News
dmunger | May 29, 2006Interesting article in the Washington Post about video game addiction in South Korea (via Slashdot). From the article:
An estimated 2.4 percent of the population from 9 to 39 are believed to be suffering from game addiction, according to a government-funded survey. Another 10.2 percent were found to be "borderline cases" at risk of addiction -- defined as an obsession with playing electronic games to the point of sleep deprivation, disruption of daily life and a loosening grip on reality. Such feelings are typically coupled with depression and a sense of withdrawal when not playing,…
dmunger | May 26, 2006Chris Chatham has an excellent summary of a talk by University of Chicago neurologist / mathematician Jack Cowan, who has come up with a mathematical explanation of a variety of common hallucinations.
The development of orientation and spatial frequency maps in V1 [a region of the brain which maps images as they are transmitted from the eyes] can be simulated with some fairly "simple" (maybe simple to Jack Cowan, but not to me!) self-organizing functions, such that "orientation and spatial frequency are the zeroth and first order spherical harmonics" and "the coefficient of the first order…
dmunger | May 25, 2006Japanese researchers have found a way to use a human brain image to control a robot.
While this isn't exactly "mind control" -- the human still has to physically move his body in order to create the proper brain image, it's a fascinating example of how things might work in the future. There are still quite a few obstacles to overcome, however. An MRI machine is a huge device, and it must be operated in a clean room away from sources of magnetic interference. It's not like you could use this thing to drive your car.
Also, the headline on the news story is misleading: "Brain waves" are not…
drorzel | April 18, 2006Two items from the sports pages this morning:
1) Not really a sports story, but I saw it first on ESPN: two Duke lacrosse players have been indicted. It really doesn't deserve a whole "CSI: Durham" post, because it's a sealed indictment, so there's basically no real information. But if you're following the story, there's the latest.
2) More importantly, from ESPN's NBA pages:
Larry Brown does not plan to coach the Knicks' final two games because of acid reflux, ESPN learned Monday morning.
Maybe I'm just a sad, pathetic little person, but this makes me feel like less of a wuss for bitching…
drorzel | April 13, 2006Via Inside Higher Ed, a story with the nearly unbeatable headline: Feds Pounce on Student Dresses As a Ninja. Why was a student running around the Georgia campus dressed as a ninja?
Ransom told The Red & Black student newspaper that he had left a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was snared by agents with guns drawn.
Damnit, now I want to know more! What is the Wesley Foundation, and why are they running ninja vs. pirate smackdowns on college campuses? Or, more precisely, why aren't they running them on my campus?
"Arr!" "Yaaah!!!" Brilliant!
(Note: I don't want to know…
drorzel | April 12, 2006Having previously mentioned the Duke lacrosse mess, I feel obliged to at least note the latest events: DNA tests failed to link any of the players to the crime, but the DA says the alleged victim has identified one of them.
I don't plan to make this a regularly recurring feature, because the whole thing is sort of squalid and depressing. If, however, you find that you just can't get enough, you can find lots of coverage elsewhere. There's a fairly comprehensive and mildly pro-Duke blog (via Dave), and of course there's the strongly anti-Duke coverage at Alas, A Blog. (Though I have serious…
drorzel | April 6, 2006As anybody who has read my comments on basketball knows, I have an intense dislike of the Duke men's basketball team, mostly due to their fans, who combine the arrogance typical of fans of a dominant program with a sort of snobbery regarding their own class and cleverness. This is particularly aggravating given the institutional contrast between Duke's status as an elite private university and their main competitors' status as larger, more diverse public institutions-- it pushes my class consciousness buttons, and makes their antics all the more annoying.
In a weird way, this has prevented me…