It’s time for another edition of Comics by People Cleverer Than Me. Enjoy the following introductory XCKD. Click it to embiggen! Today, I’m going to talk about what exactly it is that we call “me.” But first – let’s talk about feelings. Have you ever wondered why the English language has hundreds (if not thousands) [...]
Archive for March, 2011
Perfect Memory and the Ten Percent Myth
March 21st, 2011 
The Connectome This story begins in a bar. On the wall-mounted TV, the popular channel Sports Channel was taking a break from the popular show Men in Suits Awkwardly Attempting Rapport to show a trailer for the movie Limitless. I’m not gonna lie – I was intrigued by the plot at first; and not only because literally anything on [...]
Posted in Feature Stories 
Tags: drugs, memory, neurophysiology, science to the rescue! 
No Comments »What's In a Name?
March 15th, 2011 The Connectome Remember the story of the Garden of Eden? Adam and Eve pretty much had it made, wouldn’t you say? They got to chill in a tropical garden all the time, cuddling with lions and high-fiving God whenever they felt like it. In fact, other than that little rule about not eating from a certain tree, Adam [...]
Dopaminergic Hacking
March 9th, 2011 The Connectome I’ve got a question: do you ever find yourself desperately wishing for some pieces of molded metal? What about a bunch of pieces of molded metal, plastic, and rubber? What if those pieces are connected in a particular configuration… one we humans call a 2012 Aston Martin Virage? The difference between that particular configuration of [...]
The Watson Situation
March 2nd, 2011 The Connectome Or, “Logistical Problems in Subsymbolic Computation: A Neurophysiological Perspective.” Because that title’s fun – that’s why. Today, I want to take a little break from connectome hacking and talk about a question that’s been generating some lively debate lately: what exactly is IBM’s Watson doing? I don’t mean “doing,” so much, in the sense that [...]
