thinkness - March 2004 Archives

March 2004

Neural Darwinism - Edward Rothstein's NYTimes review of Wider Than the Sky, Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman's book about the nature of human consciousness. Rothstein gently chides Edelman for trying to shoehorn his complicated theory into a meager 148 pages; Rothstein's 2-page summary of... Posted in psychology & consciousness | 0 Trackbacks | 155 Comments
Justified bias - This is an old thought I wanted to catalog a while ago. I had been reading a few screeds from conservative types bitching that academia has such a terrible liberal bias, blah blah, same shit they say about the media.... Posted in emergence | 10 Trackbacks | 113 Comments
Neuromarketing marketing - Douglas Rushkoff, in his blog (thanks for the pointer, Chun), takes another whack at neuromarketing, which I posted about in October, and the NYTimes then quickly yanked away. (I'm not putting it back, dammit!) He spends a minute saying that... Posted in psychology & consciousness | 9 Trackbacks | 119 Comments
Internet saves us all - Allow me to wax overenthusiastic about the Internet for a moment. Like so many things in life, the Internet was cool, and then discovered, and then everybody went hogwild with, and it got overhyped and played out and sucked. But,... Posted in | 2 Trackbacks | 102 Comments

Dr Aas does poop transplants - Gene Weingarten's new column in the Washington Post is one of the funnier things I've ever read. Any further explanation will probably take away from it. Just read this and get transported away to that happy place.... Posted in | 8 Trackbacks | 145 Comments

Orgasmatron has arrived! - Remember that part of Woody Allen's Sleeper when Woody hides (alas, by himself) inside the Orgasmatron, the device that couples use in the future to have clean, no-contact, antiseptic sex? Well, they're getting close: The [Slightest Touch] stimulates the nerves... Posted in psychology & consciousness | 1 Trackbacks | 144 Comments
Fall of the Public Intellectual - I first became acquainted with David Brooks' writing about a year and a half ago when I came across his story Patio Man and the Sprawl People in the Weekly Standard. The piece made a lot of sense to me,... Posted in | 12 Trackbacks | 184 Comments

The triple mixer - A Kerry financial advisor said, "each plank in and of itself is not a silver bullet, but a building block toward a comprehensive plan." Everybody got that? The best thing I've seen since Ari Fleischer's triple mixer back in October.... Posted in language | 18 Trackbacks | 192 Comments
Smell is the biggest and best - People overlook the importance of smell at their own risk. We may be predominantly visual/verbal creatures, but smell connects our big cortexes with our most animalistic insides. Never forget... Oh, and I have specifics for you, kind reader. Fear not!... Posted in evolution , monkey vs robot | 0 Trackbacks | 233 Comments
Drugs? Genetic engineering!? Run for the hills!! - After a big pot bust, the San Diego Union-Tribune says, "Most of the cannabis, which was genetically engineered to be considerably stronger than ordinary marijuana, was grown in rental properties in such residential areas as Del Mar, Mira Mesa and... Posted in evolution by and for the people | 2 Trackbacks | 197 Comments
Color - Time for wasting - "Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." - Bertrand Russell, via Mark Robinson in Wired... Posted in color , language | 0 Trackbacks | 202 Comments

More on moderate environmentalism - Last week I mentioned the moderate environmentalism depicted in a New Scientist article. I just came across a Wired story by Drake Bennett that talks about Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace who has become disenchanted with the environmental movement,... Posted in | 0 Trackbacks | 150 Comments

Nibbling humans - New research suggests that part of what makes humans human was a mutation that decreased the size of our ancestors' jaw muscles, which allowed the skull to get bigger. The mutation came around 2.4M years ago, right around the time... Posted in evolution | 1 Trackbacks | 374 Comments

English history - I've always been interested in how modern English was formed from Old English and French/Latin influences. This site reveals a quick history about it. Neat stuff. I'm happy that it mentions that sometime in the 13th century, the French word... Posted in language | 3 Trackbacks | 170 Comments

Color -- Dynastic memories - Talking Points Memo says -- referring to the Bush admin's idiotic clutching to old, Cold War-era threats -- "As Talleyrand said of the restored Bourbons, they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing during their time in exile." Well said, especially... Posted in color , language | 0 Trackbacks | 182 Comments

Science's shame - This blog-post title works for big-S and little-s science. One of the most pathetic episodes in the recent annals of science was this study published in Science that claimed that ectasy (MDMA) was incredibly bad for your brain, much of... Posted in emergence | 0 Trackbacks | 208 Comments
No-way Nader and Third-way environmentalism - I just came across this http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1088336/posts " target=_blank>New Republic article that slags Nader, saying he hasn't only recently become an idiot -- he's been paranoid, monomaniacal, and disastrously inflexible and disloyal for decades. I believe it. Reminded me of this... Posted in political currents | 0 Trackbacks | 355 Comments

It takes a grandma to raise lots of children - Having grandmothers around increases the reproductive success of a family. Not terribly surprising, but interesting backup to the idea that strong extended-familial bonds are important for human survival. May also explain why human females are some of the only mammals... Posted in evolution | 18 Trackbacks | 275 Comments
Torturous temptation - I'm currently in day 7 of a 10-day fast. I want everything umami in my mouth. Right now.... Posted in ooh mommy | 0 Trackbacks | 164 Comments

Poop power! - A new type of experimental fuel cell takes human sewage and turns it into electricity. No guarantee this will ever become practical or efficient, but we can hope.... Posted in | 9 Trackbacks | 191 Comments

And another thing... - Speaking of the Union of Concerned Scientists, they are the same group that recently came out with that report saying the Bush administration was consistently ignoring scientific evidence in its decisions. Reason magazine's Ronald Bailey wrote a sort of critique... Posted in | 1 Trackbacks | 151 Comments
Extinct-o-Fish - Experiments by a group at Purdue found that the release of a genetically engineered fish into the wild could, conceivably, lead to the fish's extinction. They were working with a fish called a medaka that was genetically engineered to grow... Posted in evolution by and for the people | 8 Trackbacks | 181 Comments

Consciousness components - Alfred North Whitehead, renowned English philosopher and mathematician, broke human consciousness down into 'Instinct, Intellect, and Wisdom.' I like that.... Posted in psychology & consciousness | 7 Trackbacks | 192 Comments
Mendo no GMO - You know how there's dry counties around the American South? Well, now there's a no-GMO county: Mendocino, California, which illegalized transgenic crops through a referendum, despite the fact that a big biotech trade group spent the better part of a... Posted in evolution by and for the people | 8 Trackbacks | 150 Comments
Emerging biological truths - Leaf stomata and ants both show complex emergent behaviors based on pretty rudimentary rules, sort of like the simple computer simulation Game of Life. Neato.... Posted in emergence | 0 Trackbacks | 226 Comments