Show Notes for TWS127: This Is Your Blank On Life
On the show this week:
- This Is Your Brain On Life
- This Is Your Life On Life
- This Is Your Life After Life (EXTRAS)
This week’s Challenge Question:
What’s the one event anywhere in the world, at any time, that you’d like to attend — or should exist when it doesn’t?
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Full links to all stories covered and many more after the jump!
- Theme Song: Caffeine by Grubspoon from The Podsafe Music Network
- Promo: The House Of Grey — A story of a typical teenaged life: going to high school (albeit the most exclusive high school in the world), living life (albeit with scars both physical and emotional), dealing with growing up (albeit with no memory of who you are except frightening visions of a power you don’t understand), meeting girls (albeit some of the most beautiful and mysterious girls on the planet) and doing homework (albeit some of it is magical training). A story revealing layers both mundane and supernatural in the life of Monson Grey, sole survivor of the attack on Barity Bridge.
- Promo: Bells In The Batfry — John Bell is a very talented voice actor and comedian who has created this wacky world (with the help of a few friends) which never fails to provide a fun experience — mad-house style! Check it out and go to the forums to see just how much fun with have poking fun at John, his characters and each other!
- Promo: The Parsec Awards — The annual award recognizing particularly speculative fiction and surrounding genres. I was honoured to recieve the 2008 award for “Best Infotainment Podcast” (for which someone has nominated me again, for the first round, anyway), but if you listen to any sort of fiction podcast, you should let them know you appreciate them by nominated them.
- Promo: Balticon — I will be attending Balticon for the very first time this year, and I am really excited about meeting up with other podcasters, listeners and just a whole bunch of cool people. I hope to see you there! If you see me, introduce yourself and get a free TWS business card (that’s all I can afford to give away..).
- This Is Your Brain On Life
- Do we see faster than the blink of an eye? – ScienceDaily: Human Brain Can Recognize Objects Much Faster Than Some Have Thought
- I guess I should just try to dance my problem (-solving) away! – ScienceDaily: Body Movements Can Influence Problem Solving, Researchers Report
- Sylar: “You remember that little off switch in the back of my head? I moved it.” – New Scientist: Possible site of free will found in brain
- Eventually, we’ll have it chipped just in case we ever start to do bad, and then they’ll just shut us down. Yes, THEY will… *zap* – LiveScience: Brain’s Willpower Spot Found
- Depends on what you daydream, perhaps. Personally, I’m going to print this article and post it somewhere near me, so that I can point to it when people (including me!) yell at me to “focus!”. – ScienceDaily: Brain’s Problem-solving Function At Work When We Daydream
- Forget “use it or lose it!”, the new mantra will be “to think everything, think nothing”. – ScienceDaily: Meditation May Increase Gray Matter
- All memory is fabrication; some memories, doubly so.. – ScienceDaily: An Amnesic Patient With An Extraordinary Distorted Memory
- Your house will know what you are thinking; what happens if it starts to pick up on your subconscious desires? (Freud would have a field day!) – ScienceDaily: Virtual Smart Home Controlled By Your Thoughts
- This is at lot like saying “among all these crooked sticks, this is the straightest”. Also: not going to ask a gorilla to play hide-and-seek, because they can’t count to 30. – Yahoo!/ANI: Gorillas might be the smartest apes on the planet
- Not so much a case of “the rise of deadly machines” as “operator error”. – Popular Science: Rage From the Machine: Robot Attacks Swedish Industrial Worker
- And you thought *your* highschool teacher was stiff and unfeeling.. – The UK Telegraph: Robot teacher conducts first class in Tokyo school
- Do they really have that much unjustified rage? Oh, wait: *teenagers*. Nevermind… Carry on! – Ananova: Pupils urged to attack dummy teachers
- EXTRA: I sense a challenge happening… – Digital Journal: Opinion: Psychic Patricia Putts to be tested today for the JREF prize
- EXTRA: … I sensed a challenge over. It’s good to hear that people actually stand up to the challenge, and the article does illuminate the process, suggesting that there is more fairness than I expected. – Digital Journal: Opinion: Psychic Patricia Putts failed the test for the JREF prize today
- EXTRA: Hey, if you left a comfortable prison for a chaotic world, you might head back inside, too.. – BBC: Ape escapes, then ‘changes mind’
- EXTRA: Not the first time we’ve seen parasites which take over, but this might be the most graphic — and it’s not so much take them over as “hollow out their brain”… – Yahoo!/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Macclatchy: Parasitic flies turn fire ants into zombies
- This Is Your Life On Life
- You should be able to stand tall at any height.. – Ananova: Politician had her legs stretched
- EXTRA: So much for Politics being “show business for ugly people”.. – Yahoo!/AP: Mayor’s lip hair in shave-or-save battle
- Walk like a Centaur. – Ananova: Animal legs for humans
- “If you are about to expire, please arrange for your pickup and delivery.” – Sunday Mercury: Loughborough Council tenants told to give one month’s notice of when they will die
- Everybody knows that your food tastes better when cooked by a Virgin! Um… – Contra Costa Times/AP: Diners report seeing Virgin Mary in food griddle
- I also think you could interpret this a sighting of DOG in her salami, which is much worse.. – WSBTV: Woman: ‘GOD’ Spelled Out In Salami
- I know that they want to increase their attendance, but doesn’t anyone else think that talk about sex is still a little hard to do in a crowd for most people — let alone the religious? – The Zambia Dispatch Online: EL church spices up its sermons with saucy sex
- See? This is better, more private. You could snuggle up with a good book and a loved one.. And maybe The Good Book.. 😉 – BBC: Polish priest publishes sex guide
- EXTRA: Turns out, it’s there to be dominating, just like Freud would have thought.. – Scientific American: Secrets of the Phallus: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?
- EXTRA: I saw this movie once, it was called “FOOTLOOSE”, and was fiction… right? I guess not every church is moving forward.. – Ananova: Teen banned from graduation for attending prom
- EXTRA: Star Wars, Part 7: “The Rise of The Jedi”, or maybe “So I Married A Jedi”.. – Ananova: ‘May the 4th be with you’
- EXTRA: All things change, but when conscious thought influences change, can we really call it “evolution” any more? I think the word and theory are overly and mistakenly applied. – LiveScience: The Evolution of Religion
- EXTRA: Not everyone thinks that “pig” and “plague” sound too much alike.. – STV/Reuters: Malaysian “magic” boars a hit despite flu scare
- EXTRA: “Screw you germs! I’m outta here!” – ScienceDaily: White Blood Cells Can Sprout ‘Legs’ And Move Like Millipedes
- EXTRA: Eventually, we’ll replace all parts of mankind with (un-)natural substitutes. – ScienceDaily: Biotechnology: Engineered Moss Can Produce Human Proteins
- EXTRA: More examples of “extremovores”, which are EXTREME! – ScienceDaily: New Species Thrives In Extremely High Temperature And Pressure
- EXTRA: Chuck Norris is so tough, he doesn’t protect people, he protects the world — from himself.. – Ananova: Chuck Norris protects baker
- EXTRA: I wonder if he always thought he had a chip on his shoulder? Not the first case of carrying your dead twin, but they never cease to be odd.. – The Sun: Man, 30, gives ‘birth’ to his twin
- EXTRA: It’s tough to be the sole representative of a maligned group. Like high school. – ABC/Reuters: Afghanistan’s Only Pig Quarantined in Flu Fear
- I wonder what it smells like? – LiveScience: Ants Can Smell Death
- Smells like nirvana? – Ananova: Cocaine and LSD in the air in Spanish cities
- EXTRA: Not so much the “town hall digestor” as the “collective dietician”.. – ScienceDaily: Communal Stomach Of An Ant Colony
- Not all children smell alike; some stink of healthiness. Presumably this is an unthinking process; how many of those do we [humanity] have? – BBC: Earwigs ‘sniff out’ best babies
- EXTRA: Worms on parade! Or maybe: worms on the march! (Or May?) – Reuters: Mystery worms turn on northwest China herdsmen
- EXTRA: Just because it has become an urban legend doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen.. – Yahoo!/Reuters: Toilet snake attack: urban legend comes true?
- Another case of bloat-were.. – NewsDay.com: ‘Montauk Monster’ sighting on Southold beach
- EXTRA: It’s like a magic trick gone wrong.. – The Zambia Dispatch Online: Little bakkie keeps going with a big load of bull
- I think this would make fishing a lot less boring for most and a lot more popular… – The UK Telegraph: Fish that triggers hallucinations found off British coast
- EXTRA: It’s possibilities like this that send excited shivers down my back.. – New Scientist: Could flowers bloom on icy moon Europa?
- EXTRA: The secret (and surprising!) word in this story to watch for is “orgone” and “orgone energy”, a little-respected theory of alternative energy waves which can be used to heal or harm… – BBC: Dam plot in Mozambique denied
- EXTRA: People scoff at alternate theories of energy, but mention dark energy and for some reason people nod their heads and listen.. – ScienceDaily: The Day The Universe Froze: New Model For Dark Energy
- EXTRA: Do we have a serial killer? A lost cannibal tribe? A wendigo protecting its property? At least there is some mystery. – STV: Search for lost Chinese tourist uncovers seven corpses
- EXTRA: Personally, I think Watchmen’s “happy face” on Mars was the best of these.. – The UK Telegraph: ‘Alien skull’ spotted on Mars
- EXTRA: To be clear, it’s an exhibit about *sightings* of UFOs, not actual saucers. I was hoping for a microsecond there.. – The Sweden Local: Swedish group opens ‘world’s largest’ UFO archive
- EXTRA: Turns out, the dinosaurs may have been killed by a plot from tiny adversaries.. – MSNBC/Discovery: Poison bacteria set up worst extinction
- EXTRA: Turns out, old people are also carded for spoons. What? – Ananova: Shopper asked for ID to buy teaspoons
- EXTRA: Jellyfish are more jelly than fish, which makes them always appear on my weird list.. – The UK Telegraph: Four foot jellyfish found on British beach
- EXTRA: The oddest part is how it can be interpreted as a giggle; I wonder if it was meant to lure humans into a sense of familiarity. – BBC: Hyena giggles no laughing matter
- EXTRA: Of course, this doesn’t apply to that peculiar micro-environment called “high school”.. – LiveScience: Freaks Survive Because They Are Strange
- This Is Your Life After Life (EXTRAS)
- EXTRA: It amazes me when there exist these vast areas which no one has explored in a long time — particularly when they are man-made. I guess there are a few unknowns left in the world, and that makes me feel better. – BBC: Shedding light on the Catacombs of Rome
- EXTRA: Is this just another attempt to justify mega-farms? Personally, I’d love to see a return to family farms as a reasonable and sustainable way of life.. – New Scientist: Farmers’ crops keeping US cool
- EXTRA: Let’s all just go back to leaded gasoline and learn to love it — for the sake of the environment! Uh.. – ScienceDaily: Global Warming Inadvertently Curbed In Past By Lead Pollution, Scientists Find
- EXTRA: Turns out, walking to work is also good for the heart as well as the environment (and sneaker sales). – ScienceDaily: Driving To Work Increases Risk Of Heart Attack, Swedish Study Finds
- EXTRA: This is a lot like saying “You know: you can use a sharp steak knife to do a tracheotomy, and it will work just fine!”. – LiveScience: Toothpick Acupuncture Works Just Fine
- EXTRA: A question I’ve always thought should be open and discussed: do we have the right to refuse treatment? – CBS News/AP: Boy With Cancer Refuses Chemotherapy
- EXTRA: Be wary of black-and-white rules about something so fuzzy as health.. – Ananova: Fat chance
- EXTRA: Ok, now I know at least one place in the world that I will *not* be living.. – Ananova: Belgian city goes vegetarian
- EXTRA: Next: speeding laws defeated by designating all vehicles as “emergency transport”… – Ananova: Pub beats smoking ban
- EXTRA: There are good ways to stimulate segments of your economy; this wasn’t one of them.. – Yahoo!/AFP: China officials withdraw order to smoke
- EXTRA: Turns out, old people have something to say. Go figure! 😉 – Ananova: Woman, 103, is Britain’s oldest Twitterer
- EXTRA: Of all the ways I’ve heard to generate power from the oceon tides, this has got to be the most gentle.. – New Scientist: Sea ‘snake’ generates electricity with every wave
- EXTRA: I know that new challenges lead to innovations in everything, including basic concepts… But if you want to re-invent the wheel, best not to make it work even *worse*.. – Ananova: Bumpy road to success
- EXTRA: The main paradigm shift seems to be: “do not move yourself; move the universe around you”. Either that, or I was watching The Legend of Kung Fu again.. – MSNBC/Space: Star Trek’s warp drive: Not impossible
- EXTRA: As a one-time chip connoissuer, I can understand the desire to create new, exotic flavours.. But come on!?! *Breakfast* flavoured chips? Oh dear.. – Ananova: New crisps could make mum a millionaire
- EXTRA: I imagine it happening like this: spokesman is asked “is this the formula?”, replies “no, no way, nuh-uh, nope”, then calls up the lab and says “quick! Add more soylent green, before people catch on!”. Or maybe it’s cough syrup? All I know is that I rarely drink it, but I never have a cold after I do.. – Yahoo!/AP: Dr Pepper artifact may reveal soft drink’s origin
- EXTRA: Maybe this is the real reason that spaceflights are being scaled back? Or is that when the alien power system is introduced? – New Scientist: Nuclear fuel for spacecraft set to run out in 2018
- EXTRA: The world scoffed at Google for hiring goats to do their lawn, but it truly is a global wave of green.. – Ananova: Brits use wallabies as lawnmowers
- EXTRA: Turns out, the elves just need to get their mail. Weird, quirky.. Harmful? – IOMToday: Give the Little People a letter box, says MLC
- EXTRA: There are a large number of ghost hunting organizations out there. I recently had the chance to record an interview with a member of one group from Texas, which will come out in the show in a week or two. – Yahoo!/AP: Ghost hunters inspect 180-year-old NM hotel site
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