A slice of shark brain with lemon

Politics fatigue. The US election is over and all the politics podcasts and news have lost their bite. Hillary as foreign minister, so what? The economy tanking, who cares? Keith Olberman's attempts to sound as excited about the political news now as he did before the election are off key and Democracy Now won't stop heaping shit on not-even-president-yet Obama. But even Obama is boring now. Another 'stimulus package', wake me up in a month or two, seriously, who gives a shit? (And all the while Israel is starving Gaza.. that still lights a spark somewhere, but is it being discussed? nooo, course not. Because, to paraphrase Obama; 'that shit is sacrosanct'.. yea he actually used that word.. right before bringing Rham Emanuel on board.. but I digress....)

So that's half my podcasts rendered impotent, half my daily entertainment gone. And to top it all Entitled Opinions go on hiatus. Shit. Post-election, post-SfN blues. Even Twit has lost it's umpf.

So, back to basics. Back to work. Think of the absence of distractions as an opportunity to take a closer look at what I'm working on. An intelligent circuit. A biologically inspired circuit. Biologically inspired circuit design.

Sooner or later we all come up against network theory. We all need large data-sets for strong patterns to emerge, but then the variables are too many and the maths are too hard. For this we need intelligent circuits.

NASA knows this. NASA even uses an artificial neural network to handle the plants they're bringing to Mars. But it's unlikely that it's a network modeled on a biological circuit. We don't have programs like that, not yet.

Step step

Wake up to excited go online for news of the VP debate. Funny how the day always starts with what happened in the US the previous evening. But there's nothing new. Book a free trip to attend the Society for Neuroscience conference in Washington in November. Fill the Google calendar with guest lectures, seminars and courses on neuroscience, cognitive science and programming; get an introduction to Java from the library. Drink three cups of coffee. Little or no iPod, not today, not when the nervous system is finally starting to accept its new circumstances and generate the good routines. Lab work. Sandwiches with fried egg for lunch. The small efforts that prevent social isolation and serotonin depletion. Like sitting in the kitchen/livingroom with my books instead of in my own room; listening to the conversation flow seamlessly between English and Swahili.

But nothing lasts, so off for a run, over the railway tracks, up the hill and through the woods and out on a vast strech of dead, plowed earth, field, hill, whatever. Massive ups and downs, out on a gyrus overlooking sulci and further waves of the hills and the motorway, campus, forest and sunset beyond. All the while with Kieth Olbermann framing the debate in my iPod/ears/Wernicke.

Barack Obama on Countdown w/Keith Olbermann 09-08-08

part 1


part 2