I'm about to head to the UK for a couple of weeks to visit the Edinburgh Festival, attend (and sing at!) a wedding, and see my friends and family. So the blog will be on hiatus for a little while. I might try to get a couple of papers read while I'm away, but don't count on it.
I'll be back the weekend of August 21st - expect to see more motor control discussion around then.
Showing posts with label meta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meta. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
The name defines the thing
So, astute readers may notice a name change here - I've decided to go back to my old WordPress blog title (which never had more than five posts over its year-long lifespan, a perfect example of my habit of enthusiastically starting projects and never following through). I used to own the domain motorchauvinist.com but no longer. Oh well. Blogger will do for the moment.
Why motor chauvinism? I'd like to disassociate myself from the idea that I am in any way interested a) in cars and b) in denigrating women! I first came across the term in a paper written in 2001:
I hope to have some guest posters who will be able to talk more about things that I don't know much about, but that's a plan for later. Right now, welcome again to my blog, which will be doing the same kinds of things it has been doing for a couple of months, just under a different name.
Oh - I apologise for those who have linked to the blog under the previous name, as those links are now unlikely to work. That's why I've changed the name now rather than after a couple more months. Assuming, as I note above, that I stick with it...
The paper that the quote is from is very good, by the way, and you should definitely read it if you can. It also contains Calvin & Hobbes cartoons. What's not to like?
--
Wolpert DM, Ghahramani Z, & Flanagan JR (2001). Perspectives and problems in motor learning. Trends in cognitive sciences, 5 (11), 487-494 PMID: 11684481
Why motor chauvinism? I'd like to disassociate myself from the idea that I am in any way interested a) in cars and b) in denigrating women! I first came across the term in a paper written in 2001:
"From the motor chauvinist's point of view the entire purpose of the human brain is to produce movement." -- Wolpert, Ghahramani & Flanagan (2001)The authors go on to explain how movement underlies everything we do, our every interaction with the world, all communication (speech, sign language, gestures and writing), and so on and so forth. While I rather like the idea I want to make clear that this blog isn't going to specifically advocate for the notion. Rather, I just thought that since it's pretty specifically about movement neuroscience and not just about reading random papers it might be fun to redefine it a little more sharply.
I hope to have some guest posters who will be able to talk more about things that I don't know much about, but that's a plan for later. Right now, welcome again to my blog, which will be doing the same kinds of things it has been doing for a couple of months, just under a different name.
Oh - I apologise for those who have linked to the blog under the previous name, as those links are now unlikely to work. That's why I've changed the name now rather than after a couple more months. Assuming, as I note above, that I stick with it...
The paper that the quote is from is very good, by the way, and you should definitely read it if you can. It also contains Calvin & Hobbes cartoons. What's not to like?
--
Wolpert DM, Ghahramani Z, & Flanagan JR (2001). Perspectives and problems in motor learning. Trends in cognitive sciences, 5 (11), 487-494 PMID: 11684481
Monday, 28 June 2010
I am giving up science
No paper today, because I’ve had a fundamental rethink of my life and my priorities thanks to the august wisdom of Simon Jenkins in the Guardian.
I mean, I’ve spent the last seven years of my life learning all that the entire human race knows about how the brain controls the body. I’ve made the effort to learn technical skills, time management, writing, critical thinking and how to argue my case clearly and effectively based on sound empirical evidence. I have learnt to present my work in formats understandable by experts and non-experts alike (content of this blog notwithstanding; I do a much better job of it in the pub).
No longer shall I test people in robotic behavioural experiments and measure their muscle activity in an attempt to tease out the intricacies of how we perform complex actions. No longer shall I write computational modelling code that might give us a fundamental understanding of the neural activity that gives rise to these movements. And thus, no longer will I stay at my obviously hideously overpaid postdoc, worshipping at the altar of Big Science.
No longer! Thanks to Jenkins’ shining example, it is now clearly evident to me that I can not only make a decent living by spouting off seemingly randomly on things I know nothing about, but that I can do so with only a tenuous connection to the facts and a seeming obliviousness to my own inherent biases. (Of course, had I been paying more attention rather than clicking little pieces of graphs to mark onset and offset points of reaching movements for hours on end I would have realized that the existence of daytime TV hosts makes this intuitively obvious.)
No longer. I’ve decided to completely change my life from this point hence, give up the clearly pointless the intellectual rigour involved in trying to figure stuff out, and take a job in a large financial firm that will of course be entirely exempt from the pain being inflicted on the public sector by arrogant, libertarian-minded right-wing deficit-hawk idiots. Um, I mean the Government.
---
This article is a spoof. Any comments about Simon Jenkins that might be considered to border on the libellous totally aren’t. That’s how you do these legal disclaimers, right? Well he can sue me if he wants, I don’t own anything anyway.
Here is the article that started it all, and here is the article that inspired me to write something about it. Normal service will be resumed on Wednesday.
Also: I'm not going to make it a habit to write about politics here, but you may have gathered that I'm a bit of a lefty. Whoops, cover blown...
I mean, I’ve spent the last seven years of my life learning all that the entire human race knows about how the brain controls the body. I’ve made the effort to learn technical skills, time management, writing, critical thinking and how to argue my case clearly and effectively based on sound empirical evidence. I have learnt to present my work in formats understandable by experts and non-experts alike (content of this blog notwithstanding; I do a much better job of it in the pub).
No longer shall I test people in robotic behavioural experiments and measure their muscle activity in an attempt to tease out the intricacies of how we perform complex actions. No longer shall I write computational modelling code that might give us a fundamental understanding of the neural activity that gives rise to these movements. And thus, no longer will I stay at my obviously hideously overpaid postdoc, worshipping at the altar of Big Science.
No longer! Thanks to Jenkins’ shining example, it is now clearly evident to me that I can not only make a decent living by spouting off seemingly randomly on things I know nothing about, but that I can do so with only a tenuous connection to the facts and a seeming obliviousness to my own inherent biases. (Of course, had I been paying more attention rather than clicking little pieces of graphs to mark onset and offset points of reaching movements for hours on end I would have realized that the existence of daytime TV hosts makes this intuitively obvious.)
No longer. I’ve decided to completely change my life from this point hence, give up the clearly pointless the intellectual rigour involved in trying to figure stuff out, and take a job in a large financial firm that will of course be entirely exempt from the pain being inflicted on the public sector by arrogant, libertarian-minded right-wing deficit-hawk idiots. Um, I mean the Government.
---
This article is a spoof. Any comments about Simon Jenkins that might be considered to border on the libellous totally aren’t. That’s how you do these legal disclaimers, right? Well he can sue me if he wants, I don’t own anything anyway.
Here is the article that started it all, and here is the article that inspired me to write something about it. Normal service will be resumed on Wednesday.
Also: I'm not going to make it a habit to write about politics here, but you may have gathered that I'm a bit of a lefty. Whoops, cover blown...
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