Perhaps it's the realization that it's all a lot more complicated and intractable that nurtures their grum... read more
discussion post on Fri, November 13, 2009 - 10:22 PM
You'll never get away with it...Gender
Male
about me
At home in Paris, Geneva, San Francisco, Tokyo, professionally curious about the constituents of the Universe, privately curious about numerous other areas inside the sciences and the arts. Novels read and to read pile up everywhere, jostling for attention with unrealisable ideas for jewelry, uncookable meals, and the making of an animated movie on reaching for immortality.
You are not connected to _michael_
want to grow your network?
Running commentary
I'd been warned. I'd been told to *watch this video*. I was even cajoled to buy the tickets. But of course, I hadn't prepared, hadn't watched the video, didn't know what was going to hit me.
Thu, November 5, 2009 - 1:18 AM
permalink -
0 comments
Imagine a cross between an alphorn and an air-raid siren. Imagine her wearing a Charleston dress (blue), rubber boots (brown), and (horns?)(oversize mouse ears?) (green), Imagine this unlikely apparation climbing on stage (literally! no stairs) and shaking her ass at the public, after having e... read more 
Chinese contemporary art has risen like a red rocket over the past decade; it's in every gallery, biennale and forward-looking retrospective. The number of artists being promoted is rather small, many of them in and around a nucleus linked to Shanghai, Lorenz Helbling's Shanghart gallery and the former swiss ambassador to China, Uli Sigg. This Swiss-China connection also ties the architects Herzog and de Meuron to another chinese artist/architect, Ai Wei Wei, and it is in a documentary on the...
read more
Tue, November 3, 2009 - 7:43 AM
permalink -
0 comments
What can one say about Craig Venter that hasn't been said already so many times? Although I am not completely familiar with his work, his talk in Geneva last week was more of a reminder of his past and present activities, than a revolutionary eye-opener. But what was shockingly clear is the intensity of his mind, the effort it costs him to interact with the rest of humanity, and that his ambitions will not be thwarted. That he is collecting, almost as a side project, thousands of genes from b...
read more
Tue, October 20, 2009 - 12:02 AM
permalink -
0 comments
OK, so being a scientist with my nose to the grindstone isn't totally without occasional perks. I missed out on a fabulous lunch when the director came scouting out the locale, unfortunately, but did get invited to an advance screening of 'Angels and Demons', part of which was filmed on site in the lab. Little bit of science, lots of action, somewhat formulaic, but likely to be very successful. To its great credit, the movie accommodated scientific reality as much as possible, within the boun...
read more
Tue, May 5, 2009 - 9:40 AM
permalink -
5 comments
A few weeks ago, I participated in a video-round table on the dangers of a new piece of technology, that has been thoroughly vetted by pretty much all the experts in the field (thousands of people). The arguments going into why there is no risk are rather straightforward, although to really understand them requires a background in the corresopnding science. A few voices on the fringes of the field have raised hypothetical concerns, that the overwhelming majority of the experts have easily tak...
read more
Fri, April 24, 2009 - 7:07 AM
permalink -
8 comments
Logorrhea
Chicken or egg?
(in Brain Geeks)
So: are people better thinkers because they are grumpy, or is grumpiness simply a corollary of a lucid mind (and the state of the world)?
Perhaps it's the realization that it's all a lot more complicated and intractable that nurtures their grum... read more
Re: Why brains are wrinkled
(in Brain Geeks)
"*As I've mentioned before, my Broca's area and Wernicke's area are on the opposite side (the right) from where they normally are in most people (tests and diagnoses at various Boston hospitals after I suffered a stroke-like hemiperetic migraine s...
read more
discussion post on Tue, November 10, 2009 - 9:29 AM
Re: Why brains are wrinkled
(in Brain Geeks)
No, in fact it's the spinal fluid that's to blame.
The consideration that folding is a way to add more surface into the same volume is quite trivial, so I wonder whether there is anything more to it than that. That local folding may be linked t... read more discussion post on Thu, November 5, 2009 - 9:34 AM
Re: random quotes
(in random conversation)
"Say goodbye to your friends."
discussion post on Thu, November 5, 2009 - 5:00 AM
Re: Constant Light Linked to Symptoms of Depression
(in Cognitive Science)
I'm not sure that those results carry over in a straightforward manner to humans; mice are after all prey, and being out in the open without refuge is probably not going to do their anxiety levels much good.
discussion post on Thu, November 5, 2009 - 2:41 AM
Will you look at this?!
Read: Salman Rushdie, Richard Powers, Jonathan Lethem, Angela Carter, Mark Danielewski (The house of Leaves), Tom Robbins, Pynchon, Borges, Orwell, Zamyatin, Bulgakov, Lem, Viktor Pelevin, Tolkien, Marquez, Terry Pratchett, Murakami
Multiple facets, single core
Word Freaks,
Bibliophiles Unite,
Book Lovers,
Bookworms,
Brain Geeks,
Brothers Quay,
Butoh,
Cognitive Science,
DIY - do it yourself,
Fierce Invalids,
Freebooters Of The Undecided Lands,
GRAPHIC NOVELS,
Jewelry Artists,
Lexical Elitists,
Literacy Nerds,
Mac OS X,
Made in Taiwan,
Neurophysiology and Neurobiology,
Paris, France,
Philosophy of Science,
...
|