Category: science

Writers Needed For Science!

As some of you might know, I’m an exper­i­mental psy­cho­lo­gist. I’m cur­rently run­ning an online exper­i­ment for which I need writers. It takes just over half an hour — I’m afraid I can’t pay you, but you might find the exper­i­ment fun, and you’ll be doing your bit for science!

If you’re inter­ested, do read on:

The exper­i­ment will ask you to con­tinue writ­ing a scene after a brief genre-based prompt to get you going. You’ll do this three times. There’s also a brief pre-experiment ques­tion­naire and post-experiment ques­tion­naire. Your par­ti­cip­a­tion is entirely vol­un­tary and you can stop at any time.

There’s more detailed inform­a­tion on the exper­i­ment page itself, which you can get to via this link:

https://cccusocialsciences.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_08jkUORvegQXDcF

Writers! I need YOU

My day job has the title ‘psy­cho­logy lec­turer’, which means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent people. Part of my time is spent con­duct­ing research. I’m involved in quite dis­par­ate top­ics: one minute I’m help­ing prove dogs can be a bit thick; the next I’m try­ing to fig­ure out fun­da­ment­als of the lan­guage pro­cessing system.

Since September, I’ve been look­ing into the psy­cho­logy of fic­tion. It’s a vast topic. From the per­spect­ive of the writer, one small part involves the cre­at­ive act of get­ting words on paper. What pro­cesses are involved?

Writers! I need YOU.

Are you inter­ested in con­trib­ut­ing to the wobbly, baroque edi­fice that is sci­ence? I’d like to run a study look­ing into cre­ativ­ity and writ­ing. I can’t say much more at this stage. But if you’re inter­ested, please let me know. This won’t involve any great time invest­ment, and there’s no need to visit my lab.

Small print: You’ll need to be over eight­een, have nor­mal or corrected-to-normal vis­ion, and be a nat­ive English speaker.

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 on Vimeo

Sublime: High-definition trans­fer of the 16mm film that cap­tured the launch of Apollo 11. This cam­era is turn­ing so fast that eight minutes here rep­res­ents 30 seconds of real time. There are so many engin­eer­ing tricks and insight­ful solu­tions on dis­play and this is just a piece of the launch pad.

Someone remind me — why the hell aren’t we on Mars yet?

► Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 on Vimeo