“UFOs used to move a lot faster. Martin S. Kottmeyer asks why.” (TPM: The Philosophers’ Magazine)

A Renaissance of Wonder: My online friend, journalist Steve Silberman, returns to weblogging. As he explains, he was one of the first, at hotwired.com. I have always appreciated his incisive articles, especially those on neuroscience, for Wired, although I first became familiar with his name as a luminary in the Deadhead world. Now, he introduces his new smart science blog for PLoS.

New study suggests: “The implications for our current understanding of science are profound. If the laws of physics turn out to be merely local by-laws, it might be that whilst our observable part of the universe favours the existence of life and human beings, other far more distant regions may exist where different laws preclude the formation of life, at least as we know it.” (Science Daily via abby).

Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier is perhaps the leading debunker of preconceived notions in the medical world. (NYTimes.com).

Two Turntables and a Homophone Shirt.

The suggestion is to use the demo to distinguish between text in English and French, which is pretty trivial, so I gave it a more difficult challenge. After I had it sample one random paragraph each from Wall Street Journal and the New York Times online content, in 3:3 trials it successfully distinguished the source of further random paragraphs.The implications for categorizing a person’s demographic and sociopolitical niche from their reading choices are clear.

This item grabbed my attention because, more than thirty years ago, I had a very very footloose dog named Sashi. Before I went to medical school, I was living near Harvard Square and one morning he apparently followed the stream of working people who walked down to the Square and got on the Red line, one of the branches of Boston‘s subway system, the MTA or ‘T’. Several hours later, I was called by someone to say that he was wandering the platform at Braintree Station, at the other end of the Red Line. I considered asking them to lend him 50 cents to get back on the T and travel home, but I did in the last analysis drive down to Braintree to pick him up.

At another point, Sashi and I lived in a house further out in the country with a golf course out the back door. After the golfers were gone in the evening, I would let Sashi out to congregate with the other local dogs on the golf course at the summit of the hill. He would come back sedate and satisfied from what I imagined had been several hours of romping in the field. Several months later, I happened to be walking him past the ice cream shop in the center of town, about a half mile away. One of the local skateboard kids who hung out in front of the shop greeted Sashi by name. I asked him how he knew my dog. “How do I know him? He’s here hanging out with us every evening eating our leftovers!”

Sashi also used to swim along with me and friends as we kayaked. Once he got himself stranded on a rock in the Cohasset Rips as the tide was rushing out, prompting my one and only daredevil rescue experience.

Later, during my medical schooling, Sashi ran away from a friend of mine who was boarding him one summer in rural Maryland while I was on a volunteer medical project in Appalachia. When I eventually located him three months later through ads I ran in the Maryland newspapers, he was flown home to me in Boston by the high-powered consultant with whom he had been living, under an assumed name, and gallivanting around the country in his foster owner’s private plane. Footloose indeed!

“Flime restaurant seeking diners willing to donate body parts to be turned into gourmet meals, but some suspect a ruse.” (The Guardian).

Recently, several people have offered to buy links on FmH to their services or products. In case it wasn’t already clear, this will serve as a reminder that links here are never sold. Offering to pay me to link to you is a sure way to get me to disregard anything you might have to offer.

“You too can dazzle your friends by perturbing their bodily awareness, using nothing more than the items that are commonly found in pubs and bars.” ( Neurophilosophy)

“On Thursday, August 12th, an alignment of planets in the sunset sky will kick off the finest meteor shower of 2010, the Perseids.” (NASA Science)

In the comments to my previous post, Brian Hayes pointed me to reporter Robert Neuworth’s ‘circle of caveats’, which deserves to be elevated to the front page:

And delving further into Neuworth’s weblog, I found this poignant reflection on the passing of author David Markson. Worth your while.

“A huge mass of magnetically charged material ejected from the sun is racing across space toward our planet, where it is expected to arrive on Tuesday. When it strikes the Earth’s magnetic field, it could produce spectacular auroras.” CSMonitor.com.

Police Search For Missing City Heights Man: This 56 y/o San Diego man, who has been missing without a trace since July 22, is the fiance of a friend and co-worker of mine. There has been no sign of his car (2005 Silver Envoy with California plate number 5LJV959), no activity on his cellphone or financial accounts. He had an unexplained episode of loss of consciousness in the past and a recurrence is feared. Can you spread the word, thanks? Anyone with information about his whereabouts is asked to call his niece Kim DeMars at 404-966-7161  or SDPD Detective Mo Parga at 619-531-2277. (KGTV San Diego)

Related:

• San Diego Mystery (nowpublic.com)
• ‘Help Find David Mow’ Facebook page

Related:

• Scientists: Triceratops Never Existed (neatorama.com)
• When 2 dinosaurs become 1 – Boing Boing (atomiurl.com)

“A new cosmology successfully explains the accelerating expansion of the universe without dark energy; but only if the universe has no beginning and no end.”  Technology Review

NPR picked up on this Village Voice weblog post by Shefali Kulkarni and I heard her interviewed today. She describes how, five months or so ago, she started to order her coffees at Starbucks under the name  ‘Sheila’ instead of being burdened to spell her unfamiliar foreign name for the baristas. She is apologetic about racial profiling, but she began to notice that those on the coffee lines with foreign names often did the same thing. Now coffee snob that I am, I would never be caught in a Starbucks, but this reminds me of somethng I do which in effect turns this situation on its head.

Being a fiend for Asian food, with which my neighborhood is quite well-endowed, I noticed about thirty years ago that when I ordered takeout the Asian restauranteurs often had difficulty understanding my name ‘Eliot’ and I began ordering my food under the name ‘Wes’. Unambiguous, didn’t require spelling, etc. Within a few months, however, my favorite Szechuan restaurant started identifying me whenever I came in for a table or a pickup as ‘Mr. West,’ and ‘Hello, Mr. West’ it has remained.

This was before I used credit cards. When that changed, I recall worrying about the confusion it might cause at the restaurant if ‘Mr. West’ paid for his food with a card belonging to ‘Eliot Gelwan’, but they never batted an eyelid. After I had children, once they became old enough to notice, my son and daughter on the other hand have been shaking their heads in consternation whenever my restaurant  greets me. I think I’ll have to point them to the ‘coffee names’ post to vindicate msyelf…

Related:

• Best Antioxidant Foods for Cancer Prevention (lifescript.com)
• Flat-screen TV chemical on Cancer Society’s list of potential carcinogens (nationalpost.com)

Jim Fallon studied the brains of psychopaths for twenty years. Then his mother mentioned that he was related to Lizzie Borden, so he decided to study himself.  “You see that? I’m 100 percent. I have the pattern, the risky pattern,” he says, then pauses. “In a sense, I’m a born killer.” (NPR).

As someone who could never be described as cool, calm and collected, I appreciated  this New York Times piece:  “Lose it. Just once. See what happens.”

“Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” For schizophrenia? Perhaps. New research suggests that aspirin may be of benefit in reducing the symptoms of schizophrenia. (Psych Central News).

How neat to view the aurora from above! (NASA)

Uncanny ability to “heal by association.” (thanks, Barbara)

Clues to consciousness in nonmammals: “Many people (some scientists among them) would like to believe that consciousness sets the human mind apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. But whether in humans or other creatures, behavioral signs of cognizance all arise from the tangled interactions of neurons in the brain. So a growing number of scientists contend that animals with brain structures and neural circuitry similar to humans’ might experience something like human awareness, even if a bit less sophisticated.” (Science News)

Related?

• Debunking the Big Brain Myth (geeksaresexy.net)
• Signature of consciousness captured in brain scans (biosingularity.wordpress.com)
• Man Actually Conscious Throughout Two Decades of “Coma” (neatorama.com)
• Terri’s Press Release: Doctors Misdiagnose Patient Thought to be in 23 Year “Persistent Vegetative State” (deaconforlife.blogspot.com)

“…When I see a smiley, my first thought is, “What are you, 12 years old?” What is it about the emoticon that fills me with such loathing? Maybe it's the wastefulness of the enterprise, the redundancy of it, the implied lack of confidence in the writer's ability to communicate, or mine to comprehend. If you say, “I'm looking forward to seeing you tonight,” I think you're looking forward to seeing me. If you say, “I'm looking forward to seeing you tonight. :-),” I think you're not sure I understand the extent of sentiment in that seven-word message. And if you write, “I'm looking forward to seeing you tonight ;-),” I think your assumption of getting laid this evening may have been a bit premature, Winky.” — Mary Elizabeth Williams (Salon)

Related:

• Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages (online.wsj.com)
• The collaborative construction of “fact” on Wikipedia (matei.org)
• Have you stopped editing Wikipedia? And if so, is it doomed? (guardian.co.uk)
• Wikipedia’s New Editorial Line of Defense (slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com)
• Quoted – Ecommerce Times – Wikipedia to Tinge Suspect Entries With Orange Cast (scotttesta.com)
• Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales denies site is ‘losing’ thousands of volunteer editors (telegraph.co.uk)
• Wikipedia on the wane? (bbc.co.uk)
• Hiring for Social Media: The Ugly Side (altitudebranding.com)

Elyn R. Saks is a professor of law, psychology, and psychiatry and the behavioral sciences at the University of Southern California’s law school. She is the author of a memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (Hyperion, 2007). Here is her essay about ‘outing’ herself as a university faculty member suffering from schizophrenia. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

As someone who was a participant in and subscriber to his ‘Red Rock Eaters’ mailing list for the duration, I am reposting this to spread the word. He is certainly someone who would know how to drop off the grid if he wished to, but I worry that something more dire has happened to him.

Related:

• Missing: Phil Agre, internet scholar (boingboing.net)

.

Tetrapod Zoology.

LCROSS Finds Water on the Moon: “At a press conference today, researchers revealed preliminary data from NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicating that water exists in a permanently shadowed lunar crater. The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the Moon.” (NASA)

“Military officials say the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 and wounding 29 in last week's shooting rampage at his post in Texas has been charged in a military court with 13 counts of premeditated murder. The decision makes him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.” (NPR)

As more comes out about Hasan’s past, concern has seemed to center on his contact with a radical Islamist cleric. President Obama has ordered an inquiry into the fact that this intelligence was known but not shared or acted upon. I am more concerned with the evidence, as Daniel Zwerdling reported today on NPR, that there were considerable concerns about his fitness to be a psychiatrist and, indeed, about his mental stability overall, while he was in his psychiatric residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

‘”Put it this way,” says one official familiar with the conversations that took place. “Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole.”‘

One source, shamefully conceding that no action had been taken on those concerns, described the decision to send Hasan to Fort Hood as being based on the sense that he could do the least harm there.

Some have characterized this as a particularly egregious example of a recent overall military pattern. If someone is unfit for a job, another job is created for him rather than drumming him out of the corps. It is not implausible to suggest that this relates to the climate of overwhelming difficulty with recruitment and retention in the Iraq- and Afghanistan-era military.

Spectacular pictures of some of the world’s most interesting islands taken from manned spaceflights or satellites. (Wired)

Two deaths this week saddened — and diminished — me. The first life, easier to celebrate, was a public loss, although I, probably like a legion of others, could say that I had know Brother Blue over the decades in which my life centered around Cambridge. The storyteller serves a unique, ancient, and in my opinion irreplaceable function in our society, and Brother Blue was the best.

R.I.P. Brother Blue, 88

Brother Blue by Roger Gordy

“The City of Cambridge lost an icon this week: a master storyteller known as Brother Blue.

If you’ve spent time in Harvard Square in the past three decades or so, you’ve probably seen Brother Blue, with a crowd gathered around, telling stories. He stood out of the urban environment in his signature bright blue ensembles.

Brother Blue also told stories in classrooms and jailhouses — anywhere he could find an audience.

He and his wife Ruth produced hours of programming on Cambridge Community Television.

Susan Fleishman is the public access station’s executive director and says the show, “Street Corner Classics with Brother Blue,” was adored.

“Everybody knew who Brother Blue was, and many of the children who are now in their 20s, 30s and 40s remember him from when they were younger,” Fleishman said. ” He was just such an iconic character.”” (WBUR obituary)

I’ve previously written about the theory that the Higgs Boson exerts a sabotaging influence from the future on efforts to discover it. Now it turns out that the ‘terminator’ from the future may be avian. (Popular Science via Steve Silberman)

“How many scholarly stakes in the heart will we need before Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), still regarded by some as Germany’s greatest 20th-century philosopher, reaches his final resting place as a prolific, provincial Nazi hack? Overrated in his prime, bizarrely venerated by acolytes even now, the pretentious old Black Forest babbler makes one wonder whether there’s a university-press equivalent of wolfsbane, guaranteed to keep philosophical frauds at a distance.” (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

“NPR Music staffers and station partners observe the holiday by assembling a chilling collection of songs about ghosts, hauntings and otherwise disembodied and discombobulated spirits. More unsettling than pumpkins and more ethereal than zombies, these ghosts are sure to alternately soothe and rattle your nerves as the big day approaches:

“Bach: Toccata in D minor,” Helmut Walcha (DeutscheGrammophon 419 047)

“Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” Bauhaus, 1979-83 Vol. One [The Current]

“The Devil Had a Hold of Me,” Gillian Welch, Hell Among the Yearlings (Acony) [Folk Alley]

“Marie Laveau,” Dr. John, N’walinz — Dis Dat or D’udda (Blue Note) [Jazz 24]

“The Wizard,” Bat for Lashes, Essence [The Current]

“Ralph Vaughan Williams: Job (“Satan’s Dance”),” English Northern Sinfonia (Naxos 8578085)

“Scared,” John Lennon, Walls and Bridges [WFUV]

“John Williams: Devil’s Dance From The Witches of Eastwick,” Gil Shaham, Devil’s Dance: Gil Shaham [WGUC]

“The Vampire,” Buffy Sainte-Marie, The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie [Folk Alley]

“Little Ghost,” The White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan [WXPN]

“The Skeleton in the Closet,” Louis Armstrong, Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra, Vol. 2. (Fantasy/Prestige) [Jazz 24]

“Haunted House (Blue Ghost Blues),” Lonnie Johnson with Elmer Snowden, Blues and Ballads (Fantasy/Prestige) [Jazz 24]

“Wasteland,” The Black Heart Procession, Six, [WXPN]

“Crumb: Black Angels (excerpt),” Kronos Quartet

“Rama Lama,” Sons & Daughters, The Repulsion Box [The Current]

“Black Dahlia,” Bob Belden, Black Dahlia, [WDUQ]

“In This World,” Moby, 18 [WFUV]

“I Put a Spell on You,” Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, I Put A Spell On You: The Best of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

“Camille Saint-Saens: Danse Macabre,” Philharmonia Orchestra, Saint-Saens: Carnival of the Animals [WGUC]

“(Ghost) Riders in the Sky,” Johnny Cash, The Essential Johnny Cash

“The Long Black Veil,” Lefty Frizell, The Best of Lefty Frizzell

“See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” Lightnin’ Hopkins, Lightnin’ Hopkins

“The Unquiet Grave,” Jean Ritchie, Jean Ritchie: Ballads From Her Appalachian Family Tradition

“Liszt: At the Grave of Richard Wagner,” Kronos Quartet (Nonesuch 79318)

“Weber: Der Freischutz (Wolf’s Glen Scene, excerpt),” Eugen Jochum, Conductor (DeutscheGrammophon 4593)

“Hoo Doo Lovin'” Steve Ferguson, Mama Usepa [Jazz 24]

“Dance With La Diablesse,” Etienne Charles, Folklore (Etienne Charles) [WDUQ]

“Walking With a Ghost,” The White Stripes, Walking With a Ghost EP [WFUV]

“The Witch,” The Sonics, Nuggets Vol. 4 [The Current]

“Stravinsky: Histoire du Soldat (“Devil’s Dance”),” Orchestra of St. Luke’s (Naxos 8578085)

“The House Is Haunted by the Echo of Your Last Goodbye,” Holly Cole, Holly Cole [Jazz 24]

“Haunt You Down,” Pavement, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain [WXPN]

“Gloomy Sunday,”Branford Marsalis Quartet, Eternal, (Marsalis Music) [WDUQ]

“Hellhound on My Trail,” Robert Johnson, Complete Recordings

“Sixteen,” The Heavy, The Heavy [The Current]

“Ghost Town (12″ Mix),” The Specials, Ghost Town EP [WXPN]

“Philip Glass: Dracula (Horrible Tragedy),” Kronos Quartet (Nonesuch 79542)

“Berlioz: Chorus of Damned,” Nat’l Orch of Lille, Slovak Philharmonic Choir (Naxos 8578085)

“Manuel DeFalla: Dance of Terror,” Rachel Barton Pine, Instrument of the Devil: Rachel Barton, Violin [WGUC]

“Angel in the House,” The Story, Angel in the House

“Ghost,” Indigo Girls, 1200 Curfews [WFUV]

“You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory,” Johnny Thunders, So Alone [WXPN]

“Raven in the Storm,” John Gorka, Land of the Bottom Line [Folk Alley]

“Be My Frankenstein,” Otis Taylor, Truth Is Not Fiction

“Evil Is Alive and Well,” Jakob Dylan, Seeing Things [Folk Alley]

“Death Letter,” Son House, Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions

“St. James Infirmary,” Louis Armstrong, The Essential Louis Armstrong [WDUQ]

“(I Don’t Stand a) Ghost of a Chance,” Billy Eckstine, Imagination

“Philip Glass: Dracula (Dracula Enters),” Kronos Quartet (Nonesuch 79542)

“Kothbiro,” Kenny Werner, Lawn Chair Society [WDUQ]

“Bad Moon Rising,” Rasputina, The Lost and Found, 2nd Edition [WFUV]

“Purcell: When I’m Laid in Earth,” Jessye Norman, The Essential Jessye Norman

“Philip Glass: Dracula (Lucy’s Bitten),” Kronos Quartet (Nonesuch 79542)

“Giacomo Puccini: Witches Sabbath,” Philharmonic of La Scala/Riccardo Muti, Puccini Catalani, Ponchielli Per Orchestra [WGUC]

“Carolina Drama,” The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely

“The Devil Got My Woman,” Skip James, Hard Time Killing Floor Blues

“The Ghost of Smokey Joe,” Cab Calloway, New York, 1938-1939, Volume 2 [Jazz 24]”

(NPR)

Related:

• Let’s revive the Golden Rule: Karen Armstrong on TED.com (ted.com)
• Live on Sunday: Karen Armstrong and the Dalai Lama talk about compassion (ted.com)
• Twitter Snapshot: Karen Armstrong and the charter for compassion (ted.com)

“Grab your flashlight and duck under the covers as NPR’s Madeleine Brand talks to David Gilmore, author of a book on monsters. Every culture throughout history has invented its own monsters — it seems humanity just can’t live without them.” (NPR)

Related:

• The Ultimate Guide to Universal’s Movie Monsters (cinematical.com)
• Monsters and Wild Things (oup.com)
• The 25 Best Worst Horror Movies of All Time (pastemagazine.com)

“It's polar bear season in the town of Churchill, Manitoba. Officials usually warn kids to stay inside after dark in case a migrating bear comes too close to town. But on Halloween night, the town bands together in a polar bear patrol to keep the streets safe for trick-or-treaters.” (NPR)

The real one, near Darmstadt, Germany, said to be the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, including photos. And here you can listen (Real Player) to the famous 1952 ‘Frankenstein prank’ in which something was waiting for an Armed Forces reporter who visited the crypt under the castle on Halloween night.

‘Modern humans and Neanderthals had sex across the species barrier, according to a leading geneticist who is overseeing a project to compare their genomes.

Professor Svante Paabo, director of genetics at the renowned Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, will shortly publish his analysis of the entire Neanderthal genome, using DNA retrieved from fossils. He aims to compare it with the genomes of modern humans and chimpanzees to work out the ancestry of all three species.

Modern humans arrived in Europe from Africa about 40,000 years ago to find Neanderthals already living there. The two species then co-existed for 10,000-12,000 years before Neanderthals died out — a fact that has caused endless academic speculation about whether they interbred.

Paabo recently told a conference at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory near New York that he was now sure the two species had had sex — but a question remained about how “productive” it had been.’ (Times.UK).

“Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses. They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.” (New York Times)

“With a mixture of anticipation and anxiety, the art world has been awaiting Crumb's long-rumored illuminated manuscript, a four-year, monastic-like effort to adapt every word of the first book of the Bible in distinctive pen and ink.” (USAToday)

Related:

• R. Crumb zaps the Book of Genesis in latest work (Popeater)

Grammatical rules have always baffled

me, leaving me wondering whether my

life is transitive or intransitive, if I am the

subject or object of my life, and no one

has been able to provide words to describe

my actions, even if they do end in –ly.

But now the problem seems to be with

pronouns: I am unwilling to be him

and you are unable to be her, so we

will never be them~the ones talking

about what they need from the grocery

store because the Rogers are coming for

dinner tonight; the couple saving for a

vacation, perhaps a cruise to Alaska or a

museum tour of Europe; the two who meet

with a financial advisor to plan their children's

college fund while still managing to set enough

aside for their retirement~and so we will

continue to be nothing more than sentence

fragments, perfectly fine for effect,

but forever looking for the missing

part of speech we can never seem to find.

(The Writer’s Almanac)

and more…]
(Urlesque – Internet Trends, Viral Videos, Memes and Web Culture)

“Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. Scans/photos where possible. Fakes will be sneered at.” [thanks, abby]