Things That Surprised Me in 2008

• People who lie more are happier, better at business, and better at athletics. (RadioLab 2/29/2008)

Things That Surprised Me in 2007

• Color/Number synesthesia has been clearly demonstrated and exists in approximately one in 200 people - SynesthesiaNotes
• 95-98% of people pick the same shapes to fit the names BoobaAndKiki
• The relative effect of genes upon intelligence and personality grows as you get older. I would have assumed the opposite -- i.e. that the relative effect of environment would grow, since your genes stay pretty much the same but you get more and more input from your environment. Instead, using IQ as an example, genetic differences account for 20% of IQ differences in infancy, 40% in childhood, 50% in adolscence, and 60% in adulthood (non-shared environments accounts for 30%). (Segal, p49)
• You can't get the flu from the flu vaccine (inert/dead)
• Throwing a bowling ball from a canoe into the water makes the water level go down.
• Experiments show that scientists can detect with high accuracy where a person has a cancer that has metastacized just by looking at their hand. (They use lasers to look for cancerous cells as blood flows -- ergo more accurate than blood samples.)
• There are millions of different ways that DNA sequences could encode exactly the same protein (EvolutionDna)
• Jimmy Carter did not see a UFO (in the extraterrestrial sense) (see 7/25/2007 interview on SGU)
• Yawning has nothing to do with respiration and is not a result of being tired
• Adding a scientist critiquing the belief to a television show about a paranormal claim increases the extent that people believe the claim ( Glenn Sparks - SGU - 10/12/05 )
• DNA researchers believe that Ghengis Kahn has 16 million identifiable descendents
• Study finds that 74% of Chinese children had perfect pitch (tonal language)
• If a sound comes into the brain as a regular electrical signal (e.g. a perfect 5th), it is pleasing, if it arrives as an irregular, jagged electronic signal (e.g. a minor 2nd) are displeasing
• The more you recall a specific memory, the less accurate that memory becomes
• There was no standard time or time zones in 1880. Each town, each clock would be set by the owner's assessment of when the sun was straight overhead. (See also Sanford Fleming)
• In the oldest existing version of the verse containing the number of the beast, an Oxyrhynchus fragment, the number is 616.
• Woodland Park = birthplace of the modern zoo revolution; locals warned by zookeepers from around the country against creating a natural setting for gorillas (RadioLab)
• Most animals (with exception of terrestrial mammals) sleep with one brain hemisphere at a time

Things That Surprised Me in 2006

• Most cells in your body are not human cells. Most cells from your mother were not transfered genetically. There are 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells in the human body. If all human cells were removed from your body, you would still look very much the same and remain recognizable.

Previously

• We can conclude with high confidence that we perceive the same colors as most other human beings.
• Primary colors do not exist.

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