Miscellaneous
neurophilosophy | September 16, 2007 Katelyn Sack writes:
Another blogger has sent me a link to your post "Neurological alphabet fridge magnets" asking for more information about my "Baby, Be A Brain Surgeon!" painted tile series, featured on The Science Creative Quarterly this Tues., Sept. 11.
Although perhaps the images of the tiles should be printed on lighter material, laminated, and hot-glued to magnets, "Baby, Be A Brain Surgeon!" is currently composed of oil paint on 4.25" x 4.25" ceramic tiles, as reflected on my blog. (I first wrote about these on my art blog here, and also list the artwork for sale under these…
neurophilosophy | September 13, 2007
When Carl Zimmer asked scientists to send him photos of their scientific tattoos, the response was huge, as was the interest in the photos he collected - together, the original post on his blog and the photo set he uploaded to Flickr have been viewed about 200,000 times, and have even been mentioned in the mainstream media.
My personal favourite from Carl's collection is this one. But the photo set doesn't contain any neuroscience-related tattoos, so I did a quick search and found a few. At the top is the brain tattooed on Jon's back; above it are the famous words of Rene Descartes,…
neurophilosophy | September 11, 2007 Reed Elsevier is experimenting with open access.
The publishing giant has just launched a web portal called OncologySTAT. The service is aimed at physicians, who will be required to register their personal information at the site in order to gain immediate and free access to research papers from 100 of Reed Elsevier's journals.
Elsevier plans to finance the service with revenue generated by advertising and sponsorship from pharmaceutical companies. It hopes to get 150,000 doctors signed up to the site over the next 12 months.
neurophilosophy | September 9, 2007
The current issue of The Economist has an intersting article about biologically-inspired architecture:
So far, the use of biomimetic features in buildings has been driven as much by aesthetics as by function, and has been limited to relatively simple, passive systems. The Arab World Institute in Paris, for example, has an array of mechanical, eye-like irises on its south-facing facade. These open and close to control the amount of light entering the building, thereby regulating the internal temperature.
A quick search led me to this fantastic photograph of said mechanical…
neurophilosophy | September 8, 2007
You don't have to be a bibliophile to enjoy this compendium of beautiful libraries.
neurophilosophy | September 7, 2007
The trajectory of a foam boomerang with LED lights, by Michael Murphree.
From an article called The science of boomerangs, in last month's issue of Popular Mechanics.
mixingmemory | August 31, 2007And am I the only one who thinks that's a funny question?
Real posts to come when I have two spare moments.
neurophilosophy | August 28, 2007To celebrate the fast-approaching 500,000th reader comment, ScienceBlogs is running a contest.
To enter, all you need to do is post a comment on any of the blogs in the SB network, using a valid email address. Alternatively, you can sign up to the new weekly newsletter.
When the 500,000th comment is posted, the contest will be closed. One email address from a comment posted at around that time will then be randomly selected.
One lucky reader will win a 5-day trip to the world's greatest science city, as voted by you. (Cambridge, U. K. currently tops the poll.) 50 runners-up will receive a…
jrosenhouse | August 25, 2007It's that time of year again! That most worthless of weekly news mags, U. S. News and World Report, has just published its annual list of America's Best Colleges. As usual, they tinkered with their ranking system again, for the sole purpose of fiddling with the order, thereby creating some news. Will Princeton or Harvard be number one? Yawn.
Happily, Radar magazine has come out with a far more useful feature: America's Worst Colleges. They explain:
This year, U.S. News & World Report announced that their new college rankings system would involve “substantial changes in methodology…
mixingmemory | August 23, 2007Macht makes a good point, in noting that pro-science bloggers, who are quick to jump on any religious or Republican affront to science, have for the most part ignored the Michael Bailey case, largely, I suspect, because most of the pro-science bloggers are more anti-religion and anti-Republican than they are pro-science (which is not to say that they aren't, in fact, pro-science). Another factor, I think, comes from a source that I believe Macht, or perhaps Brandon (I forget which) has mentioned before: many of the most vocal "pro-science" bloggers are biologists who seem to have gotten it in…
jrosenhouse | August 22, 2007While I'm getting caught up, allow me to echo Ed Brayton's sentiments on the changing of the guard over at the National Center for Science Education. Nick Matzke, hero of the Kitzmiller trial, will be leaving to obtain a PhD in evolutionary biology from Berkeley. Not too shabby!
And taking his place will be my SciBling Josh Rosenau, of “Thoughts From Kansas,” who I had the pleasure of meeting this past weekend. If anyone can fill Nick's enormous shoes it is Josh, even if he does think I'm all mixed up about various religion-related issues :)
So congratulations to Nick for getting into…
jrosenhouse | August 22, 2007I'm back in Virginia after my brief visit to New York. It was really great to meet so many of my fellow science bloggers. I feel so unworthy right now! Bora has the skinny on the weekend's doings along with copious photographs.
After our big brunch on Saturday, I decided to eschew the visit to the AMNH (been there, done that) and decided to meander around New York instead. How often do I get down to the Village? I eventually ended up playing chess at Washington Square Park, eating a truly magnificent black and white cookie at The Donut Pub on 14th and 7th, browsing in Midtown Comics in…
neurophilosophy | August 21, 2007
You've probably gathered that I've spent a long weekend in New York City with other ScienceBloggers and members of the SEED magazine team. I think it's fair to say that a good time was had by all.
I've posted some of the pics I took out there, but I haven't written anything about the trip. Others have posted quite a lot about our shenanigans, as well as more pics.
Anyway, after what seems like hundreds of beers and dozens of tequilas, plus about 11,000 km of air travel, I'm back in London. It'll be business as usual on this blog as of tomorrow.
neurophilosophy | August 21, 2007
Atlas at the Rockefeller Plaza. More blogger pics below.
Bora Zivkovic (aka Coturnix) with some really handsome (but quite hairy) guy.
Mike Dunford, Suzanne Franks, Janet Stemwedel and Rob Knop.
Shelley Batts, Rob Knop, Mike Dunford and Josh Rosenau.
neurophilosophy | August 20, 2007
Kevin Beck.
More pics of the ScienceBloggers in NYC below.
Jennifer Jacquet.
Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science and Storm World.
Sheril Kirshenbaum, Mooney's co-blogger.
neurophilosophy | August 19, 2007
More photos below.
Rob Knop - spent all weekend in the hotel room. Snores quite loudly.
Mike Dunford - snores very loudly.
Shelley Batts - behaves very badly when drunk.
RPM - drinks other peoples' beer.
More photos coming soon.
neurophilosophy | August 16, 2007
Greetings from New York City. I arrived at JFK at about noon, and got a proposal of marriage about 20 minutes later, from a lady who works at Howard Beach subway station, who said she loved my accent! (Even though I sound nothing like Hugh Grant!)
Anyway, after about 2 hours on the A train, I'm now sitting at a bar between 79th and 80th St. on Amsterdam Ave., with Grrl and Chris. I'll be meeting some of the other ScienceBloggers this weekend, and doing plenty of boozing and a bit of shopping too.
mixingmemory | August 10, 2007Does anyone around here know of a program or programs that can do the following things with text:
Frequency counts for parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.).
Sort or score words/phrases based on how abstract or concrete they are.
UPDATE: Thank you everyone for the suggestions and tips. I'll try them out tomorrow when I get in the lab.
Since I asked without giving you any details, let me give you a brief, though vague description of the project. A few years ago, another psychologist and I wrote a review/theory paper about a particular type of category that we thought sounded…
mixingmemory | August 10, 2007Over at his blog The Loom, Carl Zimmer asked people to send him photos of their science-related tattoos. So far, it appears that only one (here) is cog sci related. Anyone else out there have a cog sci-related tattoo?
mixingmemory | August 8, 2007In my first month of blogging, way back in September of 2004, I posted a picture that my father (I think) had taken when he, my son, and I went to hang out in Centennial Park in Nashville while I was visiting home that summer. Here's the picture:
I remarked in the post that Nashville is just about the last place you'd expect to find a life-sized replica of the Parthenon, complete with a giant statue of Athena inside (to learn a little about why it's there, go here). I said this as someone who was born in Nashville, grew up 20 minutes away, and has been to Centennial Park many, many times…