April 2010
7 posts
Rockin' all over the ward →
Paste Magazine has an article on ‘Eight Musical Homages to the Asylum’ about some of the most famous, and infamous, songs and videos about being institutionalised. It was kindly posted by…
2010-04-02 Spike activity →
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news: The LA Times reviews a new book on how ‘The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’, originally a 60s hippie collective who became America’s…
Public debate: Economy and ethics in crisis →
Austrian author and journalist Robert Misik and Romanian economist and former minister of finance Daniel Daianu met in Bucharest on 31 March to discuss whether the financial crisis has opened up a…
Out on a limb →
Barking up the Wrong Tree is a minimalist blog that posts some amazing studies about human behaviour. If you were interested in whether taking out health insurance encourages obesity,…
Beneath the petticoat →
More than half a century before Alfred Kinsey started to study the surprising diversity of human sexual behaviour, Stanford professor Clelia Mosher surveyed Victorian-era women on their…
March 2010
51 posts
"The most important thing here is... →
“Looking for loopholes in the law and exploiting them this was the most that we allowed ourselves. And we got our kicks from showing the government the mistakes it had made in legislation.”…
From cognitive science to an empirically-informed... →
A workshop in Amsterdam (December 7-8 2010) entitled “From cognitive science and psychology to an empirically-informed philosophy of logic” will bring together logicians, philosophers,…
Closer to the East or the West? →
Hungarians are distrustful and frown upon social inequality, according to a new survey. They are in two minds about breaking rules and are deeply committed to state redistribution. This places their…
Rodent brain in sex claim shocker →
Those tenacious chaps over at Language Log have followed up Louann Brizendine’s claims that men have a ‘defend your turf area’ by chasing up the references in her ominous new book The Male…
Down the pan →
This is, I assume, the first neuropsychological test to appear on a bog roll. The ‘Mind Trainer Toilet Roll’ has a different puzzle on each sheet and it includes the Stroop test, one of…
One Night in Birdland →
I’ve just re-read an interesting biographical study from last year on the ‘Neurological problems of jazz legends’ and noticed a interesting snippet about Charlie Parker: As a result of…
Debugging the free will relationship →
In 1987, British TV station Channel 4 had a series called Voices that included four programmes on psychoanalysis. One of the guests was psychologist Sherry Turkle, years before she became…
The social rationality of footballers →
Are footballers rational? It all depends on what their goals are (no pun intended). We will not be talking here about behavior outside the field, as it’s not entirely clear what norms of rationality…
Missing the mind's eye view →
Discover magazine has a fantastic Carl Zimmer piece about a man who lost the ability to see things in his mind’s eye after a minor neurological procedure. Zimmer covers a recently…
The FBI Evil Minds Research Museum →
The FBI has an appointment-only display called the Evil Minds Research Museum that displays the letters, art and artefacts of serial killers in an attempt to understand their psychology….
Lévi-Strauss in comic form →
Thanks to Culture Matters for drawing our attention to this tribute to Claude Lévi-Strauss in comic form published by The Financial Times. It has a clever twist and it might help you…
2010-03-26 Spike activity →
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news: New Scientist has an excellent article on the ‘global workspace’ theory of consciousness. Fast food logos unconsciously speed up…
Cyber wars →
The “next generation” controls with which authorities aim to manage the Internet mark a shift from heavy-handed filtering to sophisticated multi-pronged methods. Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski on…
Easy tiger →
Psychologist Jesse Bering has written one of the most remarkable popular science articles I have read in a very long time that discusses, believe it or not, zoophilia or the sexual…
ICCI Mini-Grant Competition →
We are pleased to announce a grant competition organised by the International Cognition and Culture Institute and funded by the Programme in Culture & Cognition at the LSE. Up to five grants,…
Metaphors of betrayal →
Ukrainians are particularly wary of the realpolitik that dominates western dealings with Russia, writes Mykola Riabchuk. Whatever one thinks about the “centuries-old affinity” between Ukraine and…
Opening the mind to moral persuasion →
This week’s Nature has an article arguing that the recently popular field of moral psychology has neglected the role of public debate and personal reflection in the development of our…
For Kitty Jay →
This is the final resting place of Kitty Jay. The site, known as Jay’s Grave lies on the edge of Dartmoor, in England’s West Country. No one really knows the full story of her life, as the…
Learn about Social Neuroscience →
In the last issue of Neuron (65, 6), a “Special Feature: Reviews on Social Neuroscience,” of unique interest to cognitive and social scientists, “a series of reviews [most of them freely…
Emergency response psychology in Madrid →
Madrid is one of the very few places in the world that has emergency response psychologists that attend the scene of accidents and disasters alongside the police, paramedics and fire crews. I…
Why I have not returned to Belgrade →
Is it to spare her emotions that Slavenka Drakulic has not returned to Belgrade since the wars? She doesn’t think so. Instead, her reasons have to do with the silence and denial of so much of Serbian…
Brizendine, true to stereotype →
Louann Brizendine is a neuropsychiatrist who seems intent on bolstering sex stereotypes with poor science. Presumably in the service of promoting a new book, she has an article on CNN…
More security at any price →
The Stockholm Programme, the latest EU agreement on security policy, plans to enable the cross-border collection and sharing of data on a massive scale. Supposedly promoting “openness and security”,…
A cartoonist's code of conduct →
“Varlik” reads cartoons; “Esprit” determines the state of Sarkozy; “Blätter” sounds the alarm over plans for a high-tech fortress Europe; “Reset” warns of equating Italian identity with Catholicism;…
Varieties of disbelief →
On March 15, the Washington Post website put a link to a small ethnographic study by Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola entitled “Preachers who are not Believers.” In this remarkable piece, the…
Cartoonist's comment →
Semih Poray is one of Turkey’s most famous cartoonists. Every month, Eurozine partner “Varlik” publishes his “cartoonist’s comment”. This one appeared in March 2010, opening a themed section on…
Doing it for the country →
This study should cause all sorts of public policy head scratching and hair pulling but will undoubtedly be ignored. It suggests that motherhood, not marriage, reduces the chances of…
The 'pseudocommando' mass murderer →
Murder sprees by grudge-bearing, gun-toting killers have become a tragic feature of modern society although owing to the thankfully rare occurrence of the incidents, little is known about the…
Sarkozyism: Death of the Fifth Republic? →
Sarkozy flings himself into every political conflict, where his precursors held themselves aloof. Though he may have expanded the bounds of what is conceivable for a French president, Sarkozy has…
Jerry Fodor vs. Elliott Sober on Who Got What... →
For those who want more on the topic, here is, at Blogginghead.tv, a very earnest discussion between Jerry Fodor and Elliott Sober on Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini’s What Darwin Got Wrong.
LSE symposium on Personhood in a Neurobiological... →
An open and free Symposium on Personhood in a Neurobiological Age - Brain, Self and Society, at the LSE, 13 September 2010.
“It seems that we have learned more about the brain in the last decade…
The determined self-accuser →
While we tend to think that the recognition of false confessions is a relatively new development but The Lancet discussed the phenomenon of ‘auto-accusation’ as far back as 1902. The…
Do animals commit suicide? →
Time magazine has a short article on the history of ideas about whether animals can commit suicide. It starts somewhat awkwardly by discussing the recent Oscar winning documentary on…
Dear Lad, there's no such thing →
Spike Milligan was one of the best loved, most influential and least predictable of British comedians, not least because he experienced the highs and lows of manic depression which, on…
Is the “problem of evil” universal? →
Reading a book recommended by my brother, Gregory Boyd’s God at war (1997), I have recently been thinking about the problem of evil. Boyd suggests that the problem of evil arises because…
An interview on Death and Dying →
ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind has an archive interview from 1978 with Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who pioneered the consideration and treatment of the last stages of…
What's left of Orange Ukraine? →
After Viktor Yanukovych’s election victory, Ukraine is supposedly back where it belongs: in the Russian sphere of influence. The reality, however, is more complicated, writes Mykola Riabchuk. For the…
"The most important thing here is... →
In October 2008, Russian novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya wrote a letter to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former oligarch and Russia’s most debated prisoner. That was the beginning of a correspondence that has…
On the post-city →
As the ideological frenzy of modernism gives way to “content management systems”, and as global megacities render obsolete the urban grid and its certainties, societies of discipline become societies…
Every bastard a king →
“Mute” navigates the mediarchipelago; “Osteuropa” locates Khodorkovsky’s Rubicon; “Samtiden” warns a species headed for self-destruction; “Ny Tid” goes gender neutral; “Dilema veche” considers…
Letters from prison →
An introduction to the Khodorkovsky-Ulitskaya correspondence by the editors of “Osteuropa”.
Heisszeit →
In cooperation with “Polar”, the Eurozine Gallery presents Anna Meyer’s series of paintings “Heisszeit”: a powerful response to ecological and economic crisis and “a call for art once again to be…
New Eurozine partner: Sarajevo Notebook →
“Sarajevo Notebook” joins the Eurozine network. Founded in 2002 and published biannually, the independent regional journal aims to contribute to reconciliation in the Balkans by re-establishing lines…
Economy and ethics in crisis →
In Eurozine’s series “Europe talks to Europe”, Robert Misik and Daniel Daianu will discuss the ethical and political implications of a globalized economy. Has the financial crisis opened up a new-old…
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