Brains?

Woah,
I just noticed my coffee was precariously balanced half on/half off the desk. Must correct this.
*Swig*

It's a wonderful Friday. I've cleaned the house, gone for a run and John's home taking a nap with the cat. It doesn't take much to make me content.

Found this good article from Newsweek (via Reddit)

What we really should teach kids in Science. I tend to agree with the author. I think that there should be a class to specifically set out to teach people how to think critically. I don't think we should be waiting until college level for this kind of education. I haven't yet, but next in my line up is this iTunes U class from Oxford on Critical Reasoning.

There's kind of a scare going on right now that soon we will be facing a war on science. In my opinion, a war on reason. There seems to be a feeling that science is a bunch of bull and scientists are liars. I find this frightening. If we can't trust a formula that was designed to rattle out truth, what's the point in anything?
I guess I get a little nihilistic if you take my science away.

Back to the positives. I think we should be teaching people how to think in schools. Not necessarily what to think. Of course we need to be teaching the facts and theories that we base our existence on, but don't we also need to be training people how to find these things out for themselves too? How are we going to build new sciences if we're just repeating old data?

You've got to give the man and fishing rod, not a fish!

So few people know how to analyze data. I myself am not very good at it, but it comes with practice. Most people are used to accepting things as fact or fiction based on who told it to them. This is why I don't watch the news. It's all about the bias of where it comes from.
Sure I fill my twitter feed and RSS with information sources that validate my current beliefs and thoughts, but I don't accept all my leads as facts. I try to look at the motivations behind publications.
Most of the time.

Here's a bit of fun.
Brain games from Cambridge.
I took the 12 pillars of intelligence test.
Meh, maybe I shouldn't share but, I'm in the 37%
Call it confirmation bias, but I feel this is fairly right. I know I'm not that bright, but I have a bit stronger visual memory than some.
I wasn't surprised at my inability to remember numbers. I'm terrible at numbers.
Most people are 7 +/- 2. This is why phone numbers are 7 digits long.
I can barely recall 5 numbers on a good day.
Give me more than 5 numbers to remember and chances are that I can't.

However the "select the color of ink, color spelled" test I rocked.

Fun times.

Speaking of brains, in my Zombies in Literature class I learned that the idea of brain eating zombies has only been around since this movie. 1985.
Return of the Living Dead introduced the brain eating zombie. The zombies eat brains because it relieves the pain of being undead.
It's weird how quickly the folklore of zombies has cropped up and changed so dramatically since the 1930s.