Daniel Rourke /stream

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Is our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, the first cyborg species? Gizmodo/New Scientist has a fascinating article up about how humans evolved as a result of technology. Timothy Taylor, an anthropologist and…

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Are signs and meanings just as vital to living things as enzymes and tissues? Liz Else investigates a science in the making EVERY so often, something shows up on the New…

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Back in 1981, R.M. Hare, in his book Moral Thinking, featured a distinction that today I still find useful. Hare admitted that the distinction was not original with him, but he…

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One of the side-effects of having your work appear in a public forum such as this is that people often email me asking for advice on how to break into writing,…

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Imagine being a slave in ancient Rome. Now remember being one. The second task, unlike the first, is crazy. If, as I’m guessing, you never were a slave in ancient Rome,…

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There he goes again, making up nonsense and making ridiculous claims that have no relationship to reality. Ray Kurzweil must be able to spin out a good line of bafflegab, because…

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It seems to me part of the problem is that the term "postmodernism" was always so muddy and abstract. To different people, it meant (at least) two different things. First of…

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If the earth stood still, the oceans would gradually migrate toward the poles and cause land in the equatorial region to emerge. This would eventually result in a huge equatorial megacontinent…

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For folks that haven't checked it yet, the newly re-launched SAME HAT TUMBLR is up and running! The SAME HAT! Tumblr is curated and run by 8 contributors. It features art/videos/music…

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Porn for the Blind is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to producing audio descriptions of sample movie clips from adult web sites. This service is provided free of charge.

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Will my enduring ghost be a mute witness to the goings-on down here, waving its vapory arms frantically at the undead? Or will it be an agent, endowed with the capacity…

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According to the late Harvard University biologist Ernst W. Mayr, the greatest evolutionary theorist since Charles Darwin, “species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated…

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You may have heard of determinism, the theory that absolutely everything that happens is causally determined to happen exactly as it does by what has already gone before — right back…

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In an influential article in the Annual Review of Neuroscience, Joshua Gold of the University of Pennsylvania and Michael Shadlen of the University of Washington sum up experiments aimed at discovering…

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Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. students what a Ph.D. is. It's hard to describe it in words. So, I use pictures. Read below for the illustrated…

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Is our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, the first cyborg species? Gizmodo/New Scientist has a fascinating article up about how humans evolved as a result of technology. Timothy Taylor, an anthropologist and…

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Are signs and meanings just as vital to living things as enzymes and tissues? Liz Else investigates a science in the making EVERY so often, something shows up on the New…

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Parasites commonly manipulate host behaviour, and among the most dramatic examples are diverse fungi that cause insects to die attached to leaves. This death-grip behaviour functions to place insects in an…

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One of the side-effects of having your work appear in a public forum such as this is that people often email me asking for advice on how to break into writing,…

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There he goes again, making up nonsense and making ridiculous claims that have no relationship to reality. Ray Kurzweil must be able to spin out a good line of bafflegab, because…

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“It's not my fault. Communication error has occurred,” my computer pleads with me in a voice of lady Victoria. First it excuses itself, then urges me to pay attention, to check…

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Now available for free online: The Mind's I: Fantasies and reflections on self and soul (ISBN 0-553-34584-2) is a 1981 book composed and arranged by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C.…

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It seems to me part of the problem is that the term "postmodernism" was always so muddy and abstract. To different people, it meant (at least) two different things. First of…

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Two summers ago, the Atlantic published an essay by Nicholas Carr, one of the blogosphere's most prominent (and thoughtful) contrarians, under the headline "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". "Over the past…

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Porn for the Blind is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to producing audio descriptions of sample movie clips from adult web sites. This service is provided free of charge.

Bookmark

Will my enduring ghost be a mute witness to the goings-on down here, waving its vapory arms frantically at the undead? Or will it be an agent, endowed with the capacity…

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According to the late Harvard University biologist Ernst W. Mayr, the greatest evolutionary theorist since Charles Darwin, “species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated…

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Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory – inspired by pencil lead – that could make it all very simple IT WAS a speech that changed…

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You may have heard of determinism, the theory that absolutely everything that happens is causally determined to happen exactly as it does by what has already gone before — right back…

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Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. students what a Ph.D. is. It's hard to describe it in words. So, I use pictures. Read below for the illustrated…

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We've dedicated this Power Grid to the most disgusting alien civilizations to ever grace the page, screen, or hard drive. Why is biology used as technology the easiest way to make…