Lectures done! 22 Oct 2007 Today was the final lecture in my Introduction to Cognitive Science course. Thank the fates it is over. I started this having no real idea of the topic, never having taught what Americans are pleased to call “freshmen” and we call “first-years”, and with the first two lectures occurring in my absence as I was at a conference in the UK. So it has been a bit like surfing a wave of magma. Anyway, I dropped my hindbrain (17″ MacPowerBook G4) on Friday and shattered the LCD. This has made it hard to (i) prepare the lecture, (ii) give the lecture, and (iii) post blog entries. Now that I have time, and it is being repaired, I am to fix this. Administrative
Administrative Icon for Blogging Peer Reviewed research 15 Aug 2007 Dear readers, Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily has suggested that we have a universally available icon to indicate that the blogger is blogging about peer reviewed research, and he has created a discussion blog at BPR3. Please go make suggestions and add to the discussion. Muggins here will implement it… Read More
Administrative Some stats 14 Aug 201018 Sep 2017 It occurred to me that I don’t do a very good job of tracking the stats of the three incarnations of this blog. So here they are: Posts Hits ET 1 : 411 142,117 ET 2 @ Scienceblogs : 1,272 912,249 ET 3 : 618 tba 2,712 1,054,366 Ho. Ly…. Read More
Administrative What is a homology? 2 Jun 2010 No, not that kind, but the mathematical kind. I tried to read the online definitions, but they all presume other mathematical terminology and knowledge I don’t have. So can anyone explain, in words that don’t assume I have done a course in topology, what a mathematical homology is? Pretty please? Read More
I used to think it was a terrible thing that life was so unfair. Then I thought, ‘what if life *were* fair, and all of the terrible things that happen to us came because we really deserved them?’ Now I take great comfort in the general unfairness and hostility of the universe. Marcus Cole Babylon 5: A Late Delivery from Avalon (#3.13) (1996)
You don’t know the convenience of a laptop until you are without it, for whatever reason. Craig Venter has done some terrific work on DNA, and artificial life is getting closer. How will Philosophy handle that side of science?