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How are actors able to memorize scripts so quickly?

How are actors able to memorize scripts so quickly?

Nov 20 2010 | comment(s)

How are actors able to absorb a TV or film script, hundreds of verses of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter, or the bitchy, street-smart, exquisitely calibrated machine-gun dialogue of a contemporary playwright like David Mamet without blowing it when the eyes of an audience are upon them?

For more than two decades, a pair of husband-and-wife researchers in Indiana — psychologist Helga Noice and actor/director/cognitive-researcher Tony Noice — tried to answer that question.  Steve Silberman has the story on PLoS Blogs.

"A metaphor for this show: another crash and burn"

Nov 20 2010 | comment(s)

Two anchors on WGN were rewarded for their patience in trying to show a bridge implosion live by...missing it.   After 5 minutes of trying to kill time, they segued to the studio to talk about the weather.    And as soon as they did, the bridge went.

Watch them eat their papers in frustration.  No one likes to miss a bridge implosion.
Concerned about

Concerned about "gate rape" at the airport? "If people want to travel by some other means" says Napolitano...

Nov 19 2010 | comment(s)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is to the Obama administration what Dick Cheney was to G.W. Bush or Robert Rubin was to Clinton - it's better she not be allowed to speak.

Yet speak she does.  Again and again.  And it will only get worse.   In response to outrage over the dilemma fliers face over state-sponsored sexual harassment or questionable scanners, she said "if people want to travel by some other means," they have that right.
A Vegan No More

A Vegan No More

Nov 19 2010 | comment(s)

A dedicated vegan has to make a difficult choice.  

She realizes, as most culturally neutral people knew, that nutrition is a shockingly inexact science and that the human body may react to a strict vegan style for one person but moralizing and posturing that therefore everyone else is unethical if they aren't vegan is not an evidence-based claim, it is simply one of good fortune that they don't get sick.

She isn't going all Texas barbecue about it, just eating a small bit of fish or an egg each day to achieve a little more balance than she had before, but says both her spirits and her physical health are better.
Pres. Obama's full emissions Limo

Pres. Obama's full emissions Limo "Cadillac One" is the talk of Lisbon

Nov 19 2010 | comment(s)

Forget those politically correct world leaders zipping around Lisbon in no-emission electric vehicles, an American president needs to cowboy it up, no matter which party he is.  Our honor demands it.   That means a stretch Limo - eight tons of diesel-fueled, middle-finger-flipping-to-environmentalists overcompensation while on trips abroad.

Now, maybe he thinks Portugal is some third world country and the local police can't protect him from, you know, those terrorists he says don't exist, so he needs an armor-plated 6-miles-to-the-gallon ride.
Oops, Pluto is not the smallest - should it be a planet again?

Oops, Pluto is not the smallest - should it be a planet again?

Nov 19 2010 | comment(s)

In 2006, 2% of the world's astronomers, led by a guy with a television show, decided Pluto should not be a planet.    Recently discovered Eris was bigger, they said, so rather than make Eris a planet they made Pluto a rock.   

They did so by specifically creating a new definition of planet designed to exclude Pluto - "A body that circles the sun without being some other object's satellite, is large enough to be rounded by its own gravity (but not so big that it begins to undergo nuclear fusion, like a star) and has "cleared its neighborhood" of most other orbiting bodies."
TIME likes that Californians don't understand economics

TIME likes that Californians don't understand economics

Nov 19 2010 | comment(s)

TIME magazine got its opening right but then wanders off into a fairytale... 
From the debacle of the hacked Climategate e-mails to the bitter disappointment of Copenhagen to the slow death of carbon cap and trade in the Senate, the past year has mostly been one of reversals for the U.S. environmental movement.
Then the article by Bryan Walsh goes on to extol Californians for (hopefully - it was written before the election, though we all knew it would fail) not suspending a somewhat silly law requiring green technology 10 years from now in return for making it easier to get people employed today.
Isaac Newton, Alchemist

Isaac Newton, Alchemist

Nov 18 2010 | comment(s)

Isaac Newton, the man who invented calculus, described the law of universal gravitation and built the first reflecting telescope and is rightfully considered one of the most influential scientists in history, also practiced alchemy for three decades, says Indiana University professor William Newman.

No surprise, many scientists dabbled in alchemy.    Alchemy was an offshoot of chemistry, to some, though centuries before literary geniuses like Chaucer ridiculed alchemists as charlatans.
Climate change: Stop putting regulation of emissions ahead of innovation

Climate change: Stop putting regulation of emissions ahead of innovation

Nov 18 2010 | comment(s)

A 20-year attempt to deal with global warming by capping emissions and putting a price on carbon (the so-called "cap and trade") has died again.   

But while activists insist that means even more lobbying and 'awareness' (seriously, is anyone unaware of global warming by now?) Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in The Atlantic note that is just dressing up old ideas in new clothing.

Instead of knee-capping industry, we need to focus on innovation.    
Devilish Details Of The NCAA’s New Genetic Testing Rules

Devilish Details Of The NCAA’s New Genetic Testing Rules

Nov 18 2010 | comment(s)

The NCAA has for established a rule for mandatory testing of all student athletes in D-1 schools effective for the 2010-2011 academic year.

But there is something devilish in the details, writes Roger Groves in Forbes - students can take the test or be excused from it if they establish they sign a waiver relieving the school of liability.
If you pass out giving a talk at USC, don't expect a lot of help

If you pass out giving a talk at USC, don't expect a lot of help

Nov 17 2010 | comment(s)

Bill Nye "The Science Guy" of television fame, was approaching the podium to talk at USC and, in mid-sentence, dropped to the floor.

Did members of the audience rush to help?  No, they all pulled out their mobile phones to tweet to the world that Billy Nye The Science Guy just collapsed on the floor, apparently assuming someone else would actually help the guy.
Cars 2 - Lightning McQueen takes on the world

Cars 2 - Lightning McQueen takes on the world

Nov 17 2010 | comment(s)

"Cars" is the Pixar movie where I thought they would finally take a fall.  I didn't like the art in previews but my kids wanted to see and away we went.   Like everyone else, I thought the finished product was terrific.

For "Cars 2", unlike (the also terrific) "Toy Story 3", John Lasseter is back directing.   Basically, I am sold that these guys can do no wrong after fifteen solid years of doing no wrong.

The basic premise is that Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) go overseas to compete in the first-ever World Grand Prix to determine the world’s fastest car.  I don't need to know anything else, just take my 8 bucks.
The Simplest Argument For Dark Matter

The Simplest Argument For Dark Matter

Nov 17 2010 | comment(s)

If the Universe follows Einstein's General Relativity as its law of gravity and the Big Bang picture of the Universe works is how the Universe works, then the laws of physics say we have to have dark matter, writes Ethan Siegel.

All he was General Relativity + the Big Bang and the rest he figured out from the physics: by computing predictions and comparing them with the data.
You want a Universe without dark matter, and -- at the very least -- you have to throw out General Relativity.
Study finds gender bias in autism diagnoses

Study finds gender bias in autism diagnoses

Nov 17 2010 | comment(s)

Do more boys get autism or is it under-diagnosed in girls?  Or over-diagnosed in boys?

Leaving aside that the autism spectrum has been extruded out so far that virtually every personality type is labeled some form of autism, the fact remains that real autism, the kind with severe symptoms, exists.

Researchers at the universities of Exeter and Bristol say that even when symptoms are equally severe, boys received autism diagnoses more often.
Climate aid too heavy on C02 cuts, say English critics

Climate aid too heavy on C02 cuts, say English critics

Nov 17 2010 | comment(s)

The Copenhagen Accord reached at a U.N. summit in December 2009, though non-binding, agreed that money to give a quick push to efforts to slow climate change from 2010-12 would have a "balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation."

But that's not the case - instead, political efforts mean the $30 billion pledged is geared too strongly toward mitigation and only 11 percent of the money will go to adaptation strategies like new farming practices, according to the report by the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Berkeley study shows Doomsday messages about global warming backfire

Berkeley study shows Doomsday messages about global warming backfire

Nov 17 2010 | comment(s)

Most in science knew this - exaggeration tends to whittle away at the trust level of the public - and a UC Berkeley study set out to determine which worked better, data or dire, in changing hearts and minds about global warming.

The result; they found if scientists and advocates communicate their findings regarding climate change in less apocalyptic ways, and present solutions to global warming, even skeptics can get past their skepticism.
Progressive War - Democrat consultants say Huffington Post idea stolen from them

Progressive War - Democrat consultants say Huffington Post idea stolen from them

Nov 16 2010 | comment(s)

Progressive blogging site Huffington Post, valued at $100 million when it last raised venture capital in 2008, is getting sued by two consultants who say it was their idea and they went to Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer with a plan and had a handshake agreement to work together, according to a lawsuit to be filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

But Peter Daou and James Boyce were then boxed out, they contend, and Huffington tells a different tale about the origins of the site.   
The biggest crash on Earth - India slides under Tibet (but how?)

The biggest crash on Earth - India slides under Tibet (but how?)

Nov 16 2010 | comment(s)

During the collision of India with the Eurasian continent, the Indian plate was pushed about 500 kilometers under Tibet, reaching a depth of 250 kilometers. The result of the world's largest collision was the world's highest mountain range but that isn't the end of the story. 

Cut to 2004 and a tsunami that made world headlines ...
Livescience Discovers Chinese Brain-Imaging Device May Have Been Poached From The US

Livescience Discovers Chinese Brain-Imaging Device May Have Been Poached From The US

Nov 16 2010 | comment(s)

A Chinese team's brain imaging device has come under question from developers of a U.S. device who say it's a near duplicate of theirs, LiveScience has learned. An article on the Chinese device was published in Science.

According to the report online in Science Nov. 4th, the Chinese imaging device used a diamond knife to shave ribbons off a centimeter-size mouse brain and imaged the slices during the process, which allowed the Chinese team to create a 3-D map of the brain that revealed details as small as the axons and dendrites — the circuitry that transmits signals between brain cells — as a step in the race to map the connections in the brain.
The top words of 2010 and the decade are...

The top words of 2010 and the decade are...

Nov 16 2010 | comment(s)

A year ago, you probably did not know what a vuvuzela was but, if you read this site during the World Cup, you know it now.

Turns out so do a lot of other people.  The Global Language Monitor, which analyzes trends in word usage (read: English) says Vuvuzela was among the top new terms of the year, along with Tea Party and others, while last year Twitter and H1N1 were big winners.