Psychometric Assessments Meet Precrime - and the Zodiac?

London Fields at twilight, 2005.

ABC News is carrying a report that Professor Richard Berk of the University of Pennsylvania has developed "software ... already used in Baltimore and Philadelphia to predict which individuals on probation or parole are most likely to murder and to be murdered. In his latest version, the one being implemented in D.C., Berk goes even further, identifying the individuals most likely to commit crimes other than murder."  The critical factor for future predictions depends on the age at which an individual first previously committed certain crimes.

Anniversaries: Lest We Forget

Office Workers fleeing spread of debris from falling Twin Towers on 9/11. © Jason Florio/Corbis

Time magazine has recently posted a NIST photo collection about 9/11 (here) and German researchers from the University of Mainz have conducted a minute-by-minute study of emotions during September 11 as the attack and tragedy unfolded, based on a study of text messages (here).  These sources were available on Wikileaks (here). Speculations on the Wikileaks source are at reddit.com here.

Gnostics, Gnostics Everywhere!

Ecclesia Gnostica in Nova Albion blog compares Gnosticism to Mahayana Buddhism.

Examiner.com has recently posted a list of questions you can ask yourself to see if you have succumbed to the mass resurgence of the Christian heresy of gnosticism, which has infected popular culture, academia and politics. Eric Voegelin believed that most 19th and 20th century ideologies were gnostic, from Marxism, to feminism, to postmodernism. The linguists, the semioticians, the cyberpunks, the quantum physicists are, in their course of thought, Christian heretics and Neoplatonists. We have a belief system rampant in our culture, with most people unaware of it, even as they subscribe to its values. The Examiner also has a list of the sexiest gnostics of all time, including Neo of The Matrix movies.

Retro-Futurism 6: Burning Man 2010

Megatropolis. Burning by Kiwi, Otto. Crew photo: Mattdork (2010).

The Nevada desert art festival Burning Man 2010 just finished last weekend.  A first-time visitor returned from it a couple of days ago, announcing that it changed his life!  This year's theme was Metropolis. There is a report on it here.  The Burning Blog on the official Burning Man site has several pictures.  Burning Man, named for its burning of a giant wooden effigy on the Saturday night of the event, began in 1986 as part of a summer solstice art happening.  Since then it's moved to Labour Day weekend and grown into a massive (and, critics argue, tacitly commercial) undertaking.  For the first time, attendance hit over the 50,000 mark this year. But enthusiasts swear by Burning Man as an experience that can't be explained unless you go there and see it for yourself. 

Statues in the Eyes of Ancients

I09 recently picked up on reports from Harvard University that German ultraviolet light scans of ancient Greek statues have revealed their true colours. 

Laugh of the Day

Image from: I Can Has Cheezburger.com.

Remembering Poet Edwin Morgan

Adaptation of Morgan's poem The First Men on Mercury by Metaphrog.

Neil Gaiman recently tweeted on a cool comics adaptation of The First Men on Mercury, by Scots poet Edwin Morgan that was circulated in the UK for 2009's National Poetry Day.  Morgan sadly died on 17 August.

Dark Matter at Work in a Galaxy Cluster

Galaxy Cluster Abell 1689. Photo © NASA Goddard Photo and Video (August 19, 2010). Credit: NASA, ESA, E. Jullo (JPL/LAM), P. Natarajan (Yale) and J-P. Kneib (LAM).

NASA's Goddard Center is reporting a significant breakthrough in the study of Dark Matter.  The purple halo you see in the centre of this image from late August is the distribution of Dark Matter in the cluster.  More precisely, it is "impression of the gravitational field created by the dark matter."