Archive for October, 2007

Linguists Troubled By Conceit Of Ahistorical, Atheoretical Number Crunching

Passed on without comment from academic uberblog Language Log: This is a preview of Linguists Troubled By Conceit Of Ahistorical, Atheoretical Number Crunching. Read the full post (233 words, 1 image, estimated 56 secs reading time)
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French Band Requests That You Dance, Fight [Video]

This being the popular song with the lyrics “1234″ that isn’t currently being used for an iPod commercial, we weren’t sure if posting it would bring down the wrath of the hipsters. But this irony-endowed Jimmy Kimmel appearance probably makes it safe: Here’s the original video, which – if not for that Ronson guy – [...]
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The Lacanian Unconscious Vs. Pop Second-Wave Feminist Psychology That Ruins Peoples Lives

There’s a post up at Philosophy of Memory – one of our favorite blogs and one of our many creepy academic crushes – about efforts to help victims with false memories implanted during recovered memory therapy. One of the more charming excesses of second wave feminism, recovered memory hypnosis seems thankfully to have slipped into [...]
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Second Life Brain-Computer Interfaces And The Fermi Paradox [Video]

The Milky Way – a relatively small corner of an unfathomably large universe – is teeming with billions and billions of solar systems. Inside those solar systems, different chemicals have been given eons to form into basic organisms which have had plenty of time to evolve into extra-terrestrial intelligences. Enter the Fermi paradox, coined by [...]
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Engineer Builds Self-Aware Robots That Learn And Self-Replicate. Umm… What? [Video]

You know, we’ve seen more than a few movies that begin this way. And they always end badly. Always. Here’s uber-genius Hod Lipson giving an engaging presentation that was – for reasons inscrutable to us – not subtitled “how I spent my summer vacation ushering in the Age of the Machines:” At least he’s enthusiastic about [...]
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Anger Helps You Think

We were going to title this post Redemption!, but that seemed too exuberant. And we’re trying to keep things low-key, since we’re saving all of our energy for future angry outbursts followed by frantic intellectual activity: This is a preview of Anger Helps You Think. Read the full post (220 words, 1 image, estimated 53 [...]
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Open Knowledge Roundup – Cal And MIT Have How Many Lectures Up Now?

This is a preview of Open Knowledge Roundup – Cal And MIT Have How Many Lectures Up Now?. Read the full post (208 words, 1 image, estimated 50 secs reading time)
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Underwater Photographer Having A Lot More Fun Than Us, Also Producing Gorgeous Photos

We haven’t done a photo gallery in a while. This set is shamelessly lifted from Kawika Chetron of Cold Water Images. Blue rockfish (Sebastes mystinus) swimming below a canopy of giant kelp (Macrocystis sp.): Invisible high five from a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas): Sneaky harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) doing a little pose: They’ve got more than 100 gorgeous [...]
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Gender And The Sacred In Ancient Greece (Plus: The Dangerous Anachronism Of Identification-Driven Classical Scholarship)

Joan Connelly has a new book out about the role of priestesses in ancient Greece. James Davidson’s is not a fan: This is a preview of Gender And The Sacred In Ancient Greece (Plus: The Dangerous Anachronism Of Identification-Driven Classical Scholarship). Read the full post (504 words, 1 image, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)
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Mark Ronson And Amy Winehouse Are Very Good For Each Other [Video]

Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse are having a difficult time doing wrong. The talented and circumspect Ms. Winehouse does not make a physical appearance in this video – a cover of the Zutons’s “Valerie” – but the female vocals are all her: Another music video, as we continue to flirt with becoming a poorly written shadow [...]
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Science Photography Awards Announced

The 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge awards were announced last week in Science. That little beauty above is Chondrus crispus, a red algae more commonly known as Irish moss, that was snapped by Andrea Ottesen of the University of Maryland. National Geographic has a roundup of some more winning photographs. There are a few [...]
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Sigmund Freud Head Lollipops. Yes, Really.

The Internet is over. You can all go home now: Sigmund Freud’s head yields subtle contours and watermelon flavors when you suck on it. Of course it does. Post tagged ’s’ for stupid. References: * Watermelon Flavored Sigmund Freud Head Lollipops Previously: * [Edit] * Quantitative Hints Of The Big Other * Watermelon Flavored Sigmund Freud Head Lollipops Permanent link to this post [...]
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1994 Vision Of The Web [Video]

And even this would have been unthinkable three or four years before that: Not exactly Web 2.0. References: * DEC – Glimpse of the Future, 1994 [mgrdcm / YouTube] Previously: * Amazon Marketing And Its Discontents – Red Bull And… Wait, What? * Cog Sci Blog Roundup * Particle Physicists Do It Transparently Through The Rumor Mill (Plus: Promote NCA Open Bar [...]
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Greek Version of Scientific Instrumentalism Was Particularly Instrumentalist

There are at least two ways that science is circumstantially practiced. One is as a heavily mathematical search to understand the basic structure of the universe and what’s in it – what David Deutsche refers to as “revealing and explaining the fabric of reality.” (3) The other is as fairly straightforward instrumentalism – the theory [...]
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Social Science Partisan Attacks Critic For Lack Of Social Scientific Rigor

We actually agree with a large swath of IRB bad arguments, which is what this little spat is about. But still: The idea that the “typical journalistic interview or survey” involves great questions of war and peace and commerce and culture, while the typical social-science interview or survey involves dog owners, is, I suppose, a testable [...]
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