We are always living nearly one-half second in the past. Now, it isn’t surprising that there is some delay between an event and our becoming aware of it. This is the normal unfolding of cause and effect. And this might not be a concern if we were just passive spectators, watching the world unfold before us like a film. But given that we must also respond to events, neuroscientist David Eagleman wonders, will you perceive the event that kills you?
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Getting there is half the fun.
portable learner
The continuing education of an educator in the net age
- Just Packed
The Gospel According the Darwin
Today marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. If evolution is the true story of why we all exist, then why is there any doubt to its veracity? Richard Dawkins tackles the “evolution is just a theory” narrative, which implies evolution is merely an unfalsified scientific hypothesis, with this practical definition of truth:
Evolution is true in whatever sense you accept it as true that New Zealand is in the Southern Hemisphere. If we refused ever to use a word like “true”, how could we conduct our day-to-day conversations? Or fill in a census form: “What is your sex?” “The hypothesis that I am male has not so far been falsified, but let me just check again”. As Douglas Adams might have said, it doesn’t read well. Yet the philosophy that imposes such scruples on science has no basis for absolving everyday facts from the same circumlocution. It is in this sense that evolution is true – provided, of course, that the scientific evidence for it is strong. It is very strong.
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Tech Notes
Dress Up Your Blog for Darwin Day
Or any day for that matter. How to post special logos for special days with a little (very little) PHP.
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Book Notes
Gladwell’s Secrets of Success
The secret to genius is nurture, not nature. It’s a nice theory but . . .
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Book Notes
Subverting Our Reverence for Books
We live in a culture that holds books sacred. Pierre Bayard puts it into perspective.
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Book Notes
The Amateur Gourmet: On Learning the Basics
Do you want to become a better teacher or learner? First, try making a batch of tomato sauce.
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The Cost of Fearing Strangers
So which would scare you more: an American Muslim family you knew nothing about or the guy from your church who had just gone through a divorce? You would probably get this wrong; most of us are terrible at risk assessment. Stephen J. Dubner on why the things we fear the most are simply irrational:
Why do we fear the unknown more than the known? That’s a larger question than I can answer here (not that I’m capable anyway), but it probably has to do with the heuristics — the shortcut guesses — our brains use to solve problems, and the fact that these heuristics rely on the information already stored in our memories. And what gets stored away? Anomalies — the big, rare, “black swan” events that are so dramatic, so unpredictable, and perhaps world-changing, that they imprint themselves on our memories and con us into thinking of them as typical, or at least likely, whereas in fact they are extraordinarily rare.
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Field Notes
Weekend Food Blogging: Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate chip cookies need just a few ingredients, and are easy to make. I’ve paired them with a suitably complementary simple web layout.
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Tech Law Crystal Ball
What’s in store for Canada in 2009 in the area of technology law and policy? Michael Geist’s month-by-month blow predicts entrenched positions, slow, comprised progress on issues like copyright reform and net neutrality, only to be interrupted and displaced off the agenda by a November election (the fourth in six years). Funny in a laugh-instead-of-cry kind of way.
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There may be some neurological truth to those claims that memorizing lists or daily Sudoku encourages mental limberness. Even more importantly, the results lend some support that people in early stages of Alzheimers disease may slow their cognitive decline by keeping their minds actively engaged. Tracey J. Shors maps some of the promising territory that connects learning, memory and neurogenesis (the process by which new neurons are generated).