omnibrain | May 18, 2010Straight 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 for sarcasm. The team then identified certain sarcastic patterns that emerged in the reviews and created a classification algorithm that puts each statement into a sarcastic class.
The algorithms were then trained on that seed set of 80 sentences from the collection of reviews. These annotated…
omnibrain | May 18, 2010I'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 try out a demo on yourself! Inattentional blindness isn't the only time this happens though, there are a number of cognitive illusions that make you realize you're a lot stupider than you thought you were.
There's a brand new book out today by the semi-discoverers of inattentional blindness (well…
omnibrain | May 17, 2010This 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 of one of the contestants using me - can you guess who I am?
Keep reading for a video of the 1st place winner and links for the 2nd and 3rd place winners!
Here's the first place illusion:
And 2nd Place and 3rd Place. Both totally worth watching on neuralcorrelates.org.
omnibrain | May 16, 2010The 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, check out the invisiblegorilla.com for more videos and posts by Dan Simons!
omnibrain | April 6, 2010I'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, ham, or other yummy food is waiting. The smoke is cooled to 80-90 degrees so that the food is not actually 'cooked'. Typically the smoking lasts for 8,12, or even 48 hours. I'm seriously looking forward to the results.
What would you do if you quit your career? What's your 'Plan B' ??
omnibrain | March 31, 2010Help 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, food, music, dogs and all things of a dorky nature. Game on!
Three important details about our Ultimate Wedding.
1. Chris' parents are doctors who immigrated from Sri Lanka to New York in the late seventies. I am wearing a sari for the wedding as part of tradition. I hope the wedding is really…
omnibrain | March 16, 2010It 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 inclusion, they'll be given a snack. Ask half of them to memorize a 2 digit number and the other half a 7 digit number and once they've memorized their numbers ask them to go into a second room where they are faced with their snack choice - either a piece of chocolate cake or a cup of fruit salad. Track…
omnibrain | March 16, 2010I'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 honking piece of crap - what's the point?!?!?!?
omnibrain | March 16, 2010In 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!
omnibrain | March 10, 2010Are 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 $12,250.
Ok I jest... if you're paralyzed this might be a great device - otherwise, a huge huge huge waste of money. You can also check out a pretty cool video over @ Engadget.
omnibrain | March 4, 2010Here'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]à Interactionà [Useful State]: 2.4) Change of
structure or object makes interaction between its "attribute/state" and the
other "attribute/state" which makes up a useful "state".
show
And now for the actual model:
Any guesses? Head past the break for the big reveal. Trust me - you'll be surprised.
Got it yet?
No?
I…
omnibrain | March 3, 2010I 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, shows that an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.
Now if I fail I can blame science!
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omnibrain | October 12, 2009Seriously, 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, presenter of Inside Out in the North East and Cumbria, registered pet George with three industry bodies.
Each one accepted a certificate from the non-existent Society of Certified Advanced Mind Therapists as proof of George's credentials.
It follows a similar investigation by an American clinical…
omnibrain | October 6, 2009juuuuust kidding.
But someone DID steal the Ig Nobel Prize. Bastards.... Be on the lookout for some funny looking dice mounted on a wooden thing.
omnibrain | October 6, 2009I've seen a lot of illusions... but this one is really f'n cool:
CHOP CUP from :weareom: on Vimeo.
-via neatorama-
omnibrain | October 5, 2009I'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 Time immemorial, man has sought to explain the powers of Kal-El, a.k.a. Superman. Siegel et al. Supposed that His mighty strength stems from His origin on another planet whose density and as a result, gravity, was much higher than our own. Natural selection on the planet of krypton would therefore…
omnibrain | October 5, 2009
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 journal Perception back in the stone ages (1983) entitled "On the plausibility of superman's x-ray vision"
But first, before we get into the meat of the paper, lets see what others around the InterWebs have said about Superman's amazing seeing through underwear powers.
In Correcting Misconceptions…