November 30, 2006
Category: Research
The recent controversial shooting of an unarmed black man in New York has generated terrible grief and perhaps justifiable anger. But if officers honestly believed the man was armed and intended to harm them, weren't they justified in shooting? Perhaps,...
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Posted by Dave Munger at 1:15 PM • 19 Comments •
Category: News
An article in ScienceDaily proclaims Success A Family Affair? Willingness To Take Risks And Trust Others Are Inherited, Study Suggests. Actually, the study suggests the opposite: C only that children have similar risk profiles to their parents. This indicates that...
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Posted by Dave Munger at 8:16 AM • 11 Comments •
November 29, 2006
Category: Research
One of the unanswered questions in Krista Hyde and Isabelle Peretz's research on amusia ("tone-deafness") is why amusics frequently say they are unable to clap to the rhythm of a song, or to dance well. In Hyde and Peretz's study,...
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Posted by Dave Munger at 10:48 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: News
Is it really possible for child in a destitute situation to rise above it and become not only a productive member of society, but to excel? Jonah Lehrer discusses an important New York Times article that I had skipped over...
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Posted by Dave Munger at 8:01 AM • 8 Comments •
November 28, 2006
Category: News
Uber-geek David Pogue has completed a Casual-Friday-worthy study of the human perceptual system. He wanted to test the "megapixel myth" -- the idea that buying a higher megapixel camera doesn't necessarily mean that you will take better pictures. He made...
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Posted by Dave Munger at 8:35 AM • 1 Comments •
November 27, 2006
Category: News
New research shows that Asian Americans have a very different understanding of consequences than European Americans: While European Americans say that a single pool shot has a bigger influence on the next shot, when asked about its influence several shots...
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Posted by Dave Munger at 8:15 AM • 3 Comments •
November 22, 2006
Category: Research
Do you recognize the person depicted in this video? How about this one? The first video is actually a "chimera," formed by fusing half-images of two well-known faces together, then animated using 3D projection software. The second video shows us...
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Posted by Dave Munger at 8:55 AM • 11 Comments •
November 21, 2006
Category: News
Watch this video and describe what you see (it's a Windows Media file, so if you've got a Mac, you'll need Flip4Mac):...
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Posted by Dave Munger at 7:32 AM • 9 Comments •
November 20, 2006
Category: News
The flash-lag effect is difficult to explain, but amazingly cool to see. Over at Mixing Memory, Chris has a great post where he links to two examples of the phenomenon and discusses what might be causing it. Cool, isn't it?...
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Posted by Dave Munger at 9:55 AM • 5 Comments •
November 18, 2006
Category: Opinion
Larry Moran thinks I have the wrong idea about teaching evaluations and "thin slicing": Unfortunately, Dave Munger seems to draw the wrong conclusions from this study as he explains in an earlier posting [The six-second teacher evaluation]. In that article...
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Posted by Dave Munger at 1:00 PM • 7 Comments •