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Fun New Words
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1–2 minutes·
2 comments on Fun New WordsNew words and terms I’ve heard at my lab: Fiascotorial, adj.: combinations or permutations of fiasco-like situations. e.g., “And then the squirrel fell into the bowl! Just imagine the fiascotorial possibilites!” Gene-jockey, n.: derogatory term for a geneticist or molecular biology. e.g., “Those gene-jockeys working on the squirrel genome project, they don’t understand that the…
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Reprise
Saw Donnie Darko a second time today, with a friend from Leeds; it survived rewatching quite well. Afterwards, I described my ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ theory of cognitive development to her. It’s a little like Piaget’s controversial theory (although obviously much sillier). Jean Piaget was a psychologist who believed that children when through qualitatively different levels…
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Skwerls
During one of our classes today, we talked about the possible causes of Parkinson’s disease. One of the lecturers mentioned that in Kentucky, researchers thought they’d found a possible link between eating squirrel brains and Parkinson’s; 12 out of 42 people they surveyed with Parkinson’s ate squirrel brains, leading them to think that perhaps Parkinson’s…
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VOR
Are you short or long-sighted? Go and lower your glasses so that your visual field is split in half horizontally (in other words, perch your glasses further down on your nose). Now move your head from left to right, and look through your glasses. Then do the opposite, and look above your glasses. You should…
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On Top Of The World
Forget about the Nobel Prizes and throw that article about the Space Shuttle into the bin, because at the time of writing, First Words is the top story on Discovery.com’s news homepage! The competition just broke through the 1000 entry barrier an hour ago, as well. I should probably say something about starting my new…
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Eyes for you
This optical illusion has been making the rounds on the Internet recently, and most people are astonished to find that the A and B squares are the same shade, to the extent that they consult Photoshop to confirm that A is not darker than B. The explanation for this is simple – the eye is…
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The important questions
Ned Beauman at Bullets has made a post on my comments about the research I’m doing at Cambridge. I agree with what he’s saying, in that it’s really only the information that matters when you’re talking about cognition or consciousness, but many other people wouldn’t; all of this is based on the assumption that the…
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Aloha
Alas and alack, &c, I haven’t been able to update much recently. I’ve just returned to Cambridge, which has been having unusually glorious weather, and have been unpacking various things. I’ve also been busy getting up to speed with the research project I’m doing this year, on (essentially) information processing in neurones. What this means…
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Dancing
In case you’re interested, it might be worth checking out the BBC2 documentary The Dancer’s Body, on Saturday nights; I’m told it’s pretty good. An added bonus is that you should see Prof. Ramachandran on it either this week or next week, since he was interviewed for the programme while I was in the US.…
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Cerebroscope
Psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers like to talk of a hypothetical instrument called the ‘cerebroscope‘. The first time I heard about this, in San Diego, I expressed a bit of surprise, and then asked, ‘Why isn’t it called a ‘brainoscope’?” I was expecting to be told that people used ‘cerebroscope’ because it sounded more impressive (always…
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