Monday, August 30, 2010
Prehistoric feasting hall found
Amplify’d from cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com
Prehistoric feasting hall found
A researcher excavates a hollow inside an Israeli cave that was apparently used for funerals and feasts.
Alan Boyle writes:Archaeologists have found a cave in Israel that was clearly used for funerals and feasts 12,000 years ago, during a time when humans were just starting to settle down in villages. Among the menu items: piles of steak and tortoise meat.
"We guess that people were having communal meals previously, but this is different from that," said Natalie Munro, a zooarchaeologist from the University of Connecticut and co-author of a study on the find appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It's more than just an opportunity. It's an intentional, planned event."
The evidence suggests that the feasts and the funerals were connected — sort of like the dinners that were served after funerals at the American Legion Hall when I was growing up in Iowa. There's no sign that the Hilazon Tachtit Cave in the Galilee region of northern Israel was used as a residence 12,000 years ago, but there's plenty of evidence of funerals: Earlier excavation work turned up at least 28 human skeletons buried there, including a woman who appeared to be interred with ritual items as a shaman.
Munro and her colleagues estimate that the woman priestess was about 45 years old when she died — which would make her an elder in the Natufian culture. Bone spurs were found on her skeleton, leading researchers to conclude that she was disabled and may have walked with a limp. Based on the way the woman's grave was hollowed out, archaeologists think she was the first person to be buried in the cave.
That makes it sound as if the cave served not only as a prehistoric Legion Hall but also as a Westminster Abbey, with a fallen spiritual leader in the place of honor. But Munro said she couldn't take the story quite that far. "We don't know if it was a shrine," she told me, "but certainly she was buried with many special things, so she was very important in the culture."
The people who lived in the area 12,000 years ago are known as the Natufians. "These are really the last of what we would call hunting and gathering cultures," Munro said. "They're on the brink of agriculture. ... If you compared them to earlier cultures in the area, they're of interest because they seem to be settling down into permanent communities."
She and the study's other co-author, Leore Grosman of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, theorize that as individual family groups banded together in these communities, they needed ways to blow off steam.
"People were coming into contact with each other a lot, and that can create friction," Munro said in a news release. "Before, they could get up and leave when they had problems with the neighbors. Now, these public events served as community-building opportunities, which helped to relieve tensions and solidify social relationships."
The Hilazon Tachtit Cave in northern Israel is thought to have served as a hall for feasts and funerals 12,000 years ago.
And what events they were: When the archaeologists excavated two hollows that were carved out in the cave, they counted up the remains of at least 71 tortoises and three wild cattle, also known as aurochs. They said the bones and shells showed signs of being carved up and cooked for human consumption. The tortoise shells were found surrounding the shaman's skeleton, in such a way as to suggest that they were thrown in during the burial ceremony.
The tortoises alone would provide enough meat to feed 35 people, although many more than that may have been in attendance. "We don't know exactly how many people attended this particular feast, or what the average attendance was at similar events, since we don't know how much meat was actually available in the cave," Munro said in the news release. "The best we can do is give a minimum estimate based on the bones that are present."
Munro and Grosman consider their find to be the first clear evidence of communal feasting, but there's ample evidence that humans had meals together thousands of years earlier. Last year, archaeologists reported finding a barbecue pit in the Czech Republic that was used about 30,000 years ago for roasting mammoth meat and other morsels, luau-style. In 2007, scientists turned up evidence that humans cooked up mussels, clams and snails on South Africa's seashore 164,000 years ago — and perhaps even gussied themselves up for the clambake.
Munro said the important thing about the feasts that took place in the Hilazon Tachtit Cave is that they weren't just meals. They were community events that signaled an important turning point for ancient civilizations.
"Taken together, this community integration and the changes in economics were happening at the very beginning when incipient cultivation was getting going," she said. "These kinds of social changes are the beginnings of significant changes in human social complexity that lead into the beginning of the agricultural transition."
"Early Evidence (ca. 12,000 B.P) for Feasting at a Burial Cave in Israel" is being published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For more about the find, check out the National Science Foundation's news release and photo gallery.
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Friday, August 20, 2010
Are You Cheating?
Amplify’d from www.foxnews.com
Are You Cheating?
The first thought that comes to mind when someone mentions cheating is probably sex. But cheating can be much more complicated than that. When it comes to emotional cheating, or cybersex, insisting to your girlfriend or wife that you "didn’t even have sex" isn’t exactly going to polish your halo. The playing field has opened up, creating some serious gray areas. Is confiding in a woman other than your partner cheating? Or perhaps that lap dance you enjoyed last night?Read on to discover if you are, in fact, cheating.
Getting a lap dance
You’re out with the boys or at a bachelor party, and a gyrating sex goddess decides to give you a lap dance. It’s a bit of good fun that you enjoyed, and you’d probably do it again in the future if the opportunity presented itself.
Are you cheating? No.There’s nothing intimate about this cheating sign, despite its appearance. It’s along the same lines as a male stripper amusing the girls — just innocent fun. This woman dances for a living, just for entertainment purposes; it’s not like you were at a club and got seduced by a woman who took you aside and engaged in anything sexual. That, on the other hand, would be a very different story.
Hiding female friendships
You’re a guy who has female friends who are important to you. However, you don’t necessarily want to talk about your female friends with your girlfriend because she is possessive and might tell you to break off your friendships. By keeping the friendships a secret you can have some bonding time with your female friends and ensure happy dealings with your woman.
Are you cheating? Yes. Sorry to say, but you’re basically sneaking around behind your girlfriend’s back. Although it’s not overtly sexual, the fact is you’re still keeping things secret from her.
We don’t want to sound like Dr. Phil, but that’s never healthy, because secrecy can be a form of betrayal. You might want to ask yourself what you think you have to hide if you’re hiding friendships from your girlfriend. Be open about your life — your girlfriend is a part of it, after all — and if she has her own insecurities, perhaps your secrecy is really a symptom of a bigger problem in your relationship that needs working on, such as lack of trust.
Getting deep with another woman
No, not that kind of deep; we mean the talking kind. There are some things you find yourself talking about with another woman — maybe it’s your relationship, maybe it’s something about your girlfriend that’s frustrating to you. It’s not that you can’t talk to your girlfriend, but some things you just feel more comfortable talking about with people outside of the relationship. It’s no biggie when you confide in one of the guys, so is chatting to a woman on a deeper level a cheating sign?
Chat rooms or cybersex
You regularly visit online chat rooms and have conversations (along with some flirting) with various women whom you do not know. Once or twice you might even have had cybersex. It’s no biggie: it’s not like you know these women in real life or actually touched them. So there’s no problem, right?
Are you cheating? Yes.Although this scenario might first appear to be harmless fun because you’re not physically engaging with women, it does classify as cheating because of the following: Firstly, if you’re hiding it from your partner, it’s because you know she’ll be upset. Secondly, you are going outside your relationship for sexual excitement. It might not be physical closeness, but there’s no denying you are sharing sexual behaviors.
Hiding meetings with your ex
You and your ex are not romantically interested in each other anymore and sometimes meet up for drinks after work. Purely innocent, yes, but you have not told your girlfriend for the simple reason that you fear she won’t understand.
Are you cheating? Yes.Regardless of why you have not disclosed the info to your girlfriend, you are doing something that you wouldn’t do with her knowledge. The secrecy is the problem in this scenario because it’s keeping your girlfriend in the dark so you can have your cake and eat it too — even if the cherry on the cake does not include getting to shag your ex. If you feel guilty about something or you feel the need to hide it, then it’s cheating. Period.
Activities with a female friend
You regularly go biking with your female work colleague because you both share a love of the outdoors. You and your best female friend sometimes go to dance class together. Your respective partners do not join you on your excursions.
Are you cheating? No.Friendships are an important part of life and you can share different kinds of closeness with friends than you do with your partner. Who says your partner has to tag along with you every time you’re spending time with another woman? That’s a dark ages mentality. There’s no harm having some blameless fun with other women and sharing activities with them — as long as sex is not the shared hobby, of course.
Feeling attracted to someone else
Although you’re happily attached, you can’t help but feel attracted to your colleague or friend. Maybe you ogle her every now and then when she wears that tight dress.
Are you cheating? No.Just because you’ve admired another woman’s looks or felt a bit of sexual attraction to her, you’re not a cheat for the simple fact that you haven’t done anything more than have a look. If this were cheating, then what about watching porn? Or having a sexual fantasy about a celebrity? Every single attraction to the opposite sex would be considered unfaithful behavior, which would be ridiculous.
Are you cheating? Ask Your Conscience
Naturally, everyone has differing definitions for cheating. Your chick might have her own ideas about what is and isn’t cheating, so it’s no wonder the issue can lead to some heated, awkward moments.A good guide is to gauge your own feelings: If you feel guilty about an activity you partook in or feel the urge to cover your tracks, then you’re heading into cheating territory.
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Depressing: Ray Bradbury Hates The World Today
Amplify’d from techland.com
Depressing: Ray Bradbury Hates The World Today
By Graeme McMillan on August 16, 2010
Maybe I'm expecting too much of Ray Bradbury; he is, after all, about to turn 90 on August 22nd, and therefore can be allowed to be slightly uncertain about the way that the world today has turned out. But there's really something dispiriting about the curmudgeonly portrait of the Farenheit 451 author from the LA Times, which includes the following quotes:
I think our country is in need of a revolution... There is too much government today. We've got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people and for the people.
We have too many cellphones. We've got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.
I was approached three times during the last year by Internet companies wanting to put my books [on electronic reading devices]. I said to Yahoo 'Prick up your ears and go to hell.'
I'll give him his complaint against Barack Obama ("He should be announcing that we should go back to the moon... We should never have left there. We should go to the moon and prepare a base to fire a rocket off to Mars and then go to Mars and colonize Mars. Then when we do that, we will live forever."), but everything else...? When did Bradbury become such... well, such an old man?
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Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Artificial Meat May Feed the Planet, Scientists Say
Amplify’d from www.foxnews.com
Artificial Meat May Feed the Planet, Scientists Say
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Growing meat in a laboratory ni a petri dish like this one may be the only way to boost the world's beef supplies, scientists said.
Growing artificial meat in vats may be the best way to feed an expected population of 9 billion in 2050 without destroying the Earth, a group of leading international scientists say.
It's one of many other possible solutions being considered by the London Royal Society, which just published a set of 21 papers assessing the future of global food supplies.
Overpopulation and limited land for new agricultural expansion mean that increasing food and supplies by 70% in the next 40 years will prove a difficult task, prompting the Society's investigation.
One of the main areas of investigation is efficiency -- reducing waste while increasing crop yields -- given that the gap between delivered yields and achievable yields remains large. This can be improved by technological advances in fertilizers, chemical protections, and genetic engineering. But some think these measures won’t be enough, with land and water growing ever more scarce.
Philip Thornton of the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi sees a more novel option: growing artificial meat in vats, what he considers the “wildcard” option.
While the process is conceptually feasible, there would be elements of social stigma to overcome.
On paper though, artificial meats have numerous benefits. With greater control over composition and process, the food would be healthier with less waste.
The end result is a product that is more hygienic while reducing the amount of greenhouse gas produced by livestock.
Thornton surmises another decade of research is needed before artificial meat could hit grocery-store shelves.
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Amidst Shrapnel in Afghanistan, an Archaeology Discovery
Amplify’d from www.foxnews.com
In 2008, Afghan archaeologists are seen digging the baked earth on the heights of Cheshm-e-Shafa in the Balkh province.
Amidst Shrapnel in Afghanistan, an Archaeology Discovery
Archaeologists in Afghanistan, where Taliban Islamists are fighting the Western-backed government, have uncovered Buddhist-era remains in an area south of Kabul, an official said on Tuesday.
"There is a temple, stupas, beautiful rooms, big and small statues, two with the length of seven and nine meters, colorful frescos ornamented with gold and some coins," said Mohammad Nader Rasouli, head of the Afghan Archaeological Department.
"Some of the relics date back to the fifth century (AD). We have come across signs that there are items maybe going back to the era before Christ or prehistory," he said.
"We need foreign assistance to preserve these and their expertise to help us with further excavations."
The excavation site extends over 12 km (7.5 miles) in the Aynak region of Logar province just south of Kabul, where China is mining copper ore as part of its multi-billion dollar investments in the Central Asian country.
Rasouli said the mining work had not harmed the sites -- which were known but had not been examined in detail -- but smugglers managed to loot and destroy some relics before the government excavation work began last year.
Government and foreign troops are battling an insurgency led by the radical Taliban movement which destroyed Buddhist statues at Bamyan during its five-year control of the mountainous country from 1996 to 2001, viewing the monuments as an affront to Islam.
Many antiquities and historical sites were destroyed or pillaged during decades of civil war and foreign interventions.
Now almost entirely Muslim, Afghanistan has seen eras in its long history when other faiths such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism were widely practiced.
Rasouli said the government did not have the resources to move the relics from the remote area, which has seen some clashes during the insurgency, but hoped to build a museum there instead.
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Sunday, August 15, 2010
FOXNews.com - Tomb Raiders Raided, Actual Ancient Tomb Discovered
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Suicide Stereotypes Exposed as Myths
Amplify’d from www.livescience.com
Suicide Stereotypes Exposed as Myths
No single cookie-cutter model for suicide can explain an
individual's desire to take his or her life. And that's good news, said one
psychologist who studies suicidal behaviors across cultures.
To the surprise of many people, suicide is
more common than homicide. Many suicide stereotypes would suggest men and
women differ in their suicidal behaviors in predictable ways that hold true
regardless of culture. For instance, experts have thought that women are more
likely to engage in suicidal behavior than men, yet they ultimately die of
suicide at a lower rate because their suicide
attempts tend less often to be fatal.
That gender paradox holds up for some women in the United
States but may not in other countries, according to Silvia
S. Canetto of Colorado State University. Canetto’s research suggests culture is
key in shaping suicide tendencies
as well as how we view suicide. If suicide isn't a one-size-fits-all behavior
that holds across the board, there's hope for change, she contends.
"All of a
sudden you realize it's not an inevitable general, universal pattern that men
are more likely to die of suicide than women," Canetto told LiveScience. "Then you can see the
behavior is not fixed. It's a modifiable characteristic." And if it's
modifiable, an understanding of the particulars of suicide for a particular
group could help experts work to reduce suicide.
In order to lower rates of suicide and suicidal thoughts, scientists
must take culture as well as the resulting complex and often "messy" picture
of the behavior into account, Canetto said.
Canetto will present her ongoing research Thursday at the 118th
Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in San Diego,
Calif.
Perceptions of
suicide
While the suicide gender paradox is common, it's not
universal. Take China, where women die of suicide at higher rates than men, and
Finland and Ireland, where men and women engage in nonfatal suicidal behavior
at similar rates.
Even the definition of suicide varies by culture. In most
industrialized countries, suicide is considered a self-inflicted act. But in
Papua New Guinea's Kaliai district the ritual killing of Lusi widows by male
kin is considered suicide. The widows presumably demand to be killed to avoid
becoming dependent on their children, Canetto finds.
In some cultures, particularly in industrialized countries
such as the United States and Canada, suicide is considered a masculine act and
an "unnatural" behavior for women, Canetto said.
"In these countries, the dominant view is that 'successful,
completed' suicide is the masculine way to do suicide. In the U.S., women who
kill themselves are considered more deviant than men," Canetto said. "By
contrast, in other cultures, killing oneself is considered feminine behavior
(and is more common in women)."
Among the Aguaruna of the Peruvian Amazon, where women have
a high rate of suicide death, suicide is considered a feminine behavior and a
sign of weakness and the inability to control strong emotions. So when a man
kills himself he is considered to have acted in a womanly fashion, researchers
have found.
In Sri Lanka, however, the same types of issues (problems
with spouses, parents, or in-laws) are typically associated with both women's
and men's suicides.
Self-perpetuating
cycle
Once certain social norms are in place, Canetto says, they
tend to perpetuate themselves.
"Everywhere, suicidal behavior is culturally
scripted," Canetto said. "Women and men adopt the self-destructive
behaviors that are expected of them within their cultures."
In cultures where suicide is considered a masculine act,
such as in the United States, women do less of it – so even though they may show suicidal behaviors, they don't actually kill themselves, Canetto suggested. Men in these
cultures would be considered "wimpy" if they didn't die from suicidal
behaviors, she said.
In the Peruvian Amazon, where suicide is considered a female
act, it is still considered weak and wimpy.
"But because [women] are weak, they kill themselves. In
the U.S., women are weak, but because they are weak they don't kill
themselves," Canetto explained.
Another social notion is that aging is tied to suicide
because as people get older, they
tend to get sicker. Among Native American men, suicide rates aren't higher among
older than younger men, suggesting it's not age alone, ethnicity alone, or even
gender alone that determines suicidal
behavior, she finds.
"You can see that it makes the picture more complex,
the story less easy to tell, but also a prevention effort much more hopeful, because
you can see there's nothing intrinsic to being a male or to being older"
that makes one more likely to commit suicide, Canetto said.
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Go ahead and argue, it can be good for your health
Amplify’d from www.msnbc.msn.com
Go ahead and argue, it can be good for your health
People who held in tension had higher levels of stress hormone the next day, study says
SAN DIEGO — A little arguing now and then is good for you, if done for the right reasons, a new study suggests.
The results show when people experience tension with someone, whether their boss, spouse, or child, sidestepping confrontation could be bad for their health. Avoiding conflict was associated with more symptoms of physical problems the next day than was actually
engaging in an argument.
Bypassing bickering was also associated with abnormal rises and falls of the stress hormone cortisol throughout the day.
"Relationships have important influences on how we feel on a daily basis, especially the problems in our relationships," said study researcher Kira Birditt, of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. "How we deal with problems affects our daily well-being," she said.
Previous research has shown
married couples who avoid argumentsare more likely to die earlier than their expressive counterparts. Another study found that
expressing angercontributes to a sense of control and optimism that doesn't exist in people who respond in a fearful manner.
The study was presented here on Aug. 12 at the 118th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.
To fight or not to fight
In a previous study, Birditt and her colleagues found that the most common way for people to deal with their interpersonal problems is to simply avoid them. The researchers wanted to know the health impacts of this avoidance behavior.
They analyzed data from 1,842 adults ages 33 to 84 who took part in the Nation Study of Daily Experiences. Each day for eight days, participants were asked whether they had
engaged in an argumentor whether they had experienced a situation in which they could have argued but decided to let it pass without a fight. The subjects also gave saliva samples for four of the days.
Most participants, 62 percent, said they sidestepped arguments at some point during the study, 41 percent reported engaging in conflict. Twenty-seven percent of participants indicated no tension.
Those who had some type of tension (whether they avoided it or not) reported more
negative emotions, such as feeling upset or angry, and physical symptoms, including nausea or aches and pains, than did people who didn't experience any tension during those eight days.
However, avoiding conflict was associated with having more of these physical symptoms the following day, Birditt said.
Stressed out
Abstaining from arguments was also linked to an unusual daily cortisol pattern. Typically, a person experiences a peak in their cortisol levels just after waking, and the stress hormone declines throughout the day. People who avoided arguments saw a sharper rise in their morning cortisol levels and a slower decline over time. "They're less able to calm down over the course of a day," Birditt said.
While the researchers aren't sure what this could mean in terms of overall physical health, it's thought that any abnormalities in daily cortisol patterns could be problematic, Birditt said.
Interestingly, those who argued actually saw a lower rise in their morning cortisol levels. This might be because "people who have lots of arguments and chronic stresses in their relationships are less reactive to tension over time," Birditt said. Essentially a ticking bomb versus one that's already released its power in a more gradual way.
Future work might shed light on the cortisol-arguing link and its impact on health. In addition, Birditt hopes future work might reveal whether it's better to avoid arguments in certain situations, say with a coworker, and engage in them in others, like with a spouse.
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"Dead Zone" Asteroid Found Following Neptune
Amplify’d from news.nationalgeographic.com
"Dead Zone" Asteroid Found Following Neptune
In a gravitational dead zone, so-called Trojan trails the gas giant.
Photograph courtesy NASA/JPL
Neptune's got company—a so-called Trojan asteroid caught in a gravitational "dead zone" caused by a cosmic tug-of-war between the gravitational fields of the gas giant planet and the sun.
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Plant sprouts in man's lung
Amplify’d from pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com
How can a pea grow in a man’s lung? That's been a water cooler topic for the better part of this week. It happened to 75-year-old Ron Sveden, who had a half-inch-long sprout removed from his lung, which was first reported by a 20-year-old news intern at the Cape Cod Times on August 8.
The story was picked up by TV stations, newspapers and websites around the world.
Sveden was very sick when he was hospitalized on Memorial Day – he was having more difficulty breathing than he usually does with his emphysema.
Sveden was expecting to learn he had lung cancer. Instead, he tells a Boston television station: “I was told that I had a pea seed in my lung that had split and had sprouted.”
Dr. Jeff Spillane removed the obstruction. He tells CNN at first he couldn't see that a pea had been lodged in the lung because there was so much infected, swollen tissue around it. "His whole lobe was collapsed and there was pus behind...it was entrapped in what we call granulation tissue." But once removed, he says it looked like a pea or a bean. “It had a shoot coming out."
Spillane, a thoracic surgeon at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts, doesn’t know how long the seed was in Sveden’s lung, but he believes it stayed in the airway because Sveden’s existing lung disease didn’t allow him to breathe very well and he couldn't cough it out.
“Most of the time I'm dealing with pretty devastating illness,” Spillane says. But this case is different. “He really did get a very good outcome.”
As for the likelihood of something sprouting inside the body, experts say it’s not impossible. Walter Reeves, a horticulturist, author and radio host in Atlanta, Georgia, says it’s conceivable if a seed gets lodged in a lung.
“Isn't that what happens when a seed is underground and gets moisture and warmth? They [seeds] don't need light” he adds, at least not for the first two or three days.
Reeves doesn’t have more details about Sveden’s situation than what’s been reported in the news media, but he points out that this could happen only with raw peas or beans or peanuts. Cooked peas or other legumes cannot germinate or sprout. Reeves says a raw peanut could easily sprout, as could dried peas, after soaking in water. “Those are quite capable of germinating.”
Spillane says children, in particular, are known to have a peanuts go down the wrong way and get lodged in the lung, which is a very serious problem. “Kids have died from that stuff,” he says.
Spillane is a little surprised at all the attention this story had received. He says removing objects from patients’ lungs happens frequently. “A week later [after Sveden’s surgery], I pulled a tooth out [of another patient]."
Dr. Steve Georas, a pulmonologist in Rochester, New York, agrees. He says people inhale things into their lungs frequently, probably because the trachea and the esophagus are so close to each other. “We had a similar case at the University of Rochester where I practice. A patient had a pea wedged in his bronchus – it didn't turn into a plant."
Spillane says he went into surgery to help people and to "pull the thorn out of the lion's paw. " Sveden’s sprouting pea, the surgeon says, “was the ultimate thorn in a lion's paw, I guess.”
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Friday, August 13, 2010
A Blood Test Can Show If You Have Schizophrenia?
Well, all sufferers of Mental Illness have been waiting for something like this. It'd be easier to get a diagnosis if tests like this existed for many illnesses. It would also allow people who don't understand what mental illness is about to realize there is a very physical side that to it and give it the respect you'd give some with MS, Diabetes, ETC.
Amplify’d from www.veripsych.com
VeriPsych™ is the first and only blood test to aid a psychiatrist in the diagnosis of recent-onset schizophrenia. VeriPsych compares the patient's biomarker profile to that of confirmed schizophrenic patients. It gives physicians, researchers and consumers a new objective evaluation tool. While it is not intended to provide a definitive diagnosis of schizophrenia, VeriPsych opens a valuable new window into this complicated psychiatric condition.
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Wednesday, August 11, 2010
11 Predictions About 2010 That the Simpsons Got Right
Who doesn't love The Simpsons? This made me smile...let it brighten your day as well.
Amplify’d from www.11points.com
So yesterday, Lisa Simpson got married.
In the tradition of the two lists I did last year discussing "Back to the Future Part II" -- its good predictions and bad predictions -- I decided to look at the vision from "The Simpsons" of what 2010 would look like.
"Lisa's Wedding" aired in 1995, making predictions about a future 15 years later. Here are the 11 best predictions it made. (And, yes, there will be another list this week with the worst predictions it made.)
Soy snacks.
"30 Rock" did an entire subplot around buying a SoyJoy out of a vending machine. I'd say the idea of soy-based snacks has definitely come to pass. And "The Simpsons" also accurately nailed their horrible, horrible flavor. Even a generation that grew up eating paste as children can't really choke them down.
More and more celebrities getting arrested.
During Kent Brockman's newscast, he lets viewers know that if they see any celebrities, consider them dangerous. A few years later "The Simpsons" would have an entire episode centered around Mel Gibson. In 2010, they'd take Brockman's advice and stay the hell away. Celebrities really do get arrested at a prodigious rate today.
old but still going strong.
Rolling Stones old but still going strong.
The Rolling Stones really ignored the whole "live fast, die young" credo of rock-and-roll. Malcolm Gladwell could write a whole new "Outliers" book on the fact that they're all still alive.
Widespread home satellite dishes.
Throughout "Lisa's Wedding", pretty much every home and building shown has a small satellite dish on top. And while not all of us have satellite cable, this episode was written around the same time that DirecTV was founded. (Both in 1994.) A decade and a half later we don't all have small satellites on our roofs... but many people do, and we all, at least, have the option. (And, just like the "Simpsons" predicted, they're an unexpected eyesore.)
The Prius design.
This cab, driven by the indicted Mayor Quimby, looks surprisingly like the Prius design. And/or they modeled it after the Inspector Gadget car. Honestly, it's right smack in the middle of those two designs.
Motion controlled video games.
You probably don't recognize this scene. I didn't. It was cut out for syndication... meaning we saw it when Fox first aired the episode, then didn't see it the subsequent 200 times we watched the episode, and now have it back on the DVD.
The syndicators do a so-so job on choosing which scenes to chop out of the "Simpsons" episodes to make room for one more precious commercial. This was a good chop. The scene is kind of dumb -- Bart and a random guy wear virtual reality headsets and play motion-controlled video games.
And while it's not exactly the Wii or the Kinect or the PlayStation we're-so-late-to-this-motion-controlled-party-that-the-kegs-are-tapped-and-the-hosts-are-in-pajamas... and the headsets more resemble Nintendo's ill-fated Virtual Boy... we are in the era of motion-controlled video games. So I'm giving them a "pretty damn enough."
Classroom overcrowding.
I'm pretty sure this is what classrooms look like here in California. Well, just with a spicier Latin flavor.
Communicator watches.
I'm not sure why People Of The Past were so obsessed with wristwatch communication. Dick Tracy built his entire career around it... and here Hugh uses it for his crucial wedding proposal. Once wrist communication actually became possible, we realized it was NOT going to revolutionize the world as we know it.
Yes, this technology exists today -- mostly as toy walkie talkies or through Bluetooth from your cell phone. I think they sell both in SkyMall. And I assure you, anything sold in SkyMall is not a cutting edge or indispensable technology.
A device resembling the Kindle.
The device on Lisa's dorm room floor here (or is it Hugh's?) looks a bit like the Kindle. Or, at the very least, a slightly larger Apple Newton. The PDA, not the cookie. PDA meaning personal digital assistant, not public display of affection. Why do things always have to mean other things?
Credit cards at vending machines.
They nailed this one perfectly. 2010 is the time when we'll happily jam our credit cards into anything -- we haven't quite gotten to widespread wireless/thumbprint/RFID payments yet, but we sure as hell aren't going to carry around a bunch of cash anymore. We're not cavemen after all.
Thousands of cable channels.
ing soon -- the 11 Predictions About 2010 That the Simpsons Got Wrong.
Coming soon -- the 11 Predictions About 2010 That the Simpsons Got Wrong.
And yet we still watch the same "Simpsons" episodes over and over and over.
Read more at www.11points.com
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