Is the paint made from crushed pearls, and applied by magic elves wielding brushes of unicorn hair?

Did you know that there's a hybrid car with a $63,000 paint option?

That's not the price of the car; that's the upcharge for the fancy paint.

Really:

"Caveman."

From the Washington Post interview with former National Institutes of Health Director Elias Zerhouni, on the sequester:

"Q: That answers one possible defense of the cuts, which is that the scientists could just go work for private industry instead. 

A: That’s ridiculous. That’s the most ridiculous, caveman statement I’ve ever heard. That’s not the way science works. Science works with bright young people who are attracted to science. ... Research is an investment, it’s not an expense."

Understatement of the Week?

"In setting the nation on a course to map the active human brain, President Obama may have picked a challenge even more daunting than ending the war in Afghanistan or finding common ground with his Republican opponents."

–The opening sentence of the article "Connecting the Neural Dots" by John Markoff in today's New York Times.

Compelling and Devastating.

"The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food" by Michael Moss will appear in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

"Finally, SUPEREGO-related neural activity was localized to lateral prefrontal and parietal cortex."

"A Triple Dissociation of Neural Systems Supporting ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO" (because "... Social Neuroscience, Neuroeconomics, and Developmental Social Cognitive Affective Clinical Neuroscience are just not cutting edge enough anymore...") appears in Psyence.

e.g., "Rule number eight: exploit superstitious thinking"

"Ten ironic rules for non-statistical reviewers" ("... written for reviewers who may not have sufficient statistical expertise to provide an informed critique during the peer-reviewed process, but would like to recommend rejection on the basis of inappropriate or invalid statistical analysis") by Prof. Karl Friston will appear in the journal NeuroImage.

A Racy Taint.

Just the final sentence of the article "Off-Color Communiques Taint FBI Sting in Court: Racy text messages between informant and agents turn off jurors" by Del Quentin Wilber, which appears on the front page of today's Washington Post:

“U [expletive] [expletive],” the agent texted back.

Title of the Week!

"Coercive Citation in Academic Publishing" appears in the journal Science.

"There’s been an accident at the traffic lights and we need an ambulance fast!"

What is Lego saying about cycling?

(h/t: Bike Snob NYC)

Awesome! One-Hundred.

Announced today! The latest thing!

The AW-100! Perhaps "AW" stands for "awesome."

Comes in three colors! All awesome.

Shall we rush out to buy the very latest Nikon camera, the AW-100, because it was "Born to be extreme", or because Nikon says it will let you "Star in your own viral movies"? While the first may be just an empty slogan, the second sounds like a guarantee.

"... the exact answer ..."

"... Far better an approximate answer to the right question, than the exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise ...."

– John Tukey (1915-2000)

A modest proposal...

Now that it has been reported that "... greater liberalism [is] associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism [is] associated with increased volume of the right amygdala", we have no doubt that candidates for high political office in the USA will soon be expected to disclose not just their tax returns and medical evaluations, but also their brain scans.

"I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering..."

In "Social Animal: How the new sciences of human nature can help make sense of a life" in the 17 January issue of the New Yorker, David Brooks writes:

"Brain science helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophy."

____

[Post title refers to this.]

"See the Moon!"

A brief allegory, NeuroCooking friends, on the importance of specificity in science:

"If the Moon were made of green cheese, it would be visible to the naked eye."

"See the Moon!"

"In conclusion, we have proved that the Moon is made of green cheese."

Reading us is ok everywhere, we think.

NeuroCooking friends reading this from a computer at the United States Air Force may continue to do so, even though their access to the New York Times has been cut off; we have no word on whether they are physically searched upon entrance, to prevent them from bringing onto the base print copies of the newspaper.

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[While we know of no classified information on NeuroCooking, we cannot guarantee that NeuroCooking comments are free of classified information.]

Our first Bad Example Award!

Mark Twain once said that "No man is truly useless. He can always serve as a bad example."

The first NeuroCooking Bad Example Award goes to Mr. Konstantin Ravvin.

"Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing"

"While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales" - New York Times.

3%?!

A followup on funding for Alzheimer's Disease research: Our understanding is that for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, the National Institute on Aging, which funds most Alzheimer's Disease research in the United States, is predicted to have a "payline" of three percent, meaning that 97% of all research grant applications in this area will not be funded.

The most pressing question of our time?

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

– Daniel J. Boorstin (1914 – 2004)

I respectfully submit that the greatest puzzle of our time is how we managed to eliminate ignorance while elevating nonsense.

If I ask you, say, how old Buddy Holly was when he died, then, using the same device you are using now to read this, you can find the answer to that question. You cannot not know how old Buddy Holly was when he died, once you've been asked, because getting the answer is just a matter of touching your smartphone or tablet or laptop or what have you the right way, and the answer will be yours.

So, we have, in a sense, eliminated ignorance. But how is it then that there so much nonsense? How is it then, that a substantial fraction of the population believes that our President's religion, or birthplace, or even nationality, are different than the truth? How does such nonsense thrive?

Dear NeuroCooking friends, I do not have an answer. I just think this is perhaps the most interesting – and pressing – question of our time. How is it that we have, simultaneously, managed to eliminate ignorance while elevating nonsense?

...and he should know!

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."

-Richard P. Feynman