Author: Lloyd Morgan
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Band Names That are Really Hard to Search For
This list of band names that make online searches nigh-on impossible reminds me of McSweeney’s list of inaudible email addresses (via Link Banana). !!! A The And The The The Music
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Exercise and the Placebo Effect
Can the placebo effect work with exercise and fitness? Two Harvard psychologists decided to find out, and the results were startling. 84 maids at seven carefully matched hotels [were quizzed on] how much exercise they got. Fully a third of the women said they got no exercise at all, while two-thirds said they did not…
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Gödel, Escher, Bach
On a large number of ‘best of’ or ‘books that changed my life’ lists I always spot Gödel, Escher, Bach (GEB), the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter. When my copy arrived at my door recently I was taken aback by this tome and realised that it was going to be a dense read that…
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Visualising Four Dimensions
Need help in visualising four dimensions? Étienne Ghys has now created a series of videos for ‘teaching’ others how to visualise objects in the fourth dimension (the spatial, not temporal, fourth dimension). How on earth can we visualize such a thing? [The] challenge in visualizing four dimensions is very similar to the one that would…
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Computing and Neuroscience Links
At 24 I firmly believe that I’m still young enough to completely change my professional ‘direction’ and for it to have no discernible effect on my future earning power. As such I always have these fantastic ideas that one day soon I will go back to university and complement my CS degree with another degree…
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Ten Secrets to Giving a Good Scientific Talk
Browsing the MIT OpenCourseWare’s Laboratory in Cognitive Science entry, I came across a paper on giving effective scientific talks. Prepare your material carefully and logically Practice your talk Don’t put in too much material Avoid equations Have only a few conclusion points Talk to the audience not to the screen Avoid making distracting sounds Polish…
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Last Place and the Changing Olympic Spirit
The DFL blog rounds up the Beijing Olympics with some great data visualisations on last place finishes and some wise words on how the Olympic spirit has changed. It’s part of a larger problem: media coverage can be so overwhelmingly focused on the home team that the big picture is missed. Events in which your…
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Applying Mathematics to Escher’s Print Gallery
Prentententoonstelling—or Print Gallery—is a recursive M. C. Escher drawing. For Mathematics Awareness Month 2003, Escher and the Droste Effect delves into the mathematics behind one of Escher’s more intriguing pieces. The following from the published article. [Prentententoonstelling] shows a young man standing in an exhibition gallery, viewing a print of a Mediterranean seaport. As his…
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Patient HM Online
I keep forgetting that audio recordings of Patient HM talking to scientists are online. Brain Connection has a good overview of HM, and NPR discusses him in HM’s Brain and the History of Memory. When twenty-seven year old Henry M. entered the hospital in 1953 for radical brain surgery that was supposed to cure his…
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Celebrating Last Place
Every year, the cyclist who finishes the Tour de France in last place gets awarded the Lanterne Rouge. In 2008 Wim Vansenenant was the first person to win the accolade more than twice. [Winning the Lanterne Rouge means you] outlasted those who abandoned the Tour through illness, injury or simple exhaustion; those who were eliminated…