Friday Ark #169

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

Visit all the boarders, Link to the Ark and check back for updates through Sunday afternoon!

You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.

Cats

Other Vertebrates

Birds

Dogs

Invertebrates

In Memoriam

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Didn’t Make It

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

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Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

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Birders: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles.

For other current carnivals check out The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Good Commuter; Bad Commuter

This entry was posted in Transportation on by

Here are a couple commuting statistics from this longer list:

4.5: Percentage of Americans who use public transit to get to work.
88: Percentage of Americans who drive to work alone.

Most days I am a “good commuter” as I join the 4.5 % that use public transit.
Today, though, I am a “bad commuter”; part of the 88 % who drove to work alone.
Am I really good when I ride public transit? Well, I certainly do appreciate the near 80% subsidy I get when riding the bus. It strikes me that a better definition of “good commuter” would one who rides public transportation and pays
the full tab.
Do the folks working in the construction, auto and oil industries consider me bad when I use their services more intensely by driving to work alone?
Probably not.

Good and bad are clearly a reflection of the lenses you are looking through.

NB: I fully support eliminating subsidies for both types of commuters.

Violence: From Screen to Life

This entry was posted in Neurology on by

Science Daily reports a bit of evidence that watching violent programs may not be benign:

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center’s Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Research Center have shown that watching violent programs can cause parts of your brain that suppress aggressive behaviors to become less active.
…
“Our findings demonstrate for the first time that watching media depictions of violence does influence processing in parts of the brain that control behaviors like aggression. This is an important finding, and further research should examine very closely how these changes affect real-life behavior.”

What were the depictions of violence?

The violent stimuli depicted acts of physical violence perpetrated by one human on another without mitigating or unrealistic elements; in general, these contained shootings, stabbings, and other kinds of physical assault.

The source article doesn’t say but I suspect playing violent video games would elicit the same results. Evaluating this would be an interesting follow up study.

Here is the original research article.