Automatic pilot
The New York Times recently published an article about subconscious mental processing. It describes a number of unexpected findings (e.g., people who are unobtr...
Category: Thinking Meat Project
Posts from my blog the Thinking Meat Project (2006–2018)
The plastic brain
Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves, by Sharon Begley The Brain That Changes Itself...
Seeing the other guy’s viewpoint
The saying about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes does not, of course, have anything to do with pedestrian activities, but with the need to understa...
Time and stars
I realize I’m stretching the Thinking Meat theme with this post, but the story touches on so many of my favorite things that I’ve just got to write ...
Book review: Under a Green Sky
Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future, by Peter Ward. Collins, 2007. Under a Green Sky...
A little learning
Knowledge is power, right? I usually assume that learning more about science or technology is helpful when it comes time to form an opinion or determine a corre...
What evolutionary biologists think of religion
This article from American Scientist describes a recent project that surveyed the religious beliefs of 149 prominent evolutionary scientists. Three previous pol...
Animal personalities
One of my sons keeps pet snakes. When he was younger, I had some contact with the snakes and was struck by the degree to which they seem to have distinct person...
Book review: The Three-Pound Enigma
The Three-Pound Enigma: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock Its Mysteries, by Shannon Moffett. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2006. This overview of the cu...
Book review: The Echo Maker
I began reading The Echo Maker, the latest novel by Richard Powers, with high hopes, but overall it was a disappointment. Powers is an intelligent writer of amb...