Interesting Links for 03-12-2013

[andrewducker]

• The 10 Worst Product Names in PC History
  (tags: computers names marketing )
• Toast sandwich - why was I not previously aware of this?
  (tags: food bread )
• If I didn't already have a Nexus 5 I'd be very tempted by the Moto G - £135 is dirt cheap!
  (tags: mobile_phones android )
• A sensible Assisted Suicide act is about to be put before the Scottish parliament
  (tags: scotland law suicide euthenasia )
• Toddlers learn words for nonsolids better when getting messy in a highchair
  (tags: children learning mess )
• British wage-earners have taken £5,000 pay cut in five years
  (tags: uk wages work )
• Error messages for writers
  (tags: writing errors funny viasupergee )
• A friend is picking random directions to walk across Edinburgh and photographing what he finds...
  (tags: photography edinburgh )
• I just donated £20 to Wikipedia, because it's the first place I look whenever I want to know something.
  (tags: wikipedia donations )
• Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (a prediction from 1995)
  (tags: history prediction internet web )
• Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal (triggered by hormone changes in puberty, it looks like)
  (tags: gender brains neuroscience )
• How do ordinary voters see the UK's political parties?
  (tags: politics uk )
• First tram reaches Haymarket in test
  (tags: edinburgh trams )
• Male Pill a step closer
  (tags: contraception men )

Comments

[supergee]

How can the Intarweb work when it has no air to push against?

Thanx for the Wikipedia reminder

[liv]

Pretty much anything which uses the metaphor of "wiring" for how brains work is likely to be useless. It feels like we've replaced the homunculus theory of behaviour with "there's a really powerful computer inside people's heads" which is pretty much the exact same fallacy only it sounds more superficially appealing to people who have positive associations with "science" and negative feelings about "magic". Brains are not like computer processors or logic circuits, they're just not, on multiple important levels. Plasticity is the probably the most important reason why this hard-wired gender differences article is just as much bullshit as every other hard-wired gender differences article.

Here's a nice critique of the logic and political context of the report, that isn't too heavy on the neuroscience detail.

[andrewducker]

I don't see why a particular metaphor is bad. People know there are no real wires in there. They know that the "wiring" is just stronger connections between certain places. It's not like anyone reading that article actually thinks that brains are made of silicon chips.

The critique wasn't bad - but I find the gender-studies approach just as silly as the evo-psych approach.

Personally, I'm mostly shocked that I've only encountered one person so far pointing out that the whole left-brained/right-brained intuition/logic thing is complete bollocks. I'd have hoped that more people would know that.