IS Group met in New Haven on Sep. 3, 2011

The IS Group met on Saturday, September 3, 2011, in New Haven. The readings including James Gleick, The Information; Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk; Nigel Stepp and Michael T. Turvey, On strong anticipation; and China Miéville, The City & The City. It was a good meeting with an excellent turnout, spirited discussion of the readings, and the addition of some new participants, followed by Hobo With a Shotgun for the hardcore among us (thanks to Simon D. Levy for the suggestion?!).

NEXT MEETING -- TOPIC: Fiction in mind
The readings for the next meeting (date to be determined), include:

Brian Boyd, On the origin of stories: Evolution, cognition, and fiction.
(Thanks to Christina Spiesel for the suggestion!)

Lisa Zunshine, Why we read fiction: Theory of mind and the novel.

Additional reading:

Suzanne Keen, Empathy and the Novel.
(Thanks to Simon D. Levy for the suggestion.)

Future readings may include:

Brian Greene, The hidden reality: Parallel universes and the deep laws of the cosmos.
(Thanks to Gary Kopf for the suggestion!)

Olaf Sporns, Networks of the brain.

Date and location:

To be determined (see below).

Please note that I am having shoulder surgery on Friday, September 9, and may be out of work from between 1 to 6 weeks.

Be sure to check the IS Group webpage for up-to-date news on the IS Group. Also, please contribute to the IS Group Blog if you run across items of interest to the group, including, stories, books, films, games, comics, articles, etc. Click here for information on the entire IS Group Social Media Empire. Thanks!

Philip

Take your stinking clause off me ...

The inimitable Geoff Pullum has just posted this Language Log piece on language-evolution themes in the latest, and apparently quite good, installation in the endless Planet of the Apes franchise. (Monkeys may be the primates with tails, but the Planet of the Apes meme has the longest long-tail temporal distribution Hollywood could hope for.) Though the film may have some amazing special effects (and apparently includes scenes, like the one shown here, filmed in the aftermath of a Yankees / Red Sox game), nothing can ever top the breathtaking final scene and hammy macho posturing of the 1968 original.

Robots you can wear: Fashion cybernetics

Stephen Ebert posted an article on August 3, 2011 in HUMANS iNVENT that discusses the new age of cybernetic fashion. One example is the HAL-5 robot suit developed by Cyberdyne, a Tokyo-based company. Of particular interest is a discussion of how such suits could potentially be of assistance to the disabled and the elderly. Thanks to Howard Iger and Carol Pollard for letting us know about this.

Person Pinball, A Stop-Motion Pinball Game Using Pedestrians

Person Pinball - 2011 Animation Block Party 'Outro' video, posted by Mark Frauenfelder on boingboing, Aug 2, 2011. Video link via laughing squid. This short stop-motion animation by Aaron Hughes was the outro video for the 8th Annual Animation Block Party in New York City. Thanks and a hat tip to Robert Remez for sharing this with us.

Wall Art

A small selection of my photographs is on display, for the month of August, at Cafe George by Paula, 300 George Street, New Haven, during normal business hours (M-F, until 3 PM). This group of photos is part of the "Wall Art" book project that is still in development and focuses on photographs of painted buildings. The photo shown here is a detail of a piece called Demolition and Sport by Peter Busa (1914-1985). The piece was painted on the exterior of the old Minnesota Varnishes building on the east side of downtown Minneapolis in 1974 and updated in 1982. This is one of the first monumental outdoor murals in the state of Minnesota. The buildings on this location are currently part of the Valspar Coporation, the sixth largest painting and coatings company in the world. The photo was taken by Philip Rubin on October 19, 2005.

Facial Recognition System Causes Problems for Mass. Drivers

Facial recognition systems are starting to appear everywhere. All of the tech giants are staking out turf, including Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft (click on each for a different recent news item). ieee spectrum has a recent (July 25, 2011) story by Robert Charette, called "Here's Looking at You, and You, and You ..." about some of the problems resulting from one of the first examples of use of such systems on a large scale. The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles is one of approximately 35 states using automated anti-terrorism facial recognition systems. One of the big problems is the false positives, and the individual's "burden" to clear his or her name when mistakes are made. Read the story to learn more.

High-stakes forensic linguistics

The wonderful Language Log blog has had some excellent recent discussion of the use of forensic linguistic to determine authorship, stylistics, etc. The original entry, "High-stakes forensic linguistics," July 25, 2011, by Mark Liberman, framed the discussion around the legal battle over ownership of Facebook (also discussed by Ben Zimmer, NY Times Sunday Review, July 23, 2011, "Decoding Your E-Mail Personality"). As Mark pointed out, it was nice to see comments on the Language Log story by Ron Butters, Larry Solan, and Carole Chaski. A follow-up entry on July 27, 2011, "Authors vs. Speakers: A Tale of Two Subfields," provides some historical context related to forensic speaker identification.