This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: On the other hand — It is maybe the most politically insightful psychology study published in the past 60 years. And it is maybe not. The study in question is “State resident handedness, ideology, and political party […]
“I would like to draw attention to the difficulty presented by artifacts of performances that never happened—what I call performance nonevents.” – explains professor Pannill Camp, Associate Professor of Drama, and Chair, Performing Arts Department, at Washington University in St. Louis, US. in a recent essay for the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. “First, […]
Dr Suki Finn who is a postdoctoral research fellow in philosophy at the University of Southampton, UK, poses a question in a recent AEON magazine article : ‘Is a hole a real thing, or just a place where something isn’t?’ Pointing out that: “[…] a better understanding of where holes lie on the material/immaterial and […]
Most news reports about science and medicine come from press releases, some of which contain a colorful statement and some padding, but no actual news. This press release from Texas A&M University shows how that’s done at the highest professional level: Can you sneeze with your eyes open? …David Huston, MD, associate dean of the Texas A&M College of […]
Although it’s possible to create a swathe of specially crafted ‘academic drivel’ on the concept of the Absence of Absences that certainly doesn’t preclude the concept from serious study. In fact there’s quite a body of academic work which addresses this very subject – see for example the work of George Botterill (University of Sheffield, UK) […]
Dr. Anne Toner, of the Faculty of English at Trinity College Cambridge, UK, studies varieties of incompleteness in literary works. She has recently published a book which focusses on a particular incompleteness signifier: Ellipsis in English Literature : Signs of Omission. The publisher notes : “Anne Toner provides an original account of the history of […]
Nancy Pedri, who is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Literature at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, is a comparatist. And, as such, is one of the few scholars to have examined the implications of empty photographic frames in multimodal narratives. “In its capacity to open up the possibility for variance in meaning, […]
This machine symbolizes Monday mornings. This machine also symbolizes almost anything else. This machine fails to symbolize almost nothing. Claude Shannon, who figured out some things about information, designed the machine, years ago.
Nothing you can say about Rien can obscure the fact that Rien is obsessed with voids. Rien is at the University of Groningen. Rien is Rien van de Weygaert. Rien co-authored this study: “A hierarchy of voids: much ado about nothing.” R.K. Sheth and Rien van de Weygaert [pictured here], Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical […]
The next time you see a group of adolescents just hangin’ out at a bus stop, rather than grumbling to yourself ‘Why don’t they do something useful?’, you might ask instead ‘Could it be that “doing nothing” is a healthy teenage behaviour?’ This is exactly the question posed by postdoc researcher Maria Patsarika (currently at […]