29 May 2008
In the news this morning
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan releases a book highlighting the stench oozing off American politics. People who are outraged by his 'disloyalty' need a lecture on the concept of 'enabling' (or the Nuremberg trials).
A large review in Nature describe four groups that have spent the last eight years using deep brain stimulation to treat, successfully, obsessive compulsive disorder (ht: Laura). Their target, the ventral striatum, also called nucleus accumbens, is of course where rewarwding brain stimulation was first demonstrated over half a century ago in rats (Olds & Milner, 1954). Only the current differs.
The US Democratic party is getting ready to reconsider it's rules and rulings. One option: instead of stripping Florida and Michigan of their delegates' votes at the party's convention in August, let's "deny them passes to the convention for friends and spouses, and put them in sorry hotels"..
Finally, monkey uses brain implant controlled robotic arm (BICRA?) to feed itself (ht: Brandon). Poor monkey.
A large review in Nature describe four groups that have spent the last eight years using deep brain stimulation to treat, successfully, obsessive compulsive disorder (ht: Laura). Their target, the ventral striatum, also called nucleus accumbens, is of course where rewarwding brain stimulation was first demonstrated over half a century ago in rats (Olds & Milner, 1954). Only the current differs.
The US Democratic party is getting ready to reconsider it's rules and rulings. One option: instead of stripping Florida and Michigan of their delegates' votes at the party's convention in August, let's "deny them passes to the convention for friends and spouses, and put them in sorry hotels"..
Finally, monkey uses brain implant controlled robotic arm (BICRA?) to feed itself (ht: Brandon). Poor monkey.
24 May 2008
23 May 2008
Clinton speculates on Obama assassination (update1)
I'm glad someone brought the subject up. Obama and his family need more protection, he can't spend time in crowds like that.
Ollbermann Special Comment on Clinton Using RFK Killing (10min, YouTube)
22 May 2008
21 May 2008
20 May 2008
The impossible status quo
Chronic under-stimulation is a curse, let me tell ya. Self-inflicted under-stimulation doubly so. It's the strangest kind of laziness, verging on machoism but not quite, because you're constantly seeking to avoid pain, the pain of engaging with the world, of actually trying something new and sticking to it.
Why engaging with the world is painful you don't know, it's just a given, and for the time being you're not fighting it. Rather, you're trying to minimize the damage, minimize your engagement with the world, yourself included. But the result is chronic understimulation, and it gets to a point where you seek out crisis just to experience meaning.
Why engaging with the world is painful you don't know, it's just a given, and for the time being you're not fighting it. Rather, you're trying to minimize the damage, minimize your engagement with the world, yourself included. But the result is chronic understimulation, and it gets to a point where you seek out crisis just to experience meaning.
In the news this morning
Google Health is online! www.google.com/health. Prepare to be assimilated. (HT Google Operating System).
The UK parliament retains it's progressive approach to stem cell research, backing human-animal embryo research in a vote yesterday (336 to 176). Makes me optimistic about living in Britain and proud to be a European. Also makes me wonder how long before HAR genes are inserted into other primates, but unfortunately admixed embryos cannot legally be grown beyond 14 days or transferred to a human or animal mother. Still, it's a good start. The parliament also voted to continue allowing the creation of "saviour siblings".
In a similar vein, please help attract as much attention as possible to the Aging 2008 conference.
The UK parliament retains it's progressive approach to stem cell research, backing human-animal embryo research in a vote yesterday (336 to 176). Makes me optimistic about living in Britain and proud to be a European. Also makes me wonder how long before HAR genes are inserted into other primates, but unfortunately admixed embryos cannot legally be grown beyond 14 days or transferred to a human or animal mother. Still, it's a good start. The parliament also voted to continue allowing the creation of "saviour siblings".
In a similar vein, please help attract as much attention as possible to the Aging 2008 conference.
19 May 2008
Mighty chunk of noise
I finally caved in to the inevitable and got myself a basic Audible account. Turns out the UK version of the site doesn't have nearly as many titles (including Spook Country! why not!!??) but I still got a free book. My choice: Joseph Heller's 1961 novel Catch 22. Makes me laugh out loud at times.
If my finances agree, I predict I'll do a LOT of reading this way this summer. Was getting mighty sick of tech and news podcasts. Any recommendations, any book at all, will be much appreciated.
If my finances agree, I predict I'll do a LOT of reading this way this summer. Was getting mighty sick of tech and news podcasts. Any recommendations, any book at all, will be much appreciated.
18 May 2008
Windigo
Sometimes you find yourself making really strange Google queries just because you can, right? Anyway, I googled Scariest Monster in the World and I think the Windigo takes the prize.
From Tamim Ansary's Scariest Monsters list:
The windigo is a Native American nightmare, invented in the subarctic by the Cree and Ojibwa peoples.
From Tamim Ansary's Scariest Monsters list:
The windigo is a Native American nightmare, invented in the subarctic by the Cree and Ojibwa peoples. Let's set the scene: The subarctic is about 5 million sq km (2 million sq mi) of forest and tundra inhabited by fewer than 60,000 people. We're talking lonely. Winters last forever up there, and winter nights are long, cold, and dark.
In times past, the people who lived in this region spent winters holed up in their shelters, rationing out their dwindling food supplies, and telling tales. The most dreadful of these stories featured the windigo, a friendless creature that lives alone in the forest. It's 6 to 9 m (20 to 30 ft) tall and has a lipless mouth and jagged teeth. Its footprints in the snow are full of blood and you can hear its hissing breath for miles.
It eats people. And that's the good news.
The bad news is, if a windigo catches you alone in the forest, it can possess you. Then you turn into a windigo yourself--a mindless cannibal.
I think I see the underlying fear that glimmers through this story. Survival in the subarctic was a desperate struggle. Often, food ran out before winter did. Sometimes, well.... Cannibalism happens.
There you have the real horror of the windigo legend. Ask not what some monster might do to you; ask what you might do to someone should you become a monster.
The West and Asia - where is the moral vacuum?
Conversations With History: The Rise of Asia and the Decline of the West (57min, YouTube) This one is very good. Kishore Mahmubani's book 'The New Asian Hemisphere' is consciously "painful reading" for Westerners. (Gotta love Harry Kreisler:)
Daniel Bell on "China's New Confucianism" (44min, search iTunes for the Big Ideas Audio Podcast, Bell's is the 12 April 2008 lecture). This is a pretty fascinating introduction to the contemporary revival of confucianism in Chinese culture.
10 May 2008
Rape and romance
Dagens Nyheter this morning: Lena Jordebo interviews Katrine Kielo about her new book Rape and romance - a book about gender, aimed, perhaps, at those who normally would not read feminist literature.
From the interview:
"One way was to split a white board in two. On one side the girls got to make a list of things they did to avoid rape - it contained a lot of things, from carrying trainers in one's backpack to weapons. On the other side the guys got to make their list - which was always empty. For the girls, the unfair division of fear in society was a striking realization."
(Illustration by Stina Wirsén)
From the interview:"One way was to split a white board in two. On one side the girls got to make a list of things they did to avoid rape - it contained a lot of things, from carrying trainers in one's backpack to weapons. On the other side the guys got to make their list - which was always empty. For the girls, the unfair division of fear in society was a striking realization."
(Illustration by Stina Wirsén)
07 May 2008
Riots in Bolivia (update 2)
05 May 2008
Diet
Except for a chocolate egg when I was starving and a few smokes at a party towards the end, my March-April 'diet' (nothing but fruit&veg outside of meals, no tobacco) actually worked. Bravo me. But since May it's all gone pear-shaped. So. May diet: nothing but fruit&veg (peanuts not included this time) outside of meals, no meal bigger than 1000cals, no tobacco, AND go for a run twice a week.
For more upbeat reading: today's xkcd is great.
"Do you swear to stick to the diet, the whole diet and nothing but the diet?"
"I do"
"Then I hereby declare you man and diet. You may have breakfast."
"I do"
"Then I hereby declare you man and diet. You may have breakfast."
For more upbeat reading: today's xkcd is great.
04 May 2008
In the news this morning
Microsoft walks away from the Yahoo takeover.
Obama wins the Democratic caucuses in Guam↓ by 7 votes.
Obama wins the Democratic caucuses in Guam↓ by 7 votes.
03 May 2008
Radius of trust
One must not lie around like a dead person
- Confucius
No one escapes the tension between world-view and world. Piaget etc. Does reality change by your will or do you let reality change you? You want to see yourself as strong, hard, but you find you are soft, weak. Right?
There are 206 bones in the human body, more than half of them in our hands and feet. The infant has 350 bones, many of which fuse as we grow. The weight of the infant brain triples as it matures.
Dad says one finds meaning by attending to the subjective, by celebrating spirit. Hyde says little, but inhibits the realization that the drowning won't stop until you accept that you must wise up. 'Accept' is the crucial, unfortunate term, because that is the essence of submitting your will to reality. When is resistance admirable?
Be specific: what do you mean 'attending to the subjective'? By what methods can one explore meaning?
Meditation, as I understand it, is a willed focus of cortical electricity into the prefrontal cortex. As the temporal cortex shuts down, time disappears. As the parietal lobe quiets, the line between self and world is blurred, the Tension eased, relaxed.
Anger. Arousal. Intoxication. Rapture. Intimacy. For those of us too weak to meditate, too thirsty to accept the steady trickle of dopamine roused by the prefrontal cortex showering the midbrain in activating glutamate; we go to the world for our supply, we feed off it and it feeds us. We go to war with boredom. We make noise where there is silence. Where people go we build cities. Where there is fire we carry gasoline. Because any attention is better than none. And the inner life and quiet remains unexplored, unsatisfying, alien. Either way, the tension remains: do you shape the world to your image or does it shape you?
You obsess about your weaknesses, your inferiorities. You focus on your own quality, your strengths and direction. You become acutely aware of the anatomy of your midbrain, what jolts it, what quiets it, what lulls it, what sends it into a frenzy, and in your own way you too blur the line between self and world as you energize your embodiment to the fullest.
Yet the tension remains. Are you soft or strong? A man or a mouse, as Dostoyevsky would have it. A Napoleon, a Cleopatra; or a brief flicker of awareness in the bubbling soup of life, a replicating property - a firefly, horny and mad.
Best political commentary 2008?
Strongly recommending Real Time with Bill Maher - an weekly 1hr HBO (!!) political commentary with 3-4 guests and an enthusiastic audience. Murphy's law being what it is Bill is currently on some sort of holiday but says he should be back before Hillary drops out of the race(..).
Not been getting your Obama fix lately?
Depressed about Obama losing points in recent polls for speaking the truth about bitter Americans and having a nutty ex-pastor? Here's a New York Times article saying it doesn't really matter - he's still ahead, the superdelegates know it and they like him.
02 May 2008
iPlant seminar: date and location
The first iPlant seminar will be held on Tuesday the 16th of May at 16:00 at the Sussex Centre for Genome Damage and Stability :)<---
The notice for the seminar can be downloaded here. Let me know if it needs any changes (opinions about the controversial mouse have been mixed).
Anyone in or close enough to Brighton is extremely welcome to attend and come for drinks afterwards but if you can't make it, despair not - the whole thing will be filmed and put on YouTube.
01 May 2008
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