Flesch–Kincaid readability test

The Flesch–Kincaid readability test, composed of the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level tests, are designed to indicate comprehension difficulty when reading something in English.

In Flesch Reading Ease, higher test scores mean that the material is easier to read, while lower scores signify a harder read. The equation for this test is:



Scores can be interpreted like this:
90.0–100.0 = easily understandable by an average 11-year-old student
60.0–70.0 = easily understandable by 13- to 15-year-old students
0.0–30.0 = best understood by university graduates

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test is the same thing but instead of using a scale of 0-100, it uses a number that corresponds to the grade level at which students should be able to understand the text. Obviously, this is used much more in the field of education.

The formula for this is:



There are several other readability tests, but Reading Ease is used by the U.S. Department of Defense for its documents and forms, and Microsoft Word. I stumbled upon the Flesch–Kincaid readability test today when I was fiddling with Google Docs.

Phototropism and heliotropism

Phototropism is a plant's direction of growth in response to sunlight. Heliotropism is when the plant tracks the sun's motion across the sky.

Faustian bargain

A Faustian bargain is a proverbial deal with the devil. The phrase comes from the classic German folklore that pits the protagonist, Faust, against the devil, Mephistopheles.

Banana Man

I'll let these two videos do the talking.

Woo Bum-kon

Woo Bum-kon was a Korean officer who carried out the largest known incident of spree killing in modern history.

After a heated argument with his girlfriend on April 26, 1982, he left the house in Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea, and went to the police armory to stock up on a rifle and some grenades. He proceeded to rampage drunk through five villages in eight hours, walking from house to house and killing 58 people including himself, and injuring 35 others.

George Washington's Rules of Civility

As a teenager, George Washington wrote his 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. These rules, which were mostly common sense things dealing with etiquette, were based on a 16th century Jesuit set of precepts made for young men.

I didn't read the whole list, but if #2 is any indication of how good/funny it is, then I probably should read all 110 Rules:

When in company, put not your hands to any part of the body not usually discovered.

Devils Tower

Devils Tower is a volcanic neck located in the Black Hills of northeastern Wyoming. It rises 1,267 ft. above the surrounding terrain and the summit is 5,112 ft. above sea level. On this day in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt dedicated it as the U.S.'s first national monument.



About 1% of the the 400,000 yearly visitors climb Devils Tower.

Franklin and Dayton

Benjamin Franklin, at age 81, was the oldest person to sign the Constitution. Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey, at 26, was the youngest.

Thomas Aikenhead

Thomas Aikenhead was the last person to be hanged for blasphemy in Great Britain.

Aikenhead was an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh who had read deist literature the university library held. He supposedly criticized Christianity among a group of friends, and soon after that one of his friends ratted on him. In the fall of 1696 Aikenhead was arrested for blasphemy.

During the trial, five student "friends" testified against him, claiming that during their private conversations, Aikenhead had strongly rebuked the Old and New Testaments and even preferred Muhammad to Jesus. Although the prisoner did have a defense counsel, the defense wasn't recorded. The verdict promptly came in that Aikenhead was to be hanged on January 8, 1697.

The law at the time stated that the third offense for blasphemy would result in death. Aikenhead petitioned the Privy Council on the grounds of his "deplorable circumstances and tender years," but forgot to mention that it was his first time to be tried for blasphemy. Two ministers and two Privy Councillors pleaded on his behalf, and on January 7, the Council ruled that the Church had to intervene in order for him to be granted a reprieve. The Church, however, urged "vigorous execution" to slow down "the abounding of impiety and profanity in this land." The next day Aikenhead was hanged.

This event is also considered by many to be partly responsible for the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment.

Cool visual effect

From Scientific American:

These images of the Leaning Tower are actually identical, but the tower on the right looks more lopsided because the human visual system treats the two images as one scene. Our brains have learned that two tall objects in our view will usually rise at the same angle but converge toward the top—think of standing at the base of neighboring skyscrapers. Because these towers are parallel, they do not converge, so the visual system thinks they must be rising at different angles...

Bonhomie

Bonhomie means "frank and simple simple good-heartedness; geniality."

Door to Hell

The Door to Hell is outside of Derweze, Turkmenistan. In 1971 geologists stumbled upon an underground cavern while they were digging for gas deposits. They soon discovered that there was poisonous gas in there, so they decided to burn off the excess gas. Thirty-eight years later the hole is still burning with no end in sight.

Parkour!

Dachshund

Dachshund is pronounced [DAHKS-hoont]. It's that hot dog looking dog.

Chest wig

The chest wig is a self-adhesive wig worn on the chests of men who want to look like Tom Jones. It was especially popular in the 1970s.

Why do parrots squawk so loudly in a cage?

From Konrad Lorenz's King Solomon's Ring (pgs. 72-3):

But of all animals that suffer under the inefficient methods of many zoological gardens, by far the most unfortunate are those mentally alert creatures of whom we have spoken above. These, however, rarely awaken the pity of the zoo visitor, least of all when such an originally highly intelligent animal has deteriorated, under the influence of close confinement, into a crazy idiot, a very caricature of its former self. I have never heard an exclamation of sympathy from the onlookers in the parrot house. Sentimental old ladies, the fanatical sponsors of the Societies for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, have no compunction in keeping a grey parrot or cockatoo in a relatively small cage or even chained to a perch. Now these larger species of the parrot tribe are not only clever but mentally and bodily uncommonly vivacious; and, together with the large corvines, they are probably the only birds which can suffer from that state of mind, common to human prisoners, namely boredom. But nobody pities these pathetic creatures in their bell-shaped cages of martyrdom. Uncomprehendingly, the fond owner imagines that the bird is bowing, when it constantly repeats the bobbing head movements which, in reality, are the stereotyped remnants of its desperate attempts to escape from its cage. Free such an unhappy prisoner, and it will take weeks, even months, before it really dares to fly.

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift is a 19 year-old country pop singer.

Yeah yeah, who cares? OMG did you see that fucking douchebag Kanye West at the VMAs last night? I sure as hell didn't, maybe because I don't give a fuck about music, and I wasn't gonna give a shit about what happened until I found out that President Obama called Kanye a jackass. (That incompetent from ABC News, Terry Moran, tweeted it out after an off the record chat with the president, then quickly removed the tweet.)

Here's the incident after Taylor won Best Female Video.

MTV Shows

Now, I don't really care about Taylor, Beyonce, or Kanye -- or music in general -- but I think we can all agree that Kanye should be hanged.

Next, I checked out both videos of the ladies to see how they matched up against each other, not that it would warrant Kanye's remarks which led to the talented 19 year-old being left speechless on stage. Here's Taylor's "You Belong With Me."

Not bad. Pretty creative.

Now here's Beyonce's "Single Ladies."

Beyoncé - New Music - More Music Videos

Also creative, but I gotta admit I was pretty bored toward the end. It's just three women dancing in black suits in a black and white video.

So I give the edge to Taylor's video.

And I also give Kanye the edge of a building to fall off of.

At the end, Beyonce did the classy thing and let Taylor have her moment after Beyonce won Video of the Year.

Norman Borlaug

Norman Borlaug is known as the father of the Green Revolution, and who doubled world food production between 1960 and 1990. He is said to have saved a billion people in the world from starvation.

At the end of WWII he developed disease-resistant varieties of wheat that produced much more grain than traditional wheat varieties. He modified those techniques to do the same thing with rice and corn in Asia, the Middle East, South America, and Africa. Grain yields actually quadrupled in Pakistan and India. For his successes he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. Even in his waning years, he advocated the use of biotechnology to fight hunger. He also received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor given by Congress, in 2007.

Norman Borlaug died yesterday at the age of 95 at his home in Dallas.

But Usain Bolt's still cooler

Sarah, an 8 year-old female cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo, has broken the record for world's fastest land mammal. She sprinted the 100 meter dash in 6.130 seconds. By comparison, Usain Bolt did it in 9.58 seconds.

Impressive, but can the cheetah dance to that awesome G theme music as well as Bolt? Not to mention doing it with Lil Wayne's creepy ass voice in the background.

Sons of Confederate Veterans

The Sons of Confederate Veterans is a group of male descendants of soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War. In the past decade they've been taken over by radical neo-Confederates who favor secession and defend slavery.

Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, the 8 year-old who screamed while an adult was speaking, was at one time, maybe even still, part of the SCV. So does he remain a member of the group? Does Wilson support the takeover by the extremist faction? Does he support secession, as Gov. Rick Perry of Texas boasted about this spring?

But if it's a Republican then it's ok.

Pantheism

Pantheism is the view that God is Nature and vice versa. God is better understood as an abstract principle representing natural law, existence, and the Universe, rather than as an anthropomorphic entity. Pantheism is non-theistic but is also not atheistic. Taoism is the only major religion existing today with a pantheistic view.

Bed sharing bad

On average, couples who share a bed suffer 50% more sleep disturbances, a study conducted by the University of Surrey found. If you think about it evolutionarily, the marital bed only began during the industrial revolution, when people moved into overcrowded urban areas. Before the Victorian era couples regularly slept apart. In ancient Rome the marital bed was only for making love. So I guess it would seem natural that we would experience problems sharing a bed.

Pascal's Wager

Pascal's Wager is a suggestion posed by French philosopher Blaise Pascal. It goes something like this:

"It makes more sense to believe in God than to not believe. If you believe, and God exists, you will be rewarded in the afterlife. If you do not believe, and He exists, you will be punished for your disbelief. If He does not exist, you have lost nothing either way."

Of course, this has its flaws. One flaw is that God's not stupid. He'll know that you are perhaps superficially believing in His existence just so you can get into Heaven.

But maybe we shouldn't be too harsh on Pascal for coming up with a defective proposition. His notes were scattered in his room after his death, whereupon companions of his collected the notes and published them in a book called Pensées in 1670. It's pretty clear that he would have elaborated on his ideas had he edited them himself.

Men can breastfeed, too

Yep. Some 26 year-old pussy from Sweden, who is a full-time economics student at Stockholm University, is pumping his breasts for a few months to try to make a point that it's possible for men "to get much closer to their children at an early stage" -- as if that's the only way to do it. And it's not like there'll be much milk at all. During a nine month pregnancy a woman gets doused with estrogen, which suffices the baby. At the end of three or four months of pumping this idiot dad will get enough for "a drop or two."

Here are some disturbing quotes from the article:

"I'm going to have to pull out the pump during lectures [at school]. But really it doesn't bother me if it makes people uncomfortable. If they have issues with it that's their problem."

"But if he works on it regularly he'll likely notice a layer of tissue forming beneath the areola and it should be possible to produce enough of the hormone prolactin to cause lactation," [Sigbritt Werner, professor of endocrinology at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm] said.

Sibling fights

It's pretty obvious that siblings fight a whole hell of a lot more than they would with their friends, but here is some data. Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman have a new book out called NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children. They discovered that young siblings on average come to conflict 3.5 times per hour, which adds up to 10 minutes of every hour just arguing. They make 700% more negative and controlling statements to each other than to their best friends.

Why? Basically, familiarity breeds contempt. Siblings know they'll be with each other for a very long time; that's not necessarily true for their friends. So there's no incentive to act as nicely to your sibling as you would to your friend. You're stuck with your sibling.

Shrike

Shrikes, also known as "butcher birds," is a family of medium-sized birds that live mostly in Europe, Asia, or Africa, inhabiting mainly open land like steppes and savannas. They are famous for their feeding habits: they catch their prey (insects, small birds, and mammals) and impale them on thorns, hence the name "butcher birds."

Here is some awesome footage of a Great Grey shrike impaling a mouse.

Syncretism

Syncretism means "the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion."

No-till farming

From NPR:

This month the Senate is set to take up the climate and energy bill that Congress began work on last spring. One provision will likely set up a system to pay farmers for something called "no-till farming."

The concept: When crops are planted without tilling, the soil holds more carbon, which means less goes up into the atmosphere.

But scientists aren't sure no-till really sequesters carbon any better than conventional farming.

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar

I've only recently heard this saying. It means you'll get more people on your side by being sweet to them than by being sour. But as one commenter on a Yahoo! Answers post said: "But if you rip off their wings, they have to eat whatever you feed them."

I think, therefore I am

The guy who said "I think, therefore I am" was French philosopher Rene Descartes.

In his 1637 book Discourse on the Method, he argued that we should doubt every single thing around us until we have reached the ultimate level of doubt -- until "there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies." Who, or what, has survived this vicious onslaught of doubt? What about you, the person doing the doubting? Would you survive? To Descartes, the answer is yes. Because if you are wondering whether you exist, the act of merely thinking that is enough proof that you do, since there is an "I" while you're doing the thinking. Hence the phrase.

The next step is even crazier. Now we have established that you exist, but nothing else around you does. This is called solipsism, where one's own mind is all there is in the world. Now you've just screwed yourself over. How do you get everything back? You call God. But wait, He supposedly died in your Doubt Offensive. So you try to bring Him back by laying out a rational proof of His existence. It goes something like this: if you look at everything in the universe and try to determine its origins, everything goes up to God. For example, my blog exists because of my computer, my computer exists because of people like Jack Kilby, those people exist because of their parents, because of their parents, because of Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve exist because of God. You admit that the most perfect being is God.

But wait, how would you think of those things if you've destroyed everything with your doubt? You would have to acknowledge that there are other people out there. This is called the problem of other minds. But how would you interact with this person, how would you know he is a sentient being? Simple, if they can talk, they're sentient. This is what led Descartes to believe that animals are nothing but mere robots that don't feel pain. In fact, if you do find an animal talking, that would imply that animals are not machines, or that talking is just not a good criteria for determining sentience.

Seems pretty circular to me. Why even enter a solipsist state if you're going to essentially return to the way you were before? And how could you even be alone where you doubt everything but still think in language? Language is a social tool, made by men whom you have just obliterated with doubt, so wouldn't that negate your thinking and leave you there brain dead? Rene Descartes was a pretty loony philosopher (being an extreme mind/body dualist is another example of his bad and wrong philosophies), but he was a great mathematician.