Thursday, February 21, 2013
The Natives Are Restless
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Method to the Madness

Monday, February 18, 2013
A Curtain Call for Culture?

Timeless Moments

Friday, February 15, 2013
Marking Facebook's Face

Are Scientists Normal?

Thursday, February 14, 2013
The Science of Fabrication

Throwing the Book at Them
“The writer of a dictionary is an historian, not a lawgiver,” observed the renowned semanticist S.I. Hayakawa. Perhaps, that is why the citing of dictionaries by the U.S. Supreme Court was so rare prior to 1987. Over the past 25 years, however, as Profs. James Brudney and Lawrence Baum note in their Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper, as many as one of three statutory decisions by the High Court have invoked dictionary definitions. As is frequently the case with dictionary definitions, the connotations merit our consideration. Oasis or Mirage: The Supreme Court's Thirst for Dictionaries
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Data Driven
Our ability to amass droves of data drives certain assumptions. Among them, as David Brook notes in the New York Times, are these: that everything that can be measured should be; that data is a reliable, transparent lens that filters out ideology and emotions; and that data will enable us to foretell the future. In introducing what promises to be an informative, ongoing exploration of what he dubs “data-ism,” Brooks extols data's capacity to disabuse us of views that fly in the face of the evidence and to shed light on emerging and overlooked patterns of behavior. The Philosophy of Data
Monday, February 11, 2013
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

Sunday, February 10, 2013
Games People Play
Children know something adults have forgotten, philosopher Mark Rowlands reminds us, something we lost when we began to play “the great game of growing up and becoming someone.” Today's world is a utilitarian one in which actions have instrumental value, worth not inherent in their essence but derived from the tokens they amass ― money, for one. “Work is a classic example,” Rowlands notes. In its pure form, play has no external purpose or reward. Young children know this intuitively, reveling in the joy of the moment. If we could get lost in their spirit, we might find what we have lost. Tennis With Plato
The True Ice Age

Friday, February 08, 2013
By Jeeves, It's Wodehouse!

Monday, February 04, 2013
Racket Bawl
As arbiters of science's reputation system, journal publishers acquire copyright to the world's leading scientific output for free. They then charge scientists, who authored and reviewed the articles, and taxpayers, who
funded the research, $8 billion a year to access the findings. The exit from this revolving door lies in creating new reputation metrics, Academia.edu's Richard Price argues.
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Carnival of the Animals
As Mardi Gras nears, what better time to celebrate a carnival? Composed in 1886, While French composer Camille Saint-Saens was vacationing in Austria, Le Carnival des Animaux, a suite of 14 movements, remained unpublished until his death. From an era when cartoons were also classics.
Search . . . for the Motive
In a day in which “Google” has assumed the status of a verb, the increasing role of search engines is readily apparent. Less well known is the significance of the ongoing shift from keyword to semantic search. Yet, as physicist and computer scientist W. Daniel Hillis points out, with semantic search results are determined not by data but by the proprietor's Weltanshauung. Thus, search engines have moved from indicators of what is important to arbiters of truth. “From now on, search engines will have an editorial point of view, and
search results will reflect that viewpoint,” he concludes. “We can no longer ignore the
assumptions behind the results.” Nor Hillis' analysis. The Opinions of Search Engines
Saturday, February 02, 2013
Pursuing Knowledge Is Never Useless

Friday, February 01, 2013
Hybrid Hype
For modern theorists of technology, hybridity is ontological. They believe that to be
human is to be technological. This seemingly innocent assumption has significant implications about how we think about morality, law, and politics. Perhaps this is what the Hybrid Age is all about: marketing
masquerading as theory, charlatans masquerading as philosophers, a New
Age cult masquerading as a university, business masquerading as
redemption, and slogans masquerading as truths. The Naked and the TED
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