SilverJacket

Osbourne Unwound

My roommate Tracy and I started watching America's Got Talent this season because we know some people who tried out for it. (For example, ArcheDream for Humankind, who have spent years producing blacklight shows that are much more rich than the cool but gimmicky stuff put on by the Fighting Gravity frat boys who are now in the semifinals.)

One of my favorite acts on the show has been ArcAttack!, whom I saw performing a scaled-down version of their electrifying show last year at Gizmodo Galley 2009 . In any case, Sharon Osbourne, one of the judges, uttered a pretty hilarious racial slur this week. Due to their Frankenstein theme, I think she meant to call the members of ArcAttack! a group of "geeks and ghouls" or "geeks and spooks" but instead called them a group of "geeks and gooks." 

"Geeks and spools" would have been more technically accurate.

Listen for it in the clip here at 3:29.

Iran has the purse missile!

You heard it here first. Iran has the dreaded purse missile.

Sources: 1, 2

Indistinguishable from Magic

Magical thinking--typically considered an archaic mode of cognition that populates the world with animistic forces, hidden dimensions, and evocative incantations--may actually serve us well in the future as we navigate an existence increasingly mediated by digital information.

Read the full post at Brainstorm.

But there are several cases where we've already jumped the gun in attributing powers to our tech toys.

Read about this, too, at Brainstorm.

I am awesome for unspecified reasons!

It's funny to me that Dan Ariely & co. are using HOTorNOT for research purposes. First, because I didn't realize that site was still around. Second, because a few years ago, when I was a HoN profile moderator (responsible for viewing people's submitted pics and personal statements and approving or rejecting them), I emailed a friend, "After painfully reading over 1000 profiles I think I could write a sociology dissertation on it." Also: "I have gained a tragic glimpse into the heart of human nature."

Read the full post at Brainstorm.

Remember Sally

Everything I need to know about the internets I learned from Gabe and Max.

After using the program advertised above, though, I still had one burning question: "Exactly how many internets are there? Which one works best with Binary?" I guess that's 10 questions.

Anywho, Gabe and Max were nice enough to provide an answer: five.

Thanks, Gabe and Max!

Neurorealism

If a thought happens in a forest of neural dendrites, and no one is there to measure it, did you really think it? That's the premise of neurorealism--the bias towards believing that psychological phenomena aren't really real unless we have neuroscientific data to prove it. Further, the data can be used to make false claims appear real too--especially using the most seductive kind of brain data, neuroimages.

You can read more about it here in my story for the New York Times Magazine's 2007 Year in Ideas issue, published today.

The timing couldn't have been better. As I was writing it, a group of scientists published an op-ed in the Times titled "This Is Your Brain on Politics" that drew a scathing letter to the editor three days later co-signed by 17 eminent researchers in the field (including Anthony Wagner, in whose neuroimaging lab I worked from 2000-2002), as well as plenty of other bad press.

And last week, the neuropsychologist Daniel Amen, who makes commercial use of SPECT, published an op-ed in the LA Times arguing that we should scan the brains of all potential presidents so we can spot the types of "brain pathology" that would make one forget like Reagan, philander like Clinton, or flub words like Bush. He advocates the technique (and practically demands that the People employ his clinics) essentially as a form of Lite-Brite phrenology. His hyping of a reductionistic approach and of its political application embodies three related terms that Racine articulates in his paper: neurorealim (see above), combined with neuroessentialism* (the belief that your brain defines you as a person), deployed together to push policy changes (neuropolicy.)

On a lighter note, I considered titling the piece Crockusology, after the elusive Dr. Alfred Crockus. The tale, in brief: Since 2003, a man named Dan Hodgins has been claiming in lectures to educators and parents  that a part of the brain called the crockus is four times larger in boys, supposedly explaining why "Girls see the details of experiences... Boys see the whole but not the details." In response to some questioning by prominent linguist and blogger Mark Liberman in September after one incredulous woman brought the apocryphal lump of grey matter to Liberman's attention, Hodgins further explained that "The Crockus was actually just recently named by Dr. Alfred Crockus. It is the detailed section of the brain [sic], a part of the frontal lope [sic]." The doctor and the brain area are all a big crock, but Hodgins has responded to various email inquiries with laughably vague and incorrect elaborations. This presenter's use of PowerPoint slides with pretty pictures to pilot pedagogy perhaps profiles all of Racine's terms even more prominently that the president-pestering psychologist in the newspaper piece. You can follow the gripping case history in full at Language Log.

Of course adding schematics and jargon can make any type of scientific explanation appear more valid, but they may be most potent in studies of the mind, as people have more confidence in tangible reality than in subjective accounts of experience.

Sources for the NYTM article:
-Dave McCabe et al.'s in press Cognition paper "Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning" (pdf)
-Deena Weisberg et al.'s 2008 Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience paper "The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations" (pdf)
-Eric Racine et al.'s 2005 Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper "fMRI in the public eye" (html, pdf)
-Joe Dumit (whose course "Brains and Culture" I took at MIT) was cut from the piece for space reasons, but he has a book titled "Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity" and participated in a 2005 AAAS meeting session titled "Brain Imaging and the 'Cognitive Paparazzi': Viewing Snapshots of Mental Life Out of Context."
*Adina Roskies may have been the first to use the term "neuroessentialism," in a 2002 Neuron paper, "Neuroethics for the New Millenium." (pdf). At least a third independent coining popped up last year on Mind Hacks.

Mirage Montage

I'm sure a lot of people think of Burning Man as a big mindless party, but a more accurate (albeit only slightly less simplistic) account would have it as a rave in an art museum. The playa would be nothing without the art installations dotting the landscape (to say nothing of the art people wear and ride and drive, etc.) Here are a few of my favorites. Award for Best...

Boys' Toys: Big Rig Jig

Explaining the geometry of this one is a bit tricky so I'll just let you look at the picture. Yes, those are 18-wheeler tanker trucks stuck together and planted in the desert. You can see people climbing on them, but what you can't see is people climbing IN them. The inside is a jungle gym filled with fake vines, and you could go all the way to the top. When I reached the tip, I found one of the builders lounging on pillows sans clothing. He looked like he'd been there a while and asked if anyone had any games to play. Devoid of Pictionary, we thumb wrestled. (Here's a video and an article about the Jig.) [image source]

Mindfuckery: Homouroboros

This one elicited more simultaneous "Holy shit!"s from spectators than any other installation (non-explosion division). The 24-foot-tall zoetrope had 30 arms, each with an ape-type creature and snake in slightly varying positions. At night, strobe lights would start up, the device would begin spinning rapidly, and then when its velocity hit that sweet spot, the planets aligned. Suddenly we were looking up at 30 monkeys smoothly swinging from branch to branch, as serpents slithered down and placed apples in their mouths. There are so many metaphors mixed up in this thing I can't even stand it. (Or can, and love it. Hooray for Burning Man!) [image source]

Bang for the Buck: Skyline
At night, from a distance, it was just a line of bright dots stretching into the sky. Easy to miss when in every direction on the horizon you see mushroom clouds of flame. But then you spot it and try to figure out what it is. My first hunch was a big balloon attached to a string with lights, but then it starts to move in weird, snakelike ways. It's not immediately obvious that it's hundreds of balloons, attached 5-6 feet apart, each with its own LED. I watched as other people tried to figure it out too. The artist told me his goal was to make it a mile and a half long. So with just some balloons and LEDs and fishing line, you have a playaful of people staring at the sky and and scratching their heads.

Bang for the 2,000 Gallons of Liquid Propane and Jet Fuel: Crude Awakening

You know they burned the Man (twice.) You may even know about the annual Temple burn. But this year they were both outshone by Crude Awakening: a 90-foot tall wooden oil derrick with eight giant metallic worshipers bowing to it.  The characters' insides pulsed with their own fire effects [image source], but on Saturday night after an elegant fireworks display we witnessed something truly grand. Just watch this video.

Despite days of anticipation, and a proximity much closer than that of the camera used for that video, Katie, Suzie, and I just couldn't keep our eyes open. It had been a long week, and we were in for a, ahem, crude awakening. [image source]

Use of Ping Pong Balls: Big Round Cubatron

Thousands of changing lights enacting dozens of patterns in a 3D space, from the organic to the formally geometric. You have to watch videos to get the effect of this one. Overheard at Burning Man: "It's like a giant hippie bug zapper!" [image source]

In 2005 I posted hyperbolic praise for Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop program that revealed my idealistic side. A more pragmatic response would be Bill Gates' "Be a Hero, Feed Your Family" program, in which the Gates Foundation offers poor hungry laptop recipients $100 in hard cash or food or vaccines for their colorful gadgets. ("...The 'Be a Hero' program will offer you valuable goods in exchange for your wonderful toy. As much as one hundred dollars, Abdul! Think! That is more than your Papa earned all last year!...")

The apocryphal plan reminds me of one of my favorite Sarah Silverman gags (as quoted in the NYer):

I, this past summer, sent fifteen really fun cowl-neck sweaters to this village in Africa, in really fun colors—expecting nothing, by the way—and they culled their money together, whatever they call it, and bought a stamp and sent me a postcard thanking me, and it said thank you and that they had enough sweaters for every single member of the village to get one and that they were delicious.

(P.S. Holly, I hope you do your yarn activities with the Tanzanian orphans *after* lunch.)

Usually my coworkers and I are too busy at the office to use IM for anything non-work-related, but occasionally it serves as a virtual water cooler, like yesterday.

matt: how was your date
matt: is that why you were late
jay: no, i had a doctor's appointment this morning.
matt: was the doc appt related to the date?
jay: i wish.
carlin: there's a male morning after pill now?
matt: it seeks out and destroys your sperm wherever it happens to be
carlin: it's a homing and killing device.
jay: yeah. the guy takes the pill, the woman's pregnancy terminates.
jay: does your sperm have to be pre-installed with self-destruct devices?
matt: no the spewed sperm are quantum-entangled with your remaining sperm. it reads those.
carlin: bingo
jay: "quantum entangled" - i'm not familiar with that term.
matt: simple physics.
jay: yeah, sounds real simple
matt: collapse of the wave function, etc.
carlin: it's a sperm, it's a particle...
matt: it's a spermicle
matt: we should do a charticle on spermicles
jay: and how does it work? the man swallows a pill?
carlin: it's a spermcicle
carlin: yum
jay: or he goes to the window and releases it?
matt: he jacks off into a black box
matt: with a cat in it

EPILOGUE

Jay laughs so loudly at this that another coworker asks Jay to share with the group.
jay: what should i say?
matt: MAKE SOMETHING UP
jay: give me something!
Carlin distracts the coworker with a question about the flowers on her desk.
carlin: drop it
matt: um, tell her you found a picture of a monkey that looks like a dog
jay: should i seriously forward that to her?
carlin: no drop it!!!!
matt: looks like she's over it
jay: ok. thanks. nice work, carlin.

[click to enlarge]

Now that Apple has Boot Camp, my friend Glen did this mockup of what the online Apple Store would look like if they sold Windows XP along with their Macs. It notes, helpfully: "You'll need to add this option to run Minesweeper, Notepad or anything ending in .EXE."

(Here's what the original page looks like.)

Bytes for Bites

In 2005 I posted hyperbolic praise for Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop program that revealed my idealistic side. A more pragmatic response would be Bill Gates' "Be a Hero, Feed Your Family" program, in which the Gates Foundation offers poor hungry laptop recipients $100 in hard cash or food or vaccines for their colorful gadgets. ("...The 'Be a Hero' program will offer you valuable goods in exchange for your wonderful toy. As much as one hundred dollars, Abdul! Think! That is more than your Papa earned all last year!...")

The apocryphal plan reminds me of one of my favorite Sarah Silverman gags (as quoted in the NYer):

I, this past summer, sent fifteen really fun cowl-neck sweaters to this village in Africa, in really fun colors—expecting nothing, by the way—and they culled their money together, whatever they call it, and bought a stamp and sent me a postcard thanking me, and it said thank you and that they had enough sweaters for every single member of the village to get one and that they were delicious.

(P.S. Holly, I hope you do your yarn activities with the Tanzanian orphans *after* lunch.)

Step 3: Don't open the box.

Usually my coworkers and I are too busy at the office to use IM for anything non-work-related, but occasionally it serves as a virtual water cooler, like yesterday.

matt: how was your date
matt: is that why you were late
jay: no, i had a doctor's appointment this morning.
matt: was the doc appt related to the date?
jay: i wish.
carlin: there's a male morning after pill now?
matt: it seeks out and destroys your sperm wherever it happens to be
carlin: it's a homing and killing device.
jay: yeah. the guy takes the pill, the woman's pregnancy terminates.
jay: does your sperm have to be pre-installed with self-destruct devices?
matt: no the spewed sperm are quantum-entangled with your remaining sperm. it reads those.
carlin: bingo
jay: "quantum entangled" - i'm not familiar with that term.
matt: simple physics.
jay: yeah, sounds real simple
matt: collapse of the wave function, etc.
carlin: it's a sperm, it's a particle...
matt: it's a spermicle
matt: we should do a charticle on spermicles
jay: and how does it work? the man swallows a pill?
carlin: it's a spermcicle
carlin: yum
jay: or he goes to the window and releases it?
matt: he jacks off into a black box
matt: with a cat in it

EPILOGUE

Jay laughs so loudly at this that another coworker asks Jay to share with the group.
jay: what should i say?
matt: MAKE SOMETHING UP
jay: give me something!
Carlin distracts the coworker with a question about the flowers on her desk.
carlin: drop it
matt: um, tell her you found a picture of a monkey that looks like a dog
jay: should i seriously forward that to her?
carlin: no drop it!!!!
matt: looks like she's over it
jay: ok. thanks. nice work, carlin.

So THAT'S what Windows is for!

[click to enlarge]

Now that Apple has Boot Camp, my friend Glen did this mockup of what the online Apple Store would look like if they sold Windows XP along with their Macs. It notes, helpfully: "You'll need to add this option to run Minesweeper, Notepad or anything ending in .EXE."

(Here's what the original page looks like.)