Author Archives: brendano

Here are two great reviews, from 2003 then 2005. 1) PLoS Biology: Economy of the Mind nicely reviews the field and many interesting experiments. One annoyance: They need to say “Banburismus” is more commonly known as Bayesian learning. (Banbury, England … Continue reading →

Continuing our previous story: they’ve won! Check out the interview at the end of the semifinals here. NYT reports: ATHENS, May 20 (AP) — In what some fans called a stunning upset, a Finnish heavy metal band with monster masks … Continue reading →

Monkeys drink more alcohol when housed alone, and some like to end a long day in the lab with a boozy cocktail, according to a new analysis of alcohol consumption among members of a rhesus macaque social group.…“It was not … Continue reading →

I started reading Jeffrey Sachs’ new book The End of Poverty. The first 30 pages are excellent, but it starts getting arrogant and annoying quick. Substantively, I’m uncertain whether a big new development aid push will solve things. Since I … Continue reading →

What do the newly enriched Chinese bourgeois spend their money on? Vacations to visit Marx’s home in Trier, of course!

I thought Eurovision was weird enough already. But in addition to the usual fun mix of kitschy pop and Cold War legacy nationalism in its telephone voting politics, this year will see Finland’s satanic band Lordi: HELSINKI, Finland — They … Continue reading →

Great Microsoft Research report (from a workshop they held?): 2020 Science where they argue that computer science will become part and parcel of science in general. For example, computation theory will be important to understand biological organisms as information processing … Continue reading →

Where is social science? Where should it go? How should it get there? My answer, in a nutshell, is that social science is headed for an alliance with cognitive science. Mark Turner, 2001, Chronicle of Higher Education

The best bit from a paper by Paul Rubin on evolution and politics: libertarianism could be unpopular today because libertarian societies would get destroyed in competition with egalitarian militaristic tribes back in the hunter-gatherer days. The paper has some great … Continue reading →

Interesting aricle on Slate about the risks and rewards of academic blogging. I’ve added John Hawks‘ interesting anthropology weblog to the of ones to read…