“The most powerful conventional bomb in the U.S. arsenal exploded in a huge, fiery cloud on a Florida test range on Friday after being dropped by an Air Force cargo plane in the last developmental step for the nearly 11-ton”mother of all bombs.”

An MC-130E Combat Talon I dropped the 21,700-pound satellite-guided GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, over the test range at Eglin Air Force Base in northwestern Florida, said base spokesman Jake Swinson.” —New York Times

Marcello Ghin reviews Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity by Thomas Metzinger: “The notion of consciousness has been suspected of being too vague for being a topic of scientific investigation. Recently, consciousness has become more interesting in the light of new neuroscientific imaging studies. Scientists from all over the world are searching for neural correlates of consciousness. However, finding the neural basis is not enough for a scientific explanation of conscious experience. After all, we are still facing the ‘hard problem’, as David Chalmers dubbed it: why are those neural processes accompanied by conscious experience at all? Maybe we can reformulate the question in this way: Which constraints does a system have to satisfy in order to generate conscious experience? Being No One is an attempt to give an answer to the latter question. To be more precise: it is an attempt to give an answer to the question of how information processing systems generate the conscious experience of being someone.” —human-nature.com

Few people stretch the imagination as much as controversial theorist and activist Keith Henson:

“In 1987, he founded the Far Edge Committee to plan the Far Edge Party. Henson’s thinking was that the only way to see our entire galaxy before it died was to create multiple copies of himself, using such undefined technologies as mind uploading. The copies would go and experience the galaxy and then return to share their memories. And they would meet in the distant future at the other side of the Milky Way for a party.

About a thousand people were initially planning to attend this Far Edge Party, meaning that it would involve trillions of copies. Organizing the party therefore became a logistical challenge. The bean dip alone, organizers noted humorously, would weigh enough to form a black hole—a problem called “The Bean Dip Catastrophe.” ” —betterhumans

“A new Dartmouth study reveals that interracial contact has a profound impact on a person’s attention and performance. The researchers found new evidence using brain imaging that white individuals attempt to control racial bias when exposed to black individuals, and that this act of suppressing bias exhausts mental resources.

Published in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience on Nov. 16, the study combines the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures brain activity, with other behavioral tests common to research in social and cognitive psychology to determine how white individuals respond to black individuals.” —EurekAlert!

So the ignoramus says he isn’t aware of substantial opposition to his visit?

Listening to iTunes for Free:

“Nothing puts the stamp on our shrinking musical attention span as much as Apple’s new online song catalog, iTunes Music Store. The store is essentially Napster, with the minor caveat that you have to pay 99 cents for each song you download. But my sources in the preteen world have uncovered an interesting development: The kids aren’t actually paying for the songs. After all, how many kids have a credit card? And even if they did, a buck a song is steep, especially when you can get them for free on LimeWire and Kazaa.

No, instead of buying, they’re listening to the free 30-second previews that are available on the Web site. And they’re listening to them over and over again.

These previews get right to the essence of the songs. They’re usually cut from somewhere in the middle and contain a bit of the verse and a bit of the chorus, or the hook, which is the part that everyone recognizes.

You might ask how anyone could possibly find enjoyment in just 30 seconds of a song? But there’s a lot to suggest that 30 seconds of a song is just about all we need these days. In fact, everything from TV commercials to children’s toys, from radio jingles to cell-phone ringers, from song-form changes to the rise of sampling, has been subtly training us to read and receive our music in increasingly smaller chunks.” —NY Observer [via digitalphono]

Daily weather forecast at the summit. —Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute

“The leak of a secret memorandum written by a senior Pentagon official reveals less about the connection between Saddam and al Qaeda than the growing desperation of neo-conservative hawks in the Bush administration…

The leak, whatever its sources, appears to have worked against the administration. Not only does the intelligence contained in the article fall embarrassingly short of “closing the case” on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection, but by revealing highly classified material, the neo-conservatives, if they were indeed the source, appear willing to sacrifice the country’s secrets to retain power. “It’s obvious that if you cared about the real national security interests of this country, you wouldn’t reveal an asset,” said Goodman. “That shows this is a venal and desperate group who are not considering the real national-security interests of this country.” ” —Jim Lobe, AlterNet

The take-no-prisoners social critic skewers Bush, Ashcroft and the whole damn lot of us for letting despots rule:

“But getting back to Bush. If we use old-fashioned paper ballots and have them counted in the precinct where they are cast, he will be swept from office. He’s made every error you can. He’s wrecked the economy. Unemployment is up. People can’t find jobs. Poverty is up. It’s a total mess. How does he make such a mess? Well, he is plainly very stupid. But the people around him are not. They want to stay in power.

You paint a very dark picture of the current administration and of the American political system in general. But at a deeper, more societal level, isn’t there still a democratic underpinning?

No. There are some memories of what we once were. There are still a few old people around who remember the New Deal, which was the last time we had a government that showed some interest in the welfare of the American people. Now we have governments, in the last 20 to 30 years, that care only about the welfare of the rich.

Is Bush the worst president we’ve ever had?

Well, nobody has ever wrecked the Bill of Rights as he has. Other presidents have dodged around it, but no president before this one has so put the Bill of Rights at risk. No one has proposed preemptive war before. And two countries in a row that have done no harm to us have been bombed.

How do you think the current war in Iraq is going to play out?

I think we will go down the tubes right with it. With each action Bush ever more enrages the Muslims. And there are a billion of them. And sooner or later they will have a Saladin who will pull them together, and they will come after us. And it won’t be pretty. —LAWeekly [via walker]

“Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

— Hermann Goering (1946) [props to tingilinde]

Sharing your musical tastes in chance encounters with total strangers: “‘She listens to techno and trance and things like that,’ he said. ‘Things I’m completely disconnected from. Stuff I’d never listen to unless someone is guiding me…. It’s interesting. I’ve probably bought half a dozen CDs based on what I’ve heard. It’s like finding a new radio station.'” —Wired News

“Two Top-10 Lists of Indicators of a Color-Blind Society” —Connie Rice, NPR [via walker]