luapo |
November 23, 2011
LOL. It’s handy shorthand for laughter, or the harbinger of an intellectual apocalypse, depending on who you ask. Its part of speech is also debated: spelled out, it’s an initialism, but if you pronounce it as a word, it’s an acronym.
“But I don’t use it at all!” you might say. “I am too smart to use an asinine word like LOL!” Maybe you are, but you might be surprised by how many acronyms and intialisms you do use on a daily basis—and by their origins.
Some are fairly straightforward. For example:
BRB: Be right back
FWIW: For what it’s worth
HTH: Hope that helps
IDK/IDEK: I don’t know/I don’t even know
IIRC: If I recall correctly
IMO/IMHO/JMHO: In my opinion/In my humble opinion/Just my humble opinion
KWYM/KWIM: Know what you mean/know what I mean
OTOH: On the other hand
TMI: Too much information
TIA: Thanks in advance
TTYL: Talk to you later
WTG: Way to go
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luapo |
November 23, 2011
A cloud of charged particles from the sun slammed into Earth Monday, setting off an intense geomagnetic storm that spawned northern lights across the U.S.—even in the Deep South. Sky shows were reported in more than half the 50 states, including Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas, according to Spaceweather.com.
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luapo |
November 23, 2011
It’s 75 years since the first lobotomy was performed in the US, a procedure later described by one psychiatrist as “putting in a brain needle and stirring the works”. So how did it come to be regarded as a miracle cure?
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luapo |
November 22, 2011
Ever wonder why you may look prettier in some photos and uglier in others, even with the same smile and the same lighting? It’s all about the camera lens. These portraits—taken by Stephen Eastwood—show how this works.
If you have ever used a dating site and thought “damn, he/she looked so hot in those pictures! What happened?” or “wow! He/she looks a lot better in person!” you know exactly what I’m talking about.
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luapo |
November 22, 2011
Every so often, you’re struck with brilliance. But moments later, it’s gone. The solution to this: Don’t leave the room. BPS Research Digest reported that memory performance decreases when you walk through an open doorway, compared with walking the same distance within a room.
“Walking through doorways serves as an event boundary, thereby initiating the updating of one’s event model [i.e. the creation of a new episode in memory]” the researchers said.
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luapo |
November 22, 2011
Just a few months into a clinical trial, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have made “swift progress” using pig cells to regrow sizable chunks of missing human flesh. The first soldier to enroll in the trial lost 70 percent of his right quadricep in an attack — but now the missing flesh is back. “What would have been an amputation is now somebody with a limb that works,” says Dr. Stephen Badylak. The Pentagon is pouring $250 million into regenerative medicine research, and Badylak’s pig-protein procedure could become standard practice after the trial wraps in two years.
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