1. there is a mountain range in antarctica that is roughly alp-sized. however, these do not impress, since the valleys are filled with 4-km thick ice. see here.

2. according to some legends, eve was not adam’s first wife – she was his second. his first wife was lilith, who, unlike eve, was made from the earth by god, just like adam. she, being adam’s equal, demanded equal treatment. adam would not comply, lilith said the hebrew name of god, thus gaining immense power, and flew off. adam asked for a second wife, but one who would be subservient to him, so god complied, made him a woman out of his rib and thus millennia of discrimination began. interestingly, lilith shows up in various forms in various cultures. in some myths, she is the snake in the garden of eden. in others, she is the demon who kills women during childbirth or who causes miscarriages. in canadian culture, she’s the patron of a pretty good concert series started by sarah mclachlan.

3. glacial ice is full of small pockets of liquid water down at the bottom, near the ground. these keep the ice a little less brittle, thus allowing it to flow over land without snapping. for example, see this, or this.

4. the meaning of the word psephological, used in context in this article.

5. scientists aren’t as honest in their publications as they’d like you to believe… see this article.

6. black holes can be simulated with sound in a bose-einstein condensate. see this article.

7. i learned what a bose-einstein condensate is. see the previous article.

8. the u.s. air force lost a  nuclear bomb in the water off the coast of savannah, georgia, 50 years ago. see this article.

9. when michael jackon died, he slowed down the internet. see this article.

i’m a little late this week… too many other things on my plate.

1. during the last ice age, the build-up of ice on the ground caused the earth’s crust to sink due to the weight. the heavier the ice, the more the ground sank. since there was more ice in the north (in placed like canada) and it lasted longer, the earth sank more than in other places. the cool thing is that the earth’s crust is still bouncing back, and therefore it’s rising at a rate of a couple of millimeters a year. since the north is bouncing back more than the south, the great lakes are changing shape, pushing water towards the south.

2. hitler probably had parkinson’s disease

3. there are currently three major drug types for treating depression: a) ssri’s (selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors) which increase the amount of seratonin in the brain, the theory being that a lack of seratonin makes you depressed; b) ssre’s (selective seartonin reuptake enhancers) which decrease the amount of seratonin in the brain, the theory being that an excess of seratonin makes you depressed; and c) dri’s (dopamine reuptake inhibitors) which affect dopamine levels in the brain and don’t affect the seratonin levels at all, the theory being that seratonin has nothing to do with depression. interestingly, if you look at the studies that test the effectiveness of each of these drugs, you’ll find that each one reduces depression in approximately 60% of patients. this is strange, since this accounts for 180% of the population…

4. if you look at the clinical trials for all of the drugs mentioned above, published and unpublished (the latter category accounting for 40% of the data), you will find that, although these drugs are better than a placebo statistically speaking, they are not better, clinically speaking. listen to the lecture here.

some time ago, i was interviewed by a swedish magazine called “king”. the writer asked me to give him some tips on how to improve the sound of your stereo in your room (without spending enormous amounts of money on new toys). the article is online and can be seen here.

it turns out that the writer has a sense of humour… he starts the article with the phrase “fem genvägar till det perfekta ljudet” which means “five shortcuts to the perfect sound”. this isn’t that funny if you’re not from sweden, so i didn’t get the joke until a friend of mine explained it to me.

a while back, there was a tv show in sweden that was, in his words, an attempt to demonstrate the concept of ironic humour to the older people in sweden. it was a very popular show –  something like the swedish equivalent of “seinfeld” or “friends”. the crucial portion of the crucial episode of the show in question can be seen here. the explanation, provided by the swedish friend, is below…

The guy in the red clothes is a high school social worker [ed. who solves people’s problems by selling them stereo equipment…] and the other guy is the radio host. A girl calls in and tells that she is being bullied. The social worker starts selling her a HiFi package with a “Micromega Stage 1” cd player, a “Rotel RA-930 AX” amplifier and a pair of “TDL RTL-2” speakers for only 11000 kroner. The girls starts crying and asks if she has to buy something. He says that “there are no shortcuts to the perfect sound, but this…is.. one…step… in…the…right…direction!!”

apparently the phrase “there are no shortcuts to the perfect sound” is well-known in sweden. well-known enough that it is probably impossible that the reporter that interviewed me would not know it.

so, what i found out in the end, was that, in all likelihood, the reporter was making fun of me in his own article, which makes me very happy… i just wish i could have known about the tv show in advance. i would have included a 6th shortcut to the perfect sound… buying a pair of “tdl trl-2” speakers…

1. even when the connections have been shut down, there is 5000 volts and 15-20 amps running through the big power lines that connect power stations to cities. this is caused by induction from the current in the wire on the opposite side of the towers.
2. jack nicholson has been nominated for an oscar 12 times. the only person who received more nomiations is meryl streep with 13. also, nicholson has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fine art like picasso’s, van gogh’s, matisse’s and bacon’s in his home.
3. i’m not as fast as i would like when it comes to putting things on this blog. i’m now a week behind on writing a description of what i’m talking about in the “there are no shortcuts…” missing link from last week. sorry r…
(quiet week last week apparently…. only 2 “real” things in my list. must pay more attention to things this week…)

1. whereas 41% of canadians own a passport, only 20% of americans do. consequently, canada has more to lose as a result of the new american border-crossing rules for people entering the states from canada. since the americans will need a passport to get home, they probably won’t bother leaving in the first place, so canada loses out on the cross-border shopping.

2. there are no shortcuts to the perfect sound

3. it’s not easy to figure out who to vote for in today’s eu elections. (as a canadian, this isn’t my problem, but i also learned that i’m glad that it isn’t…)

4. late-night watching of the history channel while you’re waiting for your 7-week old to fall asleep in your arms is bad for you, since it makes you start to give serious consideration to people who believe in uso’s (unidentified submerged objects which are like the love-child of a ufo and a submarine) and atlantis. maybe this explains why people buy jewellery on the shopping network at 2:00 in the morning as well…

5. in 2004 there was a case of wide-spread sexual abuse brought before the court on pitcairn island. this tiny island, inhabited by the descendants of those who mutinied on the bounty. see this article.

6. i want to read a book called the soloist.

1. although the usa contains only 5% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the world’s prisoners. this means that 7.5% of the united states is in jail – and this is 5 times the world average for incarceration. more statistics on american prisons: 20% of prisoners have been sexually assaulted by a guard or another prisoner; an african-american man has a 1 in 3 chance of going to jail some time in his life; there are 1,700,000 “prison orphans” in the usa and they are six times more likely to wind up in jail than everyone else; 16% of prisoners suffer from a mental illness; there are more people with mental illnesses in prisons than in mental hospitals. (note that all of this information comes from this source)

2. according to one podcast i heard from npr this week, although short sellers have been villified as the seed of our current “economic crisis” they may actually be the heros that protect us from it ever happening again. according to the broadcast the problem we are currently in is the result of people obfuscating the risk of derivatives, and selling them to people who really don’t understand what they’re buying. the buyers never did figure out what they owned until the entire system went under. since derivatives are not regulated in the states, they didn’t show up on the books of any of the companies that owned them, so the people that invested in those companies didn’t know that there was a massive amount of risk accumulated in the holdings of the companies they were investing in. however, although the people buying the derivates didn’t bother to find out what they were buying, the people who sell derivatives aren’t the only ones who know what’s going on. in order to be a successful short seller, you need to be able to predict which companies currently look successful, but are about to go under. consequently, the short sellers knew who was going under two years before it happened – they’re like forensic accounts who give everyone else a heads-up years in advance of anyone else knowing what’s happening.

3. benjamin franklin lived in france for 9 years in a small town just outside of paris as the united states’s first ambassador. he was also there to build an alliance with the french in the hopes of amassing more military power against the british. read more here.

4. michaëlle jean is one of my heros. in your face, ifaw!

5. having a blog like this means getting spam comments – almost all of them linking to mp3 download sites in russia. this is more annoying than getting spam on my email. in fact, it’s annoying enough that i just might shut down the whole blog.

1. a fool and his money are indeed, soon parted

2. the legend of the lost city of atlantis originated with a small mention in some writings by plato, some 3000 years or so after it was supposed to have disappeared into the ocean. (this obviously makes it highly probable that plato was just making it up – a theory put forth, possibly initially, by aristotle, and he knew a thing or two…)

3. there is a group of people who believe that a library containing the knowledge from the lost city of atlantis is hidden under the sphynx in egypt, and that the pyramids are actually thousands of years older than is currently believed by academics and archeologists. there is a larger group of people who believe that this first group of people are a bunch of loonies.

4. two disturbing things this week… (a) sometimes, people who think that they’re upholding the law, are simply distorting it for their own purposes. in this particular case, it seems odd that a law that was designed to protect children is being used to destroy them for no particularly good reason (based on my belief that prudish, puritanical beliefs do not constitute anything close to a “good reason”). (b) note, in the same article, that bullying can lead to suicide…

5. it is illegal to import turtles into canada. however, it is not illegal to import turtle eggs for the purpose of incubating them, hatching them, and producing… wait for it… turtles! i guess that canadian politicians have not figured out which comes first, the turtle or the egg.

6. those that remember the past (or at the very least their history lessons…), but think that the rest of us don’t, are idiots.

7. when dropping things off at the dump, i should never look to see what other people think is garbage – i’ll just get depressed.

8. if i have to explain why i find this funny, you probably won’t agree that it is. (okay… okay… i didn’t learn anything by seeing this advertisement, but i still think that it’s funny…)

1. although about 50% of americans believe that god created humans in their present form, and therefore do not believe in evolution, the united states ranks #1 in nobel prizes (including, but not exclusively prizes in the sciences).

2. if you put someone in an fMRI and ask them to imagine playing tennis, a different area of the brain will light up than if you had asked them to imagine walking around their house. further to this: a researcher has put a number of patients who are in a long-term (or maybe permanent) vegatative state (and are therefore completely uncommunicative in any way) in an fMRI and asked them to imagine these two scenarios. at least two of these patients have exhibited exactly the same brain activity as the typical subjects, meaning that it is likely that these people are awake and aware, but trapped inside an immovable body.

3. the book of revelation in the christian bible mentions a star or angel called “wormwood” in the following verse: “and the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.” (revelation 8:10, 11 – KJB). interestingly,  “wormwood” in ukrainian is “chornobyl”.

4. i was surprised to find that i was in good company in my opinion that the european union’s decision this week to ban canadian seal products is annoying stupid.

5. if you go to kenya and travel to the equator, you can find a person who will demonstrate the coriolis effect. he will walk a couple of steps north of the equator and show that water draining out of bowl with a hole in the bottom swirls counter-clockwise. he will then walk a couple of steps south of the equator and show that water draining out of the same bowl swirls clockwise. finally, placing the bowl directly on the equator, he will show that it doesn’t swirl when draining.

6. the television program that showed the fellow discussed in #5 was taken in by a charlatan. the coriolis effect cannot be seen to be that dramatic when you are mere steps from the equator.

1. wikipedia is less reliable than even i give it credit for. for example, see here, here or here, just as a start…

2. the onion is even funnier than i gave it credit for.

3. the ancient jordanian city of petra is astonishing for a multitude of reasons, including al khazne, the tunnel dug to re-route floodwaters from the siq, and the hydraulic engineering required to maintain water into the city.

4. we are more fortunate than we know. i heard an interview with one of sudan’s lost boys who lives in halifax, nova scotia. he talked about how he wakes up every morning, and feels astonished that he has the luxury of running water, having come from a life where this was indeed a luxury…

5. monsters are real (but skeletons are not)

1. children who have autism get temporarily relieved of their symptoms when they have a fever, becoming more social and talkative.

2. the last time we had a swine flu outbreak (in 1976) the vaccine that was used to protect people from it caused more deaths than the flu itself.

3. in 1918 the spanish flu pandemic resulted in 40% of the world’s population infected, and more than 50,000,000 people died.

4. normal, yearly seasonal flu results in 250,000 – 500,000 deaths worldwide each year.

5. five ants is more than four elephants.