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…But Are They People? “As a population of West African chimpanzees dwindles to critically endangered levels, scientists are calling for a definition of personhood that includes our close evolutionary cousins.” (Wired)
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Airport security theater Burlesque
Via kottke: “We took our shoes off and placed our laptops in bins. Schneier took from his bag a 12-ounce container labeled ‘saline solution.’
‘It’s allowed,’ he said. Medical supplies, such as saline solution for contact-lens cleaning, don’t fall under the TSA‘s three-ounce rule.
‘What’s allowed?’ I asked. ‘Saline solution, or bottles labeled saline solution?’
‘Bottles labeled saline solution. They won’t check what’s in it, trust me.’”
Read the entire thing; very funny, if it were not so sad… (thanks, walker)
Related
- Is that Lithium in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Excited to See Me? (paul.kedrosky.com)
- Travel And Contact Lenses (ArticlesBase)
Forget impeachment
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Try Bush for murder: Charlotte Dennett is running for Attorney General of the State of Vermont.
If she wins, she will use her office to indict George Bush for the murder of the citizens of Vermont who were killed in his fraudulent war.
You can support her efforts here.” (Current)
Amazon tribe’s protest shuts down dam site
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“Indians from the Enawene Nawe tribe in the Brazilian Amazon occupied and shut down the site of a huge hydroelectric dam on Saturday, destroying equipment, in an attempt to save the river that runs through their land.
The Enawene Nawe say the 77 dams to be built on the River Juruena will pollute the water and stop the fish reaching their spawning grounds. Fish is crucial to the Enawene Nawe’s diet as they do not eat red meat. It also plays a vital part in their rituals.
‘If the fish get sick and die so will the Enawene Nawe,’ said one member of the tribe.” (Survival International via miguel)
Garrett Lisi on his theory of everything
Physicist and surfer Garrett Lisi presents a controversial new model of the universe that — just maybe — answers all the big questions. If nothing else, it’s the most beautiful 8-dimensional model of elementary particles and forces you’ve ever seen. (TED Talks)
Virginia Postrel on glamour
In a timely talk, cultural critic Virginia Postrel muses on the true meaning, and the powerful uses, of glamour — which she defines as any calculated, carefully polished image designed to impress and persuade. (TED Talks)
Paola Antonelli previews "Design and the Elastic Mind"
Rousseau’s La Bohémienne endormie
MOMA design curator Paola Antonelli walks through the groundbreaking show “Design and the Elastic Mind” — full of ideas, products and designs that reflect the multi-tasking, quickly shifting way we think now. (You can see the exhibit online.) (TED Talks)
Banjo brain surgery
“Surely this must be the greatest headline for a BBC News story ever: Banjo Used in Brain Surgery.
Although the banjo wasn’t in the hands of the surgeons it was still an essential part of the operation. It was played by legendary Blue Grass musician Eddie Adcock who was having surgery install a deep brain stimulation device to treat an essential tremor that had been affecting his playing.
The BBC News story has a video of the neurosurgery and the banjo playing, and it is pure genius. Probably the best thing you’ll see all year.” (Mind Hacks)
Out of the Blue
Seed: Out of the Blue: “Each of its microchips has been programmed to act just like a real neuron in a real brain. The behavior of the computer replicates, with shocking precision, the cellular events unfolding inside a mind. ‘This is the first model of the brain that has been built from the bottom-up,’ says Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the director of the Blue Brain project. ‘There are lots of models out there, but this is the only one that is totally biologically accurate. We began with the most basic facts about the brain and just worked from there.’” (Seed)
Mythbusting Dept.
“…The apparent desire for more shut-eye, together with oft-repeated assertions that our grandparents slept longer, all too easily leads to the conclusion that we in the west are chronically sleep-deprived. Adding to these concerns are recent claims that inadequate sleep causes obesity and related disorders, such as diabetes.
Plus ca change. Claims of widespread sleep deprivation in western society are nothing new – in 1894, the British Medical Journal ran an editorial warning that the ‘hurry and excitement’ of modern life was leading to an epidemic of insomnia.
Even then it probably wasn’t true. The fact is that most adults get enough sleep, and our collective sleep debt, if it exists at all, has not worsened in recent times. Moreover, claims that sleep deprivation is contributing to obesity and diabetes have been overblown. My assertion is that the vast majority of people sleep perfectly adequately. That’s not to say that sleep deprivation doesn’t exist. But in general we’ve never had it so good.” (New Scientist)
The Lazarus sign
Image via WikipediaThe Resurrection of Lazarus by Vincent van Gogh
A slight return: “Occasionally, brain-dead patients make movements, owing to the fact that the spinal reflexes are still intact. The most complex, and presumably the most terrifying, is called the Lazarus Sign. It is where the brain-dead patient extends their arms and crosses them over their chest – Egyptian mummy style.” (Mind Hacks)
Berkeley Breathed explains why he is ending his comic strip "Opus"
“As the country excitedly awaits our great quadrennial political climax, a smaller subset looks toward the first week of November with great anxiety and dread. On Sunday, Nov. 2, the comic “Opus” will end. Worse yet, creator Berkeley Breathed has made it clear that the strip’s namesake will, in that final strip, find his “final paradise.”
Sure, it’s been an unnaturally long run for a penguin. Opus, who started with a bit part in Breathed’s Pulitzer-winning “Bloom County” (1980-89), starred in “Outland” (1989-95) and finally took center stage in “Opus” (2003-08). But for those of us accustomed to seeing our own thoughts — and fears, hopes and simmering anger — take flight in the broken-nosed face of a penguin every week, there’s no preparation for his exit, only mourning.
Breathed says it’s the anger that led him to close the book on “Opus,” that the increasingly nasty political climate has made it too difficult to keep his strip from drifting into darkness. Breathed has described his work as a hybrid of “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz’s gentle humor and Michael Moore’s crusading social justice. Perhaps losing touch with his inner Charlie Brown, Breathed has said that “a mad penguin, like a mad cartoonist, isn’t very lovable,” and wants Opus to take his final bow before bitterness changes him forever.” (Salon)
The Cognition and Language Laboratory
“The twin research foci of this lab are cognition and language. That is, our primarily interest is in how 
language is implemented in the human mind. However, as understanding and using language probably involves many mental activities that aren’t strictly linguistic, many experiments delve into other aspects of thinking or cognition.
language is implemented in the human mind. However, as understanding and using language probably involves many mental activities that aren’t strictly linguistic, many experiments delve into other aspects of thinking or cognition.
The CLL conducts experiments via the Web. You may participate by clicking here, see results from previous experiments by clicking here. The experiments are short — some take as little as 2-3 minutes to complete. All are anonymous.”
Autism in the Presidential debate?
Karyotype for trisomy Down syndromeSome have balked at McCain’s riff on autism in answer to a debate question about his running mate’s qualifications for the Presidency. Without meaning to cast aspersions on the struggles of having a special needs child, I can’t see its bearing on the skills required to be President; others have found that difficult to understand as well. And I share others’ puzzlement over how having a Downs Syndrome child makes her qualified to understand autism. I would go even further. It would not surprise me, after watching McCain’s comments in the debate, if he is confused about the distinction between the two conditions.
And don’t even get me started on her use of her special needs child to make political points…
Emperor-Without-Clothes Dept.
Charles PonziCogent explanation of my sentiments, that the economy is a Ponzi scheme and the bailout only helps the bloodsuckers at the top.
“The worst thing a doctor can do to a critically ill person is gloss over their condition and offer false reassurances. We need to know the realities to make the decisions which will affect our very survival…
…[a] contextual framework for capitalism (markets only allowed to go up variety), globalization, the loss of purchasing power and … the “exponential expansion of debt” which has acted as the worm-ridden foundation of this decade’s bogus “prosperity.” ” (Of Two Minds)
This stock collapse is petty when compared to the nature crunch
George MonbiotGeorge Monbiot: “The financial crisis at least affords us an opportunity to now rethink our catastrophic ecological trajectory.” (Guardian.UK)
Related
- Get Recession Ready: Seven Tips (Treehugger)
- George Monbiot is a Fructivist (Treehugger)
Obesity, Abnormal ‘Reward Circuitry’ In Brain Linked
“Although recent findings suggested that obese individuals may experience less pleasure when eating, and therefore eat more to compensate, this is the first prospective evidence for this relationship… Using brain imaging and chocolate milkshakes, scientists have found that women with weakened ‘reward circuitry’ in their brains are at increased risk of weight gain over time and potential obesity. The risk increases even more for women who also have a gene associated with compromised dopamine signaling in the brain.” (Science Daily)
Is Your Bedroom Messy?
You Stole Our Obama Sign
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The God That Failed
NYSE facade from Broad and Wall StreetsThe 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult:
“Perhaps the most striking fact revealed by the global financial crash — or rather, by the reaction to it — is the staggering, astonishing, gargantuan amount of money that the governments of the world have at their command.
In just a matter of days, we have seen literally trillions of dollars offered to the financial services sector by national treasuries and central banks across the globe. Britain alone has put $1 trillion at the disposal of the bankers, traders, lenders and speculators; and this has been surpassed by the total package of public money that Washington is shoveling into the financial furnaces of Wall Street and the banks. These radical efforts are being replicated on a slightly smaller scale in France, Germany, Italy, Russia and many other countries.
The effectiveness of this unprecedented transfer of wealth from ordinary citizens to the top tiers of the business world remains to be seen. It will certainly insulate the very rich from the consequences of their own greed and folly and fraud; but it is not at all clear how much these measures will shield the vast majority of people from the catastrophe that has been visited upon them by the elite.” (Empire Burlesque)
Will globalization be reversed?
Anti-globalisation protesters in Edinburgh
at the start of the G8 summitIt had occurred to me that the anti-globalization movement might be strengthened by the current finance crisis. Good to see that someone who might know a little more about macroeconomics has been thinking along the same lines: “Global integration, in large part, has been about the triumph of markets over governments. That process is now being reversed in three important ways.” (Dani Rodrik’s weblog: )
Evolution, why it still happens
MiscarriageA response to Steve Jones’ contention that human evolution is stopping:
“[M]ost people “know” that evolution is about “survival of the fittest” and that nature is red in tooth and claw. Therefore, it naturally stands to reason that when mortality declines evolution will be a weaker force. I think the problem here is that our conception of evolution is focused too greatly on proximate modes and large scale dynamics. That is, selective high mortality rates are a “common sense” way in which the “weak” can be weeded out from the “strong.” But what about the extremely high human spontaneous abortion rates? Evolutionary biologist Mark Ridley has argued that increased miscarriage rates will “balance” out the fact that more individuals with deleterious mutations are reproducing today than in the past. Selection therefore occurs in utero; we don’t observe it so it is not salient to us. But it is selection nonetheless.” (Gene Expression Blog)
How Rich Are You?
Gericault’s Portrait of a KleptomaniacGlobal Rich List: “Every year we gaze enviously at the lists of the richest people in world.
Wondering what it would be like to have that sort of cash. But where
would you sit on one of those lists? Here’s your chance to find out.”
(thanks, miguel)
Aravind Adiga wins Booker prize
Worthy winner? “So now we know. Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger has won this year’s Booker prize…. The (Man) Booker has been around long enough for at least 10 kinds of winner to have become recognisable types. Let’s review them, and work where the 2008 laureate belongs.” (guardian.co.uk)
Ficciones
Ringo Rejects Fans
…with “Peace and Love.”
(Featured Video on BuzzFeed)
Noonan, York, Toobin And Others Take Aim At McCain
“With 22 days left before the voters hit the polls, conservative pundits and media commentators are scratching their heads over the lack of direction – indeed, the near schizophrenic judgment – of the McCain campaign.
Appearing at the Time Warner Summit conference on the 2008 election, a host of prominent electoral observers were all bearish on the Arizona Republican’s presidential ambitions. Not one panelist took the chance to defend the Senator’s choice of Sarah Palin as vice president. Others simply saw death by electoral numbers…
‘Obama seems older in a way,’ said [Peggy Noonan]. ‘McCain has seemed herky-jerky. Obama has seemed like the older, steadier fellow since the economic crisis began.’” (HuffPo)
Paul Krugman’s ‘Baby-sitting the economy’
“Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences today for his work on international trade patterns, was the lead economics columnist for Slate from the magazine’s launch in 1996 to 1999, when he became a columnist for the New York Times. His ‘Dismal Science’ column covered everything from puzzling economics of ticket scalping to the tenacity of supply-side economics in presidential campaigns. One particular favorite, which was included in Slate‘s 10th-anniversary anthology, is ‘Baby-Sitting the Economy,’ a column about what a failed baby-sitting cooperative in Washington, D.C., can teach us about a global economic crisis. The article is reprinted below.”
Christopher Hitchens Endorses Obama
McCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is simply a disgrace.
“I used to nod wisely when people said: “Let’s discuss issues rather than personalities.” It seemed so obvious that in politics an issue was an issue and a personality was a personality, and that the more one could separate the two, the more serious one was. After all, in a debate on serious issues, any mention of the opponent’s personality would be ad hominem at best and at worst would stoop as low as ad feminam.
…I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that “issue” I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the “experience” is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.” (Slate)
Does the free market corrode moral character?
A Templeton Conversation: “This is the fourth in a series of conversations among leading scientists, scholars, and public figures about the ‘Big Questions.’”
Mysterious New ‘Dark Flow’ Discovered in Space
“As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren’t vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered.
Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can’t be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon ‘dark flow.’
The stuff that’s pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude.” (space.com)
How McCain Will Steal the Election from Obama (Sort Of)
Tom Matzzie: “Imagine an election where one of the participants calls foul. Investigations are launched or at least called for. Prosecutors raise the specter of charges, the U.S. attorney and FBI get involved. No voter fraud is ever actually found. But by the time that conclusion is reached, the myth has been solidified both to soothe the loser’s supporters and condemn the winner.”(HuffPo)
Mazzie shows the specious reasoning in the allegation that ACORN committed voter fraud… but why the appearance of impropriety, fueled by the McCain campaign, may make the truth irrelevant:
“The stunning con of this whole thing is the assumption that bad voter registration cards being submitted will lead to vote fraud. If somebody submits a card for Mickey Mouse it isn’t like Mr. Mouse is going to show up to vote. There is no voter fraud if nobody votes.
But the big story here is what the Right is doing. Their attacks on ACORN open up the door for two things.
First, the ACORN myth allows the Republicans to do more purging of the voter rolls–the process of removing people from the voter rolls because of arbitrary anomalies in the voter registration databases…
Second, in the event that campaigning, purging and intimidating voters doesn’t work, the Right is creating a myth like they did in 1960. They are creating the myth of a stolen election…”
StupidFilter
“In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point.
The solution we’re creating is simple: an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian or similar analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines. The primary challenge inherent in our task is that stupidity is not a binary distinction, but rather a matter of degree. To this end, we’re collecting a ranked corpus of stupid text, gleaned from user comments on public websites and ranked on a five-point scale.
Eventually, once the research is completed, we plan to release core engine source code for incorporation into content management systems, blogs, wikis and the like. Additionally, we plan to develop a fully implemented Firefox plugin and a WordPress plugin.”
Pennsylvania not a swing state anymore?
Not a Cough in a Carload:
Not a Cough in a Carload:
Desperate McCain gives beat to the dark heart of conservatism
Michael Tomasky: “We are seeing, from (happily, at least for the time being) the majority of the country, much of what is good and decent about America in this election. But we are also seeing in smaller proportion what is chilling. The people in those videos have no proof to back up their beliefs, because of course no such proof exists. They just feel it, and that’s enough. But that isn’t what’s most disturbing. There will always be such people in all societies. What’s most disturbing is that McCain and Palin are egging them on.” (Guardian.UK)
Historian says Beatles were just capitalists, and not youth heroes
“Fab four ‘created passive teenage consumers’” (Guardian.UK)
Le Clézio, French Writer, Wins Nobel
“The academy called Le Clézio an ‘author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.’” (New York Times)
I am not familiar with his writing at all [has anyone out there read him?]… Off to Booksmith to give him a look.
Hi Ho Honda!
Civic Musical Road Plays Rossini’s William Tell Overture: “From Autopia‘s ‘Most Annoying Promotion Ever’ department comes this dispatch from Lancaster, California, where Honda’s marketing team joined forces with the city to turn a stretch of road on the edge of town into a giant LP that plays ‘The William Tell Overture,’ which you might more readily recognize as the theme to The Lone Ranger.
The quarter-mile stretch of Avenue K renamed ‘Civic Musical Road’ features grooves cut into the pavement in such a way as to make the tires resonate to the tune of Gioachino Rossini‘s classic symphony. The road, which Honda claimed sounded best when ‘played’ on a new Civic going exactly 55 miles per hour, was just one of four ‘melody roads’ in the world and the first in America. ‘I think it’s kind of cool,’ Peggy Llano told the L.A. Daily News. ‘When you are driving out on Avenue K. you’re going out to the middle of nowhere. It’s kind of a nice surprise to come across this thing.’
A lot of Lancaster residents disagreed, which is why we’re writing about this in the past tense. The ‘musical road’ is being paved over today, leaving only the YouTube video after the jump to remember it by.” (Wired)
O death, when is thy sting?
Gerrymandering the boundary: “In August… Robert Truog of the Harvard Medical School and Franklin Miller of America’s National Institutes of Health, bioethicists both, published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine describing a recent trend to revert to using cardiac death as the critical marker. But that is not good news for Dr Scaraffia and her followers for, according to Dr Truog and Dr Miller, the definition of cardiac death has changed over the years in just the sort of way that Dr Scaraffia predicted that it might.
Dr Truog and Dr Miller posit the example of a patient who has given informed consent to the withdrawal of life support in the case of his suffering devastating brain injury. The doctors respect his wishes and his heart stops beating. So far, so ethical. But instead of waiting a few minutes for his brain to die as well, they anticipate this inevitability and declare him dead immediately, so that they can hurry along with the business of removing his organs.
Death in such cases is therefore based on a decision not to resuscitate, not the impossibility of resuscitation. And their hypothetical case does seem to be happening more frequently in reality. In America, data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, an organisation that matches donors to recipients, show that those classified as cardiac-dead but not brain-dead represent the fastest growing proportion of donors, having risen from zero ten years ago to 7% in 2006.
Dr Truog and Dr Miller reckon this gerrymandering of the division between life and death will continue as long as doctors have to abide by the dead-donor rule—that although a living person can consent to have a non-vital organ removed for transplant (a single kidney, for example) vital organs can be removed only from dead bodies. Instead, they propose that someone whose brain is devastatingly and irreversibly damaged, and who has previously given his informed consent, should be able to donate vital organs while still alive.
In practice, says Dr Truog, this would not differ much from what happens now, except that doctors would be released from the temptation to fudge the definition of death, or to accelerate it by, for example, withdrawing life-sustaining treatment. Indeed, the British government is considering changing the regulations in a way that would allow just that to happen.” (The Economist)
Mud Pies for ‘That One’
Image by DoubleSpeak with Matthew and Peter Slutsky via FlickrMaureen Dowd skewers McCain, Palin and Lee Atwater with elegance and conscience. Must-read. (New York Times op-ed)
After Flying, Grounding
Walking when and where most people wouldn’t: “British novelist Will Self came to New York not long ago to promote his latest published work, a nonfiction book on walking called Psychogeography. When Self arrived at LaGuardia Airport, he was met for a radio interview by Pejk (pronounced ‘Pike’] Malinovski, a reporter for the WNYC show, “Studio 360.”
Malinovski taped a walk with Self. That was the interview. The first place the pair walked to was the airport’s Ground Transportation desk. There, Self asked the woman at the counter for the best route to take in order to reach Manhattan on foot.
“You want to . . . walk . . . out of the airport?” It was as much a statement as a question–or as much a question as a statement.
“Yes,” Self replied.
“You want to walk,” she repeated, just to make sure she’d heard right. “You mean, like . . . walk.”
“Yes,” Self repeated.
After she recovered, the Ground Transportation representative pointed Self and Malinovski in the right direction. And soon, after some highway-hopping–and an impromptu cemetery tour–they were walking the streets of residential Queens, Manhattan-bound.
For Self, this airport-walking is nothing new. He has walked from his home in London all the way to Heathrow; and trekked the 18 miles from O’Hare to Chicago’s Loop. “Walking after flying grounds one, literally,” says Self. “It reconnects you with the earth.”
Self began walking for fitness, but he has come to see it as much more, as “an insurgency against the contemporary world, an act of refusal, of dissent.”" (Walking Is Transportation)
Half world’s population ‘will have mobile phone by end of year’
“The world’s love affair with the mobile phone shows no sign of abating, with the head of the UN’s agency for information and communication technologies predicting that there will be 4 billion mobile phone users – or more than half of the planet’s estimated 6.7 billion inhabitants – by the end of this year.” (Guardian.UK)
Is the Crisis Real?
“At a Harvard panel discussion…, Gregory Mankiw–Harvard economist and Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers 2003-2005, made an interesting point: The liquidity crisis isn’t real. Or, to restate it: Any liquidity crisis is caused by the promise of a government bailout. Greg said that his many friends in investment banking said that there is plenty of money to invest in financial services, but right now it is ‘sitting on the sidelines.’ Why? Because the financial services industry does not want to pay the terms required to get that money back in circulation (e.g., give up equity). As he put it, why do business with Warren Buffett who will negotiate a tough deal, if you believe that the government will ride in soon with cheaper cash?” (Credit Slips)
What if it’s a Wealth Shock?
Arnold Kling: “For a different and important perspective on the financial crisis, I want to draw your attention to Robert Merton’s remarks at Thursday’s Harvard forum, linked to here. The Nobel Laureate begins with a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Data suggest that between June of 2007 and June of 2008, average home prices in the U.S. fell by 16 to 18 percent. Near the peak of the housing market, total housing wealth was between $20 and $23 trillion.
Simple multiplication says that we have lost somewhere around $3.5 to $4 trillion. As Merton says,
When you have this wealth loss, nothing that’s done here will resurrect it.
On top of that, not mentioned by Merton but alluded to by Rogoff, there is the drop in wealth represented by the decline in the dollar. Marking our assets to world prices, a lower dollar lowers our wealth. Furthermore, Rogoff and other economists believe that the dollar decline has further to go.” (econlib)
The Haute-est Cuisines
<Gael Greene: “What are the most important restaurants of the past 40 years?” (New York Magazine 40th anniversary issue) [I have only eaten at three of the fourteen. — FmH]
Nobel judge: U.S. too ignorant to compete
“Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.” (CNN)
Invisibility cloaks could take sting out of tsunamis
If you can believe this: a suggestion that they might be able to hide vulnerable coastlines from waveforms (New Scientist)
20th-century agenda: Messiaen
“The centenary of Olivier Messiaen, a formerly radical-seeming composer who now belongs to the ages, is being celebrated with a rather impressive array of concerts around the world.” `– Alex Ross, New Yorker music critic (The Rest is Noise)
