My Dad used to wonder about this….in his view, itching was behaviorally indistinguishable from reinforcement. Turns out there are specific sensory neurons for itching. The story is here. Still makes you wonder about the evolutionary selection pressures that produced them…
The Higher Ed debate continues…
Debt and Growth: a story of Excel coding errors leading to unemployment?
Perhaps in the near future my colleagues who are economists will have to buy malpractice insurance…
a good summary of what’s going on with the Reinhart and Rogoff paper can be found over at FT, here.
And here is my colleague Tyler Cowen’s view.
From the standpoint of data analysis and science though, there is an important case to be made here for publishing your data along with your conclusions…
Pasadena, Mars and Earth: long style science journalism at its best
Burkhard Bilger’s New Yorker piece about the Curiosity Rover here. Do not fail to read all of it.
This is really three stories, one about the engineering team at JPL that landed Curiosity successfully, one about Mars, and one about Earth. It’s magnificent.
"The Rain in Spain"….FT’s Gideon Rachman on the crisis of the European Project
Gideon Rachman is one of the FT’s very best. Here’s his latest report from Spain–it’s not pretty. In the late eighties and early nineties Spain was brimming with the kind of optimism that produced a generation of extremely bright scientists…many came to the States for training at the NIH, but then returned to the mother country, believing in both the European Project and endless possibilities for innovation. I saw this excellence first hand, in Madrid, Salamanca, Alicante and Barcelona…
Sustained progress in science however requires economic stability in addition to a long term view from political leaders….
That’s a lesson that could well be learned in other places too.
Karl Deisseroth’s tour de force in Nature–a see through mouse brain
Every once in a while, I’m simply blown away by the beauty of neuroscience….
Pesky predatory journals…
Gina Kolata’s excellent NYT piece on the recent phenomenon of being spammed by ersatz scientific organizations and the like is here. As the editor of a 100+ year old scientific journal and as a scientist, these attempts to scam really get me steamed up…particularly when they go after more junior folks coming up through the ranks.
Quantum mechanics versus relativity: the perspective of the black hole diving astronaut
Great summary of a raging physics debate, here. And don’t laugh, gedanken experiments like this one have led to very important advances in science before…
Long piece on Tim O’Reilly
Evgeny Morozov’s piece is here. It’s a bit long and provocative, but also gives an excellent perspective on Tim O’Reilly, the Silicon Valley philosopher cum entrepreneur. Settle back for a long read and enjoy…
Consciousness, the eye and the whale…
From the Atlantic: Alex Madrigal’s compassionate and profound piece about the whale eye, its visual perception and whale consciousness is here. The photos alone are worth the price of the ride. But this is also one of the best articles about animal cognition that I’ve read in some time. Read it all.
Discoverers and Discoveries 