As loyal readers know, I’ve long advocated internationalizing the Decade of the Mind Project. I’m really pleased to report here that the web site for DOM-V in Berlin, Sept 10-12 of this year is up. This promises to be a spectacular meeting. Manfred Spitzer of the University of Ulm has been at the forefront of bringing this important goal to fruition.
Jim
An unusual proposal for using the NIH stimulus money to avoid the boom-bust cycle from Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt on Olivia Judson’s NYTimes blog–Research for America. Read all of it including the very active discussion.
Apparently No Lie FMRI is getting its first case–hat tip to ScienceInsider.
I’m a super fan of MIT’s Sherry Turkle. She’s very worried about how we’re using computer simulations. Check the link.
I had breakfast this morning with several faculty colleagues. We were discussing the odd question of what it takes to be successful in science. This is not a trivial matter. It certainly takes more than raw intelligence. There’s something beyond doing well in courses and scoring well on exams. There are experiments completed, papers written, talks given and fundamentally there is something more than the sum which gives rise to scientific success as measured of course by substantive scientific discovery.
Jeffrey Mervis from ScienceInsider.com:
Several witnesses spoke in favor of using the numbers in the recently passed stimulus package—which add 50% to NSF’s regular budget and 40% to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, for example—as a starting point. Although Mollohan was poker-faced during the hearings, he tipped his hand in a brief interview with ScienceInsider.
So here’s an interesting essay by John Lukacs. It addresses the question of whether you need scientists in order to have science. And indirectly the question of whether mathematics exists out there in the Universe independent of us humans who discovered it (alone or otherwise).
Jonathan Moreno raises the specter of the use of neurotechnologies in the intelligence arena. I’m not at all sure I agree with his sinister take–but it’s worth considering as we consider that these technologies will become ubiquitous in society over the coming years. This is what we would definitely call a tripping hazard.
Jim
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There’s an awful lot going on at the same time this week as far as science funding is concerned. Besides the Recovery Act, there’s the Omnibus Bill for the FY09 budget and then the blueprint for the FY10 budget–it’s all hitting at the same time and so this is not the time for drawing conclusions.
Discoverers and Discoveries 
