Katrina

So sorry about what’s happening in New Orleans and Mobile and the rest of that Gulf coast.

If you’re a newsie, the two blogs I recently blogged are doing a swell job of reporting the humanity behind the stories. So I’m going to repeat them. It’s not much, but it’s all I can think of to do at the moment.

The Daily Nightly, from NBC News is full of snippets from NBC reporters, writers, and producers who are down South.

And the TV Newser features snippets from various tv news organizations’ coverage of Katrina.

Neither is exploiting the situation, just reporting. Lemme know about other good professional, but not-too-slick, news blogs.

And G-d bless.

Intelligent Design -- Computationally

My former colleague Lee Spector wrote a terrific op-ed piece arguing against Intelligent Design in the August 29 issue of the Boston Globe. (free registration required to read the article).

Lee is into evolutionary computation, and he creates computer programs to simulate evolution. The one I remember involves the evolution of bird-like widget-y things, who “learn”, over several generations, how to maximize their access to food. I’m greatly simplifying some work he did a while ago, but it was fascinating to watch these widget-y things change their behavior over time.

Lee’s piece argues that he can program this software to have widgets and the like evolve - but he can’t program them to evolve directly or in such a sophisticated manner -- often in ways he couldn't even imagine. “…[E]volutionary computation and biological evolution are both fundamentally driven by random variation and selection, and the successes of one hint at the power of the other.”

I’m not saying it as well as he did, but I’m very glad to see another strong scientific opponent to intelligent design. Read his piece for yourself.

Taxonomies of Animals

Fabulous taxonomy / English-Latin name translator site for the Animal, Plant, Fungal, and 2 more kingdoms from the US Dept of Agriculture. ITIS, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System, lets you search by common name or scientific name of just about anything living.

Try a search for barnacle goose -- you'll see the taxonomic rank of the goose, its French name (bernache nonnette), its Taxonomic Hierarchy, and a few references. At the bottom of the page, you'll see an option to do a search for "Other Off-Site Resources", which includes BioOne and Google Images. A mini-, free, and workable federated search!

The off-site resource option searches the scientific name (Branta leucopsis), and at Google Images, you'll see just how cute the barnacle goose actually is.

TV News

Very interesting development in TV News: blogging by the news presenters. Brian Williams, NBC’s nightly news anchor, has a blog (can’t link directly; click on "The Daily Nightly" to see the most recent entries). An August 25 New York Times story discusses the blog and Williams' approach to it. Maybe better than therapy?

Anyway, interesting to see behind the scenes of television news production. The blog also features entries from other reporters as well as news writers and producers.

And on a related note, TV Newser is a cool blog about, well, tv news.

Print is mighty, too

Have you seen the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas yet? Very impressive! The new edition is 6 volumes (compared with 4) and has some very topical and cognitive entries.

There are several having to do with consciousness, the philosophers among you will be pleased to note. There's a several-page entry on consciousness itself, as well as entries on Mind, the Philosophy of Mind, and Dualism.

Another interesting (if long; 13 pages!) entry is called "Visual Order to Organizing Collections". It could have a better name, but it's about using images to organize or provide information about information. Very meta. Several great (BW) photos, as you'd expect on such an entry.

Hampshire's got the new set, as do many libraries. Take a look, and be warned: you could spend LOTS of time with this one. Complete citation: Horowitz, Maryanne Cline, editor in chief. New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. 6 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, (2005). It's online via Gale's Virtual Reference Shelf, but I haven't seen that one yet.

Fetching

This is why it's great to have women covering football. In Sunday's Times , Karen Crouse says of Laveranues Coles:

"He came to the interview room wearing a fetching mint green suit, which is as colorful as he gets in front of reporters."

Fetching, I tell you, fetching.

Pssst ... gossip is good for you

Well, something like that. According to an article in today’s New York Times, it serves a serious purpose among social groups -- helps keep people within social norms (read the part about how people who want to leave work early are shunned by their colleagues in a group whose ethic is to work horrid hours).

The study didn't quite say that it was ok to gossip, but since it is so prevalent *and* serves to keep people in line, maybe it's ok after all?

Reminds me of Laura Sizer's question: what purpose do emotions serve (anger, love, etc.)? Why did we evolve to have these emotions? Today's question: Why did we evolve to gossip?

River's amygdala?

Turns out that Firefly’s River has had her amygdala removed, probably by the government. Summer seems to overreact to things and is emotionally unstable. I’m not sure that her characteristics are consistent with someone whose amygdala has been removed, but maybe a philosopher or psychologist among you has an idea?

Maybe we’ll find out more when the movie comes out?!

If you liked the book, you'll love the blog!

Mind Hacks, that is. Great fun for a hot afternoon! Sample articles include:

Using "trippy neuroscience videos" to test "synaptic neurotransmission - the process by which chemical signals are passed between neurons." Learn about the Multimedia Neuroscience Education Project at Williams College.

Read about an article in the Economist about why we laugh. Is it emotions? Is it socializing? Are you scared of being laughed at?

Find out about a journal for synaesthetes called Syn. Created by a British graphic design student, the journal includes articles entitled "theresa tastes words", "happiness is blue" and "color of orange". It's a nifty introduction to synaesthesia (people who hear color, see sounds, etc.)

Thanks to Rochelle's Tinfoil + Racoon for the tip.

ERIC to begin updating again

Finally, some content for the education folks among the Cog Sci audience!

Gary Price is reporting that ERIC (the education research database) is releasing content to database vendors, which is to say, there will be new articles in ERIC pretty soon. Once the content (going back to early 2004, if my math is right) is updated, ERIC will add new content weekly.