Derren Brown's Blog, page 43

Storm to bring Northern Lights to Britain

"Britain should experience spectacular Northern Lights displays from Thursday due to a large solar storm which could disrupt communication networks, the British Geological Survey (BGS) said.

"Since February 13 three energetic solar flares have erupted on the sun and spewed clouds of charged plasma called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) out towards the earth," a BGS geomagnetic storm warning said.

"Already one CME arrived on the 14th sparking Valentine's Day displays of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) further south than usual.

"Two CMEs are expected to arrive in the next 24-48 hours and further…displays are possible some time over the next two nights if skies are clear."

The strongest storm in four years is expected to interfere with satellites and electrical networks, with astronomers in southern China already reporting disturbances to radio communications.

The BGS Wednesday published geomagnetic records dating back to the Victorian era which it hopes will help in planning for future storms.

"Life increasingly depends on technologies that didn't exist when the magnetic recordings began," Alan Thomson, BGS head of geomagnetism said.

"Studying the records will tell us what we have to plan and prepare for to make sure systems can resist solar storms," he added."

Read more at Yahoo News

The Church Of Scientology, Fact-Checked

"Lawrence Wright's cover story in the current edition of The New Yorker reports on the Church of Scientology and focuses on why screenwriter and director Paul Haggis resigned from the organization in 2009 after spending nearly 35 years with it.

Haggis, who directed Crash and wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby, spoke with Wright about his reasons for leaving the church and the response from his fellow Scientologists.

Wright tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the detailed fact-checking process his article went through — The New Yorker assigned five fact checkers to the story and sent the Church of Scientology 971 fact-checking queries before publication.

In September 2010, Wright, his editor, the New Yorker fact-checking team and the magazine's editor-in-chief, David Remnick, met for eight hours with the spokesman for the Church of Scientology, Tommy Davis, along with Davis' wife and four lawyers representing the church, to discuss the facts in the piece.

Wright says that one of the most interesting parts of the meeting came when he asked Davis about L. Ron Hubbard's medical records. Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, had maintained that he was blind and a 'hopeless cripple' at the end of World War II — and that he had healed himself through measures that later became the basis of Dianetics, the 1950 book that became the basis for Scientology.

"I had found evidence that Hubbard was never actually injured during the war. … And so we pressed [Tommy Davis] for evidence that there had been such injuries and [Hubbard] had been the war hero that he described," says Wright. "Eventually, Davis sent us what is called a notice of separation — essentially discharge papers from World War II — along with some photographs of all of these medals that [Hubbard] had won. … At the same time, we finally gained access to Hubbard's entire World War II records [through a request to the military archives] and there was no evidence that he had ever been wounded in battle or distinguished himself in any way during the war. We also found another notice of separation which was strikingly different than the one that the church had provided.""

Read more at NPR (Thanks Dan A)

The more you lie, the easier it gets

"Our brains are naturally better at telling the truth than lying, but repeated lying can overcome our tendency for veracity, making subsequent lying easier – and possibly undetectable.

Neuroimaging studies have shown that people's brains show considerably more activity when they are lying than when they are not, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, suggesting that lying requires extra cognitive control and inhibition of truth-telling. Lying also takes measurably longer than telling the truth.

To test whether the brain's so-called "dominant truth response" can be changed, Bruno Verschuere of Ghent University in Ghent, Belgium, and colleagues studied three groups of students.

True or false?

The students were first asked to provide a written report about their daily activities. Each student was then questioned about these activities, and asked to either lie or tell the truth in their answers.

Interspersed with these questions were "filler" questions on a new topic. One group was always asked to tell the truth to the filler questions, a second group had to lie, and a third group was asked to lie or tell the truth in equal measure.

The researchers found that the frequent liars became more adept at lying. The normal difference in reaction times between telling the truth and lying disappeared."

Read more at New Scientist (Thanks Annette M)

Are Shrinking Brains Making Us Smarter?

"Human brains have shrunk over the past 30,000 years, puzzling scientists who argue it is not a sign we are growing dumber but that evolution is making the key motor leaner and more efficient.

The average size of modern humans — Homo sapiens — has decreased about 10 percent during that period — from 1,500 to 1,359 cubic centimeters (91 to 83 cubic inches), the size of a tennis ball.

Women's brains, which are smaller on average than those of men, have experienced an equivalent drop in size.

These measurements were taken using skulls found in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

"I'd called that a major downsizing in an evolutionary eye blink," John Hawks of the University of Michigan told Discover magazine.

But other anthropologists note that brain shrinkage is not very surprising since the stronger and larger we are, the more gray matter we need to control this larger mass.

The Neanderthal, a cousin of the modern human who disappeared about 30 millennia ago for still unknown reasons, was far more massive and had a larger brain.

The Cro-Magnons who left cave paintings of large animals in the monumental Lascaux cave over 17,000 years ago were the Homo sapiens with the biggest brain. They were also stronger than their modern descendants.

Psychology professor David Geary of the University of Missouri said these traits were necessary to survive in a hostile environment.

He has studied the evolution of skull sizes 1.9 million to 10,000 years old as our ancestors and cousins lived in an increasingly complex social environment."

Read more at Discovery News (Thanks Annette M)

Sun Captured From All Angles

"When it comes to solar storms, there's no longer any place to hide. For the first time, solar scientists have obtained simultaneous views of the entire sun, both the front and back sides."

Read more at Wired (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)

50 Things That Look Like Faces – Pareidolia

As most of you SHOULD know – Pareidolia "is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant." It commonly occurs as face-like patterns in inanimate objects, fifty instances of which can be seen after the break, so you can start developing empathy for cheese graters and alarm clocks and houses and things.

Here's our favorite few we haven't seen before:

See all 50 over at Geekosystem (Thanks @netmacDBer)

Meat-Eating Furniture

"You're not going to like this. I didn't. Nobody I've shown it to has. But the designers who thought it up, James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, are provocateurs, so they don't mind if you hate what they've done.

So here it is: meat-eating furniture.

Let's begin with their digital wall clock, which doesn't need a battery or a plug because it gets its energy from eating flies."

Read more at NPR (Thanks Dan A)

World's Total CPU Power: One Human Brain

How much information can the world transmit, process, and store? Estimating this sort of thing can be a nightmare, but the task can provide valuable information on trends that are changing our computing and broadcast infrastructure. So a pair of researchers have taken the job upon themselves and tracked the changes in 60 different analog and digital technologies, from newsprint to cellular data, for a period of over 20 years.

The trends they spot range from the expected—Internet access has pushed both analog and digital phones into a tiny niche—to the surprising, such as the fact that, in aggregate, gaming hardware has always had more computing power than the world's supercomputers.

Full article by Wired

Everything You Wanted to Know About Dinosaur Sex Read

How did these dinosaurs—bristling with spikes and plates—go about making more dinosaurs without skewering each other?

Stegosaurus has become an icon of the mystery surrounding dinosaur sex. Dinosaurs must have mated, but just how they did so has puzzled paleontologists for more than 100 years. Lacking much hard evidence, scientists have come up with all kinds of speculations: In his 1906 paper describing Tyrannosaurus rex, for instance, paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn proposed that male tyrant dinosaurs used their minuscule arms for "grasping during copulation." Others forwarded similar notions about the function of the thumb-spikes on Iguanodon hands. These ideas eventually fell out of favor—perhaps due to embarrassment as much as anything else—but the question remained. How can we study the sex lives of animals that have been dead for millions upon millions of years?

Read the full article over at Smithsonian Mag

If you are particularly interested in animal sex there's an interesting exhibition featuring plenty of erotic taxidermy over at The Natural History Museum.

Svengali coming to London's Shaftesbury Theatre – Tickets On Sale Now!

Be prepared for a theatrical roller-coaster ride as the acknowledged master of psychological illusion comes to the West End with his brand new show DERREN BROWN: SVENGALI.

Following a 73 date national tour SVENGALI will reside at the Shaftesbury Theatre, from June 8 – July 16 2011.

Tickets go on sale Friday 11 Feb.

Derren, who professes that he loves writing and performing on stage more than anything else, promises Londoners an evening of mind-melting based around audience participation.

"More than that I wouldn't want to say", he says. "I ask audiences to keep the contents of the show a secret so as not to spoil it for others, and I have to do the same. But I hope it's fun and freaky and a great night out".

Svengali is written by Derren Brown and Iain Sharkey with Stephen Long and produced by Michael Vine, Andrew O'Connor & Corrie McGuire for Objective Talent Management.

On stage as well as on TV Derren is in a class of his own, exhilarating audiences with his unique brand of intelligent and theatrical entertainment. His Mind Control, Trick of the Mind, Trick or Treat and Events programmes have garnered rave reviews and awards. His specials have provoked much controversy and acclaim and further consolidated his reputation as a performer prepared to constantly challenge and break boundaries. He has also received much praise for his best-selling books, Tricks of the Mind and Confessions of a Conjuror. He has also enjoyed considerable success in America, when his show Derren Brown: Mind Control, was screened on NBC's Sci-Fi Channel. In Jan 2011 Channel 4 celebrated ten years of Derren Brown on TV with Behind The Mischief, an exclusive behind-the-scenes documentary, followed by the best ever Derren Brown special as chosen by his fans online – a fitting tribute to the man and his amazing talents.

LISTINGS

Shaftesbury Theatre

210 Shaftesbury Avenue

London

WC2H 8DP

June 8th to July 16th

6 shows per week

Prices £50-00 to £25-00 + Booking fees

Phone Booking: 020 7379 5399

Performance times: 7-30pm

Online address: www.shaftesburytheatre.com

The performance is not suitable for children under 12 years of age.