Japan nuclear crisis and the belief instinct: Tomorrow on Bloggingheads

Tomorrow morning, I'll be back on Bloggingheads—the video chat that pairs two science bloggers, and lets you in on their conversation. I'll be talking about the Japanese nuclear crisis. If you've been reading my posts on BoingBoing, you'll have probably heard most of my side of the conversation already, but you should definitely tune in to hear the guy I'm chatting with. Jesse Bering is a research psychologist who studies the human instinct to believe in the supernatural. He's got a lot of interesting things to say about how this instinct plays out in disasters, and how it affects even those of us who don't believe. Cool stuff! Our conversation will go up tomorrow morning, on the Bloggingheads site.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

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Anonymous

Somewhat related: the “efforts” currently under way to “help” the victims in Japan by sending them “good energy” in a world-wide meditation session. I don’t use scare quotes lightly but these are three instances where they’re sorely needed.

I just created a Facebook page to at least make some people aware of ways to actually do something (with some relevant links to the “initiatives”):

“While you were meditating for Japan, I donated to a relief fund.”
http://on.fb.me/gY6GsO
Anonymous

last one was interesting. good to know people out there are having the conversations that I wish to have but lack informed partners to have.