SilverJacket

How NOT to Crop Your College Essay

The New York Times reported Friday on a new requirement in the Common Application, the admissions application used by 400 colleges: personal essays can't go over 500 words. Is that enough? I don't know, but if you write long and start lopping, be careful. Learn from my mistake.

Another Alumni Vanity Mag

 Inspirations:
02138
Hamilton Nolan

Transformers

If you haven't seen them already, you really need to check out these amazing, amazing photos of kids' science fair projects. For so many of them I can't even imagine what the null hypothesis could be. It's like science from a semi-parallel universe.

I can't really make fun of how the kids look, though, because check out this pic of my two best friends (since 6th grade), Ken and Glen:

And see how they turned out:

Reminds me of the tale of another computer hacker's transformation:

Just Say Maybe

Focus on Hallucinogens: This is a little gem I've held onto since my friends Ken and Glen mailed it to me as part of a care package when I was working in Alaska after high school. It's from 1991 and out of print but still in near-perfect condition. I wrote children's science books for two years but never wrote one as fun or useful as this. It explains to 9-year-olds everything from neurons to shamans. Rad!

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.

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.)

Money Talks

The word "said" is the gold standard when attributing quotes in straight-laced journalism, preferred over "exclaimed" or "stammered" or any other alternative; the reporter remains objective and lets the words speak for themselves. But sometimes "said" just doesn't cut it. Below are two paragraphs that caught my eye in yesterday's Times story about parents receiving a letter from a preschool warning that their practice of sending their kids to school in chauffeured SUVs that double and triple park endangers their progeny. I've highlighted two instances of "said" and suggested appropriate alternatives.

A public-relations executive, Dan Klores, who owns one of the S.U.V.’s, said he was unaware of Ms. Schulman’s letter. “I don’t have much to do with the place,” he said. “My wife takes my kid by stroller.”

Replacement: "admitted, before blatantly lying."
Reporter: "Hi, I'm a Times reporter. I just saw your child get out of your SUV in front of school." Mr. Klores: "Whatever, you must be on drugs. Plus, I don't give a shit about my kid's education."

A parent whom other parents identified as a chauffeur-using mother, Alison Schneider, whose husband, Jack Schneider, is a hedge fund manager, said, "I got the letter, but I don’t really have any feelings about it one way or the other. It’s kind of boring. It’s about cars and parking."

Replacement: "bobbled." Extra points: "bobbled, gum-snappily."
I'm less offended by the moral obliviousness than by the transgression in logic. Anything car related = dull. "Oh, it describes how people might be RUN OVER by cars? Um, BO-RING." Read it again, ma'am. This time, focus. "Wait, my defenseless three-year-old might be run over? Plus, the blood would be on my hands? My god, that's--ZZZZZZZZZZ....." And scene.

The Professionals

In researching for an article I assigned recently, I happened across an intimidating tag team of characters moonlighting as the faculty of The Southwest Finland Institute for Art, Craft and Design. Digging up some background info (via reconnaissance, surveillance, downloading of CVs) I've identified the all-stars from the troupe and assembled their profiles below.

THE THUGS

Esa Virko
Esa "Wild Bill" Virko, also known as "The Chair Wrangler of the North," demonstrates his perfected headlock technique on an unruly specimen. He's the reason the department no longer invests in Aerons.

Eero Juntilla
Eero Juntilla (translation: "Euro Giantilla") prepares to make kindling so that he might roast a wild boar to tide him over until the departmental tea.

Anne-Maj Laine
You see that shit she's holding? That's a pegleg. A fucking pirate's leg! Cross her and suffer the same face-cracking and subsequent skull-pegging that Cap'n Jack Rackham suffered from his own appendage before making his generous donation in kind to the school.

THE STRATEGISTS

Seppo Ikävalko
"The Baron," exuding stately pride over all that he surveys, descends from a long, esteemed line of Nordic Appalachians.

Marjatta Nurmikari-Berry
"The Matriarch." Through rigorous exercise, she keeps her spine so straight she will slip it out and harpoon you with it at the drop of a book. That book, incidentally, will not be one of the wisdom-infusing tomes on her head. They are attached.

Keijo Kinnunen
"The Thinker." Do not interupt him! He's busy thinking.

SPECIAL OPS

Kristian von Pfaler
West Side Choppers has nothing on this dude, who hand-crafts the fastest Vespas in Finland out of other Vespas and human teeth. Dare him to turn around and risk being blinded by "badditude" bejeweled onto the ass of his leather slacks.

Esa Kaven
"The Flash." He actually does not run very quickly, but do not try to serve him, for he will throw down  cardboard and windmill your legs out from under you faster than you can say "The Fla." Ghetto Blaster not included.

Paula Mattsson
Avoid messing with, or looking directly at, Paula, whose implanted video screen will enslave your mind ALMOST as fast as her ego-withering glare. (Tweak the right knob, though, and guess what? Endless Tubby Custard!)

The kids! They're everywhere!

Last week I wrote about what happens when some kids take Ritalin. (Delusional parasitosis, aka crank bugs.) This week the New Yorker caption contest reveals what happens when their teachers take the drug:

"I see small people."

Bossy Boots

I have discovered what may be the Best Thing Ever. It's a 2002 episode of the BBC's Look Around You dedicated to the brain. Take out your copy books, as you will learn things such as the following:

"The brain is basically a wrinkled bag of skin, filled with warm water, veins, and thought muscles. Think of it as a kind of modified heart, only with a mind, or brain."

Watch it.