Tags
famous psychology experiments, games, gender, Genetics, math, memory, mind, parasite, photography, rape, science, science and society, Science in Society, sexism, stanford prison experiment, video, videogames, virus, woman scientist
It’s been a while since I last shared a mish-mash of assorted links. Unfortunately I’ve been too busy recently to have the time to trawl aimlessly around the web, so there are fewer fruits from my foraging forays. Anyway, enough mixed metaphors and strained writing; here’s my latest collection of tidbits from the web for you to enjoy. Feel free to add more in the comments if you’d like.
Science
- An essay in PLoS Biology by S. Alexander Haslam & Stephen D. Reicher challenges the long-standing interpretations of famous psychology experiments done by Milgram (on obedience to authority) and Zimbardo (the Stanford Prison Experiment). I thought of doing a write-up about this but decided it made more sense to link directly to their essay.
- Kyle Hill writes about our malleable minds and how long an implanted (false) memory will last.
- Over on Small Things Considered, a post by Welkin Johnson gives viruses a voice and points out the bias (arrogance?) evident in the way we divide up the living world.
- A pair of posts from Ed Yong on Not Exactly Rocket Science: “Crocodile faces are more sensitive than your fingertips” and “The insect that hears like a human, with ears on its knees“.
- Ophiocordyceps is a parasitic fungus that is famous for turning ants into “zombies”. Katherine Harmon writes about the fungus that parasitizes this parasitic fungus. Parasites are fantastic! I should write about them sometime…
- Some interesting thoughts from Kevin Mitchell about the genetics of intelligence: should we be discussing the genetics of stupidity instead? Excellent & thought-provoking!
- Nathalia Holt writes on SciLogs about the availability and risks of genetic testing for parents.
- Some thoughts from Julie Gould about the importance of perception & interpretation in science, a theme which has come up several times on this blog.
Sex, sexism and gender
- A post on Elodie Under Glass with five examples of tribes with non-Western gender roles, including women hunters.
- A determined father pain-stakingly changed the text in Zelda (a video game) so his daughter could enjoy playing with Link (the main character) as a female.
- A lovely post from Greg Laden about what our biology can tell us about sex differences in humans.
- An explanation of the difference between sex and gender (using a Genderbread figure) by Lux on Teenskepchick. There’s also an excellent updated version of the Genderbread figure.
- A press release from UC Davis about research showing that fewer women are invited to speak at scientific conferences (even in fields dominated by women).
- Two articles from the Good Men Project discussing the important topic of rape: “Rapists, I Have Known” and “I Know Who You Raped Last Summer“.
- A post by Ashkat Rathi about a pair of studies investigating whether gender quotas (and other affirmative action policies) actually improve the situation of women in the long term.
Visual arts
- Artist Berndnaut Smilde has managed to make (and photograph!) indoor clouds.
- Jeweler Justin Gershenson-Gates makes amazing arthropod figurines from watch parts and light bulbs.
- Alex Wild’s beautiful photo essay about the slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum.
- Hannele went out with a camera and painted equations around Helsinki using light.
- A remarkably strange video with distorted motion produced using “slit scanning”.
Just for fun
- Here’s an article on BBC Nature looking back over some of the highlights from Sir David Attenborough’s career.
- A Twitter-sourced map of regional names for woodlice in the UK. I love all things linguistic, so if you’ve got something else like this please share it in the comments! (For the record, I called them roley poleys as a kid and pill bugs as an adult.)
- Over on The Trenches of Discovery, Shaun Hotchkiss has a wonderful write-up about science-themed video games. Velocity Raptor is really good!
That’s all from me!
Inspiring Science 
Thanks for the list, as usual, full of goodies! I just read the one about viruses; really cool!
I’m glad you liked it! If you’re interested in that sort of thing, I recommend the podcasts “This Week In Virology” and “This Week In Microbiology”; they’re generally quite good.
This is an amazing list! I am going to read them all now. Thanks a lot!!!
You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy them!
Reblogged this on Godlesszombie's Blog and commented:
It might take me a couple of days to explore and enjoy these enticing links.
Great list, thanks!