Adventures in selection bias

I always love a naughty research study, and this one sounded like fun: Spanking 'brings couples together'...

Researchers at Northern Illinois University measured stress hormone levels in couples engaging in S&M activities, and found evidence that these activities, while causing some anxiety at first (which, I suppose is the point, right?) ultimately left the couples feeling closer.

And what was their research sample? People attending an S&M party.
Yes. Really.

So... S&M brings couples who are into S&M closer? You don't say!

Sweden Does Space Tourism

As early as 2012, tourist flights to space will be launching from Kiruna in Northern Sweden. Among the attractions: the possibility of flying through the aurora borealis, and catching a glimpse of the Northern Lights from space.

Which, I have to believe, must be one of the most amazing sights ever...



Flights will be operated by Virgin Galactic, and tickets will be available for $200,000 from the nearby Ice Hotel.

Read more about Swedish space tourism here.

Visualizing Bedroom Banter

This may come in useful next time you're at a loss for words in the bedroom...


You're welcome!

Click the image for a larger version.

Extreme Sheep LED Art

This is brilliant!



I'm not entirely sure it's real, but I think it is and it makes me happy to believe. Enjoy!

The 1.4 million dollar question...

French physicist and philosopher of science Bernard d'Espagnat has been awarded the John Templeton Foundation's prestigious and highly generous Templeton Prize, amounting to 1 million British pounds. It's the world's largest annual prize.

As for what Monsieur d'Espagnat has done to deserve such a prize, I'll begin by noting that his scientific pedigree is off the charts. Known for his work in quantum mechanics, d'Espagnat enjoyed the tutorship of Louis de Broglie who was his thesis advisor, he was Enrico Fermi's research assistant, and he worked under Niels Bohr at CERN.

Yet he was awarded the Templeton Prize less for his advancements of the field of quantum mechanics, than for his exploration of its philosophical implications. The Foundation's press release offers this telling quote by d'Espagnat:

"[Quantum mechanics allows for] the possibility that the things we observe may be tentatively interpreted as signs providing us with some perhaps not entirely misleading glimpses of a higher reality and, therefore, that higher forms of spirituality are fully compatible with what seems to emerge from contemporary physics.”

It seems that the 1.4 million dollar question has ventured way off the path of science and into the territory of religion and spirituality. And I'm not sure how I feel about this.

On the one hand, at a time when our economic hardships are driving us to reduce everything to a cost benefit analysis, and the humanities are falling further and further out of favor, it's nice to see a purely theoretical endeavor rewarded. I also think we would benefit from mending the current massively unproductive rift between science and religion.

But on the other hand, is this really the 1.4 million dollar question? Or is there some truth to Richard Dawkin's critique that the Templeton Prize is just "a very large sum of money given...usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion?"

I may be leaning toward the latter...

Alice's Adventures in Microscopic Wonderland

Three beetles sip tea at a table made of butterfly wings, set in a field of crystallized vitamin C while aphids fly overhead, and it looks every bit as fanciful as Lewis Carroll's world beyond the rabbit hole.



This image, by illustrator Colleen Champ and microscopist Dennis Kunkel, was among the first prize winners at the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

Read more about it on Wired Magazine and on the contest website, where you can see other fascinating images that blur the lines between science and art.

Pencil Sculptures

Jennifer Maestre is an artist from South Africa who makes sculptures out of everyday objects like pencils and nails. Spiky sculptures! Inspired by sea urchins!

Robots, Love, Babies

Kenji, a third-generation humanoid robot, was originally programmed to emulate the human emotion of love, but ended up emulating dependence and fear of abandonment instead.

"After some limited environmental conditioning, Kenji first demonstrated love by bonding with a a stuffed doll in his enclosure, which he would embrace for hours at a time... Researchers attributed this behavior to his programmed qualities of devotion and empathy and called the experiment a success.

...

"The trouble all started when a young female intern began to spend several hours each day with Kenji, testing his systems and loading new software routines. When it came time to leave one evening, however, Kenji refused to let her out of his lab enclosure and used his bulky mechanical body to block her exit and hug her repeatedly."

Nope, looks like Kenji wasn't displaying devotion and empathy at all.

Interestingly, his behavior is surprisingly similar to the first steps of social-emotional development in babies. At around 8-10 months, babies begin to show signs of human attachment, mostly in the form of separation anxiety, and only later do they acquire the capacity of empathy and an understanding of social rules.

So maybe Kenji just needs to grow up?

The story gets funnier:

"The intern was only able to escape after she had frantically phoned two senior staff members to come and temporarily de-activate Kenji."

Would have loved to see that. You can read more about Kenji here.

Visualizing the Patterns of Poetry

While browsing through Lee Byron's website, another interesting visualization project caught my eye. I've linked to his website before, on a post about visualizing personal audio histories. This one instead is about visualizing poetry in terms of repetition patters.

It always helps that Byron's visuals are so aesthetically appealing -- it makes them even more captivating. Check this one out...


It uses visuals to highlight different levels of patterns in a limerick: large yellow arcs capture the higher-level structure of the poem; narrower purple arcs capture patterns among words, like rhymes and alliteration; the bars along the bottom denote the number of syllables in each line.

If you look closely you notice even more patterns that add complexity to the visual.

I would have loved to see something like this when learning the structure of poems in grade school. Lessons on meter and "perfect" vs. "feminine" rhymes always seems so dreary and hard to remember, especially in contrast to the musical nature of poetry.

Speaking of music... I could see really interesting applications of this sort of visual to music, particularly from the Baroque period -- pieces like Bach's fugues that rely so much on patterns and repetition.

Check out more of Byron's poetry visualizations here.

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss!

Dr Seuss turns 105 today!

And with all the fear- and misery-mongering going on these days, it's as good a time as ever to think about what crazy, colorful, exciting, trippy things the future might hold.