Category: Asides

In Time

New film from Andrew Niccol, director of Gattaca (one of my very favorite sci-fi movies).

In the late 21st century, time has replaced money as the unit of currency. At 25 years old, aging stops and each person is given one more year to live. Unless you replenish your clock, you die.

Introduction to NMR/MRI

FMRI has become an industry standard for neuroimaging, and while it’s relatively easy to understand the basics of the BOLD response and how neural activity can effect blood flow, trying to visualize the fundamentals of MRI physics can be really difficult. Luckily, friendly New Zealand company Magritek has produced an incredibly easy to follow and informative series of videos covering the basic physics of magnetic resonance all the way up through 2D MRI. They also make a really neat desktop MRI apparatus that uses the Earth’s magnetic field as its primary field, thus avoiding the need for cryogenics and superconducting magnets.

Disproving Radical Solipsism with Microsoft Excel

Start digging at all deeply into the problem of consciousness and philosophy of mind, and you’ll quickly encounter arguments of radical solipsism, the view that it is impossible to prove the existence of anything other than your own conscious experience, and certainly not any external reality. Though most philosophers don’t take this claim very seriously, there has yet to be made a convincing argument against it.

Eric Schwitzgebel has just posted an interesting argument suggesting that there may be ways to experimentally disprove radical solipsism, using nothing more than your own mathematical ability and a copy of Excel. It’s certainly preliminary work, but fascinating nonetheless.

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two


The original lyrical economic throw-down was posted to youtube by EconStories over a year ago and has since racked up over 2 million views, and for good reason. It was catchy, informative, and taught me I was a staunch Hayekian. Now the duo are back to debate economic policy as we come out of the recession. The NYT has an interview with the creator.

Keynes vs. Hayek: A Rap Battle Renewed – NYTimes.com.