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gregladen | January 15, 2009
... like, when you hear it on playback from a tape recorder.
Sound can reach the inner ear by way of two separate paths, and those paths in turn affect what we perceive. Air-conducted sound is transmitted from the surrounding environment through the external auditory canal, eardrum and middle ear to the cochlea, the fluid-filled spiral in the inner ear. Bone-conducted sound reaches the cochlea directly through the tissues of the head.
When you speak, sound energy spreads in the air around you and reaches your cochlea through your external ear by air conduction. Sound also travels from your…
cortex | January 15, 2009One of my recurring weaknesses as a writer is a reliance on the following two transitions:
"Consider the X"
and
Look, for instance, at the X
I use them all the time, even though I know they are lazy linguistic bridges, cheap transitions from idea to the next. Over at Language Log, Benjamin Zimmer has a wonderful history of the phrase. It turns out my laziness is actually an allusion to Luke:
This crutch for lazy (science) writers goes all the way back to the New Testament. Here are the famous lines of Luke 12:24 and 12:27 in the King James Version:
"Consider the ravens: for they neither sow…
sb admin | January 15, 2009By Anthony Robbins & Phyllis Freeman
If our new President and the Congress accept the pervasive perception that universal access to medical services will address all important health needs, our nation will miss a magnificent opportunity to prevent disease and to hold off unnecessary medical care expenditures. Moreover, if Congress and the President do not get it right now, the door of political opportunity may not open for many years for a second chance.Â
Impending health care reform could take advantage of the extensive medical services system, at little additional cost, to accomplish…
cortex | January 15, 2009Here's James Surowiecki on the surprising link between easy credit and rampant fraud, as epitomized by the Madoff ponzi scheme:
Fraud is a boom-time crime because it feeds on the faith of investors, and during bubbles that faith is overflowing. So while robbing a bank seems to be a demand-driven crime, robbing bank shareholders is all about supply. In the classic work on investor hysteria, "Manias, Panics, and Crashes," the economist Charles Kindleberger wrote that during bubbles "the supply of corruption increases . . . much like the supply of credit." This is more than a simple analogy:…
gregladen | January 15, 2009Answer: Depends on the joke.
The Czech EU presidency has apologised for an art installation it commissioned that lampoons national stereotypes.
Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra apologised directly to Bulgaria, which has formally complained over its depiction as a toilet...
The following is a silent overview of the work:
The quote above comes from a BBC story which has a BBC TV reporter creaming in his jeans over the insensitivity of the Czech artist, and the Czech artist being all arty and shit.
Ethnic sensitivity and humor: They don't mix, and you won't find either one in…
mspringer | January 15, 2009Doing a lot of driving this week, and since the interstates I'm driving (I-49 and I-10) are deathly boring, I have a lot of time to think. Being a physics nerd, I do a lot of thinking about physics. This trip the physics thing I'm thinking about is tire pressure.
Fig 1. A car. From the Wikipedia article "car". Research!
Tire pressure made a brief blip during the news a while back when it as a contributor to engine efficiency made a side appearance in the presidential election in regard to global warming. Climate gets done to death around here though, so let's talk about pressure as what…
tqa | January 15, 2009
According to the website for the Giants' Shoulders blog carnival, the next edition is supposed to appear here, today, so I was planning to post it here, today. However, when I was going through the entries, I noticed that the submission form on the Blog Carnival submission website claims that the carnival will appear here tomorrow, and has the submission deadline set at 23:59 tonight. On the off chance that another entry comes in, I'm going to go with that. I'll post the carnival as soon after the deadline as I can, and certainly no later than first thing tomorrow morning.
sb admin | January 15, 2009by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
Last week we alerted you to a gross miscarriage of justice involving two doctors in Iran. Many of you responded by calling the Mission of Iran at the UN and signing a petition. I wish I could report good news in this update, but so far what we have heard is not encouraging. From an email from Physicians for Human Rights USA:
I wanted to send you an urgent update on the case of Drs Kamiar and Arash Alaei. We still do not have a verdict in the case, but have released a press statement this evening in response to reports out of Iran today that are very…
nisbetmc | January 15, 2009
I am in Venice, Italy this week to participate in an expert workshop on research in science communication held at the historic Venice Institute of Science & the Arts (above). Already there have been some terrific presentations and I will have more to report later. But for now, in advance of my visit, I was invited to contribute an op-ed to the Science section of La Stampa, one of Italy's national newspapers. Go here to read a PDF of the op-ed in Italian. The draft English version that was then translated is below.
Science Communication: From Transmission to Conversation
Over the past…
thescian | January 14, 2009because he is the archetype of all those who hold that end justifies means. Wearing Machiavelli's shoes comes World-is-Flat-and-Black-and-White Mr Friedman, madly dancing with his column in NY Times on the recent gaza flare-up. Read Glenn Greenwald's criticism to restore some balance to this garbage from Mr Friedman.
pharyngula | January 14, 2009Fans of classic SF will be grieved to learn that both Patrick McGoohan, AKA The Prisoner, and Ricardo Montalban, AKA Khan Noonien Singh, will now only be accessible on DVD in the movie room of your local SF convention and on late night television.
We want information. Did Montalban quote Moby Dick on his deathbed?
gregladen | January 14, 2009HOLLAND TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Three New Jersey siblings whose names have Nazi connotations have been placed in state custody, police said. The children, ranging in age from 3 to under 1, were removed from their home Friday. They drew attention last month when a supermarket bakery refused to put the name of the oldest -- Adolf Hitler Campbell -- on a birthday cake.
State workers didn't tell police why the children were taken, police Sgt. John Harris said.
story
Hat tip: Virgil the Nazi Hunter Samms
gregladen | January 14, 2009Pursuant to the upcoming conference, Almost Diamonds has posted a list of recommended Science Fiction blogs. There is also a list of recommenced science and tech blogs, science art. Here.
sb admin | January 14, 2009By Lindsey Realmuto
As of January 1, 2009 we can all rest assured that pharmaceutical companies may voluntarily stop barraging our physicians and nurses with free mugs, pens, and trinkets carrying drug logos. PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry trade group, has updated their industry marketing guidelines, and the companies that choose to comply with them will stop giving free logoed items to prescribers. Thank goodness! Now I feel safe that my doctor is free from the shackles of industry influence.
Returning to reality, what we as patients and consumers should be more concerned about is how…
jrosenhouse | January 14, 2009Today's New York TImes features two op-eds essential to clear thinking about the situation in Gaza. The first comes from journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. He paints a grim picture of the enemy Israel faces. It is a useful corrective to those who think Hamas is a leigitmate negotiating partner interested, with the right incentives, in peaceful coexistence with Israel. You really must go read the whole thing, since it is impossible to capture all that is right with it in a few quotes. But here goes:
What a phantasmagorically strange conflict the Arab-Israeli war had become! Here was a Saudi-…
gregladen | January 14, 2009Largest-ever study of US child health begins
(AP) -- Scientists begin recruiting mothers-to-be in North Carolina and New York this week for the largest study of U.S. children ever performed - aiming eventually to track 100,000 around the country from conception to age 21.
This will be very interesting in about 20 years.
tqa | January 14, 2009
Just a quick note - the next edition of The Giants' Shoulders carnival will appear right here tomorrow afternoon. Any last-minute submissions can be sent to me (dunfordm (at) gmail.com).
pharyngula | January 14, 2009
The intelligent design creationists are jubilant — a paper has been published that shows that organisms were front-loaded with genes for future function! It describes "'latent' or 'preexistent' evolutionary potential" in our history, they say.
One small problem. The paper says nothing of the kind. It does mention latent potential, but it means something entirely different from something that is 'front-loaded', which is a sneaky little elision on the part of the creationists. There isn't even the faintest whiff of a teleological proposal in the paper at all, which makes me wonder if they even…
cortex | January 14, 2009Here's the philosopher David Chalmers, arguing that it's time we expand our definition of the "mind":
"The key idea is that when bits of the environment are hooked up to your cognitive system in the right way, they are, in effect, part of the mind, part of the cognitive system. So, say I'm rearranging Scrabble tiles on a rack. This is very close to being analogous to the situation when I'm doing an anagram in my head. In one case the representations are out in the world, in the other case they're in here. We say doing an anagram on a rack ought be regarded as a cognitive process, a process of…