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Does Dean Kamen have anything to fear with this gizmo?

Many moons ago I mentioned that steroids do not make someone a better baseball player. Now comes a statistical study on this recent bugaboo. I now stand justified empirically. Anyone keeping score?

Last fall, The New Yorker published an interesting article on the history of the SAT and its use by the Ivy League. Now the Chronicle of Higher Education recently published a somber and concise history of why essay’s are no longer used by admissions offices — replaced by a faceless multiple choice exam.

Ever wonder if there was a “digital divide” in corporate offices? Do greying executives send one another text messages throughout the day? Wonder no more as CNN Money put together an all-star cast of interviews on who is addicted to the BlackBerry — along with those who do not even own a simple cell phone.

Remember Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd in ‘Spies Like Us‘? Do you recall the scene when they act like doctors in an operation room and totally botch an operation? Well, that has nothing to do with the eye-opening article on How Islamic inventors changed the world. Oh and they did give us a scalpel…

Again, why can’t learning be fun? In an effort to ease the pain of training future programmers, instructors at Carnegie Mellon University have tapped the makers of “The Sims” to redesign a computer programming tutorial.

And speaking of innovative ways to teach in “fun” ways, Eagle’s Flight, a corporate training firm, tries to use an out-of-the-box approach to conveying management principles in a board-like role playing game. Neat-o.

If you don’t have Damn Interesting on your RSS reader yet, articles like this one should help sway you to do so. The gist of it is, throughout the tens of thousands of years of human evolution our bodies have physiologically adapted to the day-night cycle. Due to the invention and use of artificial lights we have thrown our body into a tailspin. Why? Because the light now enables us to work when and where we want to, including at night time — which is the natural time that our bodies want to sleep. As a result, some studies suggest that this causes all sorts of negative side effects. Including ugliness. Well, maybe not ugliness, but apparently it does not help stress levels.

I’ll be honest, I hardly goto movie theaters. And it’s not because I download a pirated copy. Think about it this way, unless you truly enjoy the ginormous movie screens and fantabulous speaker system, there is no reason to really goto a theater instead of just watching it at home. I should also mention that I do not enjoy going to concerts or sporting events anymore — because I can simply watch them from the comfort of my home. In addition to not wanting to pay $7.50 for a ticket how hard is it to wait just a couple more months and rent it for half the price a month or two later?

Enter Lucas and several others who want to make the theater experience worth your money. And for the record, while I am not swayed by his argument, I do have a sweet spot for the $1 theater (which I tend to patronize more often than the big box ones he is promoting).

I saw this interesting story linked over at Digg: Epigenetics: We control our genes far more than we know

The whole thing is fairly interesting in terms of defining the line of nature vs. nurture in twins and how as they grow older, some become physically different (e.g. fat). Some scientists argue that this can be generalized to every family.

The ingenuity of some engineers never fails to amaze me — then again, I am easily amused. Ever wonder what your scalp looks like at a 250x zoom? Wonder no more.

What is money? What is counterfeit? What happens when you make an obvious fake and people begin to use it as “money”? Ask these questions the next time you bump into a native European. I kinda hope the same problem happens over here…

Next to burnt rubber, is there a worse smell than of raw steaming sewage? Thanks to some innovative Germans, this odious odor will hopefully become a thing of the past.