purepedantry
Posts by this author
April 12, 2007
Kurt Vonnegut died this morning in Manhattan. He was 84.
To hear him read an excerpt of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse Five, go to this interview at Salon. It's my favorite part.
From Slaughterhouse Five:
Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?" "That is a very…
April 11, 2007
Virginia Postrel has an interesting column in Atlantic Monthly on the aesthetic purpose of fashion in museums:
The Boston exhibit's comment book records a debate between fans, mostly women, who praise the museum for displaying an "inspiring" and "seldom seen" art form and detractors, mostly men,…
April 11, 2007
TCS published an interview with Freeman Dyson about his iconoclasm and his optimism about the future of science and humanity:
Benny Peiser: One of your most influential lectures is re-published in your new book. I am talking about your Bernal Lecture which you delivered in London in 1972, one year…
April 10, 2007
Many of you will be shocked -- shocked -- to discover that ejaculation turns off men's brains. Well only briefly...
Janniko et al., after publishing an earlier paper on the subject in 2003, have chosen again to examine the activation in the male brain during ejaculation. They use PET scanning…
April 10, 2007
If you don't want to overeat, make sure they don't bus your table:
People watching the Super Bowl who saw how much they had already eaten -- in this case, leftover chicken-wing bones -- ate 27 percent less than people who had no such environmental cues, finds a new Cornell study.
The difference…
April 9, 2007
I just thought this paper was kind of cool. It reviews the evidence from twin studies that shows that certain regions of the brain show very high levels of genetic heritability. Heritability, as I discussed in an earlier post, is a gross measure of the genetic as opposed to the environmental…
April 5, 2007
Not to be outdone in ridiculousness by the younger generation, Keith Richards has admitted to inhaling his father's ashes:
Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all.
In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones…
April 5, 2007
There was a debate in the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for some time about whether the shrinkage observed in the hippocampus -- a structure involved in learning and memory -- was the result of the stress or was a vulnerability factor for the disease.
We know that high levels of cortisol…
April 5, 2007
You know, waiting might have been just as effective:
It took a Coast Guard helicopter to rescue a man and his pet cockatoo from the heights of a pine tree after he got stuck trying retrieve the $2,000 bird.
William Hart, 35, had climbed about 60 feet up the tree to get the bird after it escaped…
April 2, 2007
From AFP:
-- Discover Magazine announced in 1995 that a highly respected biologist, Aprile Pazzo (Italian for April Fool), had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. The creatures were described as having bony plates on their heads that became burning hot, allowing…
April 2, 2007
I was just in London, and a friend of mine clued me into this British comic named Bill Bailey. Priceless.
Anyway, this is not even vaguely science-related, but there is a clip below the fold that is too funny.
He was also in this BBC show that I am in love with -- or at least in lust with -- at…
April 2, 2007
This article struck my eye because all of the literature I was familiar with said the opposite. The authors looked a weight gain in the mother during pregnancy and found that the children of the mothers who gained too much or even normal amounts of weight -- by the existing standards -- were more…
March 29, 2007
This is interesting. Researchers at Columbia have established that restricting neurogenesis in the hippocampus improves working memory:
New research from Columbia University Medical Center may explain why people who are able to easily and accurately recall historical dates or long-ago events, may…
March 28, 2007
This is not just videos of hairy, fat people having sex. This is actual panda porn we are talking about:
Chuang Chuang the panda has been spending his days in front of a big-screen television watching panda porn.
Authorities at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand hope the images will encourage…
March 27, 2007
If you are like me, you spend a lot of time not thinking about anything in particular. You read a couple papers, get a little work done, and then you stare off into space for a period of pleasant mindlessness.
From a neuroscientist's perspective, we spend a lot of time determining how we react…
March 26, 2007
This is absolutely ingenious:
Patients rely on their physicians to recognize signs of trouble, yet for common heart murmurs, that ability is only fair at best. Fortunately, the solution is simple: listening repeatedly. In fact, intensive repetition -- listening at least 400 times to each heart…
March 13, 2007
I love the comedian Eddie Izzard. This is primarily because he is one of the few I have ever seen that even tries to make relatively intellectual jokes about history and science. Anyway, enjoy this video about physics and Pavlov's other animals.
March 12, 2007
David Ignatius has a great column about the underestimated power of American education. American-style education is being rapidly exported all over the world, and foreign students are lining up to attend American universities at both a graduate and undergraduate level. In some cases, these…
March 12, 2007
David Wallis, writing in SFGate, has a very interesting article about politics and political cartoons. I like all the historical background, although I don't entirely buy the one-sidedness of the censorship he seems to suggest:
Adolf Hitler understood the power of cartoons. They made him crazy…
March 12, 2007
Jeffrey Rosen has an excellent piece in the NYTimes magazine about the increasing use of neurological arguments in the courts:
One important question raised by the Roper case was the question of where to draw the line in considering neuroscience evidence as a legal mitigation or excuse. Should…
March 11, 2007
The Bistro Styx
by Rita Dove
She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness
as she paused just inside the double
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape
billowing dramatically behind her. What's this,
I thought, lifting a hand until
she nodded and started across the parquet;
that's when I saw she…
March 9, 2007
We all know that inhaled anesthesia is over the short-term impairs neurological function; that is sort of the point using it for surgery.
However, a debate exists about whether inhaled anesthetics have long-term neurological consequences as well. In light of that debate Bianchi et al, publishing…
March 9, 2007
First a German man sues three teenagers for making his ostrich impotent, now another is quite literally dividing the possessions in his divorce:
A 43-year-old German decided to settle his imminent divorce by chainsawing a family home in two and making off with his half in a forklift truck.
Police…
March 7, 2007
Steven Levitt from the Freakonomics blog has started a discussion about whether the tenure system is worth it. His argument is that the tenure system supports the mediocre and should be scrapped:
If there was ever a time when it made sense for economics professors to be given tenure, that time…
March 6, 2007
Stuart Taylor has an interesting article on Supreme Court predictions in the National Journal. He doesn't see a dramatic shift rightward happening:
Abortion. The Roberts Court has already voted in a big abortion case, on the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.…
March 6, 2007
I posted a couple months ago about neuron to glia (in this case oligodendrocyte) synapses in the hippocampus, and how researchers had shown that these synapses were capable of LTP. This was an example of two themes 1) the brain is a tricky business -- particularly with respect to information…
March 5, 2007
Not the kind of story you read everyday:
Three teenagers may be on the hook for a hefty fine if a court decides that their festive firecrackers outside an eastern German farm scared the libido right out of an ostrich named Gustav.
Rico Gabel, a farmer in Lohsa, northeast of Dresden, is claiming $6,…
March 5, 2007
The NYTimes magazine has an excellent article on the controversy within science as to the meaning of God. This is different from the cultural controversy as to the validity of Revelation because it is concerned with why religion may have evolved as opposed to whether it evolved.
Lost in the…
March 4, 2007
When Ecstasy is Inconvenient
by Lorine Niedecker
Feign a great calm;
all gay transport soon ends.
Chant: who knows --
flight's end or flight's beginning
for the resting gull?
Heart, be still.
Say there is money but it rusted;
say the time of moon is not right for escape.
It's the color in the lower…