language
omnibrain | June 7, 2007Ahh Press Releases.... Don't you just love it when someone who doesn't really give a shit comes up with extremely inane or obvious titles?
This time around the titles are come from good ol' EurekAlert.
Our first title falls under the duh category:
"Brain holds clues to bipolar disorder"
Ohh.... Reaalllly? As opposed to what?!
Our second title falls under the "my cousins uncles brothers step-sisters boss's foot surgeons dogs breeders groomers friend" category.
"Lack of sun does not explain low vitamin D in elderly who are overweight"
I feel like they're forgetting another way of classifying…
aardvarchaeology | June 7, 2007
Dear Reader -- let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to the Strawberry Parking Lot.
For the past century and a half, the naming of Swedish places has largely been taken out of the people's hands and regulated by the authorities. New names of big important places are no longer negotiated organically among those who talk about them. Instead, county and municipal planners tell people what to call a certain place. Thus a number of new names in my home area: Saltsjöbaden, Solsidan, Jarlaberg. Fine names handed down from on high, meaning "Salt Sea Bathing Resort", "Sunny Side" and "Earl's…
aardvarchaeology | May 21, 2007
Dear Reader Arkein from the land of the Freedom Fries and EuroDisney set me a-thinking about Medieval barns, butcheries, kitchens and dinner-tables. I've got a story about that, and I believe it's far more likely to be true than that slanderous yarn about Louis XIV's pinkie.
The English language has different words for livestock species and for their meat. Cow -- beef. Pig -- pork. Sheep -- mutton. And there's a pattern to the linguistic descent of these words: the live-animal words were there already in Old English, whereas the meat words are French loan words appearing from the Middle…
omnibrain | May 17, 2007There are a number of Chatbots out there on the internet. Most of the new variety actually learn words and expressions as users spend time talking with them. The idea is to make them so advanced that they can actually fool people into thinking they are talking to another person instead of a bunch of silicon and plastic. But what happens when two chatbots get into a conversation with each other? It looks pretty deep to me ;)
ALICE: Are you alive?
Jabberwacky: Perhaps.
A: Why the uncertain tone?
J: Everything is uncertain except for five facts.
A: The whole universe?
J: And we both might…
dmunger | April 26, 2007There is a considerable body of research showing that eye contact is a key component of social interaction. Not only are people more aroused when they are looked at directly, but if you consistently look at the person you speak to, you will have much more social influence over that person than you would if you averted your gaze.
The problem arises when you address a group of people. How do you pick who to engage visually? Most public speakers are encouraged to look around the room, alternating eye contact with individuals in the audience. But there's no way to look at everyone at once -- so…
omnibrain | April 24, 2007We all know the basic characteristics of a happy dog (well at least pizza guys and mail men know),
Ears close to the head, tense posture, and tail straight out from the body means "don't mess with me." Ears perked up, wriggly body and vigorously wagging tail means "I am sooo happy to see you!"
An article in todays NYT highlights a brand new discovery in doggy linguistics,
When dogs feel fundamentally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left.
I might even read the…
aardvarchaeology | April 21, 2007Ubuntu Linux is a free Open Source operating system with office software, intended to empower the Third World by freeing it from dependence on Western software companies. It shares its name with a humanist ideology promoted by people such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. The software is also popular in the West, where most of the development takes place and where most of the installations running it are likely located. The project's Swedish homepage prominently features a fine piece of inadvertent colonial condescension. It's actually quite heartwarmingly naïve in its complete lack of…
aardvarchaeology | April 12, 2007
A Dear Reader who calls themself Ophistokont made me curious about what this intriguing word might mean. It's very rare, with only seven Google hits and no entry in Merriam-Webster. Ophi- should have to do with snakes. -stok- calls stoichiometry to mind, having to do with elements. -ont has to do with being. Something that forms the basic element of a snake-like thing, maybe?
I didn't make that up unaided. Those seven Google hits explain (mostly in German) that an ophistokont is the end of a single-cell being from which its motile flagellum extends. These little whip-like outboard motors…
dmunger | April 10, 2007Jim just started playing this year for his school's junior varsity lacrosse team. As a beginner, he doesn't see a lot of action, but it's nonetheless exciting to watch the games -- they are fast-paced, with plenty of scoring and a few hard hits. Most junior varsity teams don't have the equipment budget of a varsity team, so they don't have separate home and away uniforms like varsity teams do. This means game officials have a hard time remembering which team is which, so instead of referring to players as "home" or "away," they use the color of the uniforms to distinguish between teams.…
dmunger | April 5, 2007Even though most of us aren't concerned with physical survival on a day-to-day basis, the concept of "survival" remains a potent one -- just think of the persistent success of TV shows like Survivor and Lost. Perhaps this popularity has to do with more than just good advertising and an interesting plot twist. Perhaps it also has to do with the fundamental nature of survival itself.
Darwin's mechanism for evolution -- natural selection -- has often been reduced to the catch-phrase "survival of the fittest." There's more to it than that, of course, but if survival is such an important aspect of…
dmunger | April 3, 2007If you're like me, when you read a book, you form a picture of what's happening in your mind. I try to imagine not only what the characters look like, but also their surroundings. Eventually, I've created a picture of an entire world in my head. Then, when the book gets made into a film, I'm often disappointed when things don't look the way I imagined them. Could it be that the visual environment I've created in my head is just as appealing as the one created by the filmmaker?
It makes some sense: if we've gone to the trouble of creating a visual environment, why not use the part of our mind…
omnibrain | February 25, 2007Ok just kidding but you should really read this funny post from the Language Log mocking a Washington Post article about spear use in chimps.
The Original:
Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.
The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of…
omnibrain | February 13, 2007Even if the person doesn't entirely get them. Why is that? you would certainly have to get them on some level to prefer them wouldn't you?
A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research discusses the benefits of slogans with multiple meanings, like a cell phone company using the slogan, "The Clear Alternative" or a tax-preparation service advertising that "You Get More in Return." The researchers found that some people are better at recognizing additional meanings than others, but they also found that degree of understanding has little impact on how well people respond to the catchphrases.…
dmunger | February 8, 2007Recently I attended a concert featuring the premier of an up-and-coming composer's work. She gave a brief talk before her piece was played, during which she explained the complex symbology of her work. The musical notes weren't just noises; they were intended to convey a meaning above and beyond a mere sequence of sounds. But if her music really did convey such deep meaning, why did she have to explain it to the audience beforehand? Can music ever express semantic meaning directly, without requiring a composer or someone else to "translate" for us?
Certainly not all music is as difficult to…
dmunger | February 6, 2007At a recent social psychology conference, one of the attendees kept an informal tally of how often presenters made negative statements about their own presentations. Out of 18 presenters, 11 made negative statements like
I've prepared a gosh-awful overhead
This is a gross oversimplification, or
We thought this study was pretty lame.
The statements weren't qualified in any way, just offered on their own as a preface to a portion of their presentation. Why would esteemed researchers find it worthwhile to make self-critical statements in front of their own colleagues? We're not talking here…
omnibrain | February 2, 2007Check out this site for the most common mispronounced words in the English language.
This of course if one of my favorites:
Old-timer's disease instead of Alzheimer's disease. While it is a disease of old-timers, it is named for the German neurologist, Dr. Alois Alzheimer.
I'm not really sure I've ever heard this one before, but it's entertaining anyway.
Heineken remover instead of Heimlich maneuver (or manoeuvre, Br.). This term is mispronounced many different ways. This is just the funniest one we have heard. This maneuver (manoeuvre) was named for US surgeon Henry Jay Heimlich (1920- ).
dmunger | January 22, 2007Most language processing takes places in the left hemisphere of the brain. When we read, carry on a conversation, or listen to speech, most of the action -- for right-handers -- takes place on the left side of the brain. (For left-handers, the situation is more complex; it's not simply a mirror image of a right-handed brain. For this reason, most studies involving any sort of brain scan routinely exclude left-handers.)
But there are a few occasions when the right hemisphere gets involved: when we create a narrative, for example, or when we make inferences. Some types of figurative language,…
dmunger | January 3, 2007Watch the quick video below. First you'll fixate on a small dot in the middle of the screen. Then you'll get a visual cue which serves to direct your attention to a particular location. Simultaneously, four letter Os, each colored red or green, will appear. Your task is to say, as quickly as possible, the COLOR of the letter in the direction indicated by the cue.
Now try this one, same task, but with a different cue.
Much research on visual attention during the past 30 years has focused on the difference between these two types of cues -- central arrows versus peripheral indicators such as…
dmunger | October 25, 2006Everyone knows the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words." Bound by that axiom, magazines, newspapers, and most of all, TV, bombard us with pictures every day. The latest hot internet properties aren't text-based sites like Google but picture-based sites like Flickr and YouTube. Psychological research backs this up: we do remember pictures more readily than we remember words.
The next question, of course, is "why?" Recent research by Paul W. Foos and Paula Goolkasian is beginning to shed light on the difference between memory for pictures and words. They had previously found that while…
dmunger | September 14, 2006Color categories, as we pointed out in this post, are remarkably consistent, even across different cultures and languages. "TLTB" pointed out in the comments that for people with color blindness, the color categories might not make much sense. He brought up an excellent point, one that becomes doubly perplexing when we realize that no two individual eyes are the same -- indeed, retinal scanning is considered more accurate than fingerprints in establishing someone's true identity.
The distribution of cones and rods across the retina varies substantially. What's more, the macula, a region in…