Blogs and Blogging
mixingmemory | October 10, 2006Sometime yesterday, the 200,000th unique visitor dropped by Mixing Memory (combining the old and new incarnations). That's a hell of a lot of people. Hopefuly, somebody got something out of it. Thanks for visiting everyone. As always, if you have any comments, suggestions, or requests, feel free to email them to me.
mixingmemory | October 1, 2006We interrupt this weekend of mirror neurons (I know, I'm slow getting the posts out -- the weekend may extend into the week) to bring you this public service announcement. Well, not so much an announcement as a begging for advice and discussion.
Since I started writing about cognitive science almost exclusively on this blog, I've been getting links from course websites, faculty pages, etc., and it has made me think about how I, and other bloggers, can better facilitate science education. As I've said before, I think one purpose of academic blogs should be to educate people who will never take…
mixingmemory | September 24, 2006I just got an email about a new blog on music cognition, Sound and Mind. From the email:
The vision for Sound and Mind is to provide an interdisciplinary hub, a place for cognitive musicologists, scientists, and critical theorists to discuss and critique each other's work and to build professional relationships, potentially leading to collaborative projects.
Go check it out.
Coincidentally, I just got a copy of Levitin's This Is Your Brain On Music, though I'm not sure when I'm going to get to it. It looks interesting, though.
mixingmemory | September 21, 2006Earlier this month, Mixing Memory turned 2 years old. So, happy belated birthday, Mixing Memory, and thanks to everyone who's visited in the last two years, and especially to those who've left comments and feedback. If you haven't yet left comments or feedback, then... why the hell not? I mean, come on, blogs need validation just like you and I, especially when they feel like they're getting old (you know, like around their birthdays).
mixingmemory | August 31, 2006Hi, I just wanted to apologize for the lack of posting over the last month. I've had computer issues and traveling, which don't mix well together and have left me with few opportunities to blog. I'll be posting pretty much every day starting after the weekend.
mixingmemory | July 20, 2006That's it for the republishing of the old posts, for now at least. If you read the posts on art and/or metaphor, I hope you enjoyed them, and maybe even learned something. For administrative purposes, I'm including links to all 8 posts here:
Cognitive Science of Art
Goals and Motivations of Neuroaesthetics
Ramachandran's 10 Principles of Art, Principles 1-3
Ramachandran's 10 Principles of Art, Principles 4-10
Beauty and the Brain
Metaphor
A Brief History of Metaphors in Cognitive Science
"Metaphor Is Like Analogy"
Metaphor Is Categorization
The Reckoning
UPDATE: Thanks to The Neurocritic…
mixingmemory | July 13, 2006I'm going to have only sporadic computer access for the next several days, so I won't have time to do much new posting. So I'm going to just copy and paste some of the more popular posts from the old blog. They are four posts on neuroaesthetics, particularly Ramachandran's 10 principles of art. Also, because we were talking about metaphor recently, I thought people might be interested in the posts I wrote way back when on theories of metaphor that are both more mainstream and better tested than anything cognitive linguistics has to offer. So I'll repost all of those as well. The first…
mixingmemory | June 25, 2006Well, not on blogs exactly, but internet communication in general. What he says definitely applies to blogs, though. The quote is in a footnote in this speech that Habermas gave at the 2006 annual convention of the International Communication Association.
Allow me in passing a remark on the Internet which counterbalances the seeming deficits that stem from the impersonal and asymmetrical character of broadcasting by reintroducing deliberative elements in electronic communication. The Internet has certainly reactivated the grass-roots of an egalitarian public of writers and readers. However,…
mixingmemory | June 25, 2006This week's "Ask a Science Blogger" question is, "What makes a good science teacher?" I don't know how to answer that. I've had many science teachers, some of whom were very good, some of whom were very bad, and most of whom fell somewhere in between. And they were all different. The only thing I can think of that the good ones had was a knowledge of the material and the ability to communicate it effectively, but that's pretty much the definition of a good science teacher (or a good teacher in general), so giving that as an answer for what makes a good science teacher would be pretty…
mixingmemory | June 19, 2006First, the link. This probably won't be of interest to most of you, but some might like this: the published version of Habermas' lecture titled "Religion in the Public Sphere". Here's Habermas' outline of the lecture (from p. 3-4):
I would like first of all to bring to mind the liberal premises of the constitutional state and the consequences which John Rawls's conception of the public use of reason has on the ethics of citizenship (2). I shall then go on to treat the most important objections to this rather restrictive idea of the political role of religion (3). Through a critical discussion…
mixingmemory | June 11, 2006Two new neuroscience carnivals are starting up at the same time. First, there's the one initiated by Science Bloggers, called "The Synapse," which you can read about here. The first edition is scheduled for June 25. The second, initiated by The Neurophilosopher, is called "Encephalon" and has its own webpage here. Its first edition will be posted on July 1. They both seem to have been created independently on the same day. What are the odds of that?
At first, I wondered about the wisdom of having two carnivals on the same subject, but when I thought about it more, I decided this might be a…
mixingmemory | June 9, 2006So, I was trying to think of new things to do with the new blog, and the first idea that crossed my mind was writing book reviews. Then I realized there was a problem: I don't read that many cognitive science books (fewer than one a month). The reason is that, as a friend always says, you can say anything you want in a book (just ask Steven Pinker!). So it's usually better to stick with the peer-reviewed literature, and read the occasional edited book when you want to find a good introduction to a particular topic.
Then I thought to myself, this is all the more reason to do book reviews! I…
mixingmemory | June 9, 2006Hello, Science Blogs readers. Many of you may be new to Mixing Memory, so I thought that for the first post at the new site, I would introduce myself a little. By a little, I mean a very little, because in case you hadn't noticed, I blog anonymously. Maybe that will change someday, but for the moment, I feel that I have good reasons for doing so. Here's what I can tell you: I'm a cognitive psychologist who studies a wide range of higher-order stuff (i.e., I don't do vision). For the cognitive science initiates among you, I work mostly within the symbolic tradition. That doesn't mean that I…