Social Sciences
clock | April 5, 2008Go at it! These are sooooo....bloggable ;-)
Computer Taught To Recognize Attractiveness In Women:
"Beauty," goes the old saying, "is in the eye of the beholder." But does the beholder have to be human? Not necessarily, say scientists at Tel Aviv University. Amit Kagian, an M.Sc. graduate from the TAU School of Computer Sciences, has successfully "taught" a computer how to interpret attractiveness in women. But there's a more serious dimension to this issue that reaches beyond mere vanity. The discovery is a step towards developing artificial intelligence in computers. Other applications for…
razib | April 4, 2008Charles Johnson argues that Richard Dawkins has mischaracterized Herbert Spencer:
First, Spencer was not a Social Darwinist. He was not, in fact, a Darwinist at all; he published his most famous work on evolution and society, Social Statics, in 1851, eight years before Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species. His ideas about evolution, especially as applied to society, were Lamarckian, rather than Darwinian; which is not ultimately that surprising, since he came up with them independently of Darwinian evolutionary theory, and before that even existed in published form.
Second…
gregladen | April 2, 2008I came across this chilling misanthropic missive in support of home schooling.
The greatest pitfalls of public education are the humanistic philosophies taught at the expense of biblical truth, ungodly teachers and classmates seeking to influence our children, and the absence of spiritual or moral considerations within the educational process. However, those problems aren't isolated to the public-school setting (as evidenced by just a few minutes of television-watching).
Within most of our neighborhoods--and even in some Christian schools--there are influences that tear at our desired…
kevin z | April 2, 2008CNN.com reports:
"Those favoring the removal say the sea lions are damaging salmon runs listed under the Endangered Species Act and protected at great expense.
The states estimate the sea lions eat up to about 4 percent of the spring chinook run as it schools at the base of the Bonneville Dam to pass through fish ladders en route to upriver spawning grounds.
The Humane Society contends the animals are only a small, although visible, pressure on the health of the runs and that the required "significant negative impact" hasn't been established."
drorzel | April 1, 2008
Anil Dash: Your April Fool's Day Joke Continues to Suck
"The exception, of course, is if you're doing something truly hysterical or on a magnificent scale. But I fear we won't run into too many of those."
(tags: blogs internet society stupid)
Practical Jokes - Psychology - April Fool! The Purpose of Pranks - New York Times
"In a paper published last year, three psychologists argued that the sensation of being duped -- anger, self-blame, bitterness -- was such a singular cocktail that it forced an uncomfortable kind of self-awareness. How much of a dupe am I? Where are my
(tags: psychology…
tetrapodzoology | March 31, 2008
Among the most controversial and remarkable of living tetrapods are the bizarre amphisbaenians: a group of fossorial, long-bodied carnivorous animals with reduced or absent limbs, spade-shaped or bullet-shaped skulls strongly modified for burrowing, and an annulated body where distinct, regularly arranged transverse segments give the animals a worm-like appearance. Until recently it was generally thought that amphisbaenians are reptiles, and part of Squamata (the reptile group that includes the snakes and lizards). But, in a fascinating case of multi-disciplinary co-operation involving…
drorzel | March 30, 2008
Talk Like A Physicist | Talk Like A Physicist 3.14 » A water balloon not exploding in high-speed
Possibly even cooler than a water balloon exploding at high speed.
(tags: physics video youtube science)
THE FIVE WAYS OF PROVING SANTA CLAUS
After Aquinas.
(tags: silly humanities culture society religion)
Boing Boing's Moderation Policy - Boing Boing
How it's done, by the best in the business.
(tags: culture internet blogs society)
Twenty Sided » Blog Archive » DM of the Rings I:The Copious Backstory
The Lord of the Rings movies as a hack-and-slash D&D campaign.
(tags: comics…
evolvingthoughts | March 27, 2008
My friend and colleague Neil Levy has inaugurated the first edition of a journal devoted to a new field, Neuroethics, the first edition of which is available to all for free here.
Neil has a convincing introductory editorial, arguing that advances in neurobiology call into question and in other ways illuminate the nature of ethical reasoning. In particular it challenges the notion of personal responsibility, and indeed of personal identity in action. Moreover it can along with other new disciplines such as comparative primatology illuminate traditional philosophical topics such as the…
sb admin | March 27, 2008I think I made clear that Scientology is a wacked-out cult. The primary concern from my perspective as a doctor is their denialist position on psychiatric illness.
Given the toll mental illness takes on society, and the amount of influence exerted by Scientology, everyone should be shouting from the rooftops (in a perfectly calm and sane way), "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"
The Church of Scientology has a little friend called the "Citizens Commission on Human Rights". It's motto is "investigating and exposing psychiatric human rights abuse". Who is this "commission"…
purepedantry | March 27, 2008Last night, I saw Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) speak.
(I joined this speakers club called the Oxonian Society -- which despite its name is not restricted to Oxford alumni. Why? What can I say. I was bored, and it is cheaper than internet dating. Hopefully, the people I meet will be more reliably intelligent and less reliably absurd.)
Anyway, Sen. Specter has been touring around touting his new book, Never Give In: Battling Cancer in the Senate which discusses his battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma while dealing with a variety of controversial political issues such as judicial confirmations and…
jstemwedel | March 26, 2008For those who have been following the activities of "animal rights" activists, including their attacks of the homes of researchers -- and the reticence of the public in the face of such violent attacks -- a recent Commentary in Biological Psychiatry [1] will be of interest. In it, a number of scientists call on their scientific peers to actively engage in dialogue with the public about what scientific research with animals actually involves and why it is important.
From the commentary:
The attacks are horribly misguided. It is impossible to reconcile the willingness of these terrorists to…
sb admin | March 26, 2008Science is the investigation of reality. Reality is, by definition, everything. It is all we can see, all we can measure. It is, for all practical purposes, a god; it is omnipresent, omnipotent. The only tool that successfully measures and describes reality is science (including mathematics).
So why the desire to placate theologians and theocrats in scientific discussions? What can religion offer the exploration of reality?
The only thing it has to offer is a potentially consistent moral code; and that isn't unique to religion. Religion can offer beauty, song, art, poetry, fellowship…
dmunger | March 26, 2008[This article was originally published in January of 2007]
Many many studies have repeatedly shown the dangers of driving while using a cell phone. Yesterday, while discussing a new law in Britain imposing heavy penalties not only for driving using a handheld phone, but also while using phones with hands-free kits, commenter Jan claimed that talking to a passenger was less dangerous than talking on a phone. I replied that I hadn't seen a study demonstrating that talking with passengers was any different from talking on a phone, and Jan provided a link to one such study.
Greta and I have both…
sheril | March 25, 2008As I watch our traffic ebb and flow, I sometimes wonder whether these waves may reveal something deeper about human nature--acting as a microcosm of our broader society's attention span. Of course, we know those engaged in the blogosphere are not representative of the general population, but it's possible we may gain some insight by following the tides...
Yesterday we saw a huge traffic spike. So big in fact, it was the second most viewed 24-hour period in this blog's history trumped only slightly by our coverage of the tragedy as it unfolded in Bangladesh last November when Cyclone Sidr…
cortex | March 25, 2008I had no idea this many Americans were nocturnal:
Twenty percent of American workers are night-shift workers, and the number is growing by about 3% per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the rest of society sleeps, police officers, security guards, truck drivers, office cleaning crews, hotel desk clerks, nurses, pilots and many others keep patients alive, streets safe and packages moving. But at a price.
These workers -- and people with more conventionally sleep-deprived lifestyles -- are known to be at higher risk for accidents, sleep disorders and psychological stress…
jane | March 24, 2008There's an old saying that my friends in other fields love to bring up from time to time: any discipline that has science in its name, probably isn't a science.
Are they right? Is there some truth in that statement?
When I started to think about this question, I thought I could get it all into a single post. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how complex this question really is. So this will be the first post in a series exploring whether (or under what circumstances) computer science can be considered a science.
First, some background. Why am I interested in this…
grrlscientist | March 24, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Wilson's snipe, Gallinago delicata. It is a little unusual to see a shorebird off the the ground, but this fellow decided he needed a higher perch to take in some of the scenery.
Image: Jerry Kram. [larger size].
Birds in Research
The songs that each spring announce when birds are ready to compete for homes and sex have been traced to changes in the brain, according to a study that can shed new light on winter depression in people. While some birds, such as robins, sing throughout the winter, other species of bird…
tetrapodzoology | March 24, 2008
Maybe it's because I write too much, but I am frequently surprised and sometimes a little freaked out at the strange coincidences that have so often cropped up during my time here at Tet Zoo. Long-time readers will recall the several occasions when we've looked at hypothetical intelligent dinosaurs: it started back in 2006 with my contention that ground hornbills (bucorvids) should be regarded as the dinosaurs most convergent with hominins (here). Humanoid dinosaurs like Dale Russell's hypothetical big-brained troodontid - the 'dinosauroid' - are (in my opinion) utterly unrealistic, relying…
mikethemadbiologist | March 21, 2008While I wasn't put out by this article by ScienceBlogling Chris Mooney as others were, it did make me think about how evolutionary biologists are viewed. One of the things I've seen floating around the internets, and this is seems to be 'bipartisan', is the equating of evolutionary biology with evolutionary psychology.
I've always been puzzled by this since many evolutionary biologists are skeptical about evolutionary psychology. If you went to a Society for the Study of Evolution meeting, many biologists, if not cautious or skeptical about evolutionary psychology, would be downright…
razib | March 20, 2008How a Film Triggered a Global Panic:
But Balkenende is only doing what he believes is the best thing to do under the circumstances. Meanwhile, both the secretary general of NATO and Iran's deputy foreign minister have offered the Dutch advice on how to neutralize Wilders: by invoking Article 29 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
According to Article 29, individual rights must be limited when it comes to respect for the freedoms of others and where the public order makes this necessary. Ironically, the man who invoked this article is the deputy foreign minister of a country,…