Sociology & Big Data

Can sociological researchers make use of big data?  Should they? There’s something equivocal going on between the allure of massive data sets and the temptation to try and explain everything in terms of that data… New Sociological Approach to Big Data » Sociology Lens.

OLnet Evidence Hub: A Demo

Here’s my short introduction to the OLnet Evidence Hub.  If you’re at all interested in OER you should get involved.  Registration is currently open. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo3xPyoiwYg

Open Access in Argentina

In this interview, Dr. Colman-Lerner (Faculty of Engineering, University of La Plata, Argentina) suggests that awareness of OER is largely limited to higher education researchers who are also currently teaching.  He suggests that scientific journals are facing a subscription crisis which could be ameliorated by an open access publishing model.

Metaphor and cultural ‘truth’

In the week that The Guardian reports that the UK is investing in a programme for cyber-defence, The Atlantic carries an article which says that US intelligence services are attempting to analyse the use of metaphor in order to uncover underlying beliefs or orientations among different cultural groups. IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) is …

This Is Your Brain on Art

Why does Ramachandran continuously feel the need to reassure us that we can gain knowledge about art from neuroscience without losing anything? It seems to presuppose, at the very least, that the other option is a possibility, that looking for (and finding) elemental forces in the brain that govern aesthetic impulses could, in fact, transform …

Experimental Physics and The Limits Of Human Knowledge

Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director of the CERN nuclear research laboratories, sets out his thoughts on the changing limits of human knowledge in this short article at The European.