Category: Science

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Science vs. Religion in the United States

A recently released Gallup Poll indicates that more Americans accept theory of creationism than the science of evolution.

I have to ask myself, is it because those pesky scientists have been wrong about so many things or because religion has been so particularly good at teaching us about the way the world is?

The data from several recent Gallup studies suggest that Americans’ religious behavior is highly correlated with beliefs about evolution. Those who attend church frequently are much less likely to believe in evolution than are those who seldom or never attend.

I’d be interested if there is also a correlation between those that finish high school and those that trust the science behind the theory of evolution, and again between those that go on to University and if they believe in so called “intelligent design” or evolution.

The data indicate some seeming confusion on the part of Americans on this issue. About a quarter of Americans say they believe both in evolution’s explanation that humans evolved over millions of years and in the creationist explanation that humans were created as is about 10,000 years ago.

Quite frankly, no matter which side of the debate you take, you have to admit the data indicate that about a quarter of Americans are stupid.

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Subliminal Sound to “Cure” Video Game Addiction

A Korean venture start-up claims to have developed an audio sequence that can communicate with addicted game players below the conscious level. The company wants game manufacturers to play the embedded subliminal messages when a young user has kept playing after a preset period of time.
From The Korea Times article:

“We incorporated messages into an acoustic sound wave telling gamers to stop playing. The messages are told 10,000 to 20,000 times per second,” Xtive President Yun Yun-hae said.
“Game users can’t recognize the sounds. But their subconscious is aware of them and the chances are high they will quit playing,” the 35-year-old Yun said. “Tests tell us the sounds work.”

Any scholarly evidence I’ve ever read up on has indicated that subliminal messages don’t work, but apparently marketing such messages is big business.

Xtive applied for a domestic patent for the phonogram and is looking to take advantage of the technology in other sectors.
“We can easily change the messages. In this sense, the potential for this technology is exponential,” Yun said.

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Eye Tracking for Usability

Have you ever noticed how some websites are just easier to read than others? The New York Times comes to mind as a good example of a site that creates an enjoyable experience through its use of columns that are not too wide, tight writing, lots of white space, and jettisoning unnecessary imagery.

The Online Journalism Review recently ran an extremely interesting article about the science of good page layout. It explains how using eye tracking software, it is possible to create more efficient pages that help uses read pages faster and retain more information at the same time.

eye tracking web sites

Among the different information that can be gleaned from eye tracking, I found the differences between the sexes eye moments to be the most interesting. (Though I will add, I’ve never found myself staring at other guy’s crotches — so that makes me wonder, is this for real?)

eye tracking differences between men and women

From the article:

Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed. Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.

It would be interesting to delve a little deeper into this finding. If it is true, I imagine there may be some evolutionary reason for the differences.

(via Kottke)

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Time Travelling Light Waves

Light Lab at NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J.

This is a bit of old news, but it’s interesting.

Back in 2000 Scientists figured out a way to make a pulse of light travel faster than the speed of light. Wait until you hear exactly what they did; it might have been a few years ago but it will still blow your mind.

Scientists from the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J did an experiment which caused a pulse of light, a group of waves with no mass, to come out the other side of a specially prepared chamber before it was even done entering.

From CBC News:

Inside a chamber, they changed the state of a vapour in a way that light travelling through it would travel faster than normal.

When the pulse of light travelled through the vapour, the pulse reconfigured as some component waves stretched and others compressed. As the waves approached the end of the chamber, they recombined, forming the original pulse.

The key to the experiment was that the pulse reformed before it could have gotten there by simply travelling through empty space. This means that, when the waves of the light distorted, the pulse traveled forward in time.

I’m not sure that it means anything in the grand scheme of things because they say they don’t know of any way to turn this phenomena into a way to carry data.

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Lunar Eclipse

On Saturday and Sunday we, the human population, had an opportunity to see the moon completed blotted out by Earth’s shadow in one of those rare events known as a Lunar eclipse. Personally I’ve always thought solar eclipses to be the more interesting variety and so I never even bothered looking for the moon over the weekend.

However, thanks to the power of modern computing, here is an animated version of the entire phenomena, for those like myself that want all the reward without any of the effort.

animated eclipse

I have to admit, the orange glow that appears on the moon during the middle of the action is kind of cool.

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McDonald’s Subliminal Advertising

With a wide spread of PVR adoption comes a new form of “subliminal advertising”. Ads that last only 1 frame (that’s 1/24th of a second) probably aren’t able to influence viewers even subliminally, however, the following McDonald’s ad works because it is noticeable enough that someone watching on TV might pause, rewind, see the ad and then talk about it or better yet, post it on YouTube and create an instant viral ad.

(via)

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Subliminal Messages Psychology Materials

I occasionally get requests for materials for psychology classrooms based on the backmasking section of my website. I usually don’t send out materials, but I have been known to make exceptions, especially for professors of post secondary institutions.

I should point out that if you are teaching psychology, you may be interested in material intended for classroom demonstrations by writing John Vokey or Don Read at

Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta T1K 3M4 Canada

and requesting University of Lethbridge, Department of Psychology, Technical Report No. 85. A blank cassette tape should be enclosed if classroom demonstrations are desired.

I imagine a blank CD would also work or maybe an empty USB thumb drive, but I would ask them first just to be safe.