Monthly Archives: November 2008
The Smoke and Mirrors of Profiling
While this may be difficult to believe (grab your seats), all of those ridiculously popular crime shows that feature ‘criminal profiling’ may be even less realistic than we already know. A new paper published in the journal Criminal Justice and … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
The Meme Machine Revisited: An Interview with Susan Blackmore
It has been nearly ten years since The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore was published. In this seminal book, Blackmore developed the idea–first proposed by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene–that culture, like biology, evolves through the processes of variation, selection, … Continue reading
Filed under Interviews
The Psychology of Grifting
According to Paul Zak, neuroeconomist, the essential part of running a con is not to convince the pigeon to trust you, but rather to convince him that you trust him. Zak discusses the underlying dynamics in this post on his Psychology Today … Continue reading
Filed under About Neuroscience, Videos
Seth Godin: Prophet of Remarkable Ideas
Seth Godin is a writer of well-received business books; simultaneously, he’s a writer whose work has little to do with business. For anyone else this would be an obvious contradiction, but for Godin it’s exactly on target. I’ve read Godin’s books, and … Continue reading
Filed under Books and Ideas
The Science of “What?!?”: Chatting with Author Mary Roach
You know from the first page of a Mary Roach book that you’re not in for a typical walk in the science park. Of course, when you picked up a book with the title Stiff, or Spook, or Bonk you … Continue reading
Filed under About Sexuality, Interviews
Wall-E or the Terminator?
Independently minded robots, Isaac Asimov told us, need rules. With well-structured, law abiding robots, we get terrific garbage service, expertly made French toast and great lawn care. With recklessly structured, disobedient robots, we get “He’s been sent from the future to kill … Continue reading
Filed under Books and Ideas
David DiSalvo is a science, technology and culture writer whose work appears in Scientific American Mind, Psychology Today and a variety of other places.
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