Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Ballads For The Age Of Science: Two covers from Hy Zaret and Lou Singer's late 1950s/early 1960s six album series of science songs for kids.Back at the dawn of the Space Age it seemed like everybody was trying to turn kids onto science in every conceivable way. After all, everyone knew that if our kids didn't grow up to be scientists and engineers then those darn Ruskies would colonize the Moon and Mars and who wanted that? And what better way to popularize science with kids than by setting it to music? Oh, and if you can get the guy who wrote On Top Of Spagetti to perform them, then you might have thought you had a gold record in the making. Or maybe not. Who knows?
Whatever Hy Zaret and Lou Singer's motivations might have been, I'm sure thousands of kids must have been turned onto science and nature by recordings of their Ballads For The Age Of Science. Kids like Jef Pozkazner who found his old LPs in his parents' basement and graciously ripped them to MP3 format so a whole new generation of kids can enjoy them, or in the case of us old farts big kids, enjoy them again. There you'll find all six albums (although I agree with Jef that the first three are the best) free for downloading. At the very least, you'll want to give a listen for the sheer novelty and innocence of these recordings. Listen to The Ballad Of Sir Isaac Newton below.
Hat tip: Retro Thing.
I realize that is has been blogged about before, by bloggers much more capable than myself, but it has been a while since I visited the website for the upcoming movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and I see that there is now a good deal more information available on it. It's coming out in February 2008, and stars everyone's favorite Nixon speech writer and former second-banana to Jimmy Kimmel, Ben Stein. Tongue firmly in cheek, Stein stars as a "rebel" student at "Big Science Academy" who, from what information I can gather, claims that "Big Science" is keeping "smart ideas" out of the classroom. Translation: scientists won't allow intelligent design to be taught in classrooms because they say it's not science, and that's just mean!read more »
I just happened to see on Slashdot that UC Berkeley is now making full lectures available on YouTube starting with over 300 hours of lectures in various subjects. You can see the videos divided up by course by viewing Berkeley's YouTube playlists. No psych or neuroscience in there although I did like the Physics For Future Presidents course. One can only hope this free service from Berkeley will blossom in future months. At least I think it's a fantastic thing. After all, considering the degree to which pseudoscience and the paranormal outweigh real science and fact in search engine listings it can't hurt to have one more avenue for solid information out there.
More than that though I think many adults are looking to expand their knowledge. Actually many kids are looking to go beyond the mediocre offerings of their schools too. Unfortunately in the past economic and geographic limitations have prevented those looking to increase their knowledge and skills in an academic arena from doing so. Berkeley's offering up of these lectures online is helping to eradicate those barriers. In my mind it's hard to see anything negative coming out of that.
Richard Dawkins: Richard Dawkins Foundation now officially a charitable organizationWhile I have my quibbles with Richard Dawkins' every now and then I was extremely pleased to read at Richard Dawkins' site that after a year has passed the Richard Dawkins Foundation For Reason And Science is now recognized as a charitable, tax exempt organization in both the US and UK. While every now and then I find the way Dawkins' chooses to phrase something in regards to atheism, religion or (more recently) pseudoscience and the paranormal cringe inducing I can not help but think that he is fulfilling a vital role. Sometimes I'm just not sure what that role is.read more »
However, the Richard Dawkins Foundation does have a clearly defined role and goals and the very first one mentioned is something that I believe to be of the utmost importance
The next edition of Carnival of the Liberals will be upon us soon and the deadline for submissions will be here even quicker. CotL #41 is at World Wide Webers this Wednesday, June 20th but you need to get your best liberal blogging to Karl Weber by midnight Eastern, Monday, June 18th. As always, thanks to everyone who has sent in their posts so far and for the rest, blogcarnival.com is your friend.
Don't forget that Zaius Nation will be hosting the July 4th edition of Carnival of the Liberals and he has a specific theme in mind -- defining patriotism -- so check out Dr. Zaius' post for all the details.
Continuing the patriotic theme, BlueGal & Co. will be doing another round of Blog Against Theocracy this Independence Day weekend too! Show your support for our first freedom by writing about how separation of church and state is patriotic. BlueGal's got the scoop at the BAT blog. Remember, BAT is about atheists and theists working together to support a Constitutional right that benefits everyone.
On a slightly off-topic note, Susan R. from Miss ELISA's World writes to let us know she's started a new site, Eureka Science, devoted to be a Q&A forum to "inform and educate the public about science without the distortion of the media or politics". The site's brand new but I think it's a great idea and we certainly wish her the best with this endeavour.
Finally, we still have plenty of hosting spots open this year. Why not volunteer by sending me an e-mail with your preferred date? Check the schedule for open slots.
I was just over at Stump Lane and saw that Montag had posted a link to a great article in New Scientist debunking all the common climate change denial myths/talking points. This is serious one-stop shopping for debating all your wrong-headed friends and family members about climate change without resorting to appeal to emotion and ad hominem (unless you want to). Bookmark this one folks!
Also, while we're on the topic of climate change denial, I highly recommend the Real Climate blog because you know, sometimes it helps to get your information about things from people who actually know what they're talking about. And the Denialism blog will have you debating the most ardent and repugnant Republican like a pro in no time, and not just on global warming either. There isn't a fact about anything that the right wing won't deny.
By the way gang, I'm moving out of state at the end of the week so the blogging's gonna continue to be light to non-existent for a while. I don't even want to think about all the stuff I've got to get done in the next four days. There's just no way I'll be able to get anything out for you this week. Then there's the wonderful prospect of being without internet service until Verizon deigns to grace me with DSL. It's about half the speed of cable broadband which I have right now through Road Runner but where I'm moving it's Comcast or Verizon and I decided Verizon was the lesser of two evils. I feel so dirty!
If you're like me you've been following the whole debate on framing and science spurred by Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet's articles in Science and the WaPo. The whole thing has swept across the science blogosphere like nothing else I've ever seen. It's gotten nigh impossible to keep up with all the posts, comments, replies, and counter-posts. Impossible for everyone except for Bora that is. Seriously dude, do you ever sleep? Anyhoo, Bora's got the definitive link collection on this issue over at A Blog Around The Clock should you wish to dive in.
And you should! It's important to everyone who believes that policy and governance should be based on science and the real world rather than superstition and preconceived beliefs, not to mention that we all win when the general public has a better understanding of scientific issues -- and what issue isn't touched by science these days? Whatever the reason may be, I think we can all admit that both policy and the public have been woefully ill-informed by science and that has got to change.
Photo credit: Anson Vogt / phong.com.You might remember that I posted a few days ago about Harvard's Visual Cognition Laboratory's new online experiments. I just received an e-mail update from Joshua Hartshorne who lets us know that so far 384 people have participated in the VCL's first online experiment since it was first posted on Februrary 22nd. That's great! But VCL's goal for this experiment is 2,000 test subjects so they need your help in spreading the word.
If you have a blog, whether it's science related or you just think science is cool, then you can help VCL understand how our brain processes visual information by posting about VCL and linking to their experiments. Just be a mensch and don't give away the purpose of any experiments you've participated in or quote the debriefing information at the end of the experiments. Doing so could bias other people taking part in the experiments and it could literally trash the experiment itself making the work VCL is doing unpublishable.
In the meantime, there's a brand new experiment available. This one involves a quick test of your visual short-term memory, followed by a brief video and then another quick quiz. It's easy, it's fun and you'll be helping to advance cognitive psychology! Did I mention it'll only take 3-5 minutes of your time? Why wouldn't you want to participate?
Does coffee really pick us up?: Image credit: http://www.anthonyulinski.comThe BBC had a story a few days ago that caught my eye. Seems that University of Bristol researchers have found that regular drinkers of coffee do not get a boost from the drink when they wake up. However, the research presented to the British Nutrition Foundation does suggest that one or two cups could have some benefit if you are an irregular consumer of caffeine.
As a life-long coffee drinker (and I do mean life-long, I think I had my first cup when I was 5 years old) this flies in the face of common sense. I know I get a boost from my morning (and afternoon, and sometimes evening) coffee and may the Flying Spaghetti Monster help anyone who gets in the way of me and my precious coffee!
Not so says biological psychologist Peter Rogers who lead the research:
"We do feel a boost from caffeine in the morning, but that's probably due to a reversal of the withdrawal symptoms. That alertness you feel is you getting back to normal, rather than to an above normal level."
Fortunately, I have Zoe Wheeldon of the British Coffee Association on my side (and helpfully affirming my bias):
"There are two sides to the debate and a wealth of scientific evidence suggests that moderate coffee consumption of four to five cups per day is perfectly safe for the general population and does have a beneficial effect on alertness and performance even in regular coffee drinkers."
You tell those mean research scientists Zoe!read more »
Well, whether coffee really does help make us more alert in the morning or it's just me getting my sweet, sweet caffeine fix I don't see this study changing my java drinking habits or anyone else's for that matter. As with many drugs, coffee is as much about the social factor as it is the actual buzz or high. And the fact of the matter is that unless society itself undergoes wholesale change then people are going to continue to use drugs no matter what anyone says. So it's important to study drugs and drug use regardless of what lawmakers or religious groups might think about the morality of drug use. Who knows? We might just learn something.
Happy Five-Oh PZHappy 50th Birthday to everybody's favorite champion of cephalopod sexuality and scourge of Creationist nimrods everywhere! That's right, PZ Myers of Pharyngula fame turns fifty today and the blogosphere is having a party. Everyone's invited!
PZ asked for poems for his birthday, and not being the creative type, I'm going to cheat and present a little poem about (personal) Evolution that I like by Sharmagne Leland-St. John (after the fold). And since it'd be rude to show up at a party without bringing anything, you can imagine I brought some delicious stuffed squid. read more »
Photo credit: Anson Vogt / phong.com.Harvard's Visual Cognition Laboratory wants you... as a guinea pig! Head on over and participate in their inaugural visual cognition experiment. The test is short and shouldn't take more than 10 minutes of your time. While online experiments are nothing new, research into visual cognition has previously thought to be untenable on the web:
Vision research tends to require very tight controls over the timing of the display, the size of the display, etc. New technology has made it increasingly reasonable to try doing vision research on the Internet. At the same time, care needs to be taken to pick experiments that can tolerate somewhat lax control over timing, etc.
I've signed up for e-mail notices from their Google Group so hopefully when the results are in I'll be able to tell you more about the experiment and what conclusions were drawn.
Hat tip: Omni Brain.
A bumper crop of blog carnivals for the inquiring mind (and I don't mean the kind of minds that read The National Inquirer):read more »
Something for everybody! And last but not least, the umpteenth edition of Carnival of the Godless will be this Sunday at Hell's Handmaiden so get that godless blogging in via blogcarnival.com. Oh, and I should probably also note that Neural Gourmet will be playing host to Carnival of the Godless on April 15th. You know, just to give you a little extra time to work on those infidel masterpieces that you're all going to send my way.
The neuro-bloggers are doing it pirate style this time around as the 17th edition of the neuroscience carnival Encephalon comes to shore at Pure Pedantry.
Shrinking Aral Sea: Satellite imagery showing the progression of the depletion of the Aral Sea from poor irrigation practices. Photo Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest inland sea in the world has been steadily shrinking in size as its' waters have been diverted for irrigation starting when this area was part of the old Soviet Union. Lying between Uzbekistan (north) and Kazakhstan (south), the Aral fed by the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya Rivers to the east is an endorheic sea with no natural outflows.
Starting in 1918, the two rivers feeding the Aral were diverted as part of the Soviet plan to grow cotton in the desert to provide a lucrative export crop. The irrigation canals were poorly built and allowed water to leak and evaporate. Wikipedia states that some 30%-70% of the water from the Qaraqum Canal, the largest canal in Central Asia and the largest irrigation and water supply canal in the world, went to waste. Only about 12% of Uzbekistan's canal length is waterproofed.
Dike Kokaral: A dyke splitting the North and South Aral Seas in an attempt to conserve the dwindling waters of the Syr Darya river. Photo Credit: Jesse Allen and NASA.The result is that today the Aral is just a series of connected saline lakes, only about 40% of its' former size and 20% of its' former volume. The ecosystem of the Aral and the river deltas that feed it have been virtually destroyed, primarily due to increased salinity but also due to the toxic chemicals exposed by the receding waters. The entire area is heavily polluted and its' population suffers from a lack of fresh water and poor health, including high rates of cancer and lung disease.
There can be little doubt that the Aral and its' surrounding lands are an environmental disaster area and there is no doubt that humankind has effected climate change on a large scale in Central Asia directly as a result of the desire to grow "white gold" for export in an area that could not support this crop. There is some reason for hope though as the Dike Kok-Aral which was constructed to split off the smaller North Aral Sea from the much larger South Aral Sea and completed in 2005 has resulted in some recovery of sea level at a faster than expected rate.
The environmental degradation has left the Uzbek government undaunted though. In 2006 the Uzbek government and an international consortium of petroleum companies announced plans to drill for oil in the vanishing sea.read more »
Hat tip: Earth Science Picture of the Day.
At least that's what Texas state Rep. Warren Chisum and Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges say. As reported in the Dallas Morning News (via Right Wing Watch):
“Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion," writes Mr. Bridges …
Mr. Bridges also supplies a link to a document that describes scientists Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein as "Kabbalists" and laments "Hollywood's unrelenting role in flooding the movie theaters with explicit or implicit endorsement of evolutionism."
Chisum used Texas House time to deliver a memo from the Georgia lawmaker on Tuesday. Bridges is the author of bills in the Georgia legislature designed to undermine the teaching of evolution in Georgia schools. In his memo he refers Texas House members to the website fixedearth.com which offers up Bridges'
anti-evolution bill as a model for other lawmakers to use to stem the tide of the evil 'secular evolution science' which decries everything from the heliocentric solar system to the Big Bang as lies:
The Bible and all real evidence confirms that this is precisely what He did, and indeed:
The Earth is not rotating...nor is it going around the sun. …
Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as "science".
The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie. Those lies have planted the Truth-killing virus of evolutionism in every aspect of man’s "knowledge" about the Universe, the Earth, and Himself.
To be fair to Chisum he does say he doesn't totally agree with Bridges' views, but still supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in science classes.
Those of you who know me personally and from other sites that I take part in know that I've been increasingly concerned with the incursion of anti-semitism into the dialog on the left. On the left, anti-semitism mostly slips in via two avenues. Many liberals and progressives want to express solidarity with Palestinians and sometimes uncritically read propaganda put out by decidedly unprogressive states such as Iran. Also, there has been a fairly successful far right-wing subversion of the 9-11 Truth movement. Yet as nasty as some of the stuff I've seen on the left has been, one just can not beat religious fundamentalist Southern lawmakers when it comes to advancing ignorant and bigoted causes.read more »
Who knew!? Orac reports on how when autism-mercury fear mongerer grifter David Kirby goes up against Rosie O'Donnell, it's O'Donnell who comes out on the side of reason. But donchaknow, it's a conspiracy? That's right, Big Pharma has somehow managed to silence Rosie!
Of course, that's not enough for Kirby:
During the breaks, however, I could hear women in the audience murmuring to each other: "But what causes it? Why so many children? What about mercury? How can I get more information?"During the final break, I asked Rosie when the question of causation would come up.
"We're not doing that," she said, bluntly. "We're focusing on families and their kids."
"Rosie," I replied, "I think a lot of people are wondering about what's causing this."
"We don't know what causes it," she said. "You just want me to ask so you can talk about mercury."
Stung, I explained that her audience members were asking, and that production staff had also asked me about causation privately backstage.
"We're not doing causation," Rosie repeated. "In fact, I told them not to book you."
My head spun as the show wrapped up. Had The View finally squelched Rosie O'Donnell? Did mercury trump Trump? Was this the heavy metal that dare not speak its name, at least on a network flush with Pharma ads?
It's hard to say for sure. Last year, former host Star Jones posed the vaccine-autism question on the air, (but then again, look what happened to her).
Damn. Sometimes I actually miss not owning a television anymore.read more »
OK, let's see if I can't get back into the swing of this blogging thing. Starting off, the 59th edition of Carnival of the Godless was posted yesterday at Aardvarchaeology. Have you been reading CotG while I've been shirking my blogging duties? No? Shame on you! Sure, you're not going to go to hell ('cause like the Xian god, it doesn't exist) but you've been depriving yourself of some of the best godless blogging around.
Secondly, this little blog carnival thing I do called Carnival of the Liberals was the featured carnival on blogcarnival.com yesterday. This is a brand-spanking-new feature at blogcarnival.com and I didn't get an e-mail on it until late in the day so I apologize for the post-hoc announcement. However, via this screen grab I actually had the foresight to take, you can see that Carnival of the Liberals #31 at Pollyticks.com was the featured carnival. Yay! way to go Blue Steel for putting together a great edition of CotL! Next up for CotL is The Greenbelt on Valentine's Day.
The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing On Science Blogs 2006: Anthologizing 50 of the best posts on science blogs.Finally, and I'm way, way, late in posting about this but I was honored to play a small part in helping to put together The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing On Science Blogs 2006. Kudos to Bora Zivkovic, tireless champion of all things science blogging, of A Blog Around The Clock who both organized and edited this collection of the 50 best (as suggested by you, and chosen by myself, Bora and 11 other wonderful bloggers) science blogging posts and to Lulu.com for sponsoring the project. I'll be adding an ad to the sidebar with a link to purchase the book directly from Lulu (at cost) but don't wait for me! Go buy it now. It's only $19.95 for the perfect-bound softcover. At 336 pages, that's only 6 cents a page and every single page has something well worth your reading. You can optionally buy the e-book edition for $8.69.
Oh, and one last thing... I intend (but I'm not promising) to return to blogging regularly but you can expect some more improvements (and maybe even a couple of major changes) to Neural Gourmet over the course of the next couple of months. I've already implemented a change to the way the site remembers log-ins and a 'Remember me' setting so you might want to log out, clear your NG cookies and log back in with the 'Remember me' box checked. This is still new so it might be buggy. As always, let me know if it is (better yet, let me know if you like it).
Halfway There posted a nice roundup of links and information concerning yesterday's 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan's death. I can't tell you how much I admired and respected Carl Sagan for his work in promoting not just science but also the naturalistic worldview. Sagan masterfully conveyed science and skeptical ideas but he also communicated a very powerful human understanding that enriched all our lives.
Mars Global Surveyor: Illustration credit: NASA.The BBC is reporting that NASA believes the 10 year old Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft is lost. NASA will use the rover Opportunity to try and contact the orbiter one last time from the surface of Mars using Opportunity's low power UHF antenna and then relay the data back to Earth. However, at this stage NASA isn't even sure of exactly where MGS is because they haven't been able to receive tracking data since they lost contact on November 2.read more »
