Mindblink

"psychologists have focussed on raw intelligence as the most important variable when it comes to predicting success in life. Mischel ar...

Wow, I went over the transcript of Obama's talk to the National Academy of Science , and I'm blown away. I'm actually surprise...

The study and teaching of the science of geometry are in the public interest, but whosoever practices the damnable art of mathematical divin...

Been away from blogging for a while.... Have been busy staying up and helping at the Monastery at Ukiah, and involved in a bunch of project...

My mom thinks this yam looks like a seal, and excitedly showed us. Now it sits on the kitchen counter as an ornament and proudly surveys a...

The NPR Radio News crew, "All Things Considered" (with familiar names like Robert Siegel, Melissa Block, Andrea Hsu, etc.) were a...

Crows can be pretty be smart . Japan is currently wrestling with an burgeoning crow population, who have been increasingly causing blackout...

Reports are now trickling in about the degree of devastation in Burma caused by a Super Cyclone, Nargis . With more than 40,000 still miss...

I attended Heidi's concert, this Saturday night in Berekeley. It's held as part of the Trinity Chamber Music Series, and was set in...

Using solar cell technology, Japanese researchers in Rohm and government institutes have prototyped light sensors that are 100x more sensiti...

Here's funny and observant blog post from a teacher in a low-income school in Chicago. The sleeping student body phenomenon would be oft...

I recently saw a wonderful Bjork music video, bachelorette , directed by Michel Gondry, who also directed one of my favorite movies, Eternal...

Harold Bloom, Yale literature professor and cultural critic, laments the state of the Country. "I am 77 years old and I have never seen...

A few years ago, Bill Cosby set off a firestorm with a speech excoriating his fellow African-Americans for, among other things, buying $500 ...

Apple recently featured her on their iPod Nano commercials. Feist's music is soulful and happy --kind of oh... feist-y? Sort of like a...

I opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, but --At least from what I gather this last couple month, there are encouraging evidences that th...

I recently installed Ubuntu just for fun on one of my old computers. Later, when I was putting up some pages in Chinese. I was shocked at ...

A new e-reader is coming out called the Irex Iliad. It's suppose to support the PDF, HTML, TXT format, and is touch-sensitive. It woul...

Went with some friends on a half-day hike around Angel Island. I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed the weather, which was cool with a mild breeze....

Finished Goblet of Fire. Good stuff... more ominous and perilous from the get-go. The pages really flied for me. Works well as an adventure ...

I'm beginning to see an accelerating trend toward a feasible, mega-resolution, inert electronic display. There are still design, technol...

Sailu asked me yesterday if I wanted to go to Nepal. Since we'll already be in the Eastern edge of Uttaranchal State, bordering Nepal, i...

I have been planning an Indian Pilgrimage trip. I'm now definitely going for sure. A college roommate initially invited me to go, and s...

I finished reading the 3rd Harry Potter book, the Prisoner of Azkaban. It was good, but not as good as the previous books. I think it's...

I decided I'm going to write in a more engaging style. Expect shorter, more immediate commentaries about day to day stuff....

The San Francisco Office of Emergency Services has come out with a very good website on how to determine whether or not you are prepared for...

A great story in the New York Times about a Prison Program that uses Shakespeare program to "see something in ourselves that others don...

BBC reports that Professor Jaak Panksepp have discovered that animals other than humans exhibit play sounds that resemble human laughs. His...

Another articles that advances the Theory of Mind of animals. In this case, Rhesus monkeys. Researchers, Jonathan Flombaum and Dr. Laurie Sa...

Sigma Xi Magazine has an article by Michael Shermer about using Evolutionary Psychology to bootstrap purpose and thus morality into the Evol...

The Guardian interviews various scientists on what they guess the next big paradigm shift in how man perceives himself would be. They range...

Another neat animals-are-smarter-than-we-thought article from the San Francisco Chronicle. A scientific group has recently published its fin...

The Economist Magazine surveys some of ongoing brain studies that might in the future be incorporate into governmental MacroEconomics calcul...

The San Francisco Chronicle had an incredible article on a set of homeless people. Its unflinching graphic narration of the lives of a group...

The New York Times excerpts from The Edge which annually poses big questions to Eminent Scientists. This year's questions is "What...

From Nature Magazine, Teaser: Because, as Zurek says, "the Universe is quantum to the core," this property seems to undermine the...

Being a reading-geek, I have always wanted to read electronic news and books away from my computer. The laptop had the portability -but had ...

The Economist Magazine does the Apocalypse. A slightly tongue-in-cheek historical and social exploration... Mr Campion draws parallels betw...

I heard this interesting discussion a while back on the scientific research of meditation, mindfulness, and compassion on KQED's radio s...

A Professor of English, Literature, and Culture at Carnegie Mellon wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education an article called, Here's...

*Highly Recommended* Mark Slouka's humorous article on the value of idleness from the November 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine. E...

In my recent web surfing, I found the British Library, which is digitalizing their collection of some of ancient books. This includes scans ...

Ms. Schiltz and other patients like her are the beneficiaries of an astonishing new technology that allows one set of sensory information to...

Another neat animals-are-smarter-than-we-thought article from the Associated Press. Scientist research unveils the complexity of Prairie D...

A Universal Cycle of birth and rebirth occurs every trillion years or so, according to one new cosmology based on String Theory. Big bangs r...

NPR Day to Day interviews the writer of the book, The Wisdom of Crowds , discuss the unwisdom of Crowds. Traits of the crowd: anonymity, lo...

From the New York Times, celebrating 20th anniversary of the String Theory. A lengthy article detailing the genesis, success, controversies...

Technical Review of a camera with 4 flashes to render edge outlines. Pretty cool effect (superior to Photoshop with more dimensionality), a...

With significant geopolitical stake in the outcome of the disputed Ukrainian election, a bizarre episode lingers. The opposition leader fell...

Operational counters against aims of Al Qaeda posted on Daily Kos: Most people, most of the time, just want to get along. They'll ac...

Although rational in many ways, the idea of considering human beings as something apart from nature is dangerous. Evolution has shaped all o...

Rate your environmental footprint. You get brownie points for being Vegetarian, taking public transit, recycling, etc. link

Audio article about a local bottom-up ethical economic development in Sri Lanka. NPR : Sri Lanka's Village-Based Alternative to Globali...

The reality is that only about 5% of consumers make ethical decisions in their purchasing habits. Innovation by business alone will not be e...

Cool interface with Map overlay of satellite photo over London. Multimap.com features Aerial pictures that covers England and also features...

From Jacob Holdt's photo essay on the KKK. Insightful writing on hatred, love, abuse, despair, and social status. link

Science American's supplement to the Parallel Universe article. link

How to be a Skeptic. How to draw boundaries between science and pseudoscience, Part II. Part I is no longer available. link

From Scientific American: The big bang is often described as an event that occurred long ago, a great explosion that created the universe...

Scientific American: Was Light Faster in the Past? If matter in motion is too slow for light, why not make the speed of light faster and ...

Scientific American: The Myth of the Beginning of Time Was the big bang really the beginning of time? Or did the universe exist before th...