Author Archive
abnormal psych
Technology, Entertainment, Design Talks
TED Talks Has anyone not heard of TED Talks? Apparently, because I still often find people who respond to mention of TED Talks in a way that reminds me of the old joke about medical students: Why do medical students have hunche...
Cool Runnings
Secret Fun
If grownups read bedtime stories out loud to one another, they could not be better entertained and better informed than by perusing Russ Walter’s SecretFun.com. Just what kinds of secret fun are on order here? Is it esoteric ...
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Entropy, order parameters, and complexity
The exponential growth of the internet makes the role of technical books, and especially textbooks, problematical for both the shelf-life of the information they convey and for their cost. James Sethna, Professor of Ph...
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Your own mouse brain
A few years ago I let slide a scanning electron microscope for sale on eBay for $800. I am glad I let it go. Dr. Partha Mitra and the good folks at MIT are presenting to the neuroscience community and the general public an atla...
Why Con
Love a gradient
A chorus of voices through millennia: Heaven’s breath, moving rhythmically, puts life into things. – Chinese (?) The one, the few, and the many. – Aristotle Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your l...
Why Con
Not conscious yet
I heard about Ramona from Ray Kurzweil. Ramona is a chatbot. Ray said she is a good conversationalist. Better than a chess playing dog with a weak end game. I really like Ray. He’s a great inventor, and a futurist with an .86...
Why Con
The science game
Once upon a time, guys and gals read the sports pages for the drama of how their teams and their favorite sports warriors were doing. Batting averages, total yards gained, what Federer wore to Center Court at Wimbledon, these w...
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Tungsten
“If one figures out how to create energy from the vacuum or transmit information faster than light, it’ll surely be done by applying the theory in new and unexpected ways, rather than by using specific experimental r...
brain science
We never know what we are talking about
Bertrand Russell said it. But when we try to talk about some things in neuroscience including consciousness science, mathematics creeps in on little cat feet. One of those things is patterns. Cook up a big ol’ heap o’ data,...
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nLab
Created by Cave Johnson in 1953, Aperture Science received an open ended contract from the U.S. government to develop a man-sized ad-hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain. This...