In previous articles we examine how the brain behaved detrimistically and also how training and indoctrination would affect the information stored. In considering choices an important distinction needs to be made to avoid confusing "choices" with "decisions".  In particular, the point regarding choices is that they are made well before a decision arises.

Dating can be a difficult task, a daunting challenge for men and women the world over. It becomes especially difficult when what you're trying to date is extremely ancient.

I'm not talking about romantic dates with seniors though, I don't have many tips there I'm afraid, although good personal hygiene and being a good listener will probably count in your favour.

I was reading Charlie Brooker's excellent column in The Guardian and was disappointed to learn that our educational system, underfunded though it is, seems to have bought into the wave of pseudo-scientific nonsense that is washing over us and is paying good money for something called "Brain Gym".

You can view the official "Brain Gym" website here: http://www.braingym.org.uk/

Even from the first page, it starts looking more than a little suspicious. Look at this quote for example, which surely won't fill you with confidence that the tax money being put into Brain Gym is well spent:

"the UK Educational Kinesiology Trust, makes no claims to understand the neuroscience of Brain Gym®"

Following on from a debate I had some time ago, in relation to alternative medicine (see my "Life Energy" rant) I tried to summarise the materialist view of the universe, to try and explain the reasoning behind my objection to use of the term "life energy".

It was written as a stream of consciousness and not researched or planned, so it is far from rigorous, but I think it works well enough as a rough outline, despite its many flaws. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.... I hope you're sitting comfortably, this is a long one ;-)

An article in this week's edition of Nature adds to the mysteries surrounding 'dark matter'. Should we abandon this enigmatic concept of invisible matter that exerts gravitational attraction but is otherwise undetectable? Could it be that we simply do not understand the long-range behavior of gravity?

Dear Hugh Hefner:

Ever wondered  why you’re rich?   Yes, yes, you’re a savvy businessman who succeeded where thousands have failed.   But there are deeper reasons underlying why your business model works at all. When one digs deeply enough one finds that color – yup, the stuff of rainbows and Crayola – is at the core of your success. Without hue, there’d be no Hugh.

Did you even know there was a discipline called paleomagnetics?   Probably not.(1)   It isn't easy to find a category on this site to put it in, that's for sure.

But a discipline it is and it even has its own controversies, as all science must; namely, the nature of Earth's magnetic field 1.1 billion years ago.

The Earth's magnetic field in two sentences:   it wraps around the globe and helps shield us from cosmic rays - lest we all burst into flame or turn into orange rock and say things like, "It's clobberin' time!"  

Ever play games in school?  Ever have the teacher suggest you play games?  Heck, ever had your entire middle and high school curricula be designed around games?   In a news piece titled "New York Launches Public School Curriculum on Playing Games", reporter Jeremy Hsu writes:

After wrapping up the minutiae of funding, we're finally entering the lab for Project Calliope.  Next week, I get to build a model ionosphere and replicate a spinning satellite to test what sort of music to expect.

In practice, this means rigging up a magnet to replicate ionospheric magnetic fields, putting a strobe for mimicking the Sun as seen by a rapidly spinning satellite, then seeing what sort of data my detectors spit out.

The science of Chaos is usually defined as the systematic study of non-linear processes within dynamic turbulent systems (see www.hesiodproject.net). Vivid examples of such systems are: the global economy and the global crisis, wars and armed conflicts, human beings and social organizations, the stock market, science and technology, the Olympic Games, football games an