"An alarmingly oversized appendage"
Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:50:02 -0700 (PDT)
Maybe less interesting than you hoped, but still quite interesting I
hope:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/23/toucan-bill-beak-cooling-heat
Toucans use their enormous bills to keep their cool
Researchers claim the birds don't primarily use the huge appendage for
sexual display, or as a tool for ...
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Fathers' role in child rearing
Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:21:36 -0700 (PDT)
Fathers aren't dispensable just yet
22 July 2009 by Linda Geddes
YOU may be tempted to think men are becoming an optional extra in the
mating game, but biochemical evidence in mice and people suggests that
fathers may play a key role in the rearing of offspring.
Previous studies have hinted at the importance of ...
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Questioning Evolutionary Psychology
Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:41:13 -0700 (PDT)
Questioning Evolutionary Psychology
Recently, the doubts and questions plaguing the theory of evolutionary
psychology have boiled up to the mainstream press. Christie Nicholson
reports
60-Second Psych
Download this podcast
Something is afoot in the story of us.
Well it's pretty cool when we can see scientif ...
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Jerry King's argument for constructivism in mathematics
Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:34:43 -0700 (PDT)
The Philosophy of Mathematics
... The fundamental question remains: ?Is mathematics created or
discovered??
The question is philosophically complicated and has yet to be settled
to anyone?s satisfaction. We are not about to settle it here. Nor
should we try. But I want to make two points.
The first is that ...
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How the gap between rich and poor matters
Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:41:56 GMT
A very good presentation showing in stats how inequality leads to other
undesireable outcomes:
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/docs/spirit-level-slides-from-the-equality-trust.ppt
And the video:
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/inequality-video
Mark
-- ...
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It is neither nature nor nurture
Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:07:24 -0700 (PDT)
Nature? Nurture? Scientists say neither
July 20th, 2009 in Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
It's easy to explain why we act a certain way by saying "it's in the
genes," but
a group of University of Iowa scientists say the world has relied on
that simple
explanation far too long.
In research to ...
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Of chocolate teapots
Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:51:01 -0700 (PDT)
see
http://www.plokta.com/plokta/issue23/teapot.htm
Lance ...
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Hope for South Africa - in politicians?
Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:20:36 -0700 (PDT)
Having posted my thought to twitter, and seeing how I'm perceived to
be so negative about politicians, I think it worth posting my most
recent positive thought here for balance and, perhaps, some
discussion:
"
Us Saffers are blessed with a most amazing thing - a president, Zuma,
with the humility to take advic ...
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Belief in belief
Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:22:04 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/16/daniel-dennett-belief-atheism
The folly of pretence
We must not preserve the myth of God ? it was a useful crutch, but
we've outgrown it
Daniel Dennett
The Guardian, Thursday 16 July 2009
The question: Should we believe in belief?
As I explai ...
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Re: Things belonging to the emperor
Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:34:41 -0500
Gary wrote:
>Finding order in chaos... In stats there is a
> problem sometimes referred to as "overfitting" a
> model. This is when some random set of data is
> analysed in great detail and a model is tailored
> to all the peculirities in the data, and
> eventually the model is actually a worse or a very
> p ...
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