Miscellaneous
mixingmemory | March 21, 2008Recently, I saw a famous learning theorist -- perhaps one of the two most influential learning theorists in the last 40 or so years; if ΔV = αβ(λ - ΣV) means anything to you, you'll have narrowed it down to the two -- give a talk at the behavioral neuroscience area's weekly colloqium here. The talk, on extinction, was interesting I suppose, but what really caught my attention was the speaker's language. At some point, I had to look around to make sure I wasn't at a Watson talk, circa 1915, because he kept saying things that I'd thought, well, people didn't say anymore. For example, twice…
mixingmemory | March 11, 2008Discussion of a paper titled "Respect and Religion," by Simon Blackburn, is making its way through the blogosphere, and sparking some interesting discussion (particularly over at Crooked Timber, but this is a good read too). The key quote from Blackburn's article is this:
We can respect, in the minimal sense of tolerating, those who hold false beliefs.
We can pass by on the other side. We need not be concerned to change them, and in a
liberal society we do not seek to suppress them or silence them. But once we are
convinced that a belief is false, or even just that it is irrational, we cannot…
jrosenhouse | February 29, 2008As usual, I'm late to this particular party. Over at BayBlab, a blogger calling himself “Anonymous Coward” offers up some choice words for the all-powerful, all-consuming, resistance-is-futile ScienceBlogs combine:
If you examine the elephant in the room, ScienceBlogs, the trend is maintained: politics, religion books, technology, education and music are tagged more often than biology or genetics. This suggests that their primary motives are entertainment rather than discussing science. Why? Because it pays. Seed Magazine and the bloggers themselves profit from the traffic. That's right,…
cmooney | February 25, 2008I don't have much to add to Sheril's recent post on Ralph Nader--and I certainly don't have anything nearly as clever to put up here as the Forrest Gump picture (although I will add that unlike Nader, Forrest did eventually stop running).
I will say this, though. As someone who was working at a liberal magazine, The American Prospect, at the time of the 2000 election, I observed a peculiar phenomenon. The older folks at the magazine, who remembered Ralph Nader as a hero, seemed more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the younger people like myself, who really only knew Nader…
neurophilosophy | February 6, 2008
(Photo from National Geographic)
A young victim of Kenya's post-election violence waits at a hospital in Nakuru to have an arrow removed from the back of his skull. The ethnic conflicts have claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, and the country now faces a humanitarian crisis, with about 310,000 people from the eastern and central provinces fleeing their homes.
developingintelligence | January 19, 2008UPDATE: Diebold effect explained?
Marc has an excellent summary of a flurry of Diebold-related discussions between me, "T", Marc, and Sean.
Sean also has a network model of the apparent Diebold effect.
I think we'll soon hear from Brian Mingus (who's running a meta-classifier) and Steve Freeman (an expert on machine-effects in elections) as well.
At bottom is a disagreement over how to infer causality in observational data, and how to diagnose the functional form of a data set.
The good news is two-fold: there may not be a large "Diebold effect" when nonlinear methods are used, and reason…
developingintelligence | January 17, 2008Update: Diebold Effect explained.
Here's a unique approach to understanding the Diebold effect: S.Walker has dealt with a potential multicolinearity problem between predictors by taking the principal components of a variety of demographic variables.
My brief rejoinder: the residuals of a logistic regression to predict the presence of Diebold machines based on Clinton Campaign presence, median age, % holding bachelor's degrees, percapita income, and population density are themselves correlated with the residuals of a regression to predict Clinton's votes based on the same predictors (R=.306,…
developingintelligence | January 17, 2008Update: Diebold effect explained.
Jon Stewart famously accused the Crossfire co-hosts as "hurting America" by imitating the style and appearance of political debate to disguise partisan hackery and vacuous strawman arguments.
In the case of the recent NH primary, the same criticism can be leveled at the mainstream media (e.g. this discussion of a red herring issue) - but also at some usually-thoughtful corners of the internet, including our very own Scienceblogs.
Mark at GoodMathBadMath, whom I eminently respect, has contributed trivial high-school anecdotes and parroted the essentially-…
developingintelligence | January 15, 2008UPDATES: Diebold effect explained. (previous: 1, 2, 3, 4 5 6 (a nonlinear approach) 7)
In contrast to exit pre-election polls, the final vote tally from the NH democratic primary shows a surprise victory for Hillary Clinton. People quickly noticed an anomaly in the voting tallies which seemed to show an advantage to Hillary conferred by the use of Diebold machines.
However, there was an easy explanation: towns with Diebold machines are more urban on average, and Hillary was always thought to have more support in urban areas. So, like many others, I was supremely irritated by the lack of…
neurophilosophy | December 30, 2007A Product of Evolution is an online store which "provide[s] intelligent designs for free thinking truth seekers." The products, which include mens and women's T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, and mugs, are "inspired by...the natural beauty of evolution, science, truth and free inquiry."
On the right is one of the garments sold at the store. The cotton T-shirt reads "God Free: all natural 100% nonreligious". It is available in white, ash grey and light blue and costs $20.99.
[Via Travis Morgan]
neurophilosophy | December 28, 2007Professor Colin Blakemore (right), a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford who was formerly chief executive of the Medical Research Council (MRC), has been denied a knighthood "because of his outspoken support for animal research."
This is not the first time Blakemore has been overlooked in the annual honours list, and the fact that the honours system is corrupt and outdated will probably be little consolation to him.
Unlike those who have bought the title "Sir", Blakemore deserves a peerage, as he is one of the few scientists who have publicly supported animal research, even though…
sheril | December 26, 2007= 3.1415926...
Over at Correlations, I'm having fun with Ï:
Just think: patterns exist that establish themselves out of disorder. So could it be that a higher order of some kind constructed a universe ascribing to specified geometrical axioms that result in early trajectories forward? And what if these single points of origin determine not only where we came from, but where we are headed?
cmooney | December 23, 2007As some of you will no doubt already have noticed, the main ScienceBlogs page now has up a cool feature that runs you through the top scienceblogging subjects of 2007.
Sheril and I are proud to note that the Intersection has been at the epicenter of three of the biggest blogologues from this year: framing science (April), Cyclone Sidr (November), and ScienceDebate2008 (December).
Who knows what next year will bring....
thusspakezuska | December 10, 2007Fellow Scienceblogger Steve Higgins over at Omnibrain introduced me to the Daily Coyote. I have fallen in love. And I bet you will, too.
thusspakezuska | December 2, 2007I finally had a chance to check in and I discovered three comments languishing in the junk folder, waiting for me to promote them to publication. A few were weeks old. I'm really sorry about that. I'm involved in a 24/7 caretaking situation and just don't have much spare time. I'll try to pay attention a little more frequently.
jrosenhouse | November 26, 2007I am pleased to report that Jim's comment in the big Creation Museum post is the 10,000th comment left at this blog since the jump to ScienceBlogs. As always, many thanks to all the folks who have stopped by to offer their thoughts!
cmooney | November 26, 2007In the past three months, I have done three separate events on university campuses that have involved, in some way, panel commentaries upon books. Two of the books were my own; one was Mike Tidwell's (see here and here).
As a result, I have gotten some sense of what I think works in these contexts, and what doesn't. So I have designed this post--which I'd planned to publish much earlier, before Cyclone Sidr and Thanksgiving, but have kept on hold until now--in the hope that it might help professors and administrators across the country who are trying to put together these types of fora.…
jrosenhouse | November 21, 2007Impressive company I'm keeping! Two of my SciBlings have recently received some deeply cool honors.
Over at Stranger Fruit, John Lynch has received the Carnegie/CASE professor of the year award for the state of Arizona. Very nice!
Meanwhile, Jonah Lehrer of The Frontal Cortex has snagged a place on Amazon's ten best science books of the year list for Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Again, very nice.
Congratulations to John and Jonah.
As for everyone else, have a Happy Thanksgiving! Driving tip: If you're travelling from Virginia to New Jersey via I-95 on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving…
neurophilosophy | November 1, 2007
This knitted woollen Brain Bag, designed by Jun Takashi for the Undercover label, is the ultimate accessory for the fashion-conscious female neuroscientist.
[Via Boing Boing]