omnibrain

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The NYTimes has a great article, slide show and video with some phenomenal pictures of the brain. Well worth checking out. Enjoy!
This guy has a very good point: J Med Ethics. 1992 Jun;18(2):94-8. A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder. Bentall RP. Department of Clinical Psychology, Liverpool University. Abstract It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in…
I love accidental viewpoints. (I studied the opposite in graduate school - the optimum view). Check these out: Anyone care to speculate on what's actually going on? (answer & source here)
Unless dogs only have telepathy for knowing where not to pee in the house I don't know why anyone would assume they had it at all. Anyway, check this out from weirdexperiments.com: Just found this picture from around 1920. In this telepathy experiment between human and dog Karl Krall (on the right…
Besides our blogs being about two very different topics I seem to have a much more crass interpretation of things. For example Phil says this "I don't want to live in a place where transdimensional spaceworms can appear in the sky and blast superheated steam straight down onto innocent earthlings…
A great example of 'figure-ground' (Via a scienceblogger I didn't know existed, I guess this is what happens when I stop blogging for a year +, oh and he seems to have a sweet sweet blog - so you should probably go over there, and on another related note check out the next blog post - or is it the…
yes you. Or perhaps you've fallen off of your midlife crisis testosterone penis boat? This here inflatable brain could save your life. Order only if you are experiencing an actual emergency drowning situation. Alternatively you could buy this for me for XMas... if only you knew where to send it.
Jessica @ Bioephemera found some really great plastinated bull cocks and I have to agree with her on not buying them. But... I LOVE these brains! Too bad they're 1500 euros :/
Mmmm.... brains... And.... I'm back
I don't usually post anything about "that kind" of psychology but I loved these: (via Dangerous Minds & their creator - Matthew Wilkinson)
Straight from Neatorama: A research team at Hebrew University in Israel has developed a computer program that can recognize sarcasm with about 77% accuracy: To create such an algorithm, the team scanned 66,000 Amazon.com product reviews, with three different human annotators tagging sentences…
I'm sure by now you've heard about inattentional blindness, as I've posted about it a million times since this blog began. It's an amazing effect! It shows us that we really aren't as aware of the world as we think we are. If you haven't heard about it by now I encourage you to go right here to…
This year I was asked to participate in the Illusion of the year contest and it was a blast! There were a bunch of great illusions and I had no idea who was going to win it until the votes were counted. There's even some great video of me acting in one of the presentations. Anyway here's a video…
The monkey business illusion. Did it work on you? This video is great especially since most people studying psychology have seen the original gorilla video. This even worked on a group of the most important vision scientists in the world at a recent Vision Sciences Society annual meeting. Also,…
I'm seriously considering dropping science (although the methods might come in handy) and taking up food. Check out my latest creation - a cold smoker: The idea here is that you generate smoke in the green, steel, eggish shaped thing - and then pipe it into the 55 gallon barrel where some salmon…
Help two nerds win a crate and barrel wedding contest! Our love story. We met in a hallway at the Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chris was on his way to the lab where he researched birds and I was working as a scrub for a famous professor. We realized that we both loved wine…
It seems that if you eat on a full brain you are more likely to make poor eating decisions. So here's the schtick via Weighty Matters: Simple experimental design. Take 165 undergraduate students and enroll them in a study you tell them is about memory and where as part of their reward for…
I've been fascinated by chatroulette since news of it has been floating around the internet for the last month or so. Not fascinated enough to actually go on it... but fascinated anyway. This is by far the coolest thing I've seen coming from it so far. Twitter on the other hand... what a…
In an amazing turn of events the most famous video of all time not on youtube is now on youtube... omg! omg! haha... Follow the instructions if you actually haven't seen this before (which I would be surprised if you have not). oh and look... Dan and Chris have a blog!
Are you ready for the future?! Is text messaging just too fast for you?! Are you ready to type a blazingly fast few words a minute after hours and hours of training?! We have the must buy device for you! You can get the G-Tex Intendix brain- computer interface for the amazingly great value of $12,…
Here's a snippet of some of the relevant text from the article describing the model below: show attribute/state-oriented functions. Type7. [Useful Attribute/State]: 2.3) Change of structure or object directly make a useful "attribute" including "ability". Type8. [Attribute/State]àInteractionÅ
Sorta... Can you guess what it's about? and even better my conclusions?
I have lots of work to do, including my preliminary dissertation defense tomorrow, but I'm justifying a nap because of this: If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don't roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley,…
Trying to lose weight? Need extra motivation? Don't want to spend 1000's on a diet program and personal trainer? Afraid of drugs or cutting big chunks out of your intestine? This might just be the most important diet craze to sweep the nation and solve our obesity problem. Read on to find out…
Seriously, a cat named George is a registered hypnotherapist with three professional organizations in Britain. The article not only presents these organizations as full of shit, it highlights the absolute stupidity of almost all applications of hypnosis. Here's the details: Chris Jackson,…
juuuuust kidding. But someone DID steal the Ig Nobel Prize. Bastards.... Be on the lookout for some funny looking dice mounted on a wooden thing.
I've seen a lot of illusions... but this one is really f'n cool: CHOP CUP from :weareom: on Vimeo. -via neatorama-
I've previously explored Superman's X-Ray vision and its scientific basis. Now it seems that someone has FINALLY come up with a reasonable explanation of his flight. I'm pretty sure I could breed some Supermen now given the right lab space. Postdoc here I come! Anyway, here's the abstract: Since…
So how does Superman do it! He can see through buildings and clothing (he checks out Lois Lane's underwear in Superman 1 - more on this later). Many have attempted to answer this question of the ages yet few have explored this in as much depth as J.B. Pittenger who published a study in the…