Peter Dizikes points out that while pop culture references to the butterfly effect are not just bad physics, they also reveal how the public thinks about science: They expose the growing chasm between what the public expects from scientific research — that is, a series of ever more precise answers about the world we live in — and the realms of uncertainty into which modern science is taking us.
The Meaning of the Butterfly
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Rage Against the Machines
Mainstream media coverage of games seems to be one of two sorts. Either they are dazzling accounts of endless digital features proclaiming their superiority, or bitter discounts of their claims as culture, usually advocated by representatives from generations on either side of the computer era. What is lacking, says Tom Chatfield, is a serious, mutually well-informed debate about the gaming phenomenon that will be a dominant cultural force in this century.
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Digital Forensics
Fascinating description by computer scientist Hany Farid who works with various law-enforcement agencies to uncover doctored images. Modern software has made photograph manipulation easier to carry out, but also easier to detect.
I expect that as the field progresses over the next five to 10 years, the application of image forensics will become as routine as the application of physical forensic analysis. It is my hope that this new technology, along with sensible policies and laws, will help us deal with the challenges of this exciting yet sometimes baffling digital age.
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How to Unleash Your Creativity
John Houtz, Julia Cameron and Robert Epstein, all experts on creativity, and each with different backgrounds and perspectives offer practical tactics to unleash your creative self. Their advice intersects at four different skills sets essential for creative expression: capture new ideas they occur to you, challenge yourself with tough problems, broaden your interests in new things, and surround yourself with interesting people and things.
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Limits of Working Memory
George Miller’s famous 1957 paper, ‘The Magic Number 7 Plus and Minus Two’ has been proven to be overly optimistic. Jeff Rouder and Nelson Cowan’s study, published in the April Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the average person struggles to keep just three or four things in their “working memory†or conscious mind at one time.
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Put a Little Science in Your Life
Brain Greene explains why science matters:
Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.
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Perceived Moral Blame Can Change the Memory of a Crime
The interesting outcome of Pizarro’s study shows that people’s memory of facts can be distorted by changing details about an individual’s character. If the subjects thought Frank was a good guy, they remembered the bill at being $55; if they thought he is a bad guy, they remember the bill was $65.
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Curriculum Designed to Unite Art and Science
David Sloan Wilson on designing the Humanities Initiative, a course conceived to cross the cultural chasm between the sciences and the humanities, bringing together the strengths of both mindsets to issues in evolutionary biology, and to avoid romanticizing science or presenting it as the ultimate arbiter of meaning:
You can study music, dance, narrative storytelling and artmaking scientifically, and you can conclude that yes, they’re deeply biologically driven, they’re essential to our species, but there would still be something missing, and that thing is an appreciation for the work itself, a true understanding of its meaning in its culture and context.
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What if Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk movie isn’t as bad as everyone said it was? Comic-book adaptations typically invent new adventures for their protagonists while remaining relatively faithful to the back story of their heroes. Lee, however, reimagined the story of the Hulk, blending elements from the comic book, the television show that aired in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and his own imagination. The verdict? Comic-book fans, critics, and everyone in between agreed: It stunk.