Random Thoughts

According to a well-known British figure: ... the true meaning of the Christmas story will not be revealed until Easter – or possibly much later. Now who said that?  Answer at the end of this blog. I am now preparing to give my brain a little bit of a rest while we ride out Yuletide.  Therefore, I wish all readers: These fellows were keeping warm in January of this year.  For more meerkats, see also Erdmännchen (Suricata suricatta) im Kölner Zoo - 01 If you would like something to get your teeth into, try The first state seceded from the Union 150 years ago; the argument still…

Full of fear, I nervously packed the first Calliope test build into my carry-on badge and made ready to fly from DC to San Francisco.  Would the TSA (airport security) people allow me to ship a liter-sized array of PCB boards stuck together with PVC separators? This 'Traveling with DIY Electronics' article has good recommendations for international travel, where there exists customs forms and other niceties.  However, I was traveling domestic, and there isn't really a 'this is not a bomb' form I can fill out in advance. In my favor was an absolute lack of electronics.  This is…

An excellent interview-style article created by one of my Facebook colleagues, Sniff Code.A hybridized product of Science and Philosophy. Introduction: Dr. Shapiro believes that it might be time for science to rethink its model of Intelligent Life. His proposition, though simple, isn’t exactly easy to swallow: he believes that the human body is as conscious of its own existence as the brain itself. Furthermore, he contends that the body has a master plan. In his own words, “the natural goal of the body is to evolve to a state of not needing one.” In other words, a human body isn’t…

Just saw a PR blurb about a new iPhone game called Squid Kid. Squid Kid lets the player swing in any direction, cut corners, find short cuts and capture the most notorious villains the ocean has ever seen, what more do you want! . . . SquidKid's touch control system is simple to learn while the levels have hidden depths, giving users days worth of fun game play. Squid Kid adds a twist to the normal run and jump, Super Mario Bros style platform games, as you can swing and fling yourself in any direction. Wait, this sounds really familiar. Where did I . . . oh yeah! Someone wrote this for…

Like puzzles?  Who doesn't? Long-time Science 2.0 contributor Garth Sundem - and by long time I mean loooong time, since 2006, during the beta period - is in the New York Times Science section during their theme on puzzles.     So you can see his brain benders in John Tierney's latest article on the neuroscience aspects of why people like puzzles and on Benedict Carey's article about a patient who could not form new memories yet did puzzles constantly.   There are others but the whole topic is puzzles so I am not going to just tell you where they are. Oh, and they didn't…

The semester is all over except for finals week, so this weekend and next week will have me busy grading all the papers I assigned. It's good work, busy work, and nice to see how much stronger writers and thinkers my students have become through the course of the semester. Woo was a large component of my teaching in my developmental writing and freshman composition classes; the students learned about cognitive biases and fallacies, how to define them, and how to recognize them. They learned how to recognize woo, how to read ads and be on the lookout for key words signalling woo and…

Science 2.0 is making the cartoon circuit! One of my recent pieces on the brain, computers, and the vagueness of language (Why Meanings Must Be Fuzzy) motivated this comic strip at Calamities of Nature: http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=462 Calamities is the brain child of Tony Piro, and I have been reading his smart, short, nerdy, good-looking, science-ish, and – most importantly – funny comics for nearly a year, after stumbling into his site. Science 2.0 readers and writers are naturals for Calamities, because we’re not only nerds, but don’t take ourselves too seriously. …

It seems that Abigail and Jacob will be at the top of Santa's gift-list this Christmas morning. A school rewards site says that children with these names are most likely to behave well.   Little girls called Beth and little boys named Josh will not be so fortunate; children with those names appear less prone to good behavior (so more prone to naughtiness?  Look for an evolutionary psychology study coming soon!)   Whatever your name, it is only a 'draft' list and not biological determinism so kids still have three weeks to improve their behavior. How did they determine…

Recently, two posts of Lisa Jo Rudy’s at About.com have garnered the disdain of loyal AoA (Age of Autism blog) readers. Anne Dachel felt strongly enough to write a lengthy post about the upcoming tsunami (The AoAites are nothing if not consistent in their descriptors) and Rudy’s questions concerning whether working towards making our children normal is a worthwhile goal and the funding of our children’s education and therapies. Raising questions can be a precarious thing to do; there’s the appearance that the questions raised reflect the opinions of the person who raised the questions in the…

In light of today's *way* over-hyped reporting of "new alien life" discovered by NASA-funded research (GFAJ-1, the arsenic microbe), I thought this song would be appropriate. By the way, find out the scoop on the NASA announcement here.