Miscellaneous
mixingmemory | March 25, 2007
I have to do a little fatherly bragging. My son (#3) started playing baseball this year. He's 9, so he's starting a bit later -- much later than almost all of the players in his league. So he's got some catching up to do. Yesterday, I went to his first game. That's him out there in right field (you can barely see him).
Right field is where they stick the least experienced player, of course, because in the 8-10 year old league, no one hits the ball to right. In fact, in the entire game, only 4 balls were hit into the outfield, and all 4 were hit by his team. So he didn't see any action on…
cmooney | March 23, 2007Last weekend here in D.C., I could be found hanging out at Toledo Lounge with fellow science bloggers (left to right) Evil Monkey of Neurotopia, Tara of Aetiology, and Orac of Respectful Insolence. I guess I was too drunk to notice that thing he was wearing on his head. (Just kidding.) Anyway, here (via Tara) is an action shot:
jrosenhouse | March 19, 2007After all of our hard work last week, let us begin with something a bit lighter.
Via Larry Moran I came across this post, at Cosmic Variance, regarding the great muffin joke debate.
I reprint the joke below the fold. I find it very amusing indeed, but, incredibly, there seem to be others who disagree. Let me know what you think:
So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, “Wow, it's hot in here!”
And the other muffin replies: “Holy cow! A talking muffin!”
Actually, this joke reminded me of another one I heard when I was in college. Finding it funny or not is said…
thusspakezuska | March 15, 2007I don't know if you've missed me, but I've missed blogging these last two weeks. However, my body has demanded a period of healing and I have acquiesced. The neck and shoulder are screaming less these days, and tomorrow I get my next botox treatment for the migraines, so I'm thinking by next week I should be able to tolerate some computer time again.
It's been very, very frustrating to have to submit to the limitations of my physical body, even more so to admit that I feel less mentally sharp because of being so worn out. This is the worst I've felt in a long while. I don't like it! If…
mixingmemory | March 12, 2007Since we now know that a person's music says a lot about what that person's like, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about myself by sharing some of my music. I can't give you a list of my ten favorite songs (the data Rentfrow and Gosling used in their study), because to be honest, my favorite songs change on an almost daily basis. So instead, I'll give you one song from each of the last ten albums I've listened to. They're not necessarily my favorite songs from those albums, because I was restricted to what I could find freely available online, but I do really like each of these songs. Most…
jrosenhouse | March 8, 2007It seems tha P.Z. Myers is is turning 50 today and, following the example of Richard Dawkins, we're all supposed to write him a poem.
Seems like a good way to wrap up the week's blogging. So here's my poem, with apologies to Edgar Allen Poe:
THE MYERS
Once upon a bleak December, back in Kansas I remember
P'rusing vapid, foolish volumes of bombastic ID lore
While I sat there calmly reading, musing over creo pleading
Suddenly my eyes were bleeding and my head became quite sore
“Who,” I cried, “will face this rot and vanquish it forevermore?”
“I need a hero, nothing more.”
Hopeless seemed the…
jrosenhouse | February 27, 2007My quick little jaunt up to Buffalo ended up being not so quick. The plan was to fly up on Friday, do my thing on Saturday, then fly back on Sunday. Quick and painless!
Sadly, a snowstorm in Buffalo coupled with an even bigger storm in Washington DC left me stranded for an extra day in Buffalo. Heavy sigh. Things looked scarcely better when I woke up on Monday to find that it was still snowing pretty heavily. My hosts, however, laughed at my suggestion that such a pathetic flurry would close the airport. If that's all it took to shut down the Buffalo Airport, then the airport would…
mixingmemory | February 27, 2007For my aquarium:
The picture's from CNN. The caption reads:
The Antarctic ice fish is one of many species documented during a 10-week expedition exploring the Antarctic sea floor. Researchers examined marine life and uncovered potentially new species below the surface of the cold Antarctic water.
The ice fish has no red blood pigments or red blood cells. This adaptation to the frigid environment allows it to use less energy to pump blood through its body.
jrosenhouse | February 19, 2007Just a reminder that this Saturday, February 24th, I will be speaking at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, NY. The festivities start at 3:00 with a screening of Inherit the Wind, Then, after a dinner break, I will be speaking at 6:00. More information can be obtained by contacting Barry Karr at (716) 636-4869 Ext 217, or by email at bkarr@centerforinquiry.net. Hope to see everyone there!
thusspakezuska | February 10, 2007My laptop appears to be suddenly dying, one component at at time...first the touchpad went away, and now the keyboard doesn't work. I can still operate it with an external mouse and keyboard but I'm afraid it's about to die on me completely. Fortunately I have everything backed up but if it does die, I'm going to be offline for a few days till I either get it repaired or buy a new computer. I'm sure it will cost so much to get it repaired it will almost be enough to buy a new computer, but I really can't afford a new computer right now. Dammit.
If you do not see postings on Monday, Feb…
mixingmemory | January 11, 2007I meant to post this a long time ago, but forgot about it. Here's the story of a cognitive neuroscientist who, using what he's learned about cognition in grad school, won $500,000 on the show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" From the article:
The first technique I drew upon was priming. The priming of a memory occurs because of the peculiar "connectionist" neural dynamics of our cortex, where memories are distributed across many regions and neurons. If we can recall any fragment of a pattern, our brains tend to automatically fill in the rest. For example, hearing an old Madonna song may…
mixingmemory | January 8, 2007Via Sandra over at OmniBrain, I learned about We Have Pie Charts, where just about everything you would never describe with a pie chart is described with a pie chart. Here are two of my favorites:
A Day In the Life of Goldfish:
God's Recipe:
thusspakezuska | January 7, 2007Happy New Year to everyone, and long overdue holiday greetings and all that to all the Zuskateers out there. I didn't intend to be away from the blog for so long, but life has interfered. Same old story: migraines, illness, family health issues. A wicked cold before Christmas that just wouldn't go away...though, you know, when I have a head cold, I don't get migraines. Ever. Anybody else out there experience the same phenomenon? When I suffer from allergies I still get migraines, but not when I have headcolds. Anyway, once the cold was gone the migraines came back. Then mom got sick,…
mixingmemory | January 3, 2007I just learned, via Brian Leiter's blog, that Robert Solomon has died. I have been a big fan since I was an undergrad, especially because his book In the Spirit of Hegel helped me to break the "Hegel code" that makes Hegel so unreadable to many. In fact, it wasn't very long ago that I had a short email conversation with Dr. Solomon about that book. I also enjoyed From Rationalism to Existentialism, What Nietzsche Really Said (which he wrote with Kathleen Higgins), and Living With Nietzsche, all three of which are good introductions to their subjects, especially for those who aren't all that…
mixingmemory | January 3, 2007It's a new year, and that means it's time for Edge.org's annual silly question. This year, in addition to giving the question to scientists and philosophers, they also gave it to business people, and even Brian Eno. As in the past, there are a lot of people in cognitive science and related fields on the list this year, so I thought I'd give you a brief look at how they answered the question, "What are you optimistic about?" Since this has to be the worst Edge.org question ever, and that's saying a lot, most of the answers are thoroughly uninteresting and unoriginal. You can almost feel the…
mixingmemory | January 1, 2007Regular cognitive science posting will resume in the very near future, but for the holiday, I thought I'd go with something a bit lighter. What's your favorite opening paragraph in a book? I've always liked the standards: Notes from the Underground and One Hundred Years of Solitude (and even Love in the Time of Cholera), for example. I'd include the opening of Growth of Soil on that list, too. But I think I've found one to add to that list. It's the opening of Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov's Oblamov, and in David Magarshak's translation, it goes like this:
Ilya Ilyich Oblomov was lying in bed…
jrosenhouse | December 28, 2006And speaking of internal Seed business, take a moment to go say hi to the newest member of the great SB combine: Developing Intelligence. As Bruce Willis once said, “Welcome to the party, pal!”
jrosenhouse | December 28, 2006Reminiscent of Mrs. McCave, who had twenty-three sons and named them all Dave, it seems that The Seed Mothership is having trouble making distinctions among her progeny. This is EvolutionBlog, folks. evolgen offers a different flavor of delectable bloggy goodness.
Apparently this is not the first time this particular confusion has happened:
Why, it seems like just last week that we were kvetching about the ad nominum attacks upon our character -- or, at least, the spelling of our blog's name. The people who add an extra "V" (turning evolgen into evolvgen) are lightweights compared to…
developingintelligence | December 28, 2006It looks like I'll be joining the bunch here at ScienceBlogs, so I thought I'd introduce myself.
This blog is dedicated to tracking the development of intelligence in both natural and artificial systems. This means looking at intelligence, what it means, and how it emerges over time in humans, monkeys, dolphins, chatbots, and neural network simulations alike.