Archive for September 8th, 2009

Is Your Baby Racist?

A newsweek article has provoked the question “is your baby racist?” Shocking it may seem, babies as young as six months judge others based on the color of the skin.

At the Children’s Research Lab at the University of Texas, a database is kept on thousands of families in the Austin area who have volunteered to be available for scholarly research. In 2006 Birgitte Vittrup recruited from the database about a hundred families, all of whom were Caucasian with a child 5 to 7 years old.

The goal of Vittrup’s study was to learn if typical children’s videos with multicultural storylines have any beneficial effect on children’s racial attitudes.

The report suggests that while many white parents want their children to grow up “colorblind”, i.e. with no preconceived views of a particular race, the vast majority of the kids in the test could see color as clear as crystal.

Click the link for the full article.

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Senator Al Franken Draws a Map of the USA

Here’s senator Al Franken drawing a surprisingly accurate map of all fifty U.S. states at the Minnesota State Fair.

This isn’t the first time Sen. Franken has impressed a crowd with his impressive map drawing skills. In 2007 he auctioned off another map of the U.S. during a 2007 Democratic fundraiser in Minnesota.

Derren Brown Will Predict The National Lottery Numbers Live On TV Before The Draw Takes Place

English magician and illusionist Derren Brown will aim to predict the results of the UK national lottery draw tomorrow night (09/09/09), live on television before the draw is made.

Now, I’ve seen some of the stuff Derren has done, and it’s quite spectacular, but this is just crazy. How can he possibly predict the lottery numbers? There’s a one in 14 million chance of choosing the money balls!

I personally can’t wait to see this. It will either be a huge success, or he’ll look like a complete fool on television and his career will probably be ruined. Live on Channel 4 (UK), tomorrow night at 10.35pm, make sure you catch it.

New PS4 Game Console Design

Designer Tai Chiem, has a clear vision (literally) for the future of the PlayStation, with his PS4 design that’s made from glass.

As the designer expects, the Playstation 4 will sport a high end touch screen rather than glossy body that the current generation gaming console sports. The CD ROM has a sexy placement and a gloss cover that can be customized would definitely be an added advantage, what say? Even the PS4 controllers are designed to perfectly match with the console and will sport a few touch screen options. From the images given, it seems that the gen next Play station will also have an embedded OLED screen, which makes this Playstation 4 game console here twice as cool as expected, right?

Do you like to glass look? It seems everything “futuristic” is made from glass, or is that just me? While some of you, I’m sure, will be drooling over the concept, I’m sure there are others who just won’t “get it”. Would making the PlayStation look this “pretty”, ruin it’s macho image, or would it give it that push it needs to move it into new markets? Or maybe it would just be keeping trend.

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McDonald’s Loses Trademark Battle With McCurry

McDonald’s has lost an eight year trademark battle, to prevent a small Malaysian restaurant using the “Mc” prefix, Malaysia’s highest court has ruled.

“The McCurry restaurant serves mainly roti and curries and opened in 1999.

Its logo does not resemble that of the burger chain and the owners say the name is a shortening of Malaysian Chicken Curry.”

McDonald’s now have to pay 10,000 ringgit ($2,900) to McCurry.

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