Logical Fallacies poster / website

Logical fallacies poster
Recognizing logical fallacies is not only an indispensable tool in the skeptic’s toolset, but it is also very useful in day-to-day discussions/debates for recognizing faulty arguments:

In logic and rhetoric, a fallacy is usually an improper argumentation in reasoning often resulting in a misconception or presumption. Literally, a fallacy is “an error in reasoning that renders an argument logically invalid”. By accident or design, fallacies may exploit emotional triggers in the listener or participant (appeal to emotion), or take advantage of social relationships between people (e.g. argument from authority). Fallacious arguments are often structured using rhetorical patterns that obscure any logical argument.

Though an argument is not “logically valid”, it is not necessarily the case that the conclusion is incorrect. It simply means that the conclusion cannot be arrived at using that argument. (…)

The nice poster above is from yet another website that explains the most common logical fallacies. Other excellent sites with information on, and explanations of, logical fallacies are this one, this one, and finally this one.

It may take several readings of those sites to become familiar with the specifics of these fallacies, but the result is being able to recognize them in discussions when they occur, as well as knowing how to counter them, if needed.

William Ayliffe: Why We See What We Do

William Ayliffe (Gresh College)Via Gresham College/Fora.tv:

The visual system has developed to allow us to navigate in a complex and dangerous world in order to find food and to avoid danger.

This survival system works by building a complex three-dimensional model based on two-dimensional data from the retina.

This model is tested against “reality” and checked with information from other senses and updated if needed. The brain suppresses the complexity of this processing and we believe that vision is instantaneous, real and effortless.

But is seeing just an illusion?

This is a part of Professor William Ayliffe‘s 2010/2011 series of lectures as Gresham Professor of Physics. The other lectures in this series include:

Use the first link in this post to get a transcript or slideshow of the video below, or to download the video or an audio-only version instead.


Length: ~55 minutes.

Also check out the BBC Horizon episode Is Seeing Believing? on YouTube.

Drew Berry: Astonishing Molecular Machines

Via ABC/TEDx:

Molecules are really, really tiny … so small no-one can show them to you. That’s where Drew Berry comes in. He’s what’s known as a “biomedical animator”. His job is to build scientifically-accurate and aesthetically-rich computer graphics which reveal the microscopic world inside our bodies.
Drew Berry Animation
Berry brings a rigorous scientific approach to each project, immersing himself in relevant research to ensure current data are accurately represented. His animated renderings of key concepts such as cell death, tumour growth and DNA packaging show molecular shape, scale, behaviour, and spatio-temporal dynamics in action.

Berry’s animations, made to enlighten both scientists and the scientifically curious, have been exhibited at prestige venues like the Guggenheim and MOMA in New York and have won him an award for being a ‘Genius’. His illuminating TEDx Sydney show-and-tell includes wild graphics of DNA moving through the body and malaria infiltrating a baby’s vital organs after a mosquito bite.

Drew Berry trained as a cell biologist and microscopist, and has worked as a biomedical animator since 1995, most recently at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. Drew received his BSc and MSc degrees from the University of Melbourne. His animations have appeared in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Royal Institute of Great Britain, and the University of Geneva. In 2010, he was named a MacArthur Fellow.

TED: Maya Beiser(s) and her cello(s)

As a fan of Reich‘s music, I enjoyed today’s TED talk:

Maya BeiserCellist Maya Beiser plays a gorgeous eight-part modern etude with seven copies of herself, and segues into a meditative music/video hybrid — using tech to create endless possibilities for transformative sound. Music is Steve Reich‘s “Cello Counterpoint,” then David Lang‘s “World to Come” with video by Irit Batsry.

Bonus: Steven Sharp Nelson – The Cello Song – Bach is back (with 7 more cellos) (YouTube)

La Linea

A favourite from the days back when…

La Linea (“The Line”) is an Italian animated series created by the Italian cartoonist Osvaldo Cavandoli (“Cava”). The series consists of 90 episodes which are about 2–3 minutes long each which were produced originally broadcast in the Italian channel RAI between 1972 – 1991. Over the years the series aired in more than 40 countries around the world. The cartoon features a man (known as “Mr. Linea”) drawn as a single outline around his silhouette, walking on an infinite line of which he is a part.
La Linea
The character encounters obstacles and often turns to the cartoonist to draw him a solution, with various degrees of success. One recurring obstacle was an abrupt end of line. The character would often almost fall off the edge into oblivion and get angry with the cartoonist and complain about it.

He was voiced by Carlo Bonomi in a mock version of Milanese that resembled gibberish as much as possible, giving the cartoon the possibility to be easily exported without dubbing. The voice resembles Pingu’s, the Swiss animated penguin, which was also voiced by Bonomi.

Due to its short duration (usually 2 minutes 30 seconds), it has often been used in many networks as an interstitial program.

An existing YouTube playlist with lots of episodes:

EteRNA

EteRNA logoEteRNA, developed by Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University is a Flash-based folding game, like Fold It, that enlists users to fold RNA for optimized versions, which can then be tested in the lab. Citizen science!

You can participate by signing up directly at the site or linking through facebook (and setting your profile on the EteRNA site).

The game comes with a tutorial to get you familiar with the building blocks of RNA and how to manipulate them to get the desired folding shape. After the tutorial one can try to solve a number of increasingly difficult puzzles.

Scores are kept and displayed in a leaderboard. The game auto-saves the progress on the latest puzzle you might have been working on.

For more expert knowledge on how to solve the puzzles, a number of strategy guides can be found through the community which help in solving and further optimizing the RNA folds.

Scoring 10,000 points or more, by solving the tutorials and a bunch of the challenges, gives you access to the RNA Lab where a real version of some version of RNA can be designed and proposed, which after voting, will then be tested in the real lab.

You can get an idea of what it looks like through an embedded version, as below:

For more detailed info on how the folding of RNA is used, see their information page.

Some media links:
RNA Game Lets Players Help Find a Biological Prize (NY Times)
Online game helps predict how RNA folds (New Scientist)
New video game makes game players Stanford professor’s virtual lab assistants (Stanford)

And finally a short video from Carnegie Mellon that explains EteRNA: