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Inarticulate
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3–4 minutes·
No comments on InarticulateThe Guardian’s Life section (science) has an article about the impenetrable writing favoured by scientists when writing in journals. This is hardly a new development but it’s no less interesting or disappointing for it; what is disappointing is that the author, Chris McCabe, has reduced this interesting subject to a directionless and misguided article, which…
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Tutorials &c.
So many things have happened in the past week! A final success at badminton, boardgame tournaments, computational neuroscience, strange and wonderful things happening on the next planet out, lots of good new books, and tutorials. I will deal with them all in time, but first, tutorials. One of the distinguishing features of Oxbridge is the…
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Work and hair
My first chemicals arrived today! It may come as a surprise to many, but it isn’t the case (not entirely, anyway) that I just hang around in Oxford waiting for interesting things to happen – occasionally I do some real research. In preparation for an experiment on the mouse visual system, I’ve ordered a bunch…
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A Cure
I was out in Liverpool doing some shopping and sherpa-duty for a friend when I saw a wonderfully stupid sign for a herbalist in a shopping mall. I lamented to my friend that I didn’t have a camera with me, and then did a double-take and realised that I did – I’ve just bought a…
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A Bright Picture
It’s not often that I see a piece of science writing that concisely explains a difficult concept in an accessible way, but this article at Wired on a pill that could prevent hearing loss had some well-written passages. The reporter, Noah Shachtman, used a nice turn of phrase to describe how a buildup of free…
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Dishonest science
BoingBoing linked to this interview about ‘brain technologies’ today which I think will inevitably give people a completely wrong impression about the field. The interviewee, David Pescovitz (a science writer, not a scientist) touches on all the popular stuff at the moment including the laughable ‘neuromarketing’: Volunteers in one study completed a survey about their…
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Introspection
Lately, I’ve been thinking about why I go to sleep in lectures so often. It isn’t because I’m tired, or because I’m bored; there are plenty of times when I am both tired and bored and fail to fall asleep with the kind of dependability that I do in lectures. Nor is it because I’m…
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Senses
Senses (Flash) – a nice little interactive quiz from the BBC that deals with psychological phenomena and illusions (and some other not quite as interesting stuff), via Bhisma.
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On memory
My 4 year DPhil here at Oxford is funded by a studentship from the Wellcome Trust. This is a great thing because it means I have enough money to, for example, live, and it also means that any research groups I join will not have to pay for me. It’s even better than that, though,…
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More neuroscience
The theme of today’s conference sessions was on attention, on which William James famously said, “Everyone knows what attention is.” (I never want to hear that phrase again. Ever. I heard it enough today) I wasn’t too enamoured with the first three talks today, which were arguably given by the big-hitters of the conference. I…
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