http://www.firepile.com/robin the einstein intersection Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:22:28 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en "Now back to masturbation fantasies and cognition—and this is where it gets really interesting. " Jesse Bering in Scientific American. http://www.firepile.com/robin/?p=554 That your passing desire means you get to derail a woman’s life whenever you feel like it is the absolute definition of male privilege. Kieron Gillen (writer of one of my favorite comics, Phonogram) on sexism. http://www.firepile.com/robin/?p=552 "Is a sound only a sound if someone hears it? Apparently not. Silent videos that merely imply sound - such as of someone playing a musical instrument - still get processed by auditory regions of the brain." Link to article at New Scientist. http://www.firepile.com/robin/?p=550 There's been a lot of chatter about "post-genderism" and the like with the news of this recent work: Virtual reality can get downright unreal. In this simulated realm, grown men given a new perspective on the world suddenly find themselves convinced that they inhabit the body of a young girl. I understand ... http://www.firepile.com/robin/?p=547 "A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life." Paul Bloom in ... http://www.firepile.com/robin/?p=544 BRAIN cells that may underlie our ability to empathise with others have been detected directly in people for the first time. Link to New Scientist article. http://www.firepile.com/robin/?p=542 "Some of us need regular amounts of coffee or other chemical enhancers to make us cognitively sharper. A newly published study suggests perhaps a brief bit of meditation would prepare us just as well." Link to article about "mindfulness meditation" and cognition. http://www.firepile.com/robin/?p=540 if a deterministic understanding of human behavior encourages antisocial behavior, how can we scientists justify communicating our deterministic research findings? In fact, there’s a rather shocking line in this Psychological Science article, one that I nearly overlooked on my first pass. Vohs and Schooler write that: If exposure to deterministic messages ... http://www.firepile.com/robin/?p=538 "Programs are encoded information that is contiguous and continuous with the information in our heads, and in the world. " ... Joe Berkovitz on Apple's restrictive development rules, making an Andy Clark-esque Extended Mind argument in the process. (H/T Joshua). http://www.firepile.com/robin/?p=535 Fiction writers, artists, and directors create works generally outside of the academy, for audiences outside its walls. That work is studied inside the academy by humanists seeking to gain an understanding of the period, place, or identity it reflects. Like the fiction writer or the artist, and unlike her fellow ... http://www.firepile.com/robin/?p=532