With martial arts training, it’s mre about the form, the spirit and the attitude of the student than it is about the actual specific movement or skill that’s trained. So a physical description of the basic techniques provides technical rather than spiritual insight – at least when it’s read rather than physically studied. On the […]
A while ago, at an SfN meeting, I attended a ethics panel, where one of the questions discussed was the growing of human neurons in animal brain. Other than being vaguely creeped out by the concept in spite of my better knowledge, I only remember one of the researchers talking about how very, very much […]
It is a very common notion that the study of humour is a dry and boring thing to attempt. While that is true, it is not necessarily a bad thing. We wouldn’t expect hydrodynamics to be wet, or neuroscience to be clever, so why should humour theory have to be funny, or even just entertaining? […]
If you’ve watched this show at all, it doesn’t come as news to you that oftentimes hilarity is caused by it. But recent episode five of season three, titled Mr. F, surpasses anything they’ve done so far. The whole episode is an elaborate sequence of absurd coincidences that set up a climactic scene, where a […]
Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don’t. – New York Times (If you don’t have one of the NYTimes accounts annoyingly required to read the story, consider BugMeNot and its Firefox Extension) The study quoted reports that when shown how to open a box, chimps can leave out causally unnecessary steps, while human […]
Partly insubstantial ramblings, partly interesting Martial Arts stories, this was a nice and entertaining read. Slightly annyoing that he mixes fact and fiction in his anecdotes, without making clear, which is which. But judging from his website, he’s just too great to care.
I should have known. While I enjoyed the charming simplicity of the plotlines in the Narnia series, and appreciated them as the children’s books they were intended to be, none of their story elements packs the mythological punch of Tolkien’s writing, and the Christian parable feels tired once you’ve spotted it. Which is hard not […]
I loved Le Guins The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness, so even though I’m not very keen on people in pointy hats throwing speels (unless they’re called Gandalf, obviously) I thought I’d give Earthsea a shot, and I’m glad I did. Like with her other books, I found the most interesting element of […]
Bees can recognize human faces, study finds More pseudo-news about animal superpowers. Like the ability of pigeons to distinguish painter’s styles, this is interesting for entirely different reasons than the general audience will think reading the article – rather than showing some uncanny humanness in bees, it shows the algorithmic generalityof some problems, and misleads […]
Vielleicht würde es, wenn man mehr davon wüsste, beklommen still werden um dieses Hauptwort “Geist” (Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) Vielleicht aber auch nicht. Ohnehin fragwürdig, ob ausgerechnet der Autor dieses geschwätzigen Ziegelsteins sich über beklommene Stille verbreiten sollte.