Miscellaneous:
More fluff while I grade papers... While you're giving me your puns (see below), you should also give me your best (slightly) pejorative and (hopefully) funny descriptions of cognitive psychology/science. The two best I've heard, both from the same attention...
Posted on May 7, 2008 3:10 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I'll get back to substantive posting in a bit, but as the semester wraps up, I wanted to ask for your help. Over the years, punning has become a more and more integral part of our lab meetings. It's reached...
Posted on May 7, 2008 1:56 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Like 99.8% of the people in psychology departments, I hate teaching statistics, in large part because it's boring as hell, for both the instructors and the students, but also because students have a hell of a time grasping it,...
Posted on May 6, 2008 5:36 PM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Recently, I saw a famous learning theorist -- perhaps one of the two most influential learning theorists in the last 40 or so years; if ΔV = αβ(λ - ΣV) means anything to you, you'll have narrowed it down to...
Posted on March 21, 2008 3:51 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Discussion of a paper titled "Respect and Religion," by Simon Blackburn, is making its way through the blogosphere, and sparking some interesting discussion (particularly over at Crooked Timber, but this is a good read too). The key quote from Blackburn's...
Posted on March 11, 2008 5:43 PM • 53 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Belief in Evolutionary Psychology May Be Hardwired, Study Says. (Cartoon from here. And yes, French was spoken in the EEA.) In related news, a new study has determined that "cognitive linguistics" is just a metaphor for the way the...
Posted on October 22, 2007 1:03 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
These pictures aren't my own, but they're of the weird things I've seen lately. Coal Skink White Grackle This one was hanging out with about 5,000 (I shit you not) grackles of the normal black variety, so it stuck out...
Posted on October 3, 2007 12:55 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Go over to OmniBrain, read about Donors Choose, and if you like what they're doing, give 'em some money....
Posted on October 1, 2007 9:55 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I know there are a few psychologists out there lurking around. This post is for you. I thought it might be interesting for some of you (all of you? any of you? hello, is this thing on?) to write a...
Posted on September 29, 2007 4:54 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This video is too cool not to post. Every commenter who knows why this happens, and can explain it, gets a cookie*. If no one chimes in, and you're curious about how this works, let me know and I'll explain...
Read on »
Posted on September 28, 2007 5:44 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
And am I the only one who thinks that's a funny question? Real posts to come when I have two spare moments....
Posted on August 31, 2007 11:09 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Macht makes a good point, in noting that pro-science bloggers, who are quick to jump on any religious or Republican affront to science, have for the most part ignored the Michael Bailey case, largely, I suspect, because most of the...
Posted on August 23, 2007 11:48 AM • 32 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Does anyone around here know of a program or programs that can do the following things with text: Frequency counts for parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.). Sort or score words/phrases based on how abstract or concrete they are....
Posted on August 10, 2007 3:59 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Over at his blog The Loom, Carl Zimmer asked people to send him photos of their science-related tattoos. So far, it appears that only one (here) is cog sci related. Anyone else out there have a cog sci-related tattoo?...
Posted on August 10, 2007 12:21 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In my first month of blogging, way back in September of 2004, I posted a picture that my father (I think) had taken when he, my son, and I went to hang out in Centennial Park in Nashville while I...
Posted on August 8, 2007 8:09 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Taking a break from my mini-hiatus. I watched Barry Bonds hit his 755th tonight, live. It was a historic occasion, but judging by the fans' reaction, the commissioner's reaction (did he mouth "no" as the ball landed in the left...
Posted on August 5, 2007 12:51 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
"Connectionist Sticker Propaganda" by atomicity, some rights reserved. I may actually keep this picture up....
Posted on July 15, 2007 1:23 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Here is an interesting article by Taylor, Micolich, and Jonas (via Integrated Science) on Jackson Pollock and the physics behind his work's appeal: This question triggers reservations from both scientists and artists. However, for the abstract paintings produced by Jackson...
Posted on July 13, 2007 8:52 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I'm sorry, I simply couldn't resist....
Posted on July 5, 2007 11:09 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
For the 4th of July I give you America circa 1995, in 4 minutes and 50 seconds, as seen through a Super 8, and with a soundtrack:...
Posted on July 4, 2007 1:44 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Jonathan Rowe, over at Positive Liberty, posted a link to Ophelia from The Last Waltz. Because I've been a fan of The Band since I was a little kid, I'm upping the ante, with "Carivan" with Van, the Man, who...
Read on »
Posted on June 24, 2007 3:00 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I've always really liked this song, but I've never understood a single word of it. Fortunately, some guy figured them all out for me: These are apparently the actual lyrics, but how would you know?...
Posted on June 4, 2007 2:29 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Originally posted on the old blog on Memorial Day 2005. On Memorial Day, I'm always reminded of the poems of war because, perhaps more than any other form of literature, they paint of it a picture that is more real...
Posted on May 28, 2007 11:28 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Last night, I took my son to his favorite diner to celebrate the end of 3rd grade. Just before our dinner arrived, a song came on the radio and he stopped talking, listened for a second, and said, "Hey, it's...
Posted on May 26, 2007 8:57 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Someone over at Real Climate has way too much free time....
Posted on May 9, 2007 4:24 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In case you haven't heard about it already, fellow ScienceBlogger and neuroblogger Shelley has been threatened by lawyers for using images from a journal article in her blog posts. Now, I do this all the time (check two posts back),...
Posted on April 25, 2007 2:31 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I recently made my third attempt at Finnegan's Wake, and as with the first two, failed miserably. At some point I'm going to decide, once and for all, that I will never be able to read that God forsaken book....
Posted on April 14, 2007 9:08 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Everyone should stop by and tell Richard of Philosophy, etcetera congratulations. He was accepted by pretty much every top analytical philosophy program in the U.S., and after a whirlwind tour of the states, has chosen Princeton. Richard's was one of...
Posted on April 10, 2007 11:55 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is just plain cool....
Posted on April 6, 2007 2:37 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I've got some half-written posts that should be interesting, but between baseball 4 day a week, and an unhealthily large number of current research projects, I'm completely exhausted. So instead of finishing one...
Posted on April 3, 2007 11:04 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I have to do a little fatherly bragging. My son (#3) started playing baseball this year. He's 9, so he's starting a bit later -- much later than almost all of the players in his league. So he's got...
Posted on March 25, 2007 5:29 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Since we now know that a person's music says a lot about what that person's like, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about myself by sharing some of my music. I can't give you a list of my...
Posted on March 12, 2007 12:36 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
For my aquarium: The picture's from CNN. The caption reads: The Antarctic ice fish is one of many species documented during a 10-week expedition exploring the Antarctic sea floor. Researchers examined marine life and uncovered potentially new species below the...
Posted on February 27, 2007 3:08 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I meant to post this a long time ago, but forgot about it. Here's the story of a cognitive neuroscientist who, using what he's learned about cognition in grad school, won $500,000 on the show "Who Wants to Be a...
Posted on January 11, 2007 8:26 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Via Sandra over at OmniBrain, I learned about We Have Pie Charts, where just about everything you would never describe with a pie chart is described with a pie chart. Here are two of my favorites: A Day In the...
Posted on January 8, 2007 10:51 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I just learned, via Brian Leiter's blog, that Robert Solomon has died. I have been a big fan since I was an undergrad, especially because his book In the Spirit of Hegel helped me to break the "Hegel code" that...
Posted on January 3, 2007 6:41 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It's a new year, and that means it's time for Edge.org's annual silly question. This year, in addition to giving the question to scientists and philosophers, they also gave it to business people, and even Brian Eno. As in the...
Read on »
Posted on January 3, 2007 2:25 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Regular cognitive science posting will resume in the very near future, but for the holiday, I thought I'd go with something a bit lighter. What's your favorite opening paragraph in a book? I've always liked the standards: Notes from the...
Posted on January 1, 2007 9:16 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Happy New Year, wherever you are....
Posted on December 31, 2006 8:15 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
More than a week ago, Razib wrote an unfortunate little post in which he displayed all sorts of poor judgment. Since it's short, I'm going to quote the entire post here, including his updates. The virginity thread generated a lot...
Posted on December 20, 2006 8:56 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
So far, Mixing Memory is not in last place in the voting for "best science blog"! That's saying something, given that this blog is probably the lowest traffic blog on the list by a rather large margin. If you want...
Posted on December 10, 2006 5:07 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Apparently, there's another new brain blog on ScienceBlogs, though I only learned about it because Bora linked to it. So, a warm welcome to Neurontic. While I'm linking to other SBers, Shelley of Retrospectacle has a nice interview with Irene...
Posted on December 10, 2006 8:18 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
You can go here to get the links for all the categories, or here to vote for the best science blog. You can vote once a day, apparently. Voting ends December 15....
Posted on December 7, 2006 8:33 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Is it wrong that I find this absolutely hilarious? It may be my son's new favorite song, too. Someone should pass this on to David Chalmers. That zombie clearly exhibits all the signs of consciousness....
Posted on December 7, 2006 4:59 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's participated in the discussion in the previous post, and to anyone who adds to that discussion. I may disagree with you, and you with me, and we may even do so...
Posted on December 5, 2006 7:52 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
PZ Myers on religion in general, and not just fundamentalism. I think this will be my last post on the topic for a while (I can hear your cheers), because Dr. Myers has shown the ignorance and bias in the...
Posted on December 5, 2006 12:57 PM • 108 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It seems some people are having trouble wrapping their minds around what it means to be a Neville Chamberlain atheist, while other people are just making up any definition they can to make anyone who's not a hyper-scientistic Dawkinsian look...
Posted on December 4, 2006 4:20 PM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Since there's a discussion of profanity out there in the blogosophere, I feel justified in asking the following question: Is it just me, or does Louisiana look like it's giving the bird to the Caribbean? Maybe Plaquemines is the Cajun...
Posted on December 4, 2006 1:18 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves,...
Posted on November 27, 2006 9:06 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
You've probably all heard about the Beyond Belief series, in which scientists give talks about the conflict between science and religion, as well as the science of religion. I've only watched the cognitive scientists (and Dawkins, for reasons I'll mention...
Posted on November 26, 2006 9:12 AM • 60 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Coolest toy ever: Via the Social Science Statistics Blog....
Posted on November 21, 2006 4:26 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I'm a huge Pink Floyd fan. I still look upon the time I saw them live in 1994 as a religious experience. Unlike many Floyd fans my age, though, I prefer their early albums to their later ones (up to...
Posted on November 13, 2006 8:38 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Via Amy Perfors at the Harvard statistics blog, Social Science Statistics Blog, I learned of the Jeffrey-Lindley Paradox in statistics. The paradox is that if you have a sample large enough, you can get p-values that are very close to...
Posted on October 31, 2006 2:58 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I know you're probably not looking for movie recommendations from an anonymous cognitive psychologist, but if you haven't seen The Cruise, then go rent it, borrow it, or buy it, and watch it in the next 24 hours. When you're...
Posted on October 19, 2006 8:12 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is just funny. In case you don't remember, in this year's World Cup finals, French star Zinedine Zidane, who was playing in his last World Cup game, headbutted Italian defender Marco Materazzi in extra time. He was promptly red...
Posted on October 10, 2006 5:33 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Is it wrong that I like this? I'd like to see the Nietzschean Dilbert, too. And I had to include a second one, because this is one of my favorite quotes from Zarathustra:...
Posted on October 4, 2006 4:02 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
OK, I learned of this site from Positive Liberty, and tried desperately to resist it, but ultimately was unable to. The result of my weakness: And if you recognize the "slogan," the answer is yes, I am a big fan....
Posted on September 27, 2006 10:38 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A few days ago, the New York Mets clinched the National League East title, becoming the first team to win a division with the Atlanta Braves in it, other than the Braves, since 1990 (excluding the strike-shortened 1994 season, of...
Posted on September 21, 2006 5:59 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
OK, this has nothing to do with cognitive science, but today's quake felt throughout the southeast reminded me of a little history that some people may not be aware of. In Tennessee, there is only one large natural lake, Reelfoot...
Posted on September 10, 2006 4:32 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Wow, what a really bad cup this year. I mean, I was rooting for Italy after the U.S. was eliminated, but ending on penalty kicks? That just sucks. Combine that with all the other games that either ended on penalty...
Posted on July 9, 2006 5:05 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
If you're looking for a good way to waste some time, try this (via Bitch Ph.D.). Here is a piece created by my 8-year old Pollock (aka Darth Vader):...
Posted on July 7, 2006 12:38 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It would be fair to say that I am obsessed with all things related to the first world war. I would be neglecting my own obsession, then, if I didn't mark the 90th anniversary of the start of the...
Posted on July 2, 2006 5:49 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
OK, this is goofy, but I was tired and bored, so I started playing around with "The Advertising Slogan Generator" (via Pharyngula) You put a word or phrase in, and it sticks it in classic advertising slogans. I used "cognition,"...
Posted on July 1, 2006 7:06 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The first edition of The Synapse, one of two new neuroscience carnivals, is here. Especially interesting are the mating robots and the post on neurotheology....
Posted on June 26, 2006 8:44 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Noooooooooooooooo!...
Posted on June 22, 2006 5:16 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Cognitive stuff from a cognitive person. If you've got any requests, drop me an email. If it takes me a while to get to it, drop me another one.
