Tatiana Plakhova mixes mathematically inspired design with music. via bioephemera

Yes, Hai-Ting is on Twitter as @ScopesMonkeys. I am Tweeting only during sermons at the church where I am a paid member of the professional choir. Tweeting from the choir during the sermon shall henceforth be called “Tweeching.” On Sundays around noon, look for crazy hymn lyrics that don’t quite rhyme, odd bits of nonsensical [...]

ABSINTHE Valentin Magnan: 19th century studies showed negative responses to alcohol-diluted wormwood in animals, but wasn’t studied in humans. What’s the deal? Here’s the deal: There wasn’t enough thujone in pre-ban bottles to cause trouble. And yes, it occurred to them that the chemical composition might have changed over time. Vintage and modern absinthe is [...]

While doing research for our discussion of using tuning forks for healing in a previous episode, I noticed that youtube was full of videos of tuning-fork-healers, and had no videos representing the skeptical angle. Hopefully this, Scopes Monkey Choir’s first video production, will show up when people search for info on this seriously dubious ‘medical’ [...]

The physics of the Didgeridoo The article by Roger Scruton that gets our goat, and creates our new logical fallacy: the argument for ignorance. (Different from the argument from ignorance.) This also inspired this blog post. Orcas mimic other groups’ calls. Project Calliope! ..

Geek Pop Podcast We’re on Twitter now: @scopesmonkeys .. THE HARMONIC SERIES Listen to 110 Hz and its overtones Standing waves interactive explanation This Is Your Brain On Music (Levitin, 2007) An excellent harmonic series primer (with examples) NEWS Teaching science with hip-hop ..

Everybody’s favorite Vulcan is a well-known advocate of Reason over Emotion. He’s also (spoiler alert) a fictional character. Yet somehow (and I do aim some blame at Spock, at least as a representative of pop culture) there’s a pervasive idea that embracing reason will dull the emotions; that somehow, if you fine-tune your critical thinking… [...]

SYNESTHESIA (part two) Our main references for this episode were: Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia (Cytowic, Eagleman, 2009) Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (Sacks, 2007) Synesthesia: a union of the senses (Cytowic, 2002) Think you might be one? www.synesthete.org Messiaen was one. More here. Michael Torke is too. NEWS Orlando [...]