Thursday, May 29, 2014

Julia update May 2014 - new music and writings!

So earlier this week I sent out my latest email update. It offers links to some of my more recent writings plus a bit of news about Excluded.

But the update mostly discusses my new solo music project *soft vowel sounds* and my first record (a four-song EP) under that moniker called Ray versus Macbeth and the Music Box, part one. The record includes the eponymous song "Ray," a contemporary parody of The Kinks' song "Lola." To listen to the record and/or find out how you can download it for free (for a limited time), simply check out the email update!

If you want future julia updates emailed directly to you, you can sign up for my email list here.

And if you want future updates for upcoming *soft vowel sounds* shows & music, you can sign up for the *soft vowel sounds* email list here.

enjoy! -j.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

a quick guide to media reports about brain studies

When someone in the media says:

Researchers at [fill-in-the-blank university/institution] have found that group X's brains are better at [fill-in-the-blank specific task] than group Y's.

This is what they really mean:

In the study, group X's results formed a bell curve. And group Y's results also formed a bell curve. And those bell curves largely overlapped - in other words, the groups were more similar than different. However, if you ignore those bell curves and simply look at the average result for each group, then those average numbers differ somewhat. And that is *so much* easier & more fascinating to report, so that is all we're going to tell you about the study!

That is pretty much everything you need to know about media and pop science reporting on brain studies...

[note: If you appreciate my work and want to see more of it, please check out my Patreon page]