Category: Life

Don’t fall victim to the ‘Free Wi-Fi’ scam

Don’t fall victim to the ‘Free Wi-Fi’ scam
The next time you’re at an airport looking for a wireless hot spot, and you see one called “Free Wi-Fi” or a similar name, beware — you may end up being victimized by the latest hot-spot scam hitting airports across the country.

You could end up being the target of a “man in the middle” attack, in which a hacker is able to steal the information you send over the Internet, including usernames and passwords. And you could also have your files and identity stolen, end up with a spyware-infested PC and have your PC turned into a spam-spewing zombie. The attack could even leave your laptop open to hackers every time you turn it on, by allowing anyone to connect to it without your knowledge.

Security company Authentium Inc. has found dozens of ad hoc networks in Atlanta’s airport, New York’s LaGuardia, the West Palm Beach, Fla., airport and Chicago’s O’Hare. Internet users have reported finding them at LAX airport in Los Angeles. This article will teach you how to protect yourself.

‘Cat owners at risk of bird flu’

‘Cat owners at risk of bird flu’ | the Daily Mail
Cat owners are at a greater risk of catching bird flu as the deadly virus is most likely to mutate in felines, experts say. A study on cats in areas where outbreaks have occurred found that the virus is changing in felines more quickly than thought. It raises the chilling prospect that the disease could soon easily be spread from cats to people, leading to a human pandemic.


Magical Thinking: Why Do People Cling to Odd Rituals?

Magical Thinking: Why Do People Cling to Odd Rituals? – Psychology – The New York Times – New York Times
“The question is why do people create this illusion of magical power?” said the lead author, Emily Pronin, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. “I think in part it’s because we are constantly exposed to our own thoughts, they are most salient to us” — and thus we are likely to overestimate their connection to outside events.

The brain, moreover, has evolved to make snap judgments about causation, and will leap to conclusions well before logic can be applied.These activations occur so quickly, other researchers say, that they often link two events based on nothing more than coincidence: “I was just thinking about looking up my high school girlfriend when out of the blue she called me,” or, “The day after I began praying for a quick recovery, she emerged from the coma.”

For people who are generally uncertain of their own abilities, or slow to act because of feelings of inadequacy, this kind of thinking can be an antidote, a needed activator

New TB Pandemic Fear

The dilemma of a deadly disease: patients may be forcibly detained | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited
More than 300 cases of the highly infectious disease, which is spread by airborne droplets and kills 98% of those infected within about two weeks, have been identified in South Africa.

But doctors believe there have been hundreds, possibly thousands, more and the numbers are growing among the millions of people with HIV, who are particularly vulnerable to the disease. Their fear is that patients with XDR-TB, told that there is little that can be done for them, will leave the isolation wards and go home to die. But while they are still walking around they risk spreading the infection.

Now a group of doctors has warned in a medical journal that if enforced isolation is not introduced XDR-TB could swamp South Africa and spread far beyond its borders. Regular TB is already the single largest killer of people with Aids in South Africa.

Jerome Amir Singh of the Centre for Aids Programme of Research in South Africa and two colleagues wrote in the peer-reviewed journal Public Library of Science Medicine that the government must overcome its understandable qualms over human rights in the interests of the majority. Without exceptional control measures, including enforced isolation, XDR-TB “could become a lethal global pandemic”, they say.

Virulent TB in South Africa May Imperil Millions

Blue Monday: The unhappiest day of the year

Blue Monday: The unhappiest day of the year | the Daily Mail
Dr Cliff Arnall, a Cardiff University psychologist, devised the formula that shows today is the most depressing.

His equation takes into account six factors: weather, debt, time since Christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and the feeling of a need to take action.

Taken together they pinpoint today as ‘Blue Monday’.

Controlled Chaos: European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs

Controlled Chaos: European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs – International – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News
European traffic planners are dreaming of streets free of rules and directives. They want drivers and pedestrians to interact in a free and humane way, as brethren — by means of friendly gestures, nods of the head and eye contact, without the harassment of prohibitions, restrictions and warning signs.

A project implemented by the European Union is currently seeing seven cities and regions clear-cutting their forest of traffic signs. Ejby, in Denmark, is participating in the experiment, as are Ipswich in England and the Belgian town of Ostende.

In other words, it is only when the road is made less predictable and less certain that drivers will stop looking at signs and start looking at other people.

Recalling his first project, Monderman said, “When we do traditional traffic calming with speed bumps we typically expect about a 10% drop in speed. But with no disincentives, the speed was down by almost 50% – down from 57 km/h to under 30 km/h. I could not believe my eyes. All we had done was make a village look more like a village.” Thanks to Maria for this one.

15 million Workers with IQ 120+

OpinionJournal – Extra
In professions screened for IQ by educational requirements–medicine, engineering, law, the sciences and academia–the great majority of people must, by the nature of the selection process, have IQs over 120, or about 15 million people in today’s labor force-. Evidence about who enters occupations where the screening is not directly linked to IQ indicates that people with IQs of 120 or higher also occupy large proportions of positions in the upper reaches of corporate America and the senior ranks of government. People in the top 10% of intelligence produce most of the books and newspaper articles we read and the television programs and movies we watch. They are the people in the laboratories and at workstations who invent our new pharmaceuticals, computer chips, software and every other form of advanced technology.

Brooklyn “War of the Roses”

New York Daily News – Home – Drove her up the wall!
He slept like a baby. She tossed and turned.

That’s how the quarrelsome couple in Brooklyn’s “War of the Roses” spent their first night on opposite sides of a court-mandated wall dividing their home.

If the slab of Sheetrock was supposed to stop Simon and Chana Taub from fighting over the Borough Park house during their divorce case, they clearly need something thicker

The Ideological Animal

Psychology Today: The Ideological Animal
We think our political stance is the product of reason, but we’re easily manipulated and surprisingly malleable. Our essential political self is more a stew of childhood temperament, education, and fear of death. Call it the 9/11 effect.

As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.