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Reported on http://novysan.com/magic and confirmed here: http://www.media.mit.edu/about/academics/class-schedule
'When Aleister Crowley defined magic as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will,” he might as easily have been describing technology. In fact, “magic” is still the word we use to encompass the wonders of a new technology before it becomes ubiquitous. '
Course Description
"With a focus on the creation of functional prototypes and practicing real magical crafts, this class combines theatrical illusion, game design, sleight of hand, machine learning, camouflage, and neuroscience to explore how ideas from ancient magic and modern stage illusion can inform cutting edge technology. Students will learn techniques to improve the presentation, display, and interface of their projects as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the cultural traditions that shape user expectations of technology. Topics will include: Stage Illusion as Information Display, The Neuroscience of Misdirection, Magical Warfare: Camouflage and Deception, Magic Items and the Internet of Things, Computational Demonology, Ritual Magick as User Experience Design. Guest lecturers and representatives of Member companies will contribute to select project critiques. Requires regular reading, discussion, practicing magic tricks, design exercises, a midterm project and final project."
Uncle Al would have been so proud.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Mr. Slippery on Friday February 06 2015, @04:33PM
And while we wait around for someone to have the motivation and resources to adequately test a given herbal remedy or other treatment that has been around long enough that we can at least recognize it as mostly safe while we still wonder about its effectiveness...what shall we do?
If you're going to insist on high quality placebo controlled studies before using a medical treatment, very few meet the bill. At the "gold standard", surgery is right out, all placebo ("sham surgery") controlled studies have found the procedure under study to be ineffective. I am not saying surgery is ineffective, I am commenting on the process of gathering and processing evidence, that if you judged it by the same standards that many so-called "skeptics" demand of CAM treatments it would fail.
Many drugs, once you eliminate cherry-picking by their makers, have little evidence of effectiveness.
Most medicine as it is actually practiced, is folklore in white coats.