Batman and Iron Man in Academic Literature

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E. Paul Zehr, a professor of kinesiology and neuroscience at the University of Victoria (Canada), writes how he was able to make scientific concepts accessible through the incorporation of popular characters from the films Batman and Iron Man:

Hugely popular movies like Iron Man, Captain America, The Dark Knight, and its forthcoming sequel, The Dark Knight Rises, illustrate the public interest in participating in the transient experience of being a superhero—at least for the duration of the movie. For scientists, those movies offer a way to communicate with the public about our work. The result for me has been two books: Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero and Inventing Iron Man: The Possibility of a Human Machine.

I settled on Batman and Iron Man because both icons are pitched as real humans who used training (Batman) or technology (Iron Man) to achieve extreme outcomes that seem believable. That part of their mythologies is what makes them attractive and grounded in a reality of hard work, invention, and achievement. In my books I have turned that mythology around and essentially asked: Is it really scientifically possible? And if so, how would it work, and what would it mean?

I settled on Batman and Iron Man because both icons are pitched as real humans who used training (Batman) or technology (Iron Man) to achieve extreme outcomes that seem believable. That part of their mythologies is what makes them attractive and grounded in a reality of hard work, invention, and achievement. In my books I have turned that mythology around and essentially asked: Is it really scientifically possible? And if so, how would it work, and what would it mean?

In both books, I explain neuroscience concepts to the general public, using the physical and technological marvels of the fictional characters to expose the real-life workings of the human body. Those concepts include: the hierarchical organization of the nervous system; supraspinal and spinal reflex control of movement; neural adaptations to skill training and motor learning; the neuropsychology of martial-arts training and combat; pathophysiology of concussion; neural plasticity associated with injury and training; cortical somatosensory and motor maps and phantom limbs; and the concept of neuroprosthetics including brain-machine interface.

My goal in writing this essay is merely to encourage other like-minded academics to understand the value of engaging the public in an accessible way, and to think about integrating pop-culture touchstones into their own outreach and teaching practices.

A natural extension: how (else) could teachers and professors around the country use popular culture to make what they teach more accessible?

Predicting the Future of Computing

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The New York Times has a fascinating interactive post on where you, the reader, can submit snippets on what you expect to happen in the field of computer in the near (and distant) future.

Here are some predictions I see, as of current viewing (readers can vote the prediction up or down in terms of when they think the event will happen):

2015: The price and availability of computers will be such that more than half of the world’s people will have one.

2017: Mobile web browsing on phones surpasses desktop browsing.

2019: Irrefutable evidence will show that computers consistently make more accurate diagnoses than specialists in all branches of medicine, including psychiatry.

2023:  The most common forms of cancer will be treated with a personalized therapy based on genetic sequencing. A patient’s therapy will be retargeted every six months as a result of resequencing the cancer to track its inevitable evolution.

2029: Your entire medical history from birth till death will be collectively combined in one universal system and available to all your different doctors.

2035: Most people will own and use a Personal Life Recorder which will store full video and audio of their daily lives. This will be a fully searchable archive that will radically augment a person’s effective memory.

2041: Cash will become illegal, replaced with electric currency. [Bizarre prediction!]

2071: Humans will be able to implant their dogs’ brains with a neurological device such that the images of what the dog is thinking appear on a special contact lens the dog owner is wearing.

2106: Medical advances will permit the first human to live for a period of 200 years or more.

2154: Humans will become so integrated with electronics that more people will die from computer viruses in a year than from biological viruses.

2180: Old knowledge will not have to be learned; only new knowledge will need to be created. Learning will become obsolete. All known knowledge will be contained on a super computer. Individuals can download all known knowledge pertaining to any subject directly to the brain as desired.

2225: Artificial Intelligence is awarded full citizenship.

2283: Abundance happens. Digital and physical sciences produce abundance so great that wealth becomes meaningless as a difference between people.

2416: Thought-based communication surpasses spoken and typed communication.

What do you think is the coolest prediction from above? Which one is unlikely to happen in the next 400 years?

If you have a New York Times account, you can submit your own predictions. You can vote up/down predictions without an account. It’s a fascinating experiment!

Airline Safety Pamphlets as Art

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Avi Steinberg’s post “The Unlikely Event” at The Paris Review is fantastic. He analyzes the relationship between airline safety cards and art:

The best airline-safety-card artists know how to amplify these details without creating too much noise. They are, after all, artists. They work within and bend the conventions of their form by playing with allusions to earlier work. Take, for example, a current US Airways safety card that portrays the conventional water flotation scene. We see a beautiful woman, with lush red hair, floating effortlessly, gazing ahead in an attitude of easeful melancholy. The airline artist has recruited Dante Rossetti’s 1877 Mary Magdalene, with perhaps an ironic nod to Botticelli’s Venus, as the heroine of our worst-case scenario. Thus the “fallen woman” motif is reimagined in the most urgent terms: this airline Magdalene is a woman who has quite literally fallen. And this is where we find her, floating in limbo, clutching a lily-white life preserver to her breast (instead of a vase, as in the 1877 portrait). Like Rossetti’s romantic Pre-Raphaelite Magdalene, this woman’s lowly state serves only to magnify her elemental beauty. Here she is, Our Lady of the Plane Crash. “I will make you fishers of men,” says the Christ. “We will rescue you in any corner of the globe,” says a Pan Am safety card. The fallen woman will not remain cast away forever—and, if we follow her lead, the artist assures us, neither will we. It is a pretty vision of earthly salvation.

My favorite part is this bit about the AeroMexico safety card that resembles René Magritte’s The Son of Man:

The artist behind a current AeroMexico safety card is not convinced. In an echo of The Son of Man, the 1964 painting by Belgian Surrealist René Magritte, the AeroMexico man is rendered in realistic detail—from rolled up sleeves to tousled hair—all of which is, however, a set up for the darkly comic punch line: the man has no face. This bit of surrealistic surgery, more than the yellow life preserver, is what we remember. It is plain to us that this creepily inanimate son of man is, in struggling to preserve his life, in some sense already dead.

Click through to see the whole post and the accompanying images.

The Unintended Consequences of Driverless Cars

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This is some interesting food for thoughts about driverless cars, currently being developed and tested by Google:

Google has been working on driverless cars for a few years now. The obvious selling point is that the cars will be much safer without a human behind the wheel.

Currently, a car spends 96% of its time idle. Compare that with planes which spend almost their entire lifetime in operation/airborne. Idle planes aren’t making money, and they need to recoup their hefty $120M price tag. There is an unforgiving economic incentive to make sure it is always in use.

The proliferation of driverless cars will have a similar effect. Cars will spend less time idle: why would a household buy 2 (or even 3) cars, when they only need 1? Ride to work, then send the car home to your spouse. Need to go grocery shopping, but your kid also needs a ride to a soccer game? No problem, a driverless car can handle that.

What will begin as households cutting back to a single car, will expand. Why would a family need an entire car to themselves? That’s crazy! It may start as extended family in the same area sharing cars, then neighbors sharing cars, and then entire apartment/condo complexes in cities offering driverless cars bundled into their HOA/rent.[2]

The operating percent of a car will go from 4% to that 96%. But back to my leading statement: there are unintended consequences. Parked cars will be a relic from the past. What happens to car insurance prices if a driver is no longer part of the equation? And if cars are receiving 20 times more actual use, that would imply that there would be 20 times less cars sold.[1] This is the kind of disruptive change that can reshape the automotive industry. The recent GM/Chrysler bailout may have been for naught.[3]

[1] Of course, this isn’t exactly the case, as the cars would need to be replaced more often due to nonstop usage, but the point stands.
[2] Hell, I’d share a car with my condo complex. I currently don’t own a car, I walk or take taxis basically everywhere.
[3] Of course, car companies realize this. And I can guarantee you, they will lobby against driverless cars.

The brief post is written by . For some reason, I hadn’t even considered that driverless cars would operate without someone in them, but as Dutta explains, it would make sense for families to own fewer cars.

Steve Jobs’s Vision for the World

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Today marks two months since the death of Steve Jobs. You’ve read incredible eulogies, countless personal remembrances, and perhaps have finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of the man. I wanted to share the video below, a brief 46-second clip featured in a recent PBS documentary. It vividly captures Steve Jobs’s spirit and his vision for the world:

When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is…and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact: and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

The above edited footage comes from a 1995 interview conducted by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, while Jobs was still at NeXT, without the dramatic music. See the full video here.

While I sympathize with Jobs’s vision, I must admit that I haven’t acted upon his message. Not yet. But I will.

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(via A Photo Editor and Brain Pickings)

Working Out at the Office

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This short piece in The New York Times makes me wonder if the practice of installing exercise equipment (and allowing workers to use it) at the office can become more prevalent.

First, a dire warning:

Every day, millions of American workers do something dangerous to their health: they sit down.

Sitting for long periods is hard on the body. It strains the back and causes the muscles to become slack. It slows the processes that metabolize calories, increasing the risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.

People might think they are protecting themselves from such problems if they exercise outside of working hours. And employers may pat themselves on the back if they offer their workers subsidized gym memberships. But regular exercise doesn’t entirely make up for the shutdown of chemical processes that occurs during long periods of sitting, research has shown.

The Times profiles Salo, a financial staffing firm in Minneapolis, which:

[E]ncourages walking meetings. In a conference room, Salo has set up four treadmill desks, where a height-adjustable working surface is placed above the treadmill track. The desks face one another, so that people can walk and take care of business at the same time.

The results seem impressive:

For six months, the activities of 18 employees — including Mr. Dexheimer — were monitored by a device on their belts. With the help of equipment like the treadmill desks and wireless headsets that permit walking while talking on the phone, the employees collectively lost more than 150 pounds, most of it in body fat. Their cholesterol and triglyceride levels also showed a collective decline. Mr. Dexheimer said he lost 25 pounds, and has kept the weight off.

How far do I have to walk to get my employer on board?

On Inspiration vs. Imitation

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Jessica Hische has a great post about inspiration vs. imitation. While the focus is on the design community, her advice is applicable to all kinds of creative work.

One advice that resonates is that you shouldn’t publish everything you create. Put only your best work online:

When you’re starting out and have a teeny portfolio of student work, it can be very very tempting to publish everything you’re working on, whether it’s practice or actual published work. It’s especially hard because, more often than not, the work you’re doing at your day job is less than inspiring when you are starting out. It will be really hard to resist showing off the illustration you created that was inspired heavily by one of your heroes, because in reality it is probably one of the nicest things you’ve made. But that’s the thing, every new thing you make will be (should be) the nicest thing you’ve made so far, because you’re learning and getting better with each and every new project. Resist posting the practice—the piece that you know is too close to its inspiration. Let that practice fuel original work and then publish to your heart’s content.

Some cool-headed advice on what to do if you find out your work has been ripped-off (published without permission, etc.):

Whenever I’m alerted of a possible rip-offer, I try my best to educate rather than chastise and gently nudge them to find their own voice. If you see someone ripping-off someone you know or admire, I suggest you do the same—initiate the conversation as a helpful and concerned new friend, not an angry enemy. Most of the time the offenders aren’t aware of how obvious their inspiration sources are. We’re all guilty of it when we’re starting out, but hopefully this article will remind some of you to keep that practice work out of your portfolio, which will keep the angry blog commenters off your back.

Read the full post to find Jessica’s thoughts on finding your own voice, training your eye, and diversifying your inspirations.

Why Do Nice Guys Finish Last?

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Jonah Lehrer has a post summarizing the research behind the infamous “nice guys finish last” proclamation:

In 1948, the legendary baseball manager Leo Durocher declared that “nice guys finish last.” Although Durocher would later deny the quote, his pithy line summarizes a popular and pessimistic take on human nature. When it comes to success, we assume that making it to the top requires ethical compromises. Perhaps we need to shout and scream like Steve Jobs, or cut legal corners like Gordon Gekko: the point is that those who win the game of life don’t obey the same rules as everyone else. And maybe that’s why they’re winning.

Well, it turns out Durocher and all those pessimists were right: nice guys really do finish last, or at least make significantly less money. According to a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Beth A. Livingston of Cornell, Timothy A. Judge of Notre Dame, and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario, levels of “agreeableness” are negatively correlated with the earnings of men.

Let’s begin by defining our terms. There are six facets to agreeableness: trust, straightforwardness, compliance, altruism, modesty and tender-mindedness. Those are all nice character traits, right? Why would someone lacking those traits have a competitive edge in the workplace?

To understand why niceness might be a disadvantage, it helps to understand the essence of disagreeableness. Because being disagreeable doesn’t mean you behave like Ari Gold. It doesn’t mean you are a sociopath or intentionally inflict pain on others. Instead, those on the disagreeable spectrum are generally pretty decent folks, described by their peers as mostly amiable. However, these disagreeable people do consistently exhibit one special trait: they are willing to “aggressively advocate for their position during conflicts.” While more agreeable people are quick to compromise for the good of the group – conflict is never fun – their disagreeable colleagues insist on holding firm. They don’t mind fighting for what they want.

So guys who are “agreeable” tend to lose in getting that pay raise or promotion. But it’s not all bad news:

A new study points out that kindness is the single most salient variable that women look for when choosing a significant other. (Not surprisingly, those looking for a quick fling care most about looks.) So being agreeable won’t make you rich. But it just might help you fall in love, which will make you much happier than a marginal boost in income.

That is interesting. So do nice guys finish last? In some aspects yes. But as the latest research goes to show, perhaps it balances out in the end.

The New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2011

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The New York Times has unveiled their list of ten best books of 2011. Here’s the list, with five fiction books and five non-fiction books:

Fiction:

1) The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.

2) 11/22/63 by Stephen King.

3) Swamplandia! by Karen Russell.

4) Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson.

5) The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht.

Non-fiction:

1) Arguably by Christopher Hitchens.

2) The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown.

3) Malcolm X by Manning Marable.

4) Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

5) A World on Fire by Amanda Foreman.

I haven’t read any of the ten books in this list, though I previously mentioned that Stephen King’s 11/22/63 is on my radar. From the non-fiction titles, I probably will read Daniel Kahneman’s book first, as I am generally interested in psychology.

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A question for the reader: what are some books on your “Best Books of 2011” list?

The World’s Best Airport

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I’ve never been, but I’ve heard great things about Singapore’s Changi International Airport. This Wall Street Journal piece gives some details of the perks you can expect:

The airport offers amenities found elsewhere only in airlines’ fancy lounges for premium passengers. There are comfortable areas for sleeping or watching TV, premium bars, work desks and free Internet. A nap room is about $23 for three hours; a shower can be had for $6. If you want to put your feet in a tank with tiny fish that eat dead skin, that’s $17 for 20 minutes.

The pool is free to guests of the airport’s in-transit hotels; otherwise it’s about $11 a person. A bus tour of Singapore is offered free by the airport. The tour is arranged so that passengers don’t have to clear immigration—the airport retains passports so passengers don’t run off.

Simple steps matter, like minimizing annoying announcements and honking carts and instead playing soothing music to reduce stress. Placing rival currency-exchange booths and clothing stores side-by-side stimulates competition. Touch screens in bathrooms let travelers send text messages to supervisors when toilet paper runs out, for example.

Click through the article to see a video as well.