Shannon Jiménez

:( ouch! - Anne Bouey

Stop doing it! - amelia arapoff

"Facebook has a new chief technology officer, Bret Taylor. The FriendFeed co-founder and initial product manager of Google Maps came to Facebook with the $50 million acquisition of FriendFeed last year. He took on the role of director of platform at Facebook, and led the recent rollout of Facebook’s Open Graph and Open Graph API, which attempts to make social connections on the Web as important as hyperlinks. He played a key role in making the Facebook platform much simpler to build on." - Shannon Jiménez

aye, but WHICH will be assimilated? - Big Joe Silenced

"Remember when the goal of a videogame was, well, to beat the game? Rescue the princess, piece together the Triforce, kill the big alien monster, defeat all the other fighters. Or maybe, as in the case of Tetris, postpone your inevitable defeat as long as possible and rack up a high score. When you were at the arcade (again, kids, ask your parents) feeding quarters into the machine and you got the chance to put in your initials, the only indicator of your success was a number: your score. It didn’t say how few quarters you used, or how many power-ups you got along the way, or if you found all the secret zones." - Shannon Jiménez

I'm second from the top. It's about right :oD - Melly #FForever

"Why do we often attribute events in our lives to a higher power or supernatural force? Some psychologists believe this kind of thinking, called teleological thinking, is a byproduct of social cognition. As our ancestors evolved, we developed the ability to understand one anothers’ ideas and intentions. As a result of this “theory of mind,” some experts figure, we also tend to see intention or purpose—a conscious mind—behind random or naturally occurring events. A new study presented here in a poster at the 22nd annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science supports this idea, showing that people who may have an impaired theory of mind are less likely to think in a teleological way." - Shannon Jiménez

"Bethany T. Heywood, a graduate student at Queens University Belfast, asked 27 people with Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild type of autism that involves impaired social cognition, about significant events in their lives. Working with experimental psychologist Jesse M. Bering (author of the Bering in Mind blog and a frequent contributor to Scientific American Mind), she asked them to speculate about why these important events happened—for instance, why they had gone through an illness or why they met a significant other. As compared with 34 neurotypical people, those with Asperger’s syndrome were significantly less likely to invoke a teleological response—for example, saying the event was meant to unfold in a particular way or explaining that God had a hand in it. They were more likely to invoke a natural cause (such as blaming an illness on a virus they thought they were exposed to) or to give a descriptive response, explaining the event again in a different way." - Shannon Jiménez

"In a second experiment, Heywood and Bering compared 27 people with Asperger’s with 34 neurotypical people who are atheists. The atheists, as expected, often invoked anti-teleological responses such as “there is no reason why; things just happen.” The people with Asperger’s were significantly less likely to offer such anti-teleological explanations than the atheists, indicating they were not engaged in teleological thinking at all. (The atheists, in contrast, revealed themselves to be reasoning teleologically, but then they rejected those thoughts.)" - Shannon Jiménez

"Each year the IISE announces a list of the Top 10 New Species for the preceding calendar year. The Top 10 New Species described in 2009 are listed below with links to additional details about each species." - Shannon Jiménez

Great colors, Shannon & Erick!! Well done! - Skye Miller

Glad you like it Skye! Dad thought we should paint it white, but he wants to paint everything white :) - Shannon Jiménez

Wow, great curb appeal - amelia arapoff

what did you really expect? they couldn't give you anything else, there's nothing that could tie all of that together otherwise. - Richard Lawler

"The film industry’s move to Hollywood, early on in the 20th century, was not entirely an accident. Out west, good weather was more constant, the light better and the scenery more varied than on the East Coast. Hollywood, then still a sleepy hamlet 10 miles north of Los Angeles, was conveniently central between the bustling city and the natural splendour further afield. Depending on how far afield you’d want to carry your tripod, that splendour could be a stand-in for a surprisingly wide swathe of the world." - Shannon Jiménez

"A halting and grammatically incoherent English translation marred Mexican President Felipe Calderon's arrival ceremony at the White House Wednesday, rendering his remarks difficult to understand at times. The Mexican delegation blamed its own translator. In Spanish, Calderon's comments were straightforward and clear as he stood by President Barack Obama on the South Lawn and spoke to the common values and principles that unite the U.S. and Mexico. But the English translation that American viewers heard was so bad that the official White House transcript ignored it. Instead the White House used a translation provided by the Mexican Embassy and it was markedly different from the words actually spoken by the translator as Calderon talked." - Shannon Jiménez

I know it's a little late, but cute :) - Shannon Jiménez

I did that overnight (crock pot). Now it's a lovely chicken rice soup that I'll take for lunches this week. :) - ellbeecee

hmmm...yummy... - Darda Aswin

LOL - Harold Cabezas

Why are the meanings all alphabetical except for Religion? - Jim Norris

Weird... hadn't noticed. - Shannon Jiménez

"Twin studies have shown that genetic factors can account for as much as 82 percent of the variability in children's reading skills. But while genes might set the bar for reading potential, a new study published April 23 in Science shows that teachers play a leading role in helping kids reach it. "When children receive more effective instruction, they will tend to develop at their optimal trajectory," said study lead author Jeanette Taylor in a prepared statement. "When instruction is less effective, then children's learning potential is not optimized and genetic differences are left unrealized."" - Shannon Jiménez

"The largest trial to date of "brain-training" computer games suggests that people who use the software to boost their mental skills are likely to be disappointed. The study, a collaboration between British researchers and the BBC Lab UK web site, recruited viewers of the BBC science program "Bang Goes the Theory" to practice a series of online tasks for a minimum of ten minutes a day, three times a week, for six weeks. In one group, the tasks focused on reasoning, planning and problem-solving abilities--skills correlated with general intelligence. A second group was trained on mental functions targeted by commercial brain-training programs--short-term memory, attention, visuospatial abilities and mathematics. A third group, the control subjects, simply used the Internet to find answers to obscure questions. A total of 11,430 volunteers aged from 18 to 60 completed the study, and although they improved on the tasks, the researchers believe that none of the groups boosted their performance on tests measuring general cognitive abilities such as memory, reasoning and learning." - Shannon Jiménez

Well, there goes that excuse for playing computer games! ;P - Anne Bouey

Not surprised... - Wirehead

"Prejudice may seem inescapable, but scientists now report the first group of people who seem not to form racial stereotypes. Children with a neurodevelopmental disorder called Williams syndrome (WS) are overly friendly because they do not fear strangers. Now, a study shows that these children also do not develop negative attitudes about other ethnic groups, even though they show patterns of gender stereotyping found in other children. "This is the first evidence that different forms of stereotypes are biologically dissociable," says Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, director of the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, who led the study published April 12 in Current Biology." - Shannon Jiménez

This corollary reminds me of another syndrome where there are children who are born with no ability to feel pain. Seemingly this would be desirable but it isn't: it's very dangerous. They can harm themselves seriously without knowing it. We have fail-safes in our lives - some provided, some learned, for a purpose: they protect us from harm if used appropriately. It is a fine thing to be outgoing and friendly when the situation seems all clear. But using caution, as when confronted with people and situations that are potentially dangerous, is using wisdom. If a group of people or an individual have/has lost a common rule of law openly or in their heart that respects the person that they are confronted with it is not wise to treat them as if they are safe to be around. And that goes for anyone. - Melanie Reed

I would also relate my experiences of those children with Down's Syndrome as evidence that this is not anything new. I used to work for a marketing agency in the mall and a large group of children with this syndrome would come weekly to the mall. They were without any prejudice and extremely outgoing and friendly in nature. They would walk up to anyone and start conversations. I remember their visits as being particularly joyful. But here again, they had to travel in groups with chaperones to make sure they were protected. - Melanie Reed

Yeah, it's sad to me to realize that fear of strangers is an important evolutionary safety mechanism. Despite this, I think that we can always work at minimizing our unconscious stereotypes, partly by simply recognizing that they exist. - Shannon Jiménez

"Trying to translate a 400-year old masterpiece like Don Quixote into modern English would be folly, even Quixotic. But that’s what Edith Grossman does." - Shannon Jiménez

"The US is one of the world’s biggest countries, with one of the world’s most numerous populations [1]. The 23rd Census of the United States [2], now under way, will provide us with updated information on the current size of America’s population, but until then, let’s assume – as this map does – that the country is inhabited by about 300 million people. With a total area of 3,794,101 sqare miles, that gives the US a population density of approximately 79 Americans per square mile.... National population densities are of course averages. Excepting the consistently very crowded Macaus or the almost completely empty Greenlands of this world, each country or territory is divided into significantly more and less densely populated areas. It will surprise few that Alaska is the US’s least populated state (barely 1 Alaskan per square mile. Second least populated? Wyoming, with 5 inhabitants per square mile). At the top of the list is New Jersey (1,138 inh./mi2, followed by Rhode Island with 1,003 inh./mi2). . These are small states on the crowded East Coast, but even their average density is weighed down by relatively rural areas. For really high densities, take Brooklyn, the most populous of NYC’s five boroughs (2.56 million), with a surface of 71 square miles, which works out to a whopping 34,916 inhabitants per square mile. . Now, what if the whole population of the US would live in such a cheek-by-jowlish manner? How much space would they need? Texas? Nope. California? Think again. Pennsylvania? Nu-uh. Florida? Nice try. New Hampshire. That’s how much, or rather: how little space would be needed." - Shannon Jiménez

I was just watching another "Downfall" video and it reminded me of this. Good times :) - Shannon Jiménez

I love this video, it makes me feel sad, and cool that Bret's company was made into a Downfall video. - amelia arapoff

A cool visual representation of the effectiveness of health supplements, based on randomised human trials. - Shannon Jiménez

"The feds had been investigating his tomato-processing company for more than four years, but Scott Salyer was apparently taken by surprise when the FBI nabbed him at JFK Airport last month. Salyer, who flies his own jet, had been traveling to Paraguay and Andorra, among other locales, looking for an extradition-safe home. He was visiting the United States to see his newborn grandson when the investigation closed in on him." - Shannon Jiménez

"Every dog owner knows a pooch can learn the house rules—and when she breaks one, her subsequent groveling is usually ingratiating enough to ensure quick forgiveness. But few people have stopped to ask why dogs have such a keen sense of right and wrong. Chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates regularly make the news when researchers, logically looking to our closest relatives for traits similar to our own, uncover evidence of their instinct for fairness. But our work has suggested that wild canine societies may be even better analogues for early hominid groups—and when we study dogs, wolves and coyotes, we discover behaviors that hint at the roots of human morality." - Shannon Jiménez

We have a mutt rescued from the street when she was a month old. My wife and I half-joked that we needed the teach her dog behavior so I dropped to the floor in four legs :) The amazing thing is that instinctively we followed all the rules described in the article, reading them I recognize all the things we did and how I picked up her behavior as well. When we rescued another dog, this one eight years old, they played just like we did before. Thanks for sharing this! - Andrés David Aparicio