what kind of brain do you have… or, how to drive yourself nuts for an entire evening…

from dan harlow:

Does the above image of a spinning dancer (found via and article in Perth Now) demonstrate which side of your brain is the more dominant? According to the article most people will see this dancer moving counter-clockwise because they apparently use more of the left side of their brain and tend to be more logical and practical. People who see the dancer moving clockwise (like me) are right brain dominant and tend to be more risk taking and imaginative.

several days ago, i watched this image for several hours on and off and couldn’t see her spinning anything BUT clockwise.  today?  she’s all counter-clockwise :o the first time that i watched her, i was working on a website design (right-brained?).  today, i’ve some paperwork, weblog entries, etc, to do (left-brained?).  i wonder if we’re all a bit of each every now and again.

interesting, how our minds work.  this actually ties with the book i’m reading, at the moment, .  i’ve a huge stack of books that i need to read and hit a period where i just had no interest in reading much of ~anything~.  then one day, i picked this book back up and it caught my attention right off the bat.  it’s been interesting so far. 

the author begins by comparing the human mind with artificial intelligence (robots) and the difficulty in programming a robot to understand something we all just ~know~...like… what a bachelor is.  say you program the robot with the definition of a bachelor: “an adult male who has never been married”.  then, wanting the robot to send out invitations to eligible bachelors for your party, you give it the following list.  how does the robot, using the definition of bachelor, correctly identify which people to invite?

• arthur has been living happily with alice for the last five years.  they have a 2 year old daughter and have never been officially married.
• charlie is 17 years old.  he lives at home with his parents and is in high school.
• eli and edgar are homosexual lovers who have been living together for many years.
• father gregory is the bishop of the catholic cathedral at groton upon thames.

reading the list, common sense tells you that ~none~ of the men are “eligible bachelors”.  yet.  how do we know that?  what exactly is “common sense”?  how is it defined?

Continue Reading...

Blogged, Just for Fun, books, WTF,
Tagged as: books,wtf,science,psychology October 23, 2007 @ 03:17 am

stcynic speaks at yearlykos

don’t miss this!  stcynic spoke at yearlykos about the need to get scientifically minded people on school boards… EXCELLENT speech.  very very good job   but then, i’d have expected no less!

here’s his website: dispatches from the culture wars

Blogged, Politics,
Tagged as: religion,politics,videos,science,culture,stcynic,education August 16, 2007 @ 08:02 am