Cognitive Dissonance in Monkeys, revisited

As a follow-up to this post on cognitive dissonance research, Louisa Egan has graciously provided a link to some new research that addresses some of the criticism.

Robots that Care

Apropos the theme of our next meeting, I was delighted to see this piece in the 02 November 2009 New Yorker featuring work by Maja Mataric (who spent some time in the Computer Science Department of our beloved Brandeis University). Maja and her students are building robots to help the elderly, work with autistic children, etc. I especially enjoyed the criticism of this work by Sherry Turkle: essentially, "people should be doing this, not robots". Having spent many hours volunteering in a nursing home as a youth, I can attest to the fact that what old people need is human, not robot, companionship.

Soupy Sales dead at 83

Soupy Sales, comedian and radio-TV personality best known for his childrens' TV show, Lunch with Soupy Sales (later known as The Soupy Sales Show), died on Oct. 22, 2009 at the age of 83. GAWKER has a short article on their site with a brief video. We will miss Soupy, White Fang, Black Tooth, Pookie, and the rest. Thanks and a hat tip to Robert Remez.

Crumb has found god

Robert Crumb, famed illustrator and underground comix pioneer, has a new project: The Book of Genesis Illustrated, which covers the first 50 chapters of the bible. An article by David Colton in USA Today on Oct. 19, 2009, reviews the book and provides background information. In the article, Crumb reports that "It was hard to draw God."

"Should God just be a bright light? Should I use word balloons? Should God be a woman?" Crumb says the answer came to him in a dream.

"I ended up with the old stereotypical Charlton Heston kind of God, long beard, very masculine. I used a lot of white-out, a lot of corrections when I tried to draw God."

"I got totally sick of it by the end of it. I've come out exhausted," Crumb says.

"I may never draw again."

IS Group meeting: Music and Mind

The next IS Group meeting with take place at 6pm, Saturday, 17 October 2009, at the home of Douglas Whalen in Guilford, Connecticut. The theme is Music and Mind. The Readings include Oliver Sacks. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition; and Daniel J. Levitin. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. For additional information contact Philip Rubin or Doug Whalen.

Gaia vs. Medea

This article in the always enjoyable Chronicle of Higher Education Review touches on a theme from an I.S. meeting of many years ago: James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. An interesting twist is the recent "Medea Hypothesis", which portrays life on Earth not as a self-sustaining force restoring the planet to equlibrium, but an ultimately self-destroying force that (echoing another IS theme) pushes it away from equlibrium.

Brain Control

An article by Erico Guizzo, called "Monkeys Control Computer With Thought" in the July 2009 IEEE Spectrum online, describes the work of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The work of Jose Carmena and his students, published in PLos Biology, shows how "a monkey’s brain is able to develop a motor memory for controlling a virtual device in a manner similar to the way it creates such a memory for the animal’s body." Lena Ting, a professor of biomedical engineering at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, says that the findings may "... change the whole way that people have thought about how to approach brain-machine interfaces." "Previous research," she explains, "tried to use the parts of the brain that operate real limbs to control an artificial one. The Berkeley study suggests that an artificial arm may not need to rely on brain signals related to the natural arm; the brain can assimilate the artificial device as if it were a new part of the body."