of abortion? One possibility is that lables are closely tied to political party. The greatest upswing in pro-lifers was among Republicans. Another possibility is that the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” aren’t quite as clear-cut as they might seem. It is, after all, possible to believe that abortion is wrong (or wrong for yourself), but still feel that is should be legal.

You get what you pay for, I guess. Microsoft’s new marketing campaign against Apple is trying to paint the Macintosh as a snobby, over-priced computer that users only buy because it’s shiny. Luckily, lots of people are taking a closer look at the comparisons Microsoft is making.

In the latest ad, Giampaolo buys an HP Pavilion HDX instead of a MacBook. The Apple Insider breaks down the features that “G” was looking for. Here’s a quick summary.

Portability
HP: 16″ screen, 1.7″ thick, 7.3 lbs
MacBook: 13.3″ screen, .95″ thick, 4.5 lbs
MacBook Pro: 15.4″ screen,.95″ thick, 5.5 lbs

Battery Life
HP: >3 hrs (>2 hrs in reviews)
MacBook: ~5 hrs
MacBook Pro:~5 hrs

Power
HP: 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB 533MHz DDR2 RAM
(and if he’s not running 64-bit Windows, he only gets to use about 3GB of that RAM)
MacBook: 2.0 or 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2-4GB 1066MHz DDR3 RAM
MacBook Pro: 2.4 or 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 2-4GB 1066MHz DDR3 RAM

And let’s not forget the poor 1366×768 resolution on a 16″ screen. Or the hours of time Giampaolo will spend looking for drivers, updating his virus software, and uninstalling bloatware. Try again, MS.

(via MEdical News Today)

Hey guys todally check this out! This is fricking coll man, so awesome. TUrns out tha if you drink red wine it;ll totally mnake you think better! Yeah! I dunno man, there’s some sturff that scienctists gave poepole from wine taht sends more bloods to your brain or soemthing. I don’t really getit, but it makes sense riight? I mean, when I drank red wine sometimes I can feel blood rush to my head and things seem totally clearrer, you know? It’s like, I dunno, it relazes my minds or osmething and the toughts just come easy. It’s porbably why I’m more clever and fun to be around haveing a good time when I drink wine.

I’ves gtta stsart doing that more otfem. the red winee I meen, S:Tarting to day. I mean WTF??? IT”S SCICENSE BITCHES!!!!

http://tinyurl.com/culyan5
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(via NewScientist)

I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told
I have guessed that the resistance,
of a smaller box of equal weight is heavier.
All lies and jest!
Still a man lifts what he wants to lift and disregards the rest.

A study done at Dalhousie University in Canada says that someone who lifts two boxes of equal weight but different size, will estimate that the smaller box is heavier. They will do this even after examining the contents of the box. What’s even weirder is that a lifter will equalize the amount of force they use to lift each box even while maintaining that one is heavier than the other.

Why do we make this mistake? Well, the researchers were able to reverse a volunteer’s estimations through training so that they would think a larger box was heavier than a smaller box of equal weight. This suggests that our estimations are based on previous experiences.

Makes sense, right? Think back to a time (perhaps as a child) when you struggled to lift a large pitcher of iced tea that your mom made for a big dinner. Next time you went to lift that pitcher out of the fridge, you probably put a little more muscle into it to compensate for what you experienced the first time. And what happens the next day when you decide a little more iced tea might be nice? You grab the pitcher with confidence and smash it into the shelf above. Why? Because your brain stored a short-cut for how to approach that pitcher.

Well, your brain does the same thing with the boxes. Smaller objects tend to be lighter than big ones. So, when faced with two boxes, you put a little more oomph into the larger box and a little less into the smaller which makes the smaller one feel a little heavier since it weighed more than you expected.

The researchers conclude that our sensorimotor system (how our muscles move) and our perceptual system (what we experience with our senses) estimate weight differently. Our muscles act as though they are lifting boxes of equal weight while we consciously think the boxes are weighted differently.

This also seems to show that the way we react to lifting a box has little to do with our reason and more to do with some automated calculations performed by our brains.

PS – My apologies to Paul Simon.