Pretty much everyone who works in medicine still wears a watch... so there's about 5 million people just there (~3 million nurses, 850k licensed physicians, and various ancillary staff). But in all the years I've worked in a hospital I've seen a very select few people wear watches worth more than $100. One guy had a…

Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to walk around talking to my gadgets. Bluetooth made people look crazy, walking down the street waving their arms around or whatever. Glass will have you talking to your own glasses. How irritating is that going to be on the subway? "Man, I'm trying to read, will you quit talking…

Meh. Of course photos look bad when you re-make them specifically to look bad. Why are there so many bad photos on Instagram? Because everyone has a camera. If we assume the vast majority of people aren't trained photographers, it's no surprise a large proportion of photos are awful... but that doesn't mean we're…

Amen. If you could diagnose someone with a questionnaire you wouldn't have to spend 5 years in grad school/do a psychiatric residency.

Yeah, I understand that. Figure-ground perception is a necessary component of that, because without it you couldn't tell that there was a car behind the tree - you would see one object that looked like both a car and a tree combined. It's not really important, I was just trying to help clarify. If it's not helpful,…

OK.

That's a mixture of two different skills. Closure allows you to recognize the car, but figure-ground perception allows you to tell it's behind (rather than part of) the tree.

What she's saying is that this principle applies to a lot of things, not just dalmatian dots. In many of those situations, like the columns of squares and circles, there is no inherent reason to group objects one way or another, we just prefer it that way. In other situations, for instance this point-light walker demo,…

Am I the last person who doesn't care what his friends are listening to? Especially the ones on Facebook. 400 "friends" I took a class with in college, or met a few times at parties, or worked with at some point. A dozen or so have an annoying habit of posting what they're listening to on FB and that's pretty…

Not being intentionally deceptive isn't the same thing as not being deceptive. If you look at their website (though it will obviously change) it goes to great lengths to say you can get a phone for a low up-front cost AND not be tied into a contract with no mention of the phone payment plan being separate from the…

A lot of deaths from pharmaceuticals come from misuse, rather than out and out abuse. That isn't to say that no one abuses them - the TV tells me prescription pills are the new high school drug of choice. However, older adults take an average of 6 pills per day for things like blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure,…

I loved GI Joe because no matter how many guys you had shooting at each other on the screen no one ever got hit. Worst. Armies. Ever. Plus, of course, the "knowing is half the battle" moral at the end.

Ah, bitcoin... I'm sure digital currency will happen (of course, I already pay for everything digitally with USDs anyway, so...), but bitcoin lost me when the exchange decided to rollback trades after the hack in 2011. What's that, you made some really choice trades while the market was in turmoil? Too bad, they never…

Probably people who feel the need to pretentiously discuss the quality of the beer other people enjoy, like anyone gives two fucks whether you like what I'm drinking. I hate IPAs. You know what I do about it? I don't drink them. I don't whine about them to every person ordering one at the pub, like some dickbag beer…

Bunch of jaded, whiney internet bastards. That video was cool.

If they made a bluetooth watch that looked more like a watch and less like a toy (metawatch gets close), that had a high resolution screen (not retina, but enough to read a text on), and a battery that lasted at least 24 hours, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. It's a lot easier to check your watch than to pull out your…

I think the idea is that things which marginalize women and minorities act as barriers to their participation in certain fields/websites/whatever. So, while it's not necessarily better to have black programmers than white ones, it probably is more beneficial to have as many good coders as one can find regardless of…

To add to what Bainsy said, neurons don't release packets of information, per se. Think of it this way. You have a house with a million light switches. Some of them, when flipped, divert power to the next switch (they turn it on), and others will reduce or cut off power to the next switch (they suppress it or turn it…

So your response to this error is to be sexist? Do you always react that way when a woman makes a mistake? It seems ironic to disagree with an article about racism, sexism, and homophobia by being sexist. Kind of makes it hard to take your disparagement seriously.

No, not "someone." You. You're a jerk who told a woman to go back to a webpage for women's issues. How edgy of you, taking the moral stance that women need to know their place. Where's my rolly-eyed emoticon when I need it?