Couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure to sit down with Mathias Meyer, Chief Visionary at Scalarium, a Berlin startup and discuss NoSQL adoption. Like myself, Mathias is really excited about NoSQL and he uses every opportunity to introduce more people to the NoSQL space. Recently he gave quite a…

nosql:

There’s been a lot of speculation about the announcements coming from Oracle’s OpenWorld event. A first part was revealed during the keynote in the form of an in-memory analytics appliance called Exalytics ^[2]. But there’s talk about a Big Data Appliance and an Oracle NoSQL database.

…

picturethisdate:

On September 28, 1928, Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin. He was investigating the properties of staphylococcus bacteria and, after returning from a vacation, discovered that one culture had been contaminated by a mold, and the bacteria surrounding the mould had been killed. Fleming named the mold’s secretions penicillin, and discovered that it was effective against a number of diseases. He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1945 for his discovery.

psydoctor8:

Hi guys, I’m Evil.

“Neuroscientists suggest there is no such thing. Are they right?”

…Yes, according to many neuroscientists, who are emerging as the new high priests of the secrets of the psyche, explainers of human behavior in general. A phenomenon attested to by a recent torrent of pop-sci brain books with titles like Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. Not secret in most of these works is the disdain for metaphysical evil, which is regarded as an antiquated concept that’s done more harm than good. They argue that the time has come to replace such metaphysical terms with physical explanations—malfunctions or malformations in the brain. - Via Slate

Dangerously close to my research there, pal. If you’re just tuning in, this article is a hot bowl of hint soup of what goes down here. A few of my favorite go-to neuroscience guys are mentioned, from the so called lofty but inspirational Eagleman to rock-steady Morse & lovable left-field Libet (feel like I should make the Stars of Science trading cards™ ) to the ever charming, side-eye giving, finger wagging skeptic group. There might not be a better way to get my attention than the deceptive whispers of free will and enticing illusions of consciousness, but I’ve had beef with the word evil for a long time now.

What’s interesting is there have been studies making claims that they have found ”the neural locus of love and God and evil” in the brain, but:

Despite all the astonishing advances in neuroscience, however, we still know woefully little about how the brain enables the mind and especially about how consciousness and intentionality can arise from the complicated hunk of matter that is the brain. … Discovering the neural correlates of mental phenomena does not tell us how these phenomena are possible.

In other words, correlation doesn’t always equal causation: We may know the 13 regions that light up on an fMRI when we feel “empathy” (or fail to light up when we choose evil) but that doesn’t explain whether this lit-up state indicates they are causing empathy or just reflecting it.

Interrupting myself with an unsolicited/unrelated comment: why do I feel like some science writers would essentially be content replacing “fMRI data” with the term ‘coloring books’ or a freakin Light Brite? (Defensive footnote: Please don’t let this be me getting a PhD in Light Brite. OMG I’m getting my PhD in Lite Brite.)

I’m a little confused on who claimed the evil/empathy idea is a ‘scientific  breakthrough’ besides the Slate article author who didn’t mean it, so augmenting the “unscientific term ‘evil’ with the scientific term ‘empathy’,” doesn’t rub me completely the wrong way when discussing behavioral neuroscience, and I feel like calling it semantics is simplifying the underlying issue, a linguistic issue that bleeds into psychological, treatment and punishment areas.

If we are talking about finding neural basis for intentionality, shouldn’t the terms be operationalized for just that? Having a problem with ‘evil’ being tossed for a more measurable state like empathy sounds to me like having a problem admitting what other associations of ‘evil’ you’d have to come to terms with/redefine, e.g. god, love, consciousness, etc. Evil has long been to me, a meaningless word, an evolutionary culling of men, and arbitrary at best. Shouldn’t this be examined along with philosophers, ethicists and linguists chiming in as well? Where are you guys?

image1, 2

approachingsignificance:

Haha.  This is why I love research.  There is so much creativity expressed in research.  It bewilders me that more professors do not emphasize the importance of creativity in a good researcher.  Sometimes you can’t directly measure what you would like, so you have to think of ways around it.

The Ig Nobel is an award given to research that makes you laugh and may even be beneficial to society.  This years winner: Peter Snyder of Brown University.  He co-authored the paper “The Effect of Acute Increase in Urge to Void on Cognitive on Cognitive Function in Healthy Adults.”  Read it here if you are interested.  

Past winners have been honored for studying:

• Why toast falling off the breakfast table tends to land butter-side down.
• Peter Barss: “Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts”
• George and Charlotte Blonsky: who invented a device to help women give birth by spinning them at high speed>
• British Standards Institution, for publishing a six-page document specifying the proper way to make a cup of tea.
• Don Featherstone (1996 art prize, for creating the plastic pink flamingo lawn ornament).
• Dan Meyer (2007 medicine prize, for co-authoring the medical study “Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects”).
• Deborah Anderson (2009 chemistry prize for testing whether Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide).
• Hyuk Ho Kwon (1999 for inventing the self-perfuming business suit).

ohscience:

from national geographic:

Smaller fish keep their distance when a blacktip reef shark swims amongst them in shallow water in the Maldives.

jayarrarr:

Truth
Is truth writ
More vehement
In Latin indelible
             & ineffable
                        & L O U D

Truth
In every thought
However layered
In fiction & falsity

Truth
In blood & ink
Spilled
Literal
Now
Literal
Now

Transcendent.
Triumphant. 

wbsloan:

Walk it Off 

ratak-monodosico:

spintria, Rome, 1st century BCE

This is a spintria. They were used in ancient Rome to request and pay for different “services” in brothels and from prostitutes on the street.  As a cosmopolitan city, many visitors did not speak the language and most of the prostitutes were slaves captured from distant lands, so the coins made the transactions easy.  One side of these coins showed what the buyer wanted and the other showed the amount of money to be paid for the act

The Best Divorce Letter