prohibited!

Researchers whose work is supported by the National Institutes of Health are prohibited by law from using any of those funds to "disseminate scientific information that is deliberately false or misleading."

two on love

"The main reason for the virtual disappearance of discourse on love ... is the enormous prestige of science in our age, and science's propensity to value only that which it can explain."

- Ethel S. Person, M.D., from the introduction to her book "Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters: The Power of Romantic Passion" (1988; 2007).

"But what the old time masters had / Is what I feel for you / Love is love and doesn't change / In a century or two / If some way they had seen and knew / How it would be for me and you / They'd wish for love like yours / And they would wish for love like mine / Before my time / Before my time."

- Johnny Cash (1932-2003), from "Before My Time" (from his album "American III - Solitary Man", 2000)

Ah, but how?

Just the very first sentence of a thoughtful, comprehensive, & provocative article entitled "Lack of generalizability of sex differences in the fMRI BOLD activity associated with language processing in adults", by S.K.Z. Ihnen, Jessica A. Church, Steven E. Petersen, & Bradley L. Schlaggar that appeared last year in the journal NeuroImage:

"Neuroscientists and men, women, and children the world over seem to agree that, despite being largely similar, the average human male brain is different from the average human female brain in important and predictable ways."

on the interrelatedness & interdependence of all terrestrial life

"We're in the same boat, brother."

- Huddie William Ledbetter ("Lead Belly") (1888-1949)

unless the fence is closed, rather than straight

If you build a straight fence one hundred feet long, using ten-foot-long rails, how many fenceposts do you need?

The obvious answer is 100/10=10, which is wrong. The correct answer is eleven.

If you write a computer program to process items I through J of a list, how many items will be processed?

The obvious answer is J-I items, which is wrong. The correct answer is J-I+1.

By analogy to the fencepost question, the wrong answer is known as the "fencepost error".

your end-of-the-week lecture on the human brain

What, Why & How Story Matters

My newest essay is up at PhilanTopic: What, Why & How Story Matters.

It begins:

I fear the term "story" is being used so broadly as to render it meaningless.

Messages are not stories. Statements of belief and opinions are not stories. And, most of the time, answers to direct questions are not stories.

Many well-intentioned professionals are rushing out and thinking they are asking for stories, when they are not. What gets shared as a result of their efforts is often called story, even when it is not.

Click here to read the full post.

"... a skyscraper made of..."

Just one sentence from Louis Menand's article, "Head Case: Can psychiatry be a science?" in the March 1st issue of the New Yorker:

"Science, particularly medical science, is not a skyscraper made of Lucite."

having nothing to do with Gov. Mark Sanford

I have never hiked the Appalachian Trail. But somewhere I read advice for what "through-hikers" should carry in their backpacks, and I have used this advice to pack for various trips.

The advice, as I recall, is this:

Make three piles of gear:

1. Items you definitely need and cannot do without.
2. Items you might need, but could likely do without.
3. Items you definitely do not need, but would like to have along (e.g., guitar, camera, or frisbee).

Then:

• Take half of the items from the first pile;
• none of the items from the second pile;
• and one item from the third pile.

[Title refers to this. If you know the original source of the advice I recapitulate above, please let me know!]

AED

AED can stand for Automated External Defibrillator or Anti-Epileptic Drug.