Archive for May, 2008
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
Brain Chips and the Dark Ages of Neuroscience
The Times has a front-page report on the latest advance in brain chips, or neural prosthetics. In “Monkeys Think, Moving Artificial Arm as Own,” Benedict Carey describes experiments in which two monkeys learn to control a robotic arm via chips implanted in their brains. “The report, released online by the journal Nature, is the most [...]
6 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
David Warsh on Econoplexity
Time for another term: “econoplexity,” by which I mean the application of complexity studies to economics. That was the theme of “Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Economic Complexity,” the meeting I attended at James Madison University May 17. One participant was the economics journalist David Warsh, a long-time columnist for the Boston Globe who now opinionizes [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Saturday, May 24th, 2008
Clever Corvids
Crows are scarily intelligent. If you want evidence, check out this wonderful talk by the hacker/writer Joshua Klein. I was sent this link by someone who recalled me talking about a clever crow named George on Bloggingheads.tv last year. I can’t resist retelling my George story here:
George was an orphan whom my wife, a wild-bird [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
Chaoplexity, Continued
Barkley Rosser’s comments here and on his lively blog Econospeak made me revisit my critique of chaoplexity in The End of Science. I think it holds up pretty well. Here are a couple of excerpts, from, respectively, the chapter “The End of Chaoplexity” and the afterword of the paperback edition, “Loose Ends.”
From “The End of [...]
277 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
2008 Green Book Award Event – 30 April 2008
The Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology presents its annual Green Book Award to Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger for their book, “Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility.” A discussion follows with Nordhaus, Shellenberger, and special guest, New York Times reporter, Andrew C. Revkin.
No Comments » - Posted in Events, Green Book Award, Multimedia by Rand HOPPE
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
Can Chaoplexity Save Economics?
Can economics get a better grip on the world by cribbing ideas from catastrophe theory, chaos, complexity, physics, biology, other fields? That was the question explored by a score of economists and quasi-economists from the U.S., Europe, Russia and Japan last Saturday at James Madison University in Virginia. They discussed a wide range of topics, [...]
30 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Monday, May 19th, 2008
Anti-Science Fiction?
Maybe a lot of people realized this a long time ago, but it just occurred to me – most science fiction is really anti-science fiction. All the classic sci-fi authors–from H.G. Wells to Arthur C. Clarke to Asimov to Philip K. Dick and Michael Crichton–they’re all telling grisly stories about the horrors of science-run-amok. [...]
5 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by Suhas Sreedhar
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Religion is “Childish Superstition,” said Einstein.
A letter from Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind written in 1954 should put an end to the whole “Einstein believed in God” blabber you hear from time to time. The letter, which is being auctioned off this week contains Einstein’s scathing words about God, religious belief, and Judaism.
Here are some excerpts:
“The word god is for [...]
5 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by Suhas Sreedhar
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
A Pat for David Brooks
Kneejerk liberal that I am, I reflexively distrusted David Brooks when he filled William Safire’s center-right slot on the Times oped page. And early on Brooks’s support for the invasion of Iraq and castigation of antiwar critics so infuriated me that I avoided reading him. But Brooks, like Safire before him, has earned my grudging [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
Stopping Street Crime and War
“If Gang Shootings and Revenge Killings Were an Infectious Disease, How Would You Stop It?” Good question, posed in the pat-worthy cover story of the most recent New York Times Magazine. Author Alex Kotlowitz, a compassionate chronicler of Chicago’s underclass, reports on a program called CeaseFire. The program enlists former violent criminals to prevent urban [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
RIP: Albert Hofmann, LSD’s Discoverer
Albert Hofmann, the Sandoz chemist who accidentally discovered LSD’s remarkable psychotropic properties in 1943, died on Tuesday. Hofmann’s fateful discovery took place in Basel, Switzerland. I met Hofmann in Basel in November 1999 at “Worlds of Consciousness,” a gathering of the world’s leading experts on altered states. Hofmann was the guest of honor. I [...]