Freedom By Any Other Definition Of Culture "Does the notion of 'freedom' really mean the same thing in Baghdad as it does in Boston? Newly published research suggests the answer is probably no. It's a question of whether one is more oriented toward independence or interdependence -- an attitude that is largely conditioned by one's cultural background."

Miller-McCune 07/02/09

email this story | Posted 07/03/09@04:43AM

The Master's Degree: Valuable Credential, Intellectual Journey Or Waste Of Time And Money? The NY Times Room for Debate blog asks four contributors: "How do students know if an M.A. is worth it or not? What degrees might be worth getting, and which are not? How does a student weigh the risks and benefits of taking that intermediate step in higher education?"

New York Times 06/30/09

email this story | Posted 07/02/09@09:20PM

After 100 Years, Back To The Futurists "This small throng of early 20th-century artists and writers wanted nothing less than the total reinvention of Italian culture, and their recommended program - Kill the past! Embrace the future! - held an unexpected appeal for a nostalgist like me. … [Yet] their belligerence made me nervous. Along with exalting speed and technology (prescient), they were dangerously infatuated with violence (disturbing)." And in some ways, "the Futurists actually did predict the future: Is not Target-esque 'design for all' an outgrowth of the Futurist call for the immersion of art in everyday life?" (And then there's The Futurist Cookbook.)

Slate 06/29-07/03/09

email this story | Posted 07/02/09@09:03PM

Might Compassion Be Racially Biased? "The brain is not an equal opportunities organ, it seems. An imaging study of Chinese and Caucasian people has found that their brains respond less strongly to the pain of strangers whose ethnicity is different when compared with strangers of their own race."

New Scientist 07/01/09

email this story | Posted 07/01/09@09:56PM

You Are What You Speak: Grammar Really Does Shape Thought "Do English, Indonesian, Russian, and Turkish speakers end up attending to, partitioning, and remembering their experiences differently just because they speak different languages?"

Edge 06/12/09

email this story | Posted 07/01/09@09:55PM

You Mean My Chaotic Brain Is A Good Thing? "Though much of the time it runs in an orderly and stable way, every now and again it suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise. Neuroscientists have long suspected as much. Only recently, however, have they come up with proof that brains work this way. Now they are trying to work out why. Some believe that near-chaotic states may be crucial to memory, and could explain why some people are smarter than others."

New Scientist 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/30/09@09:58PM

Learn To Echolocate Like A Dolphin! "Ordinary people with no special skills can use tongue clicks to visualize objects by listening to the way sound echoes off their surroundings, according to acoustic experts at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain. […] Martinez and his colleagues are developing a system to teach people how to use echolocation, a skill that could be particularly useful for the blind and for people who work under dark or smoky conditions, like firefighters - or cat burglars."

Wired 06/30/09

email this story | Posted 06/30/09@09:56PM

Regrets File: I'd Have Been A Math Whiz -- If I'd Played D&D "There are many reasons that I wish I had played Dungeons and Dragons, or any RPG for that matter, when I was younger. Sure, it wouldn't have garnered me much in the way of cool points, but I'd ostensibly revoked mine at the door by dressing like a hippie and burying my face in books." The game requires doing simple math, and connecting that with the fun of role-playing means D&D players get good at it.

Wired 06/30/09

email this story | Posted 06/30/09@08:03AM

The Art Project, The Waffle Shop, And A Little Sociology "It was supposed to be a two-semester community artistic social experiment for a Carnegie Mellon University art class, videotaping hip late-night crowds discussing what was on their minds while they ate waffles. But the combination of homemade treats and homegrown reality show has proven to be an unusual recipe for success since Waffle Shop opened its doors last fall."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/29/09@04:25AM

Malcom Gladwell Ponders The Cost Of Free "Giving something away means that a lot of it will be wasted. But because it costs almost nothing to make things, digitally, we can afford to be wasteful. The elaborate mechanisms we set up to monitor and judge the quality of content are, Anderson thinks, artifacts of an era of scarcity: we had to worry about how to allocate scarce resources like newsprint and shelf space and broadcast time. Not anymore."

The New Yorker 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/29/09@04:21AM

The Internet Is Vulnerable - A Plan To Save It? "A series of catastrophic failures seems to suggest that the internet is rather more vulnerable to accidents, earthquakes or misplaced ships' anchors than people thought. At tens, perhaps hundreds, of places around the world, the net seems to be hanging by a thread. It badly needs upgrading, but clearly we can't just tear up sections of the network and rebuild them from scratch."

New Scientist 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/29/09@04:00AM

The Limitations Of Free "When the world started to go digital 15 years ago, clever people in the music and film businesses were frightened because they knew how much easier it would make copying. But some of it is entirely unexpected. Wikipedia and open-source software, for instance, are the products of something that has floored economists - that people enjoy doing, and will do for free, all sorts of things that other people regard as work."

The Observer (UK) 06/28/09

email this story | Posted 06/28/09@07:46PM

We Love The Idea That There Are Multiple Ways To Learn. Just One Problem Though... "There probably is just a single intelligence or capacity to learn, not multiple ones devoted to independent tasks. To varying degrees, some individuals have this capacity, and others do not."

Chronicle of Higher Education 06/15/09

email this story | Posted 06/26/09@05:30AM

Where Heaven Comes From "The idea that Christians go to heaven upon dying isn't found in the oldest books in the New Testament, such as the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Mark. In this excerpt from the new book The Evolution of God, Robert Wright suggests that early Christianity adopted the idea from a competing religion in the Roman Empire."

Beliefnet 06/20/09

email this story | Posted 06/25/09@09:47PM

Why Do Celebrities Stay Famous Regardless Of Their Talent? Because "people need something to talk about. The human desire to find common ground in conversation pushes us to discuss already popular people," says a Stanford professor. To test this hypothesis, the research team turned not to the unquantifiable Paris Hilton and her ilk, but to the statistics-rich realm of professional baseball.

New Scientist 06/24/09

email this story | Posted 06/25/09@09:38PM

France Is McDonald's No. 2 Market? How?? "Indeed, the quarter-pounded conquest of France was not the result of some fiendish American plot to subvert French food culture. It was an inside job, and not merely in the sense that the French public was lovin' it - the architects of McDonald's strategy in France were French."

Slate 06/25/09

email this story | Posted 06/25/09@09:09PM

Immortality, Glory And Happiness "This is what the Greeks called 'glory,' and it expresses a very different understanding of immortality than is common amongst us. One lives on only through the stories, accounts and anecdotes that are told about one. It is in this that happiness consists. This has a very peculiar consequence for societies like the United States, so singlemindedly devoted to the pursuit of happiness. We assume that the question of happiness is a question of my happiness or, more properly, of my relation to my happiness. But why?"

New York Times 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/25/09@01:59AM

'Why Does That Chocolate Chip Cookie Have Such Power Over Me?' Former US Food and Drug Administration head David Kessler posed that question, which most of us have asked ourselves. "Is it the cookie, the representation of the cookie in my brain? I spent seven years trying to figure out the answer."

New York Times 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/23/09@09:35PM

A Musical Call And Response In Mice's Mating Dance "A few years ago, researchers determined that when male mice are courting, they produce ultrasonic vocalizations that have an elaborate structure, similar to bird songs. Left unanswered was the question of whether mice sing for a similar purpose -- to mark their territory and attract mates." New research says "male mice songs definitely elicit interest from the opposite sex."

The New York Times 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/23/09@05:32AM

Report: Email Patterns Can Predict Disaster "Email logs can provide advance warning of an organisation reaching crisis point. That's the tantalising suggestion to emerge from the pattern of messages exchanged by Enron employees."

New Scientist 06/22/09

email this story | Posted 06/22/09@07:42AM

San Francisco College Lets Donors Name Courses When They Donate The cash-strapped City College of San Francisco is deep in the red and having to slash classes. So it's soliciting donors. And they can designate their money to underwrite specific courses. "If you want to pay for one class at City College, it's $6,000. And if you designate it for that class, we'll make sure the class is reinstated, and we'll put your name on it."

San Francisco Chronicle 06/22/09

email this story | Posted 06/22/09@07:25AM

That Aha! Moment - Science Studies Daydreaming "In today's innovation economy, engineers, economists and policy makers are eager to foster creative thinking among knowledge workers. Until recently, these sorts of revelations were too elusive for serious scientific study... Lately, researchers have been able to document the brain's behavior during Eureka moments by recording brain-wave patterns and imaging the neural circuits that become active as volunteers struggle to solve anagrams, riddles and other brain teasers."

The Wall Street Journal 06/19/09

email this story | Posted 06/22/09@06:35AM

Why Can't We Concede Defeat? "At the upper reaches of society, we litigate ever more readily and accept misfortune with ever less stoicism. Being fired from a job becomes the beginning of a negotiation, while a routine school suspension instantly goes to appeal. In part, this is probably the inevitable reckoning for a culture that gives trophies to every Little Leaguer because, as the saying goes, we're all winners."

New York Times Magazine 06/21/09

email this story | Posted 06/21/09@05:19PM

Page Versus Screen - Time For A Smackdown Do we read differently on the computer screen from how we read on the printed page?

Boston Globe 06/19/09

email this story | Posted 06/19/09@07:45AM

New Study: "Sleeping On It" Might Not Improve Decision-Making "Sleeping on a complex decision may not help you make the best choice after all. So say two studies that question the evidence for unconscious decision-making."

New Scientist 06/19/09

email this story | Posted 06/19/09@07:38AM

The Year Everything Changed: 1968? 1989? No, It's 1959 Fred Kaplan: "Several years ago, it occurred to me that many of my favorite groundbreaking record albums, books, and movies … were all released in 1959. Was this just coincidence, or was it part of a pattern? … The more I looked into it, the more it struck me that 1959 really was a pivotal year - not only in culture but also in politics, society, science, sex: everything."

Slate 06/18/09

email this story | Posted 06/18/09@09:58PM

Maybe We Do Need A Hole In The Head A Russian neurophysiologist "is exploring the idea that people with Alzheimer's disease could be treated by drilling a hole in their skull. In fact, he is so convinced of the benefits of trepanation that he claims it may help anyone from their mid-40s onwards to slow or even reverse the process of age-related cognitive decline. Can he be serious?"

New Scientist 06/17/09

email this story | Posted 06/18/09@09:50PM

Some Japanese Males Start Mellowing Out, Making The Rest Of The Country Nervous "Ryoma Igarashi likes going for long drives through the mountains, taking photographs of Buddhist temples and exploring old neighborhoods. He's just taken up gardening, growing radishes in a planter in his apartment." This sort of 20-something male would be completely unremarkable in Seattle or Munich. But in Japan, these "soushoku danshi" (literally, "grass-eating boys") are precipitating a national debate about masculinity.

Slate 06/15/09

email this story | Posted 06/17/09@09:38PM

A Quest We Can All Get Behind: Where To Get The Best Sleep? "It was the mythical supersleep, deeper than any other, the Atlantis of the unconscious. It was a heavy dose of what scientists call slow-wave sleep. I've been trying to find it again ever since - but the question is, where?"

Slate 06/15/09

email this story | Posted 06/17/09@09:33PM

The University Major Most Common Among Terrorists (It's Not Art History) Researchers "found that engineers are three to four times as likely as other graduates to be present among the members of violent Islamic groups in the Muslim world since the 1970s. … The largest single group were engineers, with 78 out of 178, followed by 34 taking Islamic studies, 14 studying medicine, 12 economics and business studies, and 7 natural sciences."

New Scientist 06/15/09

email this story | Posted 06/16/09@09:56PM

Listening To, And Silencing, The Critic Within "Psychologists say many of their patients are plagued by a harsh Inner Critic -- including some extremely successful people who think it's the secret to their success. An Inner Critic can indeed roust you out of bed in the morning, get you on the treadmill (literally and figuratively) and spur you to finish that book or symphony or invention. But the desire to achieve can get hijacked by harsh judgment and unrelenting fear."

Wall Street Journal 06/16/09

email this story | Posted 06/16/09@05:11AM

Up Next: Invisibility Cloaks "So called 'carpet cloaks' are the first technology to succeed in hiding objects by deflecting light across a range of wavelengths. Invisibility cloaks work by deflecting light waves so the light that reaches the eye shows no trace of the hidden object."

New Scientist 06/15/09

email this story | Posted 06/15/09@07:23AM

Of Complexity And Catastrophic Failure "It may be true, in fact, that complex networks such as financial systems face an inescapable trade-off - between size and efficiency on one hand, and global stability on the other. Once they have been assembled, in other words, globally interconnected and integrated financial networks just may be too complex to prevent crises like the current one from reoccurring."

Boston Globe 06/14/09

email this story | Posted 06/14/09@09:58AM

Free Markets Are Efficient (And Other Myths) "The idea first took hold among a generation of economists repelled by the heavy government oversight of financial markets imposed during the New Deal era and by evidence of widespread irrational behaviour by participants in these markets. At the same time they were excited by the advances in mathematical economics and the computing power that allowed market data to be analysed like never before."

The Economist 06/12/09

email this story | Posted 06/12/09@06:24AM

The Sokal-Social Text Debacle, Redux "So kudos to Philip Davis, a graduate student in library and information science at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who revealed yesterday on The Scholarly Kitchen blog that he got a nonsensical computer-generated paper accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal."

New Scientist 06/11/09

email this story | Posted 06/11/09@09:59PM

'Bring Them In For The Art And Have Them Leave With Science.' At the second annual World Science Festival in New York this weekend, "the curious will have to make painful choices: [for instance,] attend an investigation of the effects of music on the brain with a performance by Bobby McFerrin, or join a quest for a long-lost mural by Leonardo Da Vinci at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?"

New York Times 06/12/09

email this story | Posted 06/11/09@09:57PM

Ten Inventions That Changed The World "To mark its centenary, the Science Museum in London had its curators select the ten objects in its collection that made the biggest mark on history." Among the items on the list are the electric telegraph, the Model T Ford, the Pilot ACE computer, and Dr. Fleming's sample of penicillium mold.

New Scientist 06/10/09 (slide show)

email this story | Posted 06/10/09@09:50PM

Perhaps War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning "Lethal warfare drove the evolution of altruistic behaviour among ancient humans, claims a new study based on archaeological records and mathematical simulations."

New Scientist 06/04/09

email this story | Posted 06/10/09@09:43PM

Numbers As Abstract Concepts That Even Infants (Unlike Certain Adults) Can Understand "Abstract numerical thought is the ability to perceive numbers as entities, independently of specific things. It can be demonstrated by the human capacity to link a certain number of objects to the same number of sounds, irrespective of what the specific sounds or objects are. But whether this ability is innate or learned through culture or language wasn't known."

New Scientist 06/08/09

email this story | Posted 06/10/09@09:21PM

Man Is Not The Only Animal Who Laughs (When Tickled) "Researchers who tickled 25 juvenile apes - including three human infants - and recorded the sounds they made say that laughter seems to be shared by all great apes."

New Scientist 06/04/09

email this story | Posted 06/09/09@09:47PM