One the least enjoyable parts of writing an academic paper is composing the abstract. It is always a struggle to boil down your complex and nuanced research to just 150 words. This is why I was delighted by a paper titled “Do Large (Magnitude ≥8) Global Earthquakes Occur on Preferred Days of the Calendar Year or Lunar Cycle?”
The abstract simply reads:
No.
[Hat tip to BoingBoing]
While I still prefer physical books, I now read newspapers exclusively on the Kindle. This has many advantages, including no more gigantic recycling piles and not having to tramp out into monstrous drifts of lake effect snow just to recover the paper.
However, one thing had been sadly lacking, the comics. I developed the habit of reading the comics everyday as a child and it was hard to give up. The New York Times, of course, never carried daily strips and the Kindle version of the Cleveland Plain Dealer was similarly devoid. Only the Washington Post carried a few strips.
But that has all changed, within the last month the Post has started to carry a much wider range of daily comics, including ones that I haven’t seen in years, like Mary Worth, Rex Morgan, MD, and The Phantom.
The quality of my life has substantially improved. And I now have another excuse to read the Comic Crumudgeon.
(Hat tip to BoingBoing)
Scott Lilienfeld and Steven Jay Lynn have a great paper in the most recent Perspectives on Psychological Science: “You’ll Never Guess Who Wrote That 78 Surprising Authors of Psychological Publications.” From the abstract:
One can find psychological authors in the most unexpected places. We present a capsule summary of scholarly publications of psychological interest authored or coauthored by 78 surprising individuals, most of whom are celebrities or relatives of celebrities, historical figures, or people who have otherwise achieved visibility in academic circles, politics, religion, art, and diverse realms of popular culture. Still other publications are authored by individuals who are far better known for their contributions to popular than to academic psychology.
Here’s my favorite entry:
Natalie Portman (1981– )
Baird, A. A., Kagan, J., Gaudette, T., Walz, K. A., Hershlag, N., & Boas, D. A. (2002). Frontal lobe activation during object permanence: Data from near-infrared spectroscopy. NeuroImage, 16, 1120–1126.
Academy-Award-winning American actress Natalie Hershlag, who later adopted the stage name of Natalie Portman, was a psychology major at Harvard University when she coauthored this article with several prominent researchers, including psychologist Jerome Kagan, on brain imaging correlates of the development of object permanence in humans. The authors reported that prefrontal cortical activity is related to the emergence of object permanence.
Who knew that Natalie Portman was a developmental psychologist!
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