Category: ideas

“Like a magpie building its nest, we have hunted eclectically, though not without discrimination, for noteworthy notions of 2009 … from A to Z, the most clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations we carried back from all corners of the thinking world.”

The RAE “appointed itself custodian of the Spanish language over three centuries ago and has affiliates in every Spanish-speaking country, but has long been felt to ignore how millions actually communicate between Tijuana and Tierra del Fuego … But the new grammar book launched on Thursday in Madrid seeks to end these divisions” by incorporating Latin American usage.

Remember how the veneration of relics is catching on again? If you should have a mind to make a holiday pilgrimage, The Smart Set has a list of top Nativity-related relics, including the Holy Swaddling Clothes, the Holy Umbilical Cord, and the Blessed Virgin’s Breast Milk.

According to a new study, some intensive reading programs “improved the integrity of fibers that carry information from one part of the brain to another,” a change of brain structure that correlated with improved reading ability.

Last month IBM announced that it had developed “a computer system that can simulate the thinking power of a cat’s brain.” The head of a Swiss team that’s “attempting to reverse engineer the mammalian brain” says that IBM’s claim is little short of fraudulent.

The magazine compares feline and canine capabilities and characteristics in ten categories – including brain size and structure, problem-solving, vocalization, sensory abilities and eco-friendliness – and adds up the results to determine the superior species.

“In a troubling corollary to the truism that a picture is worth 1,000 words, a new study suggests stereotypical imagery can largely negate the central point of a lengthy text.”

“Having spent months recording the monkeys’ calls in response to both natural and artificial stimuli, a group led by Klaus Zuberbühler of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland argues that the Campbell’s monkeys have a primitive form of syntax.”

“Sharing your work product for other people’s review and improvement is the soul of the enlightenment. It’s the difference between alchemy and science.”

“Franco Moretti is already famous in bookish circles for his data-centric approach to novels, which he graphs, maps, and charts. Now he’s going digital, building searchable databases of old books, working to write software that can mine for patterns. Instead of diving deep into a few beloved titles, Moretti aims to zip across the creative output of entire eras. He calls it distant reading, and if his new methods catch on, they could change the way we look at literary history.”