Latest Story

Novag Star Diamond Serial Port

January 16, 2012
By ratthing

I’ve spent some time off and on during the last few weeks trying to get my Novag Star Diamond chess computer to communicate with my laptop. The Star Diamond is an older model from Novag’s table-top chess computer line. It is a very nice chess computer, allowing you to play a game of chess...

Read more »

Social rejection and self-affirmations

August 16, 2011
By ratthing

An interesting study just got published in the premier experimental psychology journal, Psychological Science. The purpose of the study was to look at the effects of “self-affirmations” on perceived social rejection. People who are very insecure tend to be very sensitive to rejection by...

Read more »

Symposium SA is born!

July 29, 2011
By ratthing

Today I had a lovely meeting with David Saussy, a brilliant young man who teaches English here in San Antonio. I will be assisting him in establishing a “great books” club in San Antonio, tentatively called Symposium SA. The first book we will be...

Read more »

Why IBMs Watson computer is important

February 17, 2011
By ratthing

Yesterday, IBMs computer named Watson beat two human competitors in a 3-day Jeopardy TV show contest. All in all, Watson did very well, minus a few glaring mistakes (such...

Read more »

The brain is… networks!

February 10, 2011
By ratthing

A great new book has been published called Networks of the Brain, written by Dr. Olaf Sporns. The press release for this new book has the following quote from...

Read more »

Getting a Ph.D. Is it worth it?

February 7, 2011
By ratthing

There are a lot of discussions going on right now at the Chronicle of Higher Education website and other blogs regarding the value of the Ph.D. Specifically, the discussion...

Read more »

Tags