Michael Shermer: The pattern behind self-deception

Michael Shermer says the human tendency to believe strange things -- from alien abductions to dowsing rods -- boils down to two of the brain's most basic, hard-wired survival skills. He explains what they are, and how they get us into trouble. (...)

Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. Shermer is also the producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family television (now ABC Family) series Exploring the Unknown. Since April 2004, he has been a monthly columnist for Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column.

Statistical Physics, Computer Simulation, and Probability

Google TechTalks Bay Area Discrete Math Day XII April 15, 2006, Raissa D'Souza (UC Davis)

Statistical physics, computer simulation and discrete mathematics are intimately related through the study of shared models. These are primarily lattice models, such as the Ising model, yet can also involve discrete structures such as networks. Several models illustrate the current interplay between these three fields, while also providing cautionary tales of interpolating results obtained in one realm to the other. This talk will survey several such models, focusing on pattern formation in a simple first-order jamming transition.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

This Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes. Provided By Digital Ethnography @ KSU

WorldMap Live Storm-Worm

F-Secure's WorldMap Live showing an outbreak of malware named Small.DAM.

Flight Patterns

The following flight pattern visualizations are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment. The frames were composited with Adobe After Effects and/or Maya.