Links of Interest

The New York Times on the complications of preserving digital art.  I wonder when articles like these will be able to stop assuming that "digital art" is a new concept for much of the audience. This isn't snark; I honestly wonder when this will happen, since it's a key line to cross.

Author N.K. Jemison calls for a "Reconciliation" and encourages the speculative fiction community to acknowledge and address its inequalities in her Continuum Guest of Honor speech. 

Amazing images of Bryde's whales in full "balloon mode" here. I always find it interesting when people refer to animals as "alien-like," since most visual representations of alien creatures tend to be exaggerated or hybridized pictures of animals; after all, where else would we get our images of "alien" bodies? The "alien" description reminds me of Donna Haraway's claim that we use animals to form our broader notions of what is familiar or strange, what is "us" and "not-us."

Speaking of sea life and the imagination, this is a typical response of skeptical bloggers to last month's cable special about whether mermaids are real, which somehow became a trending topic.  Again, it was a trending debate about whether mermaids are real. It bears repeating. When the "special" originally aired last year, it received similar responses, including Wired's delightfully titled "Mermaids Embodies the Rotting Carcass of Science TV."

And speaking of critics of pseudoscience, Sally Satel is interviewed on BookTV about her and Scott Lilienfeld's book, Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience. She argues that we tend to overestimate how much information brainscans can really tell us, and how easy it is to misinterpret or misstate the results in a variety of situations, including the courts and in medical treatment centers.  The book also argues that overstating and misunderstanding the state of neuroscience can make us think really problematic things about free will and individualism.