thinkness - April 2004 Archives

April 2004

Where falsity enters - Mickey Kaus points out that Paul Krugman's column may conflate lying and self-deception: In doing this, Krugman attributes conscious deception to people (the Bushies) who are probably (in reality and Orwellian theory) guilty only of self-deception. This tendency--to call opponents... Posted in psychology & consciousness | 0 Trackbacks | 35 Comments

Where we are - A few years ago, a friend of mine told me, very confidently, that we were living in an era that was ruled by irony. He told me this happily, insisting that irony was a great, beautiful, and honest thing. (Was... Posted in psychology & consciousness | 3 Trackbacks | 137 Comments
Sick man dragged to exuberance - I like the main conceit of this Thomas Friedman column: "Even through my jet lag, I can see that the sick man of Asia, otherwise known as the Japanese economy, just jumped out of bed and is now running laps... Posted in language , the lethal literal | 3 Trackbacks | 86 Comments

Nature of the beast - Former Harvard Professor Christian Schwabe has a whole different idea about how evolution works, though he can't get any folks in the mainstream science world to even give it a look. His "genomic potential hypothesis" is "the idea that life... Posted in evolution , monkey vs robot | 5 Trackbacks | 106 Comments
Teach me all the ways of umami - Yum. An umami seminar.... Posted in ooh mommy | 0 Trackbacks | 73 Comments

The Good Life - Wow, this is a really interesting essay written by Martin Seligman, the president of the American Psychological Association. So much of interest in here; it'll take me a while to internalize much of it. Some good points: - I'm pretty... Posted in monkey vs robot , psychology & consciousness | 4 Trackbacks | 91 Comments

The proof has left the pudding - Apparently, my favorite saying is wrong. "The proof is in the pudding" is supposed to be, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating." According to some guy named John Powers, anyway. And I have been misusing the word... Posted in color , language | 3 Trackbacks | 97 Comments

The pervasive logic of death - The Pope, in his annual Easter address, tried to dissuade people from following a "logic of death" in Iraq and other violence-filled areas. That's a heck of a statement coming from a guy who heads a religion whose symbol is... Posted in | 0 Trackbacks | 89 Comments

Cat is man's second-best friend - Cats were buried along with humans in Cyprus almost 10k years ago, seeming to push back the amicable relationship between the two species significantly further than previously known. (Human-dog relations seem to go back around 12k years.) I've talked a... Posted in evolution | 1 Trackbacks | 77 Comments

Anglophone GM-phobia - Sure, we Americans love technology and are relatively happy to take biotech foods. But the Aussies and Canucks are not diving in so eagerly. An interview with the vice president of the National Farmers Union of Canada shows they've tried... Posted in evolution by and for the people | 1 Trackbacks | 94 Comments
Dog bites man; teevee bites child - Recent studies show that ever hour per day of teevee that a toddler watches makes them 10% more likely to develop ADHD by age 7. This is really not very surprising at all, but it's good when those science guys... Posted in psychology & consciousness | 0 Trackbacks | 83 Comments
Better bananas through biotech - The bananas we currently eat are all from the same breed, the Cavendish. In fact, these bananas are all identical twins, planted and grown from clippings of sterile banana plants. Over the past few decades that almost the entire world... Posted in evolution by and for the people | 14 Trackbacks | 105 Comments

Stunted Americans - I was just about to blog about a genetically engineered super rat that escaped in Michigan until I realized it was an April fool's joke. I'm an idiot, clearly, so take everything I say with a shaker full of salt,... Posted in | 11 Trackbacks | 104 Comments
Biomimetics is cool - Don't have much to say about this summary of biomimetics by David Pescovitz. I suspect there's about a million other biomimetics efforts out there, no?... Posted in emergence | 0 Trackbacks | 126 Comments