Category: interesting
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Experimenting with Ganzfeld Hallucinations
After reading a recent issue of Cortex, Mind Hacks goes into some detail discussing the Ganzfeld procedure: The Ganzfeld procedure exposes the participant to ‘unstructured’ sensations usually by placing half ping-pong balls over the eyes so they can only see diffuse white light and by playing white noise through headphones. It is probably best known…
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Blogs as Wunderkammern
Wunderkammer, or Cabinets of Curiosities/Wonder, could be classed as collections of objects that fascinate or interest the collector. I suppose you could say that Jay Walker’s personal library is a type of wunderkammer, and quite an impressive one at that. Heather McDougal suggests that blogs are a type of wunderkammer, and I’m inclined to agree.…
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Can Perfume be Art?
Angus Trumble, curator of paintings and sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art, asks, why is great perfume not taken more seriously? The parallels between what ought to be more properly regarded as sister arts are undeniable. Artists and colourmen combine natural and, these days, synthetic pigments with media such as oils and resins,…
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Gladwell, Journo-gurus, and Anecdotes as Science
You can guarantee that whenever Malcolm Gladwell brings out a book he’ll make headlines. And with his latest book having recently been released, here are a number of interesting and contrasting views. First (via Kottke, and in Gladwell’s own words), what to expect from Outliers: though the story of Sidney Weinberg, from high-school dropout to…
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The Counter-Intuitive Comparison of All Things
The Big Chart, created by The Counter-Intuitive Comparison Institute of North America (CICINA), attempts to find the single best thing in the world using a tournament-style bracketing system to compare 16,384 things in 8 categories (ideas, art, people, fuels, words, other animals, places and other things). Is the Bilbao Guggenheim better than McDonald’s French fries?…
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Finding the ‘Best’ Product
The oddly-named Best Covery is destined to be one of my regular shopping resources. At a glance it allows you to find the ‘best’ (most popular?) products in a large number of categories, such as Best HDTV Picture Quality for the Money, Best Earbud Headphones, and many more. I’ve written previously on the troubles I…
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L’Arbre du Ténéré
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, a picture of L’Arbre du Ténéré may. This solitary acacia, know as the Tree of Ténéré in English, was long considered to be the most isolated tree on Earth, situated in the Sahara desert in north-east Niger. It was destroyed in 1973 by a drunk Libyan truck driver…
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Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction
A recent article from the University of Pittsburgh’s Centre for Biosecurity, Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction. Abstract: In this century a number of events could extinguish humanity. The probability of these events may be very low, but the expected value of preventing them could be high, as it represents the value of all future…
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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…
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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…