Letters Remain

  • The (Data) Visualisation Lab

    I’ve been playing with The New York Times’ Visualization Lab lately and am enjoying it quite a lot, even though the current data sets you can play with are quite limited. However, the system uses IBM’s ‘Many Eyes’ tool, a project of their Visual Communication Lab, and if you head there you can register and upload your own data sets.

    On the topic of data visualisation, I’ve also been going through the archives of Pictures of Numbers (via Kottke); a site providing “practical tips and techniques for busy researchers on improving their data presentation”. It reminds me somewhat of Junk Charts.

    (A good resource for ‘info viz’ links is the ‘Bookmarks’ section of Eager Eyes… far right sidebar, under the login box.)

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Revolutionary Scientific Minds

    Revolutionary Minds is a new(ish) video series from Seed Magazine well worth your time. Each instalment profiles a number of scientists with one thing in common: their ideas are revolutionising how science advances. So far:

    The Game Changers

    Competition, legal difficulties, information overload, a lack of money, and public relations problems can impede the progress of science. [These ‘revolutionary minds’] are prizing openness over secrecy, access over scarcity, and they are creating a future that will help science fulfill its potential to make all our lives better.

    The Re-envisionaries

    The more science advances, the less, it seems, that any one discipline holds all the answers—even to the problems that a discipline was originally conceived to answer. So it’s not surprising that some of today’s most innovative scientific thinkers are making breakthroughs by hybridizing multiple fields.

    Design and Architecture

    The drawings, structures, renderings, and sculptures of these designers and architects expand and clarify our knowledge of the world around us, demonstrating that design is an integral step in the scientific method.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • International Taxi Fare Calculator

    Travelling abroad and afraid you’re going to get ripped-off on a taxi ride? Worry no more: World Taximeter provides you with taxi fare estimates for journeys in cities around the world.

    I couldn’t have found this at a better time: tomorrow afternoon I’m off to Prague and now know that my journey from the airport should cost around 400 Kc and last about 25 minutes.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • DIY Home Improvement Tips

    I suck at DIY: when it comes to manual labour common sense eludes me like originality to a James Bond script. Maybe with the help of DoItYourself.com, a website packed full of useful information on skills I really should know, this will change.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Making O’Reilly Animals

    Like many others, I, too, have wondered about the reasoning behind O’Reilly Media’s animal-themed book covers. While it doesn’t reveal all, this article describes the history of, and the creative process behind, O’Reilly’s iconic covers.

    Lorrie tries to imbue her illustrations with the historical, somewhat less-than-accurate style of the old Dover engravings. Her technique has evolved with each project’s demands and through trial and error. Each animal presents its own unique complexities. She was recently commissioned to draw a dragon for an O’Reilly retail bookstore promotion. This was her first illustration of a mythical creature. She pored over Asian art books for anything with images of dragons–lacquer boxes, kimonos, silk screens–to help her draw samples.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Is Unlimited Vacation a Good Thing?

    With a number of companies beginning to offer unlimited vacation time, Alison Lobron of The Boston Globe asks whether unlimited vacation is really a beneficial perk for employees.

    Because of technology’s reach, some activists rightly worry that “unlimited vacation” is nothing more than corporate-speak for “no vacation at all.” They worry that employees without a specified vacation allotment will feel pressure to work constantly, damaging their relationships, their health, and the nails on their BlackBerry-typing fingers. Bonnie Michaels is a board member at Take Back Your Time, a nonprofit organization focused on work/life balance. She has no problem with informal vacation policies, so long as managers create a culture where employees really can take breaks. “People are always afraid of taking time off if everybody else isn’t doing it,” says Michaels. A recession can compound that problem. When people feel insecure about their jobs and their wallets, “they probably won’t take the time,” she says.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Dopamine and the Social Brain

    In a recent article for Seed, Jonah Lehrer writes about new research from the neuroscientist Read Montague linking dopamine to complex social phenomena.

    There is so much great stuff in the article that I find it difficult to quote just one piece. I’ve decided on this anecdote that I happen to find slightly amusing:

    The importance of dopamine was discovered by accident. In 1954 James Olds and Peter Milner, two neuroscientists at McGill University, decided to implant an electrode deep into the center of a rat’s brain. The precise placement of the electrode was largely happenstance: At the time the geography of the mind remained a mystery. But Olds and Milner got lucky. They inserted the needle right next to the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), a part of the brain dense with dopamine neurons and involved with the processing of pleasurable rewards, like food and sex.

    Olds and Milner quickly discovered that too much pleasure can be fatal. After they ran a small current into the wire, so that the NAcc was continually excited, the scientists noticed that the rodents lost interest in everything else. They stopped eating and drinking. All courtship behavior ceased. The rats would just cower in the corner of their cage, transfixed by their bliss. Within days all of the animals had perished. They had died of thirst.

    It took several decades of painstaking research, but neuroscientists eventually discovered that the rats were suffering from an excess of dopamine.

    This review on Mind Hacks is a good complement to the article.

    Update: The above quoted anecdote reminded me of another article detailing some extreme cases of erotic self-stimulation using brain implants. This one, from a lady who had a deep brain stimulation (DBS) device implanted to help with chronic pain:

    At its most frequent, the patient self-stimulated throughout the day, neglecting personal hygiene and family commitments. A chronic ulceration developed at the tip of the finger used to adjust the amplitude dial and she frequently tampered with the device in an effort to increase the stimulation amplitude. […] During the past two years, compulsive use has become associated with frequent attacks of anxiety, depersonalization, periods of psychogenic polydipsia and virtually complete inactivity.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Lazarus Sign

    The Lazarus Sign; something I have never heard of, and hope I never see.

    Occasionally, brain-dead patients make movements, owing to the fact that the spinal reflexes are still intact. The most complex, and presumably the most terrifying, is called the Lazarus Sign. It is where the brain-dead patient extends their arms and crosses them over their chest – Egyptian mummy style.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Freudian Projection: An Evolutionary Explanation

    Some interesting research has been attempting to give an evolutionary psychology explanation for psychological projection.

    Using Silence of the Lambs, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead and Koyaanisqatsi, no less.

    We project emotions on others based on our own emotional state, but those projections are functional: We don’t project fear if we’re afraid — we project anger, the object of our fear. And this fear depends in large part on our pre-existing biases. If we’re predisposed to see a member of a particular group as threatening, then we’re likely to project anger on that person, based on our fear of that group.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • British, American, and German Senses of Humour

    The reason why Britons believe that the Germans have no sense of humour is a language problem, not a humour problem. One example:

    The German phenomenon of compound words also serves to confound the English sense of humour. In English there are many words that have double or even triple meanings, and whole sitcom plot structures have been built on the confusion that arises from deploying these words at choice moments. Once again, German denies us this easy option. There is less room for doubt in German because of the language’s infinitely extendable compound words. In English we surround a noun with adjectives to try to clarify it. In German, they merely bolt more words on to an existing word. Thus a federal constitutional court, which in English exists as three weak fragments, becomes Bundesverfassungsgericht, a vast impregnable structure that is difficult to penetrate linguistically.

    Why many Americans miss the irony in British humour.

    It’s not so much about having a different sense of humour as a different approach to life. More demonstrative than we are, Americans are not embarrassed by their emotions. They clap louder, cheer harder and empathise more unconditionally. It’s an openness that always leaves me feeling slightly guilty and apologetic when American personalities appear on British chat shows and find their jokes and stories met with titters, not guffaws, or their achievements met with silent appreciation, rather than claps and yelps. We don’t like them any less, we just aren’t inclined to give that much of ourselves away. Meanwhile, as a Brit on an American chat show, it’s difficult to endure prolonged whooping without intense, red-faced smirking.

    via Mind Hacks

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    Lloyd Morgan