Understanding the Brain with Kiki and Boobah

A fascinating talk about the connection between different areas of the brain and various mental abilities, as manifested in patients who suffered different kinds of brain damage:

Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them

A surprising interview on the Freakonomics blog with Philippe Legrain, the author of a new book, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, which also won the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award:

Economists calculate that removing immigration controls could more than double the size of the world economy. Even a small relaxation of immigration controls would yield disproportionately big gains.

More than the economic case, I was impressed by the moral case that Legrain opens the interview with:

I think freedom of movement is one of the most basic human rights, as anyone who is denied it can confirm. It is abhorrent that the rich and the educated are allowed to circulate around the world more or less freely, while the poor are not — causing, in effect, a form of global apartheid. So I think the burden of proof lies with supporters of immigration controls to justify why they think letting people move freely would have such catastrophic consequences. And, frankly, I don’t think they can.

Hear, hear! Read the rest of the interview here.

"Self-aware" Robots

Un-freaking-believable.
I have never seen a machine look more alive.

Wi-Fi T-Shirt

Didn't you always wish you could have a shirt that detected wi-fi networks around it?
Well now, finally, you can:

Here at ThinkGeek we're pretty lazy when it comes to technology. We expect our gadgets to do all the busywork while we focus on the high level important tasks like reading blogs. That's why we hate to have to crack open our laptops just to see if there is any wi-fi internet access about... and keychain wi-fi detectors, we would have to actually remove them from our pockets to look at them. But now thanks to the ingenious ThinkGeek robot monkeys you can display the current wi-fi signal strength to yourself and everyone around you with this stylish Wi-Fi Detector Shirt. The glowing bars on the front of the shirt dynamically change as the surrounding wi-fi signal strength fluctuates. Finally you can get the attention you deserve as others bow to you as their reverential wi-fi god, while geeky chicks swoon at your presence. You can thank us later.

The batteries, apparently, are not included.