Monthly Archives: April 2010

While it is well-known that flamingos stand on one leg for long periods of time, I recently saw a wild turkey standing on one leg while walking home from work (the Boston area is known for harboring wild turkeys). Is this behavior considered normal for turkeys, or other birds? Or did I see a turkey [...]

Harvard Magazine has an article, On the Tip of Your Tongue, about some of my research on how to use phonological networks (networks where words are connected if they sound similar) in order to understand how people process language. The article is a sidebar in a larger article called Networked, which discusses the network science [...]

From Information is Beautiful, an amazing color wheel of the meaning of colors in different cultures. For example, red represents anger in Western culture, while black represents anger in Hindu societies. Or religion is yellow in Japan, but green in African cultures.

Kevin Kelly has a great post on his blog The Technium about the Long Tail of Life. Discussing a marine census of species that seems to find new kinds of life wherever it looks, Kelly writes the following: This suggests there is a long tail of life in bacteria, with a few species super-abundant, but [...]

Sarah Palin once dressed up as Tina Fey Brandan Routh won a costume contest dressed up as Clark Kent Any more?

Mesofact, the word I used to describe slowly changing knowledge, is apparently becoming a word, at least according to Fox News, in its list of 25 New Tech Words You Need to Know: A mesofact is a fact that is slowly evolving over time. For example, the term “national healthcare” might have one meaning at [...]