Mike Battista

Moved

2007-06-22T13:15:00.001-04:00

This blog moved a long time ago. The new address is http://www.mikebattista.com

50 Things To Do To Stop Global Warming

2007-02-27T09:40:00.001-05:00

Here is a list of 50 things you can do to not feel guilty about global warming. I think this stuff is pretty important, because seriously, we're going to destroy the Earth. It might be sooner, it might be later, but pumping pollution into the air can't be a good thing, so we should probably stop that.

Most of these are pretty obvious, but it's good to have them all in one place. Some should be obvious but aren't - like not putting your fridge beside your stove. I've never thought of that before, but...duh.

There is one thing they forgot, though:

Reality Television Secrets

2007-02-21T10:59:00.001-05:00

So I TiVo'ed American Idol last night and watched it this morning. I discovered that, if you fast forward through the commercials and useless filler, you can watch a 2 hour episode of Idol in approximately 40 minutes. That means about 66% of the show is skippable. It's not a good sign when you're watching a show in which the majority of its material can be discarded without detracting from it. Why do I bother?

Still, I'm glad that this season there are TWO funny chubby guys. They're always good to watch. And one of them is named "Sundance Head", which is a pretty damn funny name. Though with a last name of "Head", pretty much any first name is funny. If it were my last name, I'd name one of my kids Richard so he could be Dick Head. Another one would be Harold, so he could be Harry Head, which would become ironically hilarious when he inherited my baldness genes.

You know what show has even more filler though? Deal or No Deal. If you skip the crap, it's approximately 30 seconds long (i.e., "I pick case #4! *FAST FORWARD* Ohhh, look, your case contained 2 dollars. Should've made a deal. *FAST FORWARD* Here are shots of all the models *FAST FORWARD* See you next time! I'm Howie Mandel! I'm mentally ill...isn't that funny!?")

I do find the fact that it's popular pretty fascinating. I have a feeling it's getting down to basic psychological principles; like the need to resolve uncertainty (i.e. what's in each case), the reward that results from resolving it (i.e. opening cases), and the fact that people will keep watching what's, basically, a person playing a giant scratch-and-win ticket, just for these little rewards. It's sorta like rats pushing levers over and over if it will sporadically release a reward. In some cases, they'll just keep pushing until they die. Perhaps people aren't exaggerating when they say that reality TV will bring about the end of the world.

Nine Inch Nails Kickass "Viral Marketing" Stuff

2007-02-14T23:16:00.001-05:00

OK this is pretty cool. A new Nine Inch Nails album is coming out pretty soon, and to promote it, a series of weird-ass web sites have popped up in relation to it, such as this one (click and drag), this one, and this one. There is a whole story emerging out of it, involving terrorism and drugs and corrupt governments and all that good stuff.

An image that recurs on these sites is the following:

A hand reaching down from the sky, or something.

Then, recently, an mp3 file appeared on the internet. Apparently, it was found on an abandoned USB drive in a bathroom at a NIN show. The file contained a brand new NIN track, along with some static at the end. The song can currently be heard here, but who knows for how long.

But the weird, and very cool, thing is that when you run the file through a computer program that allows you to see the "spectrum" of the static, you see this:

The same hand. Creepy.

Obviously this is all a marketing ploy, designed to draw attention to the new album. The web sites are created by a marketing company, and the mp3 wasn't "leaked" at all; it was made to be found. But if an artist wants to draw attention to their work, this is the way to do it. Getting people involved and entertained by using the power of the internet to spread ideas that no individual could figure out (I'd never think to visualize the static like that). This couldn't have happened a few years ago. I didn't even know a new NIN album was on the horizon, but now I'm kinda excited about it, so the ploy is working. Good job, Trent.

As a side note, this isn't the first time a musician has hidden images in sounds. Apparently Aphex Twin did this a while ago:

It's his own face. Obviously. The dude plasters his creepy face on everything he does, even the music itself. It would be annoying if the music wasn't so wonderful.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

Anagrams

2007-02-08T14:46:00.000-05:00

Rearrange my name, and this is what you get (from this web site, Sternest Meanings):

Mike Battista -> I'm a basket tit.
Michael Battista -> Blast it! I'm a cheat.
Michael E. Battista -> I am athletic beast.
Michael Evan Battista -> Hateable victim Satan.

Nice. I think I'll just call myself "hateable victim Satan" from now on.

Also:

George W Bush -> He grew bogus.
Osama Bin Laden -> A damn alien S.O.B.
Justin Timberlake -> I'm a jerk, but listen.

Skeptiko

2007-02-02T12:22:00.001-05:00

A new podcast, called Skeptiko, has just started releasing episodes. It's about controversial scientific issues, and the scientific method. I've enjoyed the two episodes so far, so if you're interested in this sort of thing, you can download the shows from the official site or the usual way through iTunes.

The reason I mention this is to follow up my review of Dean Radin's book below. He was just on Skeptiko talking about the book and more. What I found quite cool is that the interviewer gave Radin several opportunities to put down "skeptical" critics - for example, by accusing them of fiddling with statistics in order to support their own agenda - but Radin did not go for it. Instead, he (rightly) pointed out that it's a double-edged sword. Every scientist, consciously or not, is going to focus on the results and methods that support their hypothesis, which is why it's good that there are proponents of both sides of the issue to bring balance.

Apparently Dr. Radin is now working on some research involving one of my favourite things in the world: chocolate. This place is where he gets the chocolate. I wish it was possible to taste things through a computer screen. If this research works out, I just might have to change my PhD dissertation to a replication of it. Of course, it will require constant sampling of the chocolate to make sure it's still good. For science.

Book Review: Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality, by Dean Radin

2007-01-25T14:25:00.000-05:00

Wow. I'm always blown away after reading books about parapsychology. This is no exception.

Entangled Minds is almost like 3 books in one. It starts with a brief overview of what psi (i.e., phenomena like ESP and PK) is, with some examples, and an even briefer review of parapsychology's relatively long history. Radin is constantly pointing out that parapsychology research has been endorsed and conducted by top-notch scientists, including a surprising number of Nobel laureates. This might be seen as overly defensive, but it is necessary, given the common "no real scientists believe in psi" criticism. On the contrary, my experience has shown that the most vocal opponents of parapsychology are magicians, armchair "scientists", and other people with no scientific training. Radin points out that the most vocal proponents of psi, on the other hand, are the best that science has to offer.

The second part of the book is sort of a meta-analysis of meta-analyses of psi research. He goes over some of the major categories of psi research that have been conducted, such as dream studies (where one person tries to influence another person's dreams at a distance), presentiment (reacting physiologically to, say, a shocking picture, a few seconds before seeing the randomly selected picture), global consciousness (e.g. random number generators all over the world acted strangely on September 11th, 2001), and lots more.

This part of the book should blow the mind of anyone not already familiar with the research. It gives me chills even though I am. Radin shows that the results found would be astronomically improbable if chance alone were operating. Since chance is ruled out, he meticulously goes through alternate explanations (a bias in publishing, fraud, shitty experimental designs, etc.) and either rules them out completely or shows that even if they played a role, they cannot explain the overall results. The take-home message is that things like telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis really do exist. Not only that, but they have been clearly demonstrated in laboratories all over the world.

The strange thing is, from what I can tell, parapsychology research is conducted much more carefully than most psychology research. The effects in parapsychology are proven to exist to a greater degree than many effects in psychology. And, no offense to psychology, but parapsychology has the potential for discoveries of much greater importance, both scientifically and practically. Yet parapsychology is shunned, receiving a minuscule amount of funding and mainstream attention, while psychology thrives. I guess this is motivated by the same fear of the unknown that (temporarily) kept Copernicus from telling people that the earth isn't the center of the universe. But geeze...get over it.

Anyway...Radin does rely on quite a bit of math to get his points across, but it is not too deep and he explains it briefly beforehand. It should be easy to understand even for people with no knowledge of statistics. My only complaint is that most of the information was also included in Radin's previous book, "The Conscious Universe". The title of Entangled Minds implies that it will primarily be about the relationship between quantum physics and psi, but in reality most of the book is spent establishing that psi exists. The examples here are different and it is a good reference for "proof-oriented" psi research, but he really could have said "see my other book for proof, which I will now connect to the latest advancements in physics".

When he does get on to the physics stuff though, it satisfies the purpose that the title implies. Quantum physics is spooky enough on its own. Particles can be everywhere at once (or nowhere) until they are observed. A particle can be correlated with the observation of another particle that is miles away, with no communication between them. The observation of a particle in the future can even seem to affect a particle in the past. All this is stuff that mainstream physicists know and accept.

Radin essentially takes what we know about particles and expands it to a larger scale, including, of course, us. His main argument is that every particle in the universe is "entangled" (i.e. able to have the spooky correlations above) with every other particle. There is more to it, but at the very least, this makes it possible for psi to exist without overturning everything we know about science.

It's explained quite well, and he even manages to get across some very confusing quantum phenomena in a pretty intuitive manner (though I don't think quantum physics will ever be entirely intuitive to our big classical brains). If I had to complain, though, I would point out that he leaves some things ambiguous. For example, at one point he seems to imply that our unconscious is "in tune" with the entire universe, but we tend to focus on things familiar to us (such as a distant family member in trouble) for psychological reasons. We essentially filter out everything except the important stuff. But then later, he implies that people who are frequently physically close in spacetime are "more entangled" with each other. So which is it? Are we equally entangled with everything, but able to psychologically focus on familiar things, or are things that are physically close more entangled? Both?

(Side note: If it's the 2nd possibility, it would be fun to test. Have two people in close physical proximity for a few hours, maybe separated by an opaque wall, with half of them being aware of it and half not. Later, pair them up for a ganzfeld or something. Would mere prior proximity improve performance? What about later proximity?)

If little issues like this can be worked out, and details filled in, Radin could be well on the way to providing what could be considered the holy grail of parapsychology: An actual theory of how it works, with testable predictions. Scientists could go beyond proving that psi exists, and move on to figuring out how it works. Perhaps they'll even bypass the scientific bickering and move on to practical applications. Personally, I am getting sick of moving my physical body every time I wanna turn on a light. A psychic light switch would be so much nicer.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough. This book is well worth reading for anyone even remotely interested in science of any kind.

[Disclaimer] (in case future academic employers read this): I'm not directly involved in parapsychology. I'm not a believer in the subject matter of parapsychology, per se. I do believe in science and its methods, though, no matter what the topic of study. While there may be disagreement about what the results of parapsychology represent, anyone who reads and understands the literature would have to agree that something interesting is going on. I am not fully decided on whether I think that "something" is purely psychological, statistical, or paranormal, but any of these possibilities are fascinating and deserving of attention. [/Disclaimer]

Book Review: Sole Survivor, by Dean Koontz

2007-01-25T14:18:00.001-05:00

I picked up this book for a few cents at a flea market, because I hadn't read a Dean Koontz novel in a long time, but remembered liking the ones I read as a kid.

Sole Survivor is about a dude whose family was killed in a plane crash. On the one year anniversary of the crash, he finds that he's being followed, and strange things are happening. The book starts out slow, but picks up in pace and scope, and is good light entertainment. I had fun reading it, but I'll probably forget I ever saw it in a few weeks.

Koontz is an OK author, but I often find myself taken out of the story by excessively cheesy metaphors. Most of the ending of the book also violates the big "show, don't tell" rule by having one mystery after another explained flashback-style. It would have been nice to have the climax of the book happen "on-camera", so to speak. Maybe if there were less words wasted on describing how the wind is like a pack of wolves, there'd be room to have the characters actually participate in the plot.

Still, it ain't a bad read.

Book Review: Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories, by Chuck Palahniuk

2007-01-08T08:50:00.001-05:00

This is the first book that I listened to in audiobook format. That is, I downloaded an audio file of someone reading the book, and then listened to it on my iPod. I got it from Audible, which is a pretty cool site. The books are a lot cheaper than buying them physically, or even getting the same audio files from iTunes. And here's a secret...follow this link and you get two books for free. You're supposed to have bought a certain iPod accessory to get the offer, but it's not like they check if you actually have it. I just signed up, got the two free books, then cancelled the account. Nice.

Anyway, Stranger Than Fiction is a collection of essays that Palahniuk has written for various sources. Thus, it's sort of a mish-mash of random topics, some of which are fascinating, and others less so.

I enjoyed the autobiographical stuff the best. Much of it is about Fight Club, and the consequences of it being adapted into a popular movie. Palahniuk writes about how his jealousy of Brad Pitt's lips caused him to invest in a lip pump (sort of like a penis pump, but to give you bigger lips instead of a longer schlong); how most of Fight Club is based on true stories that he and his friends experienced, and the weirdness of seeing people imitating actors imitating characters in a book imitating real people; how people get annoyed when he doesn't reveal the location of real fight clubs. Funny stuff. There is also some material about writing itself. For me, it's always fascinating to hear about what fiction writers think about writing itself, given how mysterious of a process writing fiction can be.

Less interesting, but still worth reading, are some of the other random topics. The worst offender was the overly long chapter about people who dedicate their lives to building castles. I like hearing about the people who do that, but I really didn't need to hear the details on how to keep moister out of a concrete building.

Overall, it's worth reading, to see a bit into the mind of a unique author like Palahniuk, and learn a bit about some of the fascinating people and situations he has encountered. Especially if you are a fan of his fictional work.

One last note, though...don't get the audiobook version. It says "Unabridged Selections" in its title, which apparently does not mean you get the whole book. You get whole chapters (i.e. "selections"), but not all of them. I have no idea why two or three chapters were left out, but it sucks that I missed them.

New Words I Learned Today

2006-12-12T12:44:00.001-05:00

Hyperopia: An excess of farsightedness. Most people aspire to be farsighted. It's good to delay pleasure now so that we can be better off in the long run. But a recently published study (read about it here) interviewed people about what they regret. In the short term, people regretted partying when they should have been working. In the long term, though, people wished they partied more.

On the surface, this seems like evidence that I should be partying right now instead of writing FOUR damn papers by the end of the month, but that's probably not the case. The people they interviewed were probably the ones who did work hard to get to where they were. They may regret not partying now, but fail to realize they wouldn't be alive to express their regret if they spent their entire life eating finger food and drinking martinis. I doubt they'd find the same results with less successful people. The homeless drug addict on the verge of death probably wouldn't say "yeah dude, I wish I partied more...my life would have been so much better if I had even less self control".

Still, it illustrates that we should enjoy our lives in addition to working, or we'll hate ourselves later.

Pseudocyesis: Fake pregnancy. This article tells the heartwarming story of a pregnant woman who went to see her doctor. She was quite far along, with a big belly, kicking baby, screwed up nipples, etc. The doctor, however, could not detect the baby's heart beat. After further research, he discovered that there actually was no baby. There never was a baby. She just wanted to be pregnant so bad that her body changed to look like she was.

The hilarious part of the story, though, is that the doctor didn't tell her that she didn't have a baby. Instead, in a mind boggling breach of ethics and human decency, he told her that the baby was ready to be delivered that very day. Then he drugged her, and when she came to, he told her she'd lost the baby.

You'll have to read the article to find out the rest. The power of the mind over matter in this case is fascinating, but equally fascinating is how horrible (but, looking back on them, hilarious) things have been done in the name of science.

Thank science we have ethical standards now. Science bless you all. Merry Sciencemass.

Book Review: The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene

2006-12-07T23:40:00.000-05:00

It has literally taken me years to read this book. Not because it's uninteresting or anything, but because I have to be in a certain mood to read it. A mood in which I'm ready to read slowly and think deeply.

The Elegant Universe is about superstring theory and M-theory; basically, the "theory of everything" that physicists have always been searching for. It's written for a general audience, but still gets pretty deep into it - without much math. While that's a good thing, since most people (myself included) would need years of training to even begin to understand the math involved, it also left me with a feeling that I was always missing part of the picture. I guess that's unavoidable in a book of this sort, though.

The book answers a lot of questions, but also brings up just as many - most of which are things that the average person has never considered before. Many such questions are very very deep. So deep that it's nearly impossible to really grasp what's being talked about. Whenever possible, Greene illustrates things with 2 or 3-dimensional analogies, but again, you feel like you're missing something when, in reality, the theory involves 11 dimensions.

That's the thing, though - humans will never intuitively grasp a world with 11 dimensions. We live - and evolved in - the 3 space dimensions (and one time dimension) that we're all familiar with. Our brains simply weren't built to understand any more than that. Like a goldfish can never understand the math involved in buying a chocolate bar, maybe we will never fully understand the math involved in describing the universe.

People will damn well try, though. I have much respect for the physicists involved in string theory (and other cutting-edge stuff like it). Many would probably hate this word, but it involves a lot of faith. Faith in at least two things: 1) That humans are able to understand the universe, and 2) That the universe is understandable at all. As briefly discussed in the book, maybe there is no ultimate theory that ties everything together. Maybe planets just work a certain way, and photons work a certain way, and there is no connection between these two ways of working. Until they find it, these physicists don't even know if the theory they dedicate their lives to finding exists. Of course, they feel it exists, as I'm sure most scientists do. How could it not? And so far, everything has gotten closer and closer to meshing together cohesively. But it could stop at any point, and yeah, that feeling that it won't, in some way, that's faith.

These are deep issues, and I can't really get into them in a brief review, so you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. But if you want to have your brain challenged and get a better understanding of one way the entire universe might be explained, give The Elegant Universe a shot.

Video Games Make You Smart

2006-10-24T13:53:00.000-04:00

I'll stick with posting about psychology, since school/work is all I've been doing lately.

I came across an article (Teasdale & Owen, 2000) which looked at trends in intelligence scores over the last few decades. As you may know, intelligence has been steadily going up over time. This study looked at a Danish population, to see if IQ is still going up. The graph above shows what they found. It's not going up as much as it used to, except visuo-spatial abilities (working with shapes in your head), which continue to increase.

Why is this? The researchers guess: "..it is tempting to speculate that [...] it has been growing exposure to video games and geometrically configured computer screens via operating systems, applications programs and the Internet, that have particularly accelerated the development of visuo-spatial abilities during the last decade."

So there you have it. Contrary to what some believe, video games are not responsible for the downfall of society; it's the opposite. Video games are making everybody smarter. Parents: start your kids off on the right foot. Get those toddlers playing Grand Theft Auto right away.

This also gives me an idea for my Ph.D. dissertation: "Does Playing Video Games All Day for a Year Make People Smarter? A Self-Administered Case Study. By Mike."

Here's the full reference for the article I'm talking about:

Teasdale, T., & Owen, D. (2000). Forty-year secular trends in cognitive abilities. Intelligence, 28, 115 - 120.

Psychobabble

2006-10-19T13:52:00.000-04:00

You know, there are a lot of interesting things in the field of psychology, but not a lot of people know about them. When most people think of psychology, they think of Sigmund Freud sitting behind a patient on a couch while they talk about their childhood, while he fills out a prescription for crazy pills. That has very little to do with real psychology.

I think one of the reasons that most people ignore psychology research is that we use stupid jargon for very simple things. This makes us feel smart, but just confuses everyone else.

As an example, here is a line from an article I came across, defining what a "home page" is:

A home page is an entry interface of hyperdocuments for presenting a Website's information to visitors, which is mostly concerned with human perception in terms of users’ comprehension and mental representation.

Seriously. I barely know what it's talkng about. How about this? "A home page is the first thing you see when you visit a web site." Much better.

Book Review: Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

2006-09-10T13:51:00.000-04:00

Just finished reading Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. Most people know him as the guy who wrote Fight Club. Invisible Monsters is so full of twists and turns that I feel that I'd give important plot points away with even a brief summary of the book. But basically, it's about a fashion model who gets her jaw blown off, and ends up going on a physical and psychological journey with some, um, interesting characters.

The style of this book sets it apart from most others. It's written like a fashion magazine; that is, it uses too many adjectives, the paragraphs are short, and it jumps around from topic to topic so that you feel like you're never getting the whole story at one time. I actually found that this made it more enjoyable to read, rather than less, though perhaps that just says something about my attention span.

The content is loud, shocking, hilarious, and campy. Easily disturbed or easily disgusted people will probably want to avoid this (though if you really wanna throw up in your mouth while reading, check out his short story Guts (click to read the whole story)). The themes running through Invisible Monsters will be familiar to anyone who's read Palahniuk's other novels, or seen Fight Club.

I've heard rumours that Invisible Monsters was being worked on as a movie. I find it hard to picture this as a movie, though. Without giving much away, let's just say it would have to employ some "unique" actors and/or actresses. I enjoyed the book from start to finish, though, so I'd recommend it to anyone with a strong stomach looking for a fun read.

I'm Back

2006-09-09T13:57:00.000-04:00

It's a new school year, so how's about I start blogging on this blog again? Sounds good. As many of you know, I have another blog, but I only post relatively tame posts on this one (since it's the one I link to in my e-mail signature, and may be seen by people who have the power to hire/fire me). I've been slacking in copying the tame posts over to this one lately. Well, I just added a bunch of posts, and I'll continue to do so. I've also decided to get more serious about school and research, by keeping up with the latest literature in sciency stuff. This will probably translate over to this blog, since blogging about interesting stuff, and my opinions on it, will help motivate me to really think about what I'm reading.

See you soon.

Sleep Sucks

2006-05-29T10:47:00.000-04:00

I recently read about a drug being developed that will allow people to stay up for 36 hours, or even a few days, at a time, without any of the side effects of things like caffeine.

Now most people will think this is creepy. That we shouldn't play God and mess with nature like that. But not I; sign me up, I want to get rid of sleep altogether. I remember in my 2nd year of university I read a lot about sleep. Most of the best sources seemed to agree that sleep serves little purpose today. One theory is that we only sleep at night because it would be dangerous for our ancestors to be out and about at night. Since we can't see in the dark, we'd be likely to fall into a lake or the mouth of a tiger. Much better that we just lie dormant in a cave while it's dark.

This doesn't apply today, where we have electric lights all over the place. We can have artificial daylight 24 / 7. Think of how much more time we could have to be productive, and more importantly, have fun and enjoy life, if we didn't have to spend 8 hours a day lying there doing nothing.

People will say "oh, but I like sleeping". Well yeah, me too, but I only like it when I'm tired. If a pill made it so I was never tired, I'd never feel like sleeping.

OK, so there are some advantages to sleep. Dreaming is the biggie. I love waking up and remember all the crazy ass dreams I had. Dreaming is one of the purest sources of creativity in everyday human life, and it would be a shame to lose it. There is also evidence that sleep helps with certain brain functions, such as consolidating memories.

So here's my ideal situation: We take a pill once a day, 6 days a week, that keeps us awake and alert 24 / 7. This gains us 8 x 6 = 48 hours = 3 WHOLE WAKING DAYS (assuming we're awake 16 hours per day) of extra time per week. There are people who can write novels in three days! Then, like God himself, on the 7th day we rest. We skip the pill and get a good night's sleep, gaining all the benefits of sleep and waking up with some sweet dreams.

It's a perfect solution to make life awesomer for everyone. Disagree? You're wrong.

P.S. Here's another fun link: How to Become an Early Riser. Just remember that this is some random blogger who might not know what he's talking about.

Book Review: Theatre of the Mind: Raising the Curtain on Consciousness, by Jay Ingram

2006-05-08T11:27:00.000-04:00

Consciousness is a very difficult subject to tackle. It's hard to even define, despite the fact that every one of us experiences it during every (waking?) moment of our lives. It's even harder to study objectively, given that consciousness is, practically by definition, highly subjective.

Jay Ingram gives it a shot in his latest book, Theatre of the Mind. The title refers to several past thinkers who have used the theatre metaphor to understand consciousness. This often leads to problems (e.g. if the stage represents consciousness, then someone (the audience) needs to view the contents of consciousness, and thus must be conscious themselves, which leads to an infinite string of consciousnesses within consciousnesses), which Ingram points out in order to illustrate difficulties with consciousness studies. However, I like how he also explains an updated version of the metaphor to illustrate one of the current theories about what consciousness is, how it works, and how it avoids the above problem. Books like this often present a whole lot of research and anecdotes without even attempting to tie it all together. Ingram, though aware of the limitations of this approach, does bring up one possible approach (global workspace theory) to wrap things up.

Given Ingram's origin as a host of popular science shows, it is not unexpected that the book is extremely casual and non-scientific. It is almost like watching a long episode of Daily Planet all about consciousness. This makes it an easy read, and I would recommend the book to anyone even if they have no experience with psychology or philosophy. Sometimes, however, I wished for more detail and depth. He jumps around a lot, as if unable to stay on one topic for more than a few paragraphs, which can get annoying if the topic is interesting and he suddenly moves on to something else. Ingram also adds his own anecdotes and opinions, which again makes it easier to digest, but some may view it as overstepping his bounds to be critical of an area of research which he has not participated in himself.

Another thing I must mention is that Ingram takes a very open-minded approach. Though he always warns when something is not generally accepted by the scientific community, he is not afraid to venture into territory that could be considered pseudo-science or parapsychological. One example is a researcher, Benjamin Libet, who wishes to stimulate a piece of brain which has been completely detached from the rest of the brain, but kept alive and in the skull. He believes that the rest of the brain could still react to the stimulus, because there is more to consciousness than connections between neurons. Needless to say, it's a bit controversial, but given some of the incredible findings that Libet (and others) have already discovered about the mind and brain, I think it's worth seeing what happens.

I recommend Theatre of the Mind to anyone looking to learn more about consciousness. It probably brings up more questions than answers, but at least it will clarify one's thinking about a subject which is very hard to think about.

Book Review: Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown

2006-03-27T12:15:00.000-05:00

A quick review here, just so I have a record of the books I've read and it motivates me to keep reading instead of playing video games (which is what I've been doing for the last 3 days).

Angels and Demons takes place in the same world as The Da Vinci Code, with the same main character, Robert Langdon. I think that Dan Brown is secretly in love with his fictional character, and loves the name "Robert Langdon." He always writes about Langdon's deep manly voice and awesome tweed jacket. And instead of using pronouns, it's "Robert Langdon touched the pope's hat, because it was shiny and Robert Langdon liked shiny things. Robert Langdon communicated Robert Langdon's intense appreciation for the church in that single touch."

This also demonstrates how badly written Angels and Demons is. If you've read The Da Vinci Code and cringed, Angels and Demons is even more simply written. With all this said, it doesn't really get in the way of keeping you reading and interested. The book takes place in real-time, never jumping forward or backward in time (except for flashbacks), so it's as intense as an episode of 24.

The historical "facts" are obviously not facts. While you may feel like you're learning something while reading this book, it's actually making you dumber. For example, a critical plot point is that nobody could figure out how to make words read the same whether they are upside down or right side up (ambigrams). Yet...Dan Brown and Friends were able to come up with a whole bunch for this book (and the awesome cover for it pictured here). It's really cool to see these ambigrams in the book, but I doubt that a fiction author is the first person in history to create them.

Still, if you go in expecting an intense novel that's more science fiction than art history textbook, it's a very entertaining read.

On a side note, I hear that Brown is being sued over The Da Vinci Code. A non-fiction book was written a while before Da Vinci which dealt with the same topic, and the author of that book is angry that Brown stole the idea. Brown admits to using it as a source. Now, last time I checked, fiction authors were allowed to use non-fiction sources to check their facts, and that's not plagarism. If I write an erotic story about squirrel sex, The Discovery Channel isn't going to sue me because I saw squirrels boinking on TV. And this is (supposedly) fact...if Brown hadn't even read this book and had done his own research, he (supposedly) would have come to the same conclusion. Since facts are, arguably, objective.

Whatever. I'm just looking forward to the Smart Car chase in the movie version of The Da Vinci Code. Yay Smart Cars!

How To Stop Time

2006-03-14T12:42:00.000-05:00

I found this groovy little illusion: How to Stop Time. It involves looking at a the second hand of a clock out of the corner of your eye, and it appears to stop moving.

The site gets cheesiness points for trying to convince people that they are actually stopping time. I do wonder what the actual explanation is, though. I've read about people with brain damage who are blind to movement: when pouring liquid out of a glass, they see it frozen in mid-pour, then the glass is suddenly empty. Perhaps this illusion is related to that, allowing normal people to experience change blindness without ramming a pole through their brain.

The Cuba Trip (Part 1)

2006-03-12T19:18:00.000-05:00

V and I spent our slack week doing what the week was made for: slacking. We figured slacking would be more efficient in a warm place, so we went to Cuba. Here are some pictures and stories documenting the trip.

The plane ride there was a blast. The Cuban airline isn't as nice and fancy as Air Canada. I couldn't understand what the hell the stewardess was saying over the intercom, even when she switched to English. She could have been telling us that our time on this earth is over...say bye to your loved ones...but all I heard was Spanglish babbling. The seat in front of me had a substance on it that resembled bloody snot, and even though I knew it would make me lose my appetite, I couldn't stop looking at it as I ate. That was probably a good thing though, since the "beef" they served for lunch was covered in a shiny rainbow film, like it was covered in oil. Probably good that I didn't eat it.

The airport had people in military outfits all over the place, which is a little alarming at first. We found the guy who was supposed to guide us to the resort, but he said our bus was full. He told us to get on another random bus. Whatever. Luckily it did take us to the right place...Brisas Del Caribe, which looks like this from the outside:

The lobby of the resort was full of drunk people. That's because there are two bars in the lobby alone. Nice. Further exploration revealed that there were approximately three thousand bars at the place, all serving unlimited booze. The bartenders there don't bother with little things we care about here...such as "measuring" and "not spilling rum all over the bar". Every drink was at least a double. Plus they're never the same twice. You can order a "Brisas" one day, and it will be a blue fruity vodka drink. The next day it will be a pink rum drink. It's a surprise every time. My new favourite drink is the Mojito, which has tonic water, mint leaves, a bunch of sugar, and a whole lot of rum.

Yum. I also rediscovered the Grasshopper (chocolate liqueur, mint liqueur, cream). It's not unique to Cuba or anything, but damn it's good. I was mildly drunk the entire week, but never really DRUNK drunk. I guess your body gets used to alcohol when it's all you drink. And yes, my shirt does say "Western Drinking Team."

While the drinks were good, the food was ... questionable. They seem to love ham and cheese there. You can get ham and cheese on its own, ham and cheese on a piece of toast, deep fried ham/cheese paste, or ham and cheese stuffed into a chicken ("Gordon Blue", as the menu called it). The rest of the buffet was average at best...and unidentifiable at worst. V mostly stuck to bread, but I enjoyed some of the weird mystery food.

Our room smelled funny (as did most of the country), but it was good enough for sleeping. The bathroom, like the food, was full of mysteries.

Like, what the hell is this? It looks like a sink that's a foot off the ground. At first we thought it was a urinal, but what's the point, with a toilet right beside it? Then I thought maybe it's for washing feet and babies. Some dude we met insisted it was a bidet...a fancy European thing that you shit in, then spray water onto your ass and balls to clean off. Just the fact that people think you should shit in the thing makes me sorry I ever washed my feet in it.

Whoa...ok...I looked it up in Wikipedia (Bidet). It probably was a bidet...which is for washing your junk off (but not shitting in), and washing babies. Um...yuck. Poor babies.

Speaking of washing and genitals, the maids would make fun sculptures with the towels they brought to the room. Here is one of them:

What is it? My guess is vagina. I suppose it could be a flower or shrimp thing, though. Who knows.

The bathroom also held this friendly reminder that the world cannot survive without water. Also, we cannot live without water. Don't misspendit...pitchin.

OK, enough dumb stuff. The whole point of Cuba was to be in warm weather on a nice beach, and there was plenty of that. The weather was beautiful the whole time we were there, and the beach really is gorgeous. We spent the majority of our time just sitting on the beach or by the pool reading in the sun (though, strangely, neither of us got a dark tan). Here are some random pictures of the beautifulness:

I could write more, but I'll save it for later. What I still need to cover: Lizards, The River Cruise, Communism/Anti-Americanism, The Rock Star, and CSI: Cuba. Stay tuned.

Road Trip of Death

2006-02-20T11:22:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, a few friends and I went to Toronto to see the Ontario Science Centre's Body Worlds 2 exhibit. This exhibit consists of real dead bodies and organs, preserved by replacing fluids and fat with plastic. It's partly educational, but mostly artistic. I was surprised at how close you could get to the bodies; they are not behind glass, so you can get right up to them. It was extremely interesting to see the insides of the human body...a place that most people will never see except in pictures.

Speaking of pictures, I managed to avoid security and snap a few with my crappy camera phone.

Here are two "plastinates" figure skating. They were in all sorts of poses, to illustrate different body parts and keep things interesting.

This is the ring man. He's on the rings, and his flesh is cut into rings! Get it?

Not all of the bodies were human. Here's a dead horsie!

They also weren't all adults. Here's a cute little skeleton of a kid. There was also a controversial dead baby / pregnant mom section. It was cool to see how fast kids grow in the womb. But I feel sorry for women having to pop those things out...damn...

Anyway, I recommend that anyone who can go see this thing do so ASAP. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity, and good practice for the upcoming zombie apocalypse.

Book Review: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell

2006-02-06T10:26:00.000-05:00

I have a reading problem. It's not that I'm illiterate (even though I just had to look up how to spell illiterate), it's that I have trouble finishing books. Whenever I get a new book, I want to start reading it right away. Therefore, all the books I'm currently reading start seeming like a chore to read; just something to get over with so I can start the new book. Usually I give in and start the new book before finishing the old one, so I end up with 20 half-read books lying around.

So it is a big accomplishment for me to have finished reading the book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. I'll start reviewing books here, so I have a nice record of the books I've finished. Maybe it'll motivate me to finish them.

Blink is about what Gladwell calls "thin-slicing": making quick decisions based on very little information (i.e. a "thin slice" of information). He goes through numerous examples of this process in a variety of contexts, such as military operations and the recognition of facial expressions.

The book deals mainly with anecdotal accounts, which makes it an easy and entertaining read. Psychological research is not described in great detail, but the quick and casual descriptions are a nice change from the detailed procedures and statistics I'm used to reading. Gladwell offers a glimpse into areas many people never think about, such as professional food tasting, which is fascinating. It was also kinda cool for me to see Keith Payne mentioned...he gave a great talk at UWO recently.

However, I have several problems with the book. It reads more like a collection of short stories than a cohesive essay. It is sometimes unclear how each chapter relates to the big picture, and some of his points seem to contradict other points. I also noticed a few obvious errors which indicate sloppiness. For example, Limp Bizkit is two words. It's not "Limpbizkit".

My biggest problem, though, is that Gladwell is making up a new term (thin slicing) for a concept that already has too many words to describe it. My favourite term is intuition (since that's what I'm studying myself), but it also goes by insight, implicit learning, automatic thought, etc. These are terms only briefly mentioned in the book, even though he is obviously talking about them. It is as if he is trying to cover up the fact that his ideas are nothing new. In fact, I found one of his specific examples (about a firefighter getting a bad feeling about a building before it collapsed) in a book about intuition. Intuition is already a confusing term, and calling it by other names will just confuse it even more.

Still, I would recommend Blink to both psycholgists and the general reader. It's a fun read, even though it may not be as deep or insightful as geeks like me would like. Also, I'm glad to see this topic getting mainstream attention, because it probably means the government will give me lots of money to do research on it. Mmm, money.

MRI Dangers

2006-01-16T19:29:00.000-05:00

I've been in an MRI machine many times before, so I could get pretty pictures of my brain and get paid for it. Oh, and help with the advancement of human knowledge and all that too.

So it was somewhat scary to come across this web page with pictures and stories of objects flying into the MRI. Since it's a giant magnet, any nearby metallic objects tend to fly at it with great speed. If a person had been in there when, say, the large floor buffer flew into the tube, they probably wouldn't live to see their brain's data in a science journal. Apparently there is also a danger of being eaten by a tiger while in an MRI.

I wonder what part of your brain lights up when you've been impaled by a sharp metal object?

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism

2005-11-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sachz, in response to the post below, brought my attention to The Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. The church presents a reasonable alternative to Christian intelligent design and evolution, and so this theory should really be taught in science classes at school. The web page shows the letter which was sent to the Kansas School Board promoting its presence in classrooms, and showing the link between global warming and pirates.

I've been touched by his noodly appendage. Have you?

Atheism vs. Agnosticism and Other Crap About My Friday

2005-11-11T20:44:00.000-05:00

Hi. Happy Remembrance day. Did you know that the word "remembrance" does not have the word "remember" in it? Something to think about.

So today I was walking to school when I passed a table full of stuff in bags. Some guy shouted to me "hey, want some free stuff?" I've never turned down free stuff in my life, so I asked him what the catch was. He told me that all I had to do was fill out a survey. I like surveys too, so I snatched up my free bag and grabbed a pen.

Then I found the catch: they were religious nuts trying to convert people. The questions on the survey were about religion and spirituality. As with most religion surveys, "atheist" and "agnostic" were two separate entries and you weren't supposed to check more than one.

Let me go on a bit of a rant. It is completely possible to be both atheist and agnostic (here is a nice article about this issue). The reason is that atheism deals with belief about God(s), while agnosticism deals with knowledge about God(s). I do not believe that God exists (atheist), but I also do not know whether God exists or not (agnostic). In other words, it's highly unlikely that God exists (there is no evidence for God, and most concepts of God logically contradict themselves), but I don't know for sure either way. Maybe tomorrow, scientists will discover incontrovertible evidence for the existence of God. And maybe tomorrow a magical fairy will fly into my bedroom with a few million dollars and all the cheesecake I can eat, but I'm not holding my breath.

If you want to get more picky, you can divide things into weak atheism and strong atheism, then weak agnosticism and strong agnosticism. Pickier still, you can point out that everybody is an atheist in some way: do Christians not deny the existence of Zeus and Aphrodite?

Anyway, I bet you're dying to know what was in the bag of free stuff. Obviously there was a cheap bible in there, but also a nifty book about Jesus, a CD, and a DVD. If only they included some cheesecake, I might have been converted.

Oh, also, I have finally started running participants for my thesis. Yay! Four down, ninety six to go.

Now I sit at home, playing with Willow. She's becoming bored with her toys and can only have fun by being chased around by me. Here is a picture of her being bored with her ball:

And here is a picture of her being bored with her ball, her rope toy, and a sock:

Isn't she cuuuuute?

Procrastination Pictures

2005-11-04T14:16:00.000-05:00

I should really be working right now. I've got a hundred things to do, some of them quite urgent and important. Instead, I've been trying to figure out how to get my camera phone working again. It mysteriously stopped letting me upload pictures to my computer a while ago. Luckily, my procrastination has payed off, for I finally got it working (turns out the computer doesn't like it when more than a few pictures are on the phone at a time, so I had to delete some. I hate computers). Of course, I had to test it out a bit, so I took some random pictures. Then I remembered that I have this blog, and it's supposed to be a log of my life that replaces the need for biological memory, so I had better post some pictures here. After all, the images will have vanished from my mind when I'm old, but they can stay on this web site until the end of the world (or at least until terrorists unleash an EMP bomb that erases the memory of every computer in Canada).

So, here is a slice of my life - a slice where I procrastinated for an entire day - in picture form.

Here is the view from my office right now. Why is it so damn nice out? That's another reason I can't get anything done. When it's nice outside, I don't feel like sitting inside doing work.

Here's the computer I should be typing my thesis on, but am instead typing this post which nobody will read.

Here's the muffin I had for lunch.

And here is my half full coffee, getting in my half-eaten muffin's sun. OK, I guess I'm running out of things to take pictures of.

This concludes this incredibly exciting post. Maybe I should go actually do something, now that I've gotten this out of my system. Bye.

Coffee is Good For You

2005-10-20T21:26:00.000-04:00

According to this Psychology Today article, coffee is good for you in all sorts of ways. Hooray! Now I don't feel so bad that the only liquid I've put in my body today was coffee.

Now what I'm wondering is whether all the research we heard about a few years ago - about coffee causing heart disease and being addictive - is now not true any more. OK, so coffee prevents cancer now. So will I live a cancer-free life, only to die of a heart attack while I'm trembling in the line at Starbucks waiting for my next fix?

Whatever. That picture to the right is making me want some coffee. Mmmm, coffee.

Mind Podcast

2005-10-20T20:22:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been into podcasts. Podcasts are basically radio shows which are recorded as mp3s, and can be set to automatically upload to your mp3 player (such as an iPod) whenever a new episode comes out.

For psychologists, a very useful podcast is Mind Podcast. It's not flashy and exciting or anything, but this guy goes over whatever psychology topic he is studying every day. It's like having a study buddy reading notes to you through your mp3 player. A study buddy with a cool accent. For grad students, it will mostly be review of the basics, but we can all use that once in a while.

The show is on a break right now, but I've been emailing back and forth with the dude who does this, and he says it will be back sometime (though maybe not as frequently...every day was a bit excessive anyway).

Note that you can get to older episodes by clicking on the Archives on the righthand side, then clicking on individual episode titles.

Caninetivity

2005-08-24T19:07:00.000-04:00

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The other night, Willow (our dog) was hyper yet bored. We were watching TV and ignoring her. So she started playing with her tennis ball. At one point, it rolled onto her blanket. She then decided to grab the edge of the blanket and yank it up, so that the ball went flying off to the side. She decided this was a fun game, so she chased down the ball, put it back on the blanket, and sent it flying again. She did this over and over, until she got bored of that too.

This got me thinking...can animals be creative? My research involves creativity, but I haven't really come across (or looked for) anything about animal creativity. Most people seem to think that creativity is uniquely human. I've seen it referred to as the very thing that makes us human. Yet there was my dog, coming up with a new way to combine two items in a way she had never witnessed before. She then used this combination to satisfy her goals (i.e. having fun by chasing a ball). Is that creativity?

Usually we define creativity as doing something that is both novel and useful. This seems to satisfy both requirements. Maybe she wasn't the first dog in the history of dogkind to come up with this game, but it was certainly new to her, and useful in alleviating boredom. So yeah, animals can be creative, by that definition. I'm sure monkeys and apes come up with even more amazing stuff than tossing a ball using a blanket.

Speaking of which, I'm listening to the new Gorillaz album for the first time, and it is just spiffy. Go buy it.

Under Construction

2005-08-14T14:26:00.000-04:00

You know what I think I'll do with this web site? I'll make it my "professional" site, where I can record my school and career related activities. Sort of like a super-detailed CV / resume. I can also deal with topics directly related to my schooling and research, like philosophical and detailed psychological stuff. It will probably not be interesting to anybody except me, but that's OK.

Unfortunately, I'm too lazy to start today, so this will have to remain as a crappy under-construction site for now. Later!

~Mike

2005-06-08T18:53:00.000-04:00

I am in snow?

Nothing.

2005-06-08T16:36:00.000-04:00

I have nothing to say today.