Emil O. W. Kirkegaard blog
Case in point, i’m taking a break from my reading of an introduction to relativity theory to write this post. I wrote this in a hurry becus i felt in the flow. I cleaned out the worst mistakes. Q: How do i become a polymath? There are various ways to learn stuff. The current method…
Continue ReadingWhat this really means is that the classical elements are familiar representatives of the different physical states that matter can adopt. Earth represents not just soil or rock, but all solids. Water is the archetype of all liquids; air, of all gases and vapours. Fire is a strange one, for it is indeed a unique…
Continue Readinghttp://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/04/thinking-in-foreign-language-makes-decisions-more-rational.ars This surely sounds like one of those dubious psychology experiments. U know the type, the type with a single or perhaps two small experiments that were slightly below p<0.05 and therefore publishable. So, i decided to take a look. The Foreign-Language Effect Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases In general, there is…
Continue ReadingVictoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams – An Introduction to Language I thought i better read a linguistics textbook before i start studying it formally. Who wud want to look like a noob? ;) I have not read any other textbook on this subject, but i think it was a fairly typical okish textbook. Many…
Continue ReadingCheck out this discussion i had earlier today. most recent common ancestor To sum up. A paper from 2003 proposed a model to calculate how long ago our most recent common ancestor lived. The surprising finding is that it is only a few thousand years ago. I spent the discussion arguing the implausibility of this…
Continue ReadingQuestion from /sci/: what is the smaller number of people necessary (male / female) required to create a stable genictic base for a civilization to grow from? planned breeding programs considered http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck As can be seen from the examples. Extremely small bottlenecks are possible without being extinct. However, this says nothing about the probability…
Continue Readinghttp://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/hen_sweden_s_new_gender_neutral_pronoun_causes_controversy_.html Read if u dare. These people are I also predict that this will not change sex-based stereotypes. Men and women are simply different due to genetics (and epigenetics etc.). Altho, as a linguist, i like the idea of gender free pronouns even tho they reasons they want to introduce it are insane. The linguist…
Continue Readinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences Multiple Intelligences, the Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence A Critical Review Inadequate evidence for Multiple Intelligences, Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence Theories The entire issue of that journal seems to be about this topic, but my university does not have online access to the journal, so i can’t post the other papers. Too bad….
Continue Readinghttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/ The term ‘naturalism’ has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed ‘naturalists’ from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science….
Continue ReadingOP: Why do authors say things through symbols? Especially people who are good at using the English language, I mean, if they want to say something, if they actually want to convey a specific message, then why don´t they just say it plainly? When you use a symbol to convey a message then people are…
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