November 2012
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“A spider on the wall said hello to me. And for some reason it didn’t seem...”
– Neurologist Oliver Sacks discusses his experiences with hallucinogenic substances, and his study of how the brain sees what isn’t there. A fascinating conversation about his new book, from The Guardian.
October 2012
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What's In a Breath? →
You know what’s hard to wrap your mind around? The size of an atom.
If every atom in the air were a grain of sand, every breath you take would cover the United States in sand deep enough to hide an eight-story building. Plus you’d be dead because your lungs were full of sand.
That means that, on average, you just breathed in twenty atoms that have also graced my lungs, the lungs of...
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If only scientists had warned people of how...
Oh wait, they did! Here’s part of an abstract from Nature Climate Change, from February of this year (emphasis mine):
Struck by many intense hurricanes in recorded history and prehistory, NYC is highly vulnerable to storm surges. We show that the change of storm climatology will probably increase the surge risk for NYC; results based on two GCMs show the distribution of surge levels...
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“If you were teaching a graduate seminar in public policy and challenged your...”
– Kevin Drum, with the sad truth. (via motherjones)
No candy for you, Kevin Drum. Your completely logical point and 110% truthy take on the political difficulties of dealing with climate change is like the worst trick when I asked for a treat. But it’s something we need to hear.
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The Psychology Of Tetris →
Tom Stafford writes at Mind Hacks on the strange psychology of why Tetris is so damn addictive, and how it scratches some natural human tendencies to make order out of chaos.
Tetris holds our attention by continually creating unfinished tasks. Each action in the game allows us to solve part of the puzzle, filling up a row or rows completely so that they disappear, but is also just as likely to...
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The Humility of the Brain Knowing Itself
The world is an astonishing place, and the idea that we have in our possession the basic tools needed to understand it is no more credible now than it was in Aristotle’s day.
Philosopher Thomas Nagel, from his critique of scientific reductionism: Mind and Cosmos.
I could be described as something of a “reductionist”. By this I mean that the experience that we call...
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“After learning about the general strength and prevalence of lunar tides,...”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson, on whether the Moon’s tidal forces can affect human behavior. An appropriate reminder in a week where Halloween and the full moon fall only days apart, which, thanks to this, we know means very little.
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Election 20,012 B.C.: Where the Candidates Stand... →
McSweeney’s is prefect on this one. Gog vs. Mog!
For instance, “Make man-dropping inside cave or outside cave?”
Gog: Gog believe Cavemen science clear on effect of man-made dropping inside cave: It very bad. Gog believe cave sacred: Cave where cook, where lay with woman, where paint to express inner Song Bird. Gog want to pass clean cave to son and to son of son. Gog say to do...
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E = - (0.62T2 + 39.2W2 + 62.4P2) + (21.8T + 184.4W...
It’s not a new theory of quantum physics … it’s the formula for the perfect pint!
A study of over 1,000 pub-goers across the UK surveyed their preferences for the most enjoyable drinking environment. What’s it all mean?
“E stands for enjoyment, T for temperature, W is the number of days before the drinker is back at work, P is the number of drinking companions, M...
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WatchThe wind map is in full swirl mode.
Stay safe, fine people of the northeast.
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Did Climate Change Supersize Hurricane Sandy? →
Climate and energy journalist/guru Chris Mooney tackles the question at Mother Jones. Hurricane Sandy is a very interesting storm, with some features influenced by climate and some perhaps not.
It brings home the point that this presidential campaign has been silent on the issue of climate, and it’s sad that it takes a storm for some people to speak up. As Chris writes:
In a campaign...
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“Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he has not got much of a bark
And sure any...”
– James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake
This poem provided co-discoverer of the quark, Murray Gell-Mann, with a clue of how to spell the name for the subatomic particle whose existence he had theorized in 1964. But he had picked out the name, originally pronounced “kwork”, some time before...
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Want an inside look at what it's like to do...
Might I suggest you follow the researchinprogress Tumblr?
On answering the question “How is your research useful?”:
by Emin
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Why do children hide by covering their eyes? →
University of Cambridge researchers studied the effects of hiding children’s eyes on their feelings of invisibility, and discovered some very interesting things about how young kids view their “self” versus their “body”, which you should check out.
“… it would seem that children apply the principle of joint attention to the self and assume that for...
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The Oldest Known Recording, Restored in the...
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