thinkness - July 2004 Archives

July 2004

Theory. Not film. - This may be a veritably ancient [in web terms] article, but it comes back around to some issues of academic humanities mentioned in thinkness:Film theory caught on in the 1970s and 1980s, she points out, a time when many cinema... Posted in thinking progress | 12 Trackbacks | 352 Comments

Addition through subtraction - Hey, this is the most interesting article thinkness has seen since... well, that thing about money yesterday. This research shows that when rats consume artificial sweetener is throws their natural eating-tasting-satiety system all out of whack and they end up... Posted in monkey vs robot | 0 Trackbacks | 351 Comments

How not to buy happiness - Wow. This is a fascinating article. It claims that money can buy happiness, but only if you spend it right. Robert Frank says, essentially, that there are certain things we can buy that we will soon get used to, so... Posted in psychology & consciousness | 2 Trackbacks | 201 Comments
Boat-ax injection - Anecdote from The Hindu about a man who sells historical American curious: "He points to an axe and says that it was the same used by George Washington to chop the cherry tree. When asked how it looks so shiny,... Posted in random bits of detritus | 1 Trackbacks | 198 Comments
The NYTimes is mine! (and yours) - There is a really extremely useful website that generates permanent links to NYTimes stories. I've been hoping for something like this for many moons, and now we finally have it. Let's hope it doesn't get too too popular, because then... Posted in random bits of detritus | 0 Trackbacks | 134 Comments

That transgenic glow - Catching fireflies at night, like playing baseball in late afternoon, or splashing around a pool with the sun at its blazing apex, is one of the idyllic images of many childhood summers. Would-be entomologists pluck the glowing marvels from the... Posted in evolution by and for the people | 0 Trackbacks | 157 Comments
Lose the disgust - thinkness picked up on the debate over the usefulness of disgust a couple of months ago. Now psychologists Paul Bloom jumps into the fray and says we should be over disgust (it was so hundreds of years ago). The incidents... Posted in monkey vs robot , psychology & consciousness | 0 Trackbacks | 218 Comments

The recipe for a great team - Sport is one of the most cliche-ridden ventures around (probably just behind journalism), so it's not so surprising to see this quote from Rangers GM John Hart pop up on ESPN.com: "'But I'm not going to short-circuit this plan we've... Posted in language | 119 Comments

Words for worlds - Astrobiologists are stoked that the OED just added 'astrobiology' to its authoritative pages. About time this modern, very interdisciplinary study is getting broad attention. Also interesting to see the little discussion about the roots of the word and what exactly... Posted in language | 0 Trackbacks | 111 Comments
Modern evolution - This sort of reads like physics for poets, but there are a couple ideas of note about evolution still going on for us humans.... Posted in evolution | 0 Trackbacks | 147 Comments

Apostrophe placement is important - "The stadium loudspeakers blare 'We're Not Going To Take It' so loud that all three of the team mascot's ears bleed." Heh.... Posted in language | 18 Trackbacks | 180 Comments

Tough on the ticker - The expected lifespan of a professional bicycle racer is only slightly over than 50 years. Whoa. thinkness will try to remember that the next time I criticize myself for being lazy; hey, it's for my own good.... Posted in random bits of detritus | 0 Trackbacks | 162 Comments
Mendo's footsteps - When Mendocino County proposed an initiative outlawing transgenic crops, biotech companies shat a brick, thinking the idea mights spread, so they spent $600k -- 6 times as much as the supporters -- in a losing effort to defeat the ban.... Posted in evolution by and for the people | 2 Trackbacks | 116 Comments

A book all about umami - Yes.... Posted in ooh mommy | 2 Trackbacks | 159 Comments
A meme by any other name - Interesting story on people's given names as memes. I think The Economist blows it, however, in its main point: they suggest that the vicissitudes in naming children seems to be attributable to random drift, and that this casts doubt on... Posted in emergence | 9 Trackbacks | 130 Comments
Smart animals? - Recent research shows two genes whose evolution was apparently pretty important for the emergence of our whopping human intelligence. Will scientists soon take, say, 50 genes tied in with high intelligence, put them in a pig, and make a really... Posted in evolution by and for the people | 2 Trackbacks | 174 Comments

Big gay animal science - Apparently, there's lots of homosexuality in other animals and it's not entirely dissimilar from our human homosexuality. Some brain-chemistry hoo-ha may at least partially explain male gay-ness both in humans and rams, for instance. And there's this: "Sometimes the females... Posted in evolution | 19 Trackbacks | 114 Comments