purepedantry | July 2, 2006What is wrong with this picture?
It's wrong for one. What this picture represents is what is called the "motor homunculus." The motor homunculus is the idea that on a particular gyrus of the brain -- the precentral gyrus -- all muscle are represented by discrete pools of neurons. Activation of these discrete pools of neurons leads to activation of the muscles.
This model was generated when a neurologist named Wilder Penfield, while performing brain surgery, used an electrode to zap different regions of the brain. When he would zap this gyrus at different points, it would result in…
purepedantry | July 2, 2006Popular Science has a great article on the recent advances in prosthetics. They hit on one of the topics that I think has been really under-researched: neural to machine interfaces. What you would really like to do with a prosthetic is have it communicate directly to and recieve information directly from the central nervous system. To whit:
Once science figures out better ways to attach artificial limbs, prosthetics themselves need to become smarter, able to act on signals sent directly from the brain. Consider the case of Jesse Sullivan, a power lineman from Dayton, Tennessee, who lost…
purepedantry | June 30, 2006Who Killed the Electric Car? opened this evening. As Seed has a nice interview with the filmmaker, Chris Paine, I thought I would see it and write of a review.
(Incidentally, I saw this film tonight in a theater of a whopping 27 people in downtown Manhattan. Considering that this is Manhattan, and it is opening night I wouldn't be holding out for An Inconvenient Truth level turnout over the next couple weeks.)
(I don't have time to write a coherent essay on the film, so my issues with it are dealt with below in more or less random order.)
First, I disagree with this movie's title. I guess…
purepedantry | June 30, 2006How does that even work?
Former "Baywatch" star David Hasselhoff had surgery after severing a tendon in his right arm in an accident in a London gym bathroom, his spokeswoman said Friday.
The 53-year-old actor, who played lifeguard Mitch Buchannon on the TV beach drama for 11 years, was shaving at a gym in the Sanderson Hotel on Thursday when he hit his head on a chandelier, showering his arm with broken glass, his publicist, Judy Katz, said.
Among other things, why was there a chandelier in the gym bathroom? Apparently, Mr. Hasselhoff and I frequent different gyms.
purepedantry | June 30, 2006This article in The Scientist describes a paper where the authors claim to have found empathy in mice. The problem is that what you define as empathy may be more a matter of semantics than of science:
There is an "increasingly popular" view that this kind of basic, pre-cognitive response to social cues may be present in all mammals, said Frans de Waal at Emory University and the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, who did not participate in the study. "This "highly significant [paper]...confirms that empathy is an ancient capacity," he told The Scientist in an Email.
...
In this study,…
purepedantry | June 30, 2006If you have gone to college in the past 20 years, odds are you went to about a thousand more A Cappella concerts than you bargained for. I was an RA in college, and frankly by the end I started boycotting them as a matter of principle.
Anyway, this video is hilarious: A Cappella Addiction Counseling.
Hat-tip: Daniel Drezner.
purepedantry | June 29, 2006I love this article from Seed debunking the latest "We are falling behind in science!" hysteria. Here is my favorite line though:
Wadhwa and Gereffi found that the oft-quoted numbers didn't filter for expertise. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Association of Software and Service Companies and the Chinese Ministry of Education, they determined that many of the Chinese and Indian degrees are "sub-baccalaureate," awarded to the "equivalent of motor mechanics and industrial technicians." They also found that in 2004, the United States actually awarded…
purepedantry | June 29, 2006How does cooperation evolve? It is in an organism's best interest to screw its competitors in order to best convey its genes to the next generation, yet we see a variety of human and animals examples of cooperation. The answer falls to a division of mathematics and economics called Game Theory. Game Theory examines the behavior of individuals (or software constructs designed to replicate individual behaviors) as they interact. Generally, this interaction occurs in terms of simple games where the effects of different strategies on the outcome -- cooperation or competition -- can be…
purepedantry | June 29, 2006I like my milk pasteurized like everyone else, but the Department of Agriculture is now actually conducting raw milk stings:
Last September, a man came to Stutzman's weathered, two-story farmhouse, located in a pastoral region in northeast Ohio that has the world's largest Amish settlement. The man asked for milk.
Stutzman was leery, but agreed to fill up the man's plastic container from a 250-gallon stainless steel tank in the milkhouse.
After the creamy white, unpasteurized milk flowed into the container, the man, an undercover agent from the Ohio Department of Agriculture, gave Stutzman…
purepedantry | June 28, 2006I recieved early release from the New York penal system. As I noted earlier, I had jury duty today, which normally lasts 3 days. However the guy came in after like 3 hours and says that they are letting us out of the whole thing. Apparently there weren't many cases to begin with right before 4th of July and everyone else settled (this was civil court).
Hot.
I have to hand it to the legal system here. They do have their shit together. As much as jury duty is still a chore, they make at least an effort to distinguish it from the DMV -- and at least partly succeed.
purepedantry | June 28, 2006Warning SPOILERS below the fold!
So I saw -- as is my habit -- a geeky comic book movie on the opening show last night: Superman Returns.
On the whole I would give it two thumbs up. Whereas most comic book movies are not shining examples of good writing, the dialogue managed to walk the fine line between intended and unintended corniness. At least in my opinion, the mark of powerful writing in a science fiction movie is not that the characters avoid saying ridiculous things but rather that when they do you know they actually planned it.
This is particularly relevant in this case because…
purepedantry | June 28, 2006Are there neurobiological correlates of economic behavior such as utility seeking? The answer is yes, as demonstrated by some very elegant work by Berns et al in Science.
Bern et al. wanted to establish what areas activate during the feeling of dread. Dread is defined as the feeling during the wait for a bad outcome that one knows is going to be inevitable. Why would we have dread? What is the purpose of dread? Well, the decision about whether to delay a bad outcome or get it over with quick is determine, in their view, by a comparison of the utility of the time during the delay to the…
purepedantry | June 28, 2006Blogging may be light as I am currently a ward of New York state as a juror. Live-blogging the jury system...see what I have been reduced to...
We saw this great little video at the beginning called "Your Turn" that was hosted by Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer about the history of juries. It has this whole little spiel about how modern juries are better than trail by drowning -- you know like in the middle ages when they would throw someone in a lake to see if they were guilty or innocent. How terribly reassuring.
Nonetheless I remain determined to do my civic duty, though I intend to test a…
purepedantry | June 27, 2006In contrast to neuroscience journals who Shelley reveals are still mortally under-representing women, James Lileks is at least trying to bring out some feminism in his daughter. He has this little episode about trying to teach his daughter to go to Harvard in the Bleat. Unfortunately sometimes lessons don't take (sort of):
Every time you think you're raising a level-headed child you get a bit of TV culture seeping into their play. She wanted me to play Polly Pockets after summer school; it was a simple routine. They were going to Hollywood. In a helicopter car. In their underwear. (Aspiring…
purepedantry | June 27, 2006In unrelated geek news, there is a new trailer for Spider-Man 3. Ooooh...I am giddy as a school girl.
purepedantry | June 27, 2006Oh you!
Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose was arrested in Stockholm early Tuesday after allegedly biting a security guard in the leg outside his hotel, police said.
Rose -- who performed in the Swedish capital on Monday evening -- was being held on suspicion of attacking and threatening the guard, as well as causing damage to the Berns Hotel where the alleged scuffle took place, police spokeswoman Towe Hagg said.
Hagg told The Associated Press that Rose was intoxicated during the confrontation, which broke out around 8 a.m. (0600 GMT), and would face questioning after he sobers up.
"He was…
purepedantry | June 27, 2006Discovery News makes me wonder whether they will be reporting all new theories that come up, no matter how odd they are or how little evidence they have. This one argues that people are en masse becoming less mature. To whit:
The theory's creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of Medical Hypotheses, which will feature a paper outlining his theory in an upcoming issue.
Charlton explained to Discovery News that humans have an inherent attraction to physical youth, since it can be…
purepedantry | June 26, 2006This could be very interesting:
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide to combat global warming, setting up what could be one of the court's most important decisions on the environment.
The decision means the court will address whether the administration's decision to rely on voluntary measures to combat climate change are legal under federal clean air laws.
...
The administration maintains that carbon dioxide -- unlike other chemicals that must be controlled to assure healthy air -- is not a pollutant under the federal clean…
purepedantry | June 26, 2006Matthew Yglesias has a great satire on the hysterionics in the MSM about blogging:
The world, then, has recently been dangerously lacking in "-ofascist" (or perhaps O'Fascist, like in Ireland) threats. Thankfully, New Republic culture critic Lee Siegel has now uncovered the most insidious threat of all: Bloggers. "The blogosphere," he told us last week, "radiates democracy's dream of full participation" but is, in fact, "hard fascism with a Microsoft face." Some thought Siegel was engaging in a little ill-advised overstatement. But no. The bold truth-teller was all-too-serious, as he revealed…
purepedantry | June 26, 2006Ed Brayton and Mike Dunford have been talking about a Washington Post article on a study that is concerned with the ill effects the Daily Show and Jon Stewart are having on our democracy. Basically people who watch the Daily Show are more cynical:
Two political scientists found that young people who watch Stewart's faux news program, "The Daily Show," develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting.
That's particularly dismaying news because the show is hugely popular among college students, many of whom already don't bother to cast ballots…