‘Scientists from the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College London showed that psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms, makes people less likely to embrace authoritarian views like fascism and more connected with nature….’
Via Big Think
Belinda Smith writes:
‘…[T]here are a few basic things we can do, said Hany Farid, a computer scientist and digital forensics expert at Dartmouth University in the US. …’
Source: ABC News
Josh Gabbatiss writes:
‘Romeo, “the world’s loneliest frog”, has had an online dating profile set up by scientists in an effort to save his species from extinction.
The lovesick amphibian is the only known Sehuencas water frog in the world, and he has been calling for a mate ever since researchers collected him from the wild a decade ago.
Now they have launched him into the world of online dating in an effort to raise awareness and funds for the rejuvenation of his species. …’
Source: The Independent UK
‘The world is filled with unusual rules that you might not even realise you’re breaking. Here are some of the most bizarre and dangerous examples. …’
Source: The New Zealand Herald
No excuse for silence?
‘In the United States alone, someone dies by suicide once every 13 minutes. For the longest time, there was a cloak of secrecy about the details of a death by suicide, but talking about suicide may be the best hope for stopping it, according to researchers.
Until recently, many religious leaders were not well-prepared to talk about suicide with their congregants. Now some clergy have become an important part of suicide prevention….’
Via NPR
A hint of a guess of a supposition:
‘It’s been a long time since it was first proposed, but now scientists appear to have finally found evidence of a weird quantum object called an “odderon“. “We’ve been looking for this since the 1970s,” says Christophe Royon of the University of Kansas (UK)….’
Via Big Think
‘…[T]he social media giant profited from Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election via spreading false news with Russian origins, and … the company is still not doing enough to stop it….’
Via CBS
‘…[B]y not reading the daily briefing, the president could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, intelligence experts warned….’
Via Washington Post
Every country gets the leader it deserves, and the stupidity of the American electorate in voting anti-intellectual will come back to bite them.
‘We speak about the “Mueller probe” as a single entity, but it’s important to understand that there are no fewer than five (known) separate investigations under the broad umbrella of the special counsel’s office—some threads of these investigations may overlap or intersect, some may be completely free-standing, and some potential targets may be part of multiple threads. But it’s important to understand the different “buckets” of Mueller’s probe..
1. Preexisting Business Deals and Money Laundering…
2. Russian Information Operations…
3. Active Cyber Intrusions…
4. Russian Campaign Contacts…
and the big Kahuna,
5. Obstruction of Justice …’
Via Wired
Co-founder of EFF and Grateful Dead lyricist dead at 70:
‘John Perry Barlow, a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, rancher, and lyricist for the Grateful Dead, died Wednesday at the age of 70.
The San Francisco-based digital rights advocacy organization said that it was mourning the loss of its co-founder. “It is no exaggeration to say that major parts of the Internet we all know and love today exist and thrive because of Barlow’s vision and leadership,” Cindy Cohn, the group’s executive director, wrote in a blog post. “He always saw the Internet as a fundamental place of freedom, where voices long silenced can find an audience and people can connect with others regardless of physical distance.”…’
Via Ars Technika
‘A full-blown war with North Korea wouldn’t be as bad as you think. It would be much, much worse….’
Via Vox
The case of a 13-year-old Oakland girl whose family has fought to continue care for her for more than two years after she was declared dead (in the face of complications of a tonsillectomy) raises questions about our definition of death, the medical establishment’s response to costly mistakes, and largely overlooked dimensions of the disparity in the healthcare of ethnic and religious minority patients.
Interestingly, she began to menstruate several years into this state, a change mediated by a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. A condition called ischemic penumbra, proposed by some (but hardly generally accepted) might lead to a misdiagnosis of brain death in patients whose diminished but continuing cerebral blood flow could not be detected by standard tests, holding out the promise of some degree of recovery. Moreover, even if she was brain dead, is it necessarily the case that “the destruction of one organ is synonymous with death”? How similar is our notion of brain death to the concept embraced by the Nazis after the publication, in 1920, of a widely read medical and legal text called “Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Living”?
If one did not take the issues in this case seriously, some of them have a strong flavor of black comedy. The girl’s family brought a malpractice suit against the Oakland Children’s Hospital where she had undergone her surgery, but the hospital is fighting the legal standing of a corpse to bring a lawsuit. The IRS has rejected mother’s tax return saying that one of the ‘dependents’ she had listed was dead.I couldn’t help thinking of the movie Weekend at Bernie’s.
The case has provoked a so-called shadow effect in which a number of families, many of them from ethnic or racial minorities, have been going to court to prevent hospitals from turning off the ventilators of their loved ones declared brain-dead. One neurologist has done research on hundreds of cases of what he called “chronic survival” after brain death. When the director of the Center of Bioethics at Harvard, which had been instrumental in the consensus conference fifty years ago establishing the definition of brain death, began to refer to it as a ‘catastrophic brain injury’ instead of death, he prompted a backlash from, among others, transplant surgeons decrying the immorality of “…[putting] doubts in the minds of people about a practice that is saving countless lives.” There is even growing discussion of the morality of taking organs from such patients even if we do not believe them to be dead.
Via New Yorker
Happy Super Bowl Day:‘Over at The Intercept, Josh Begley, a data visualization artist, has posted a video entitled “Field of Vision – Concussion Protocol.” By way of introduction, he writes:
Since the season started, there have been more than 280 concussions in the NFL. That is an average of 12 concussions per week. Though it claims to take head injuries very seriously, the National Football League holds this data relatively close. It releases yearly statistics, but those numbers are published in aggregate, making it difficult to glean specific insights….’
Via Open Culture
William Brennan writes:
‘…”[D]og shaming” has become popular on Twitter and Instagram, as owners around the world post shots of their trembling pets beside notes in which the dogs seem to cop to bad behavior… Human enthusiasm for guilty dogs seems boundless: A 2013 collection of dog-shaming photos landed on the New York Times best-seller list; [one] video has been viewed more than 50 million times.
But according to Alexandra Horowitz, a dog-cognition expert at Barnard College, what we perceive as a dog’s guilty look is no sign of guilt at all… Far from signaling remorse, one group of researchers wrote in a 2012 paper, the guilty look is likely a submissive response that has proved advantageous because it reduces conflict between dog and human …’
Source: The Atlantic
However, I’m not sure I share the conclusion that this does not represent guilt. What we call guilt in humans is assumed to reflect a sense that one has done wrong by violating some moral code. But moral philosophers and psychologists know that some proportion of humans operate on the level not of governing their actions by some intrinsic sense of what is right or wrong but rather that of simply not getting caught by some powerful other — just what the researchers are saying is happening in the canine world.
PS: There is also a difference between “shame” and “guilt”. A rule of thumb is that shame is discomfort at who you are, whereas guilt is discomfort at something you’ve done. If you shame someone for something they did, you are globally condemning them as a person — or a dog — for a single action.
‘…[F]ruit can still surprise us. Whether it’s a bright-orange bulb that tastes like peanut butter, a poisonous lychee relative that becomes edible and egg-like when cooked, or a Pacific Island native that doubles as sugary treat and fibrous dental floss, these plants show us that the fruit world still holds many wonders for those willing to explore it….’
Via Atlas Obscura
Global Guru of Nonviolent Resistance Dies at 90:
‘
Gene Sharp, a preacher’s son whose own gospel of nonviolent struggle inspired velvet revolutions that toppled dictators on four continents, died Jan. 28 at his home in Boston. He was 90.
His death was announced by Jamila Raqib, an Afghan refugee who is the executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution, which Dr. Sharp founded in 1983 to promote indigenous regime change that does not invite violent retaliation.
His strategy was adopted by insurgents in the Baltics, Serbia, Ukraine, Burma (now Myanmar) and Egypt, during the Arab Spring turmoil. The Occupy Wall Street movement and other “occupy” demonstrations to protest economic inequality in the United States also drew from the Sharp manual.
Dr. Sharp became an intellectual father of peaceful resistance and the founder of an academic discipline devoted to his lifetime cause, one that synthesizes the philosophies espoused by Einstein, Gandhi, Tolstoy, Thomas Hobbes, Henry David Thoreau and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
He could also be a pragmatic strategist and, though generally shy and mild-mannered, a sometimes strident advocate.
Continue reading the main story He armed his diverse followers with a list of 198 of what he called “nonviolent weapons” of protest and noncooperation to disrupt or even paralyze oppressive authorities.
“In South America, they’re not tweeting Che Guevara; they’re tweeting Gene Sharp,” said the Scottish journalist Ruaridh Arrow, who made an acclaimed documentary film about Dr. Sharp in 2011, “How to Start a Revolution,” and wrote his biography, to be published this year….’
Via New York Times
‘Can murder really be a symptom of brain disease? And if our brains can be hijacked so easily, do we really have free will?
Neuroscientists are shedding new light on these questions by uncovering how brain lesions can lead to criminal behavior. A recent study contains the first systematic review of 17 known cases where criminal behavior was preceded by the onset of a brain lesion. Is there one brain region consistently involved in cases of criminal behavior? No—the researchers found that the lesions were widely distributed throughout different brain regions. However, all the lesions were part of the same functional network, located on different parts of a single circuit that normally allows neurons throughout the brain to cooperate with each other on specific cognitive tasks. In an era of increasing excitement about mapping the brain’s “connectome,” this finding fits with our growing understanding of complex brain functions as residing not in discrete brain regions, but in densely connected networks of neurons spread throughout different parts of the brain.
Interestingly, the ‘criminality-associated network’ identified by the researchers is closely related to networks previously linked with moral decision making. The network is most closely associated with two specific components of moral psychology: theory of mind and value-based decision making…..’
S
Should America be worried?
‘…[W]e can rest somewhat assured that the railgun might not actually work. Fancy though it may be, it’s not easy to get a machine this powerful to fire at a target. The American military had up until fairly recently working on railgun technology but since dropped it in favor of more short-range weaponry; it looks like China was watching pretty closely and picked up the ball where America either lost interest or lost focus.
So, should anyone be worried? Maybe. It could be a while until the railgun actually gets used, and… this [might be] the kind of show-off weapon that is built mostly as a deterrent and/or status symbol. And besides, it’s not like we have a head of government who likes to tick off the Chinese. Oh, wait! We do. Well, we might be seeing the railgun sooner than later….’
Via Big Think
What Freud and Buddhism agree on about the ego, paraphrased from Mark Epstein’s essay, an excerpt from his excellent book A Guide to Getting Over Yourself:
Ego is the affliction we all have in common, and it is not an innocent bystander. While claiming to have our best interests at heart, ego-driven pursuits undermine the very goals it sets out to achieve. We need to loosen ego’s grip to have a more satisfying existence.
How we interact with our ego is up to us. We have gotten very little help with this in life; no one teaches us how to be with ourselves constructively. Goals which develop a stronger sense of self are generally cherished in our society but self-love, self-esteem, self-confidence and aggressively seeking what one wants do not guarantee well-being. If we look around, we see that people with a strong sense of self are suffering. In fact, the most important events in our lives from falling in love to giving birth to facing death all require the ego to let go.
We have the capacity to bring unbridled ego under control by focusing on internal successes instead of merely success in the external world. Our culture does not generally support such conscious de-escalation of the ego but there are advocates to be found, among them both Buddhist psychology and Western psychotherapy. Although developing in completely different times and places and until recently having nothing to do with each other, both the Buddha and Freud came to a virtually identical conclusion, identifying the untrammeled ego as the limiting factor to our well-being.
Neither Buddhism or psychotherapy aim to eradicate the ego, which would render us either psychotic or completely helpless in navigating the world and mediating conflicting demands of self and others. Both practices, in fact, build up some executive functions of the ego. Much of the benefit of modern meditation practice, for example, which has found a modern place in healthcare, on Wall Street, in athletics and in the military, lies in the ego strength it confers by giving people more control. But ego-enhancement, by itself, can only get us so far.
Both practices aim to rebalance the ego by strengthening the “observing I” over the “unbridled me.” Freud based his approach on free association and the interpretation of dreams. The self-reflection borne from psychoanalysis, staring into space and “saying whatever comes to mind,” shifts the ego toward the subjective, making room for uncomfortable emotional experiences, greater acceptance, and relaxation of ego struggles.
Buddhism teaches people to watch their minds without necessarily believing, or being captivated by, everything they see. In so doing, one is freed from being victimized by one’s most selfish momentary impulses. By making room for whatever arises in the mind and dwelling more consistently in an observing awareness, a meditator is training herself neither to push away the unpleasant nor to cling to the appealing. Observing ego is balanced and impersonal, more distant from the immature ego’s insistent self-concern and its fluctuation in the face of the incessant change life throws at us.
However, there are some differences between the focuses of psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation. Freud found the most illuminating thing to be the unconscious instincts that came to awareness through the process of psychoanalysis, giving people a deeper and richer appreciation of themselves and thus humbling the ego with a wider scope, greater awareness of its limitations, and greater freedom from being dictated to by instinctual cravings.
Buddhism finds inspiration, in contrast, in the phenomenon of consciousness itself and seeks to give people a glimpse of pure awareness. Not only do I experience things, I know that I am experiencing them and even know that I know I am doing so, in an endless regress. But once in awhile through deep meditation the whole thing collapses and there is no ‘I’, no ‘me’, just the pure awareness. It is hard to talk about but it is an indubitable result of this kind of mind training, and the consequent freedom from the limitations of one’s identity comes as a relief. The contrast from one’s habitual ego-driven state is overwhelming, and much of Buddhist tradition is designed to consolidate the perspective of this expanded awareness with one’s everyday perspective.
Via Big Think
Playing jazz can make you cooler under pressure:
‘A small study by Emily Przysinda of Wesleyan University suggests that the brains of jazz musicians react differently to unexpected events than the brains of classical musicians or non-musicians. It also supports previous findings that learning to play music at all improves creativity….
…The researchers suggest that the jazz musicians, who study a musical tradition that places a high value on improvisation and often uses strange chord structures, were well trained to expect the unexpected…’
Via Big Think
And what about listeners who prefer improvisational styles?
A llama-derived protein could block human IgE-mediated immune responses like hay fever.
Via Big Think
Steven Pinker at Davos:
‘…[P]olitical correctness may be responsible for feeding some of the most odious ideas out there, developed by tech-oriented loners who grow such thinking in isolation from the mainstream discussion.
Pinker pointed out that by treating certain facts as taboo, political correctness helped “stoke” the alt-right by “giving them the sense that there were truths the academic establishment could not face up to.” He said the alt-right feeds on overzealous political correctness, pushing back with wrong-headed ideas that develop in their own bubbles – ideas on differences between the genders or capitalist and communist countries or things like crime statistics among ethnic groups….’
Via Big Think
‘Determine the age of a ship’s captain if there [are] 26 sheep and 10 goats on the vessel….’
Via Distractify
Umair Haque writes:
‘When we take a hard look at US collapse, we see a number of social pathologies on the rise. Not just any kind. Not even troubling, worrying, and dangerous ones. But strange and bizarre ones. Unique ones. Singular and gruesomely weird ones I’ve never really seen before, and outside of a dystopia written by Dickens and Orwell, nor have you, and neither has history. They suggest that whatever “numbers” we use to represent decline — shrinking real incomes, inequality, and so on —we are in fact grossly underestimating what pundits call the “human toll”, but which sensible human beings like you and I should simply think of as the overwhelming despair, rage, and anxiety of living in a collapsing society.
Let me give you just five examples of what I’ll call the social pathologies of collapse — strange, weird, and gruesome new diseases, not just ones we don’t usually see in healthy societies, but ones that we have never really seen before in any modern society….’
Via Eudaimonia
Drug firms shipped 20.8M pain pills to WV town with 2,900 people:
‘Over the past decade, out-of-state drug companies shipped 20.8 million prescription painkillers to two pharmacies four blocks apart in a Southern West Virginia town with 2,900 people, according to a congressional committee investigating the opioid crisis.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee cited the massive shipments of hydrocodone and oxycodone — two powerful painkillers — to the town of Williamson, in Mingo County, amid the panel’s inquiry into the role of drug distributors in the opioid epidemic.
“These numbers are outrageous, and we will get to the bottom of how this destruction was able to be unleashed across West Virginia,” said committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., in a joint statement.
The panel recently sent letters to regional drug wholesalers Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith, asking why the companies increased painkiller shipments and didn’t flag suspicious drug orders from pharmacies while overdose deaths were surging across West Virginia….’
‘How a late-blossoming classics don became Britain’s most beloved intellectual….’
Via The Guardian
‘I really shouldn’t need [crampons] to get around in a city’s downtown area. I mean, shouldn’t we have heated sidewalks and roads by now? We don’t need an expensive solar-tile road to do it, although that would be cool. Iceland’s got a nifty geothermal snowmelt system that uses hot water to melt snow and ice on Reykjavik streets. The city of Holland, Michigan has a snowmelt system too. Sure, it would require digging up streets and putting in tubing to circulate hot water—but places with snowmelt systems still generally save a ton of money every year….’
Via Motherboard
The costs include not only the snow removal budget but the environmental impact of the plowing (fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emission from diesel plows, etc.), the cost of pavement damage from plowing, the environmental impact of road salt, and the costs of social harm from associated traffic accidents and pedestrian injuries.
Ezra Klein writes:
‘Trump is making us a little more like him, and politics a little more like the tribal clash he says it is….’
Via Vox
The other way he is winning is by inuring you to his outrages. The lie told often enough becomes the truth. This is not normal. Resist
Timothy L. O’Brien writes:
‘Trump has the power to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the official overseeing Mueller’s probe, if Rosenstein doesn’t obey a request to fire Mueller. Trump could then tear through the Justice Department’s senior ranks, firing people until he finds one who would comply with his demands.
Although there’s some debate among legal scholars about how much latitude the president would have for such a purge, Trump’s previous maneuvering in this investigation suggests he believes he can do almost whatever he wants. …’
Source: Bloomberg
John Cassidy writes:
‘Mueller and his team surely have evidence on obstruction of justice that has not yet been made public. But even on the available evidence, Trump’s position looks perilous indeed. The portrait is of a President using every resource at his disposal to shut down an investigation—of Trump himself. And now it has become clear that Trump’s own White House counsel rebelled at the President’s rationale for his actions. …’
Source: The New Yorker
Miles Parks writes:
‘President Trump’s reported order last summer to fire Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller is all about obstruction of justice — whether it happened, and whether it could be proved. …’
Source: NPR
Carrie Johnson writes:
‘What was happening in Robert Mueller’s investigation when President Trump reportedly tried to get the special counsel fired? Many people are wondering if this development strengthens an obstruction of justice case against Trump. …’
Source: NPR
Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost:
No one knows how great the effect is but it could be felt around the world, and there is evidence that the clock is ticking. For the first time in centuries, the Arctic permafrost is rapidly warming.
In northern Alaska, the temperature at some permafrost sites has risen by more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1980s, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported in November. And in recent years, many spots have reached record temperatures.
It shows no signs of returning to a reliably frozen state. And the consequences of the thaw could be disastrous. First of all, there is the release of the massive amounts of carbonaceous material frozen in the permafrost, twice as much as all the carbon humans have spewed into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, could vastly accelerate climate change.
“We have evidence that Alaska has changed from being a net absorber of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to a net exporter of the gas back to the atmosphere,” says Charles Miller, a chemist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who measures gas emissions from Arctic permafrost.
It’ll be a feedback loop — warming stimulating CO2 release which in turn stimulates further warming, stimulating further CO2 release etc. — over which we would have no control.
Via NPR
Secondly, long-frozen ‘zombie’ pathogens may be waiting to rise and infect us as the permafrost thaws:
‘In the past few years, there has been a growing fear about a possible consequence of climate change: zombie pathogens. Specifically, bacteria and viruses — preserved for centuries in frozen ground — coming back to life as the Arctic’s permafrost starts to thaw.
The idea resurfaced in the summer of 2016, when a large anthrax outbreak struck Siberia.
A heat wave in the Arctic thawed a thick layer of the permafrost, and a bunch of reindeer carcasses started to warm up. The animals had died of anthrax, and as their bodies thawed, so did the bacteria. Anthrax spores spread across the tundra. Dozens of people were hospitalized, and a 12-year-old boy died.
On the surface, it looked as if zombie anthrax had somehow come back to life after being frozen for 70 years. What pathogen would be next? Smallpox? The 1918 flu?…’
(as seen in the recent British TV series Fortitude, set in Svalbard.).
Westerners Aren’t Good At Naming Smells. But Hunter Gatherers Are :
‘English and other Western languages have a real gap when it comes to describing smells. Hunter-gathers, on the other hand, have a rich vocabulary of abstract words for scents….’
Via NPR
Closest to Midnight the Clock Has Ever Been:
‘It’s two minutes to midnight. And that’s really bad news if you’re a fan of planet Earth….’
Via Gizmodo
The biggest threat of such a diet may not be to your pet but to you.
‘According to the Washington Post, [raw-meat-based diets, RMBDs] [are] the fastest growing trend among pet owners them in the US and other developed nations. The market has responded and is offering such choices at boutique and chain pet stores across the nation. But is such a diet good for your dog or cat? The results of a new study state you should not feed your pet a raw meat diet because the products associated with it are likely to carry bacteria or parasites. These findings were published in the journal Vet Record…
Escherichia coli (E. coli) was found on 80% of samples, and 23% had the type of E. coli that can cause kidney failure in humans. The researchers also found that 43% tested positive for listeria and 20% positive for salmonella. That’s not all. Two types of parasites were detected: 23% of samples tested positive for sarcocystis and 6% toxoplasma gondii. While the former mostly sickens farm animals, the latter can negatively affect human infants.
Toxoplasma gondii is also known to hurt cats and has been implicated in cases of mental illness among cat owners. Study authors told Time that the brands found in the Netherlands were “without a doubt similar” to those sold in the U.S. As a result, researchers say, such products should be labeled high risk.
Not only could these products get pets sick, they could affect their human owners through cross-contamination. Besides preparing food and food bowls on the counter or in the sink near dishes or utensils, a pet often licks its owner’s hands or face. What’s more, the owner has to handle the pet’s feces or things associated with it, so at many points throughout animal care, a person runs a risk of contracting a dangerous pathogen….’
Via Big Think
Why they are washing up on Japan’s shores:
‘Japanese police discovered another “ghost ship” washed up on its shores in mid-January. On the heels of 104 such ships in 2017, this wooden ship carried the corpses of seven men as it came ashore in the Ishikawa prefecture.
The men were carried badges with the likenesses of the North Korean leaders Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung. The fleet of vessels as a whole is from North Korea, with people driven to undertake a very dangerous journey on turbulent seas….
Jeffrey Kingston from Temple University in Japan called the ghost ships “ “a barometer for the state of living conditions in North Korea — grim and desperate.” …’
Via Big Think
‘A new study finds a strong relationship between armed conflict and the decline of Africa’s large animals….’
Via The Atlantic
As an antinuclear activist I was tortured by Peter Watkins’ terrifying 1965 War Games (banned from view for twenty years) and The Day After, (1983) but I had never heard of this:
‘In 1984 a bomb went off on British television.
That bomb was Threads, a well-researched TV movie about nuclear war. Unlike so many other movies, books, and television shows that deal with the subject of nuclear weapons, Threads showed what life was like for normal people on the ground during a nuclear war. It is one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen on screen.
Threads traumatized an entire British generation. The BBC only aired it twice—once in 1984 then again in 1985, on the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan—then put it in a vault for 20 years. When TBS aired it in the US in 1985, media mogul Ted Turner introduced it personally. “The more we know about what could happen, the less chance it is that it will happen,” the millionaire told Americans before airing the unsettling feature.
Despite its power and enduring relevance, Threads has always been tough to find outside of Britain. That’s about to change. On January 30, a restored Blu-ray and DVD will hit store shelves, complete with new interviews with the cast and crew….’
Via Motherboard
Who Ya Gonna Call?
‘Faced with some six-eyed slime-being rooting through your trash, or a spacecraft idling above your backyard (provided it’s not Elon Musk’s “nuclear alien UFO” again), who exactly would you think to call? And what would whoever you called do, when you called them?
…We reached out to dozens of agencies, everyone from NASA to the Center for Disease Control to the NYPD to find out who to call in such a situation, and what (if any) protocols are in place when these things are reported, and we came up mostly empty-handed—though the astronomers and independent institutes we spoke with did provide us with some hope. The US government might, at present, be grievously ill-prepared for first contact, but there are countless hobbyists and professionals keeping an eye on what’s happening up there….’
Via Gizmodo
‘The particulars surrounding how our memory works has baffled neuroscientists for decades. Turns out, it’s a very sophisticated process involving several brain systems. What about on the molecular level? Inside the brain, proteins don’t stick around longer than a few minutes. And yet, our memories can hang on for our entire lifetime.Recently, an international collaboration of researchers from the University of Utah, the University of Copenhagen, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the UK, discovered something strange about a protein called Arc. This is essential to long-term memory formation. What they found was that it has very similar properties to how a virus infects its host. Their findings were published in the journal Cell.
In it researchers write, “The neuronal gene Arc is essential for long-lasting information storage in the mammalian brain, mediates various forms of synaptic plasticity, and has been implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders.” They go on to say, “little is known about Arc’s molecular function and evolutionary origins.”
As a result of the study, researchers now believe that a chance encounter occurring hundreds of millions of years ago, led to Arc’s centrality in our memory function today. Assistant professor of neurobiology Jason Shepherd, Ph.D. of the University of Utah, led this research project. He’s dedicated himself to the study of the protein for the last 15 years…
Researchers were intrigued by the idea that a protein could behave like a virus and serve as the platform through which neurons communicate. What Arc does is open a window through which memories can become solidified. Without Arc, the window cannot be opened…..’
Via Big Think
Sara Boboltz writes:
‘Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for Women to March,” Trump wrote Saturday.
He then urged people to “[g]et out there now to celebrate the historic milestones” he said his administration had achieved, appearing to ignore that the marches largely exist to protest him, his presidency, his rhetoric toward women and his stances on a number of other issues. …’
Source: Trump Tweeted Support For The Women’s Marches. It Backfired.
‘Although previous research has shown that groups with smarter leaders perform better by objective measures, some studies have hinted that followers might subjectively view leaders with stratospheric intellect as less effective. Decades ago Dean Simonton, a psychologist the University of California, Davis, proposed that brilliant leaders’ words may simply go over people’s heads, their solutions could be more complicated to implement and followers might find it harder to relate to them. Now Simonton and two colleagues have finally tested that idea, publishing their results in the July 2017 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology….’
For you nostalgia buffs:
Via Digg and The Guardian
Here’s hoping this is the only year’s retrospective of Trump’s presidency we ever have to observe.
‘Thinking about spaces in a more ‘Japanese’ way can open up new ways of organizing our lives and focusing on the relationships that matter to us. Building spaces that deepen relationships (wa), generate new knowledge (ba), connect to the world around us (tokoro), and allow moments of quiet and integration (ma) can enrich our experience of the world and that of those around us….’
Via Quartz
This Might Actually Change Your Driving Habits:
‘Think it’s okay to go just a few miles beyond the speed limit? Maybe think again….’
Via Digg
A small change in speed can dramatically increase the energy of a collision.
‘In 2011, before she signed her non-disclosure agreement with Trump, porn actress Stormy Daniels gave a detailed account of her 2006 sex affair with Trump to InTouch magazine. During last night’s airing of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert read some of the choice bits….’
Via Boing Boing
Maybe one with him & Ivanka on cover:
‘Get your barf bag handy before you read this post. We’re not joking….’
Via Boing Boing
Search data shows that interest in Trump is waning:
‘The gravest threat to a ratings-thirsty creature such as President Donald Trump is the nightmare scenario of not being on everyone’s mind all the time. While the president remains the hottest topic in so many newsfeeds and the specter looming over so many, recent data shows that the hype around him has begun to die down over the past year….’
Via Salon
(Poor baby.)
Epidemic leads to early deaths:
‘Previous research has linked an epidemic of loneliness to early deaths across wealthy nations. The groundbreaking 2017 meta studies came to two important conclusions; greater social connection was associated with a 50% reduced risk of dying early and the effect of loneliness had an effect on the risk of dying younger equal to that of obesity….’
Via Quartz
Will You See Him Coming?
‘One day, very soon, your personal Donald Trump will come along. It’ll be all of the same tricks, only perfectly tailored to your beliefs and pent-up rage. He or she will be just as dishonest and as abrasive as the proverbial cat’s tongue on your genitals … but everything they say will go down smooth as butter….
They may not even be running for office. They may only want you to buy their book, or listen to their podcast. What matters is that you spot them before it’s too late. So, here’s how:…’
Via Cracked
‘…Long before the Google Arts and Culture app, which became the most downloaded mobile app over the weekend, art aficionados, dabblers, narcissists and soul searchers pondering a cosmic connection to distant humans have been searching for their art twins, a long-gone, sometimes fictional or unknown doppelgänger encased in oil, sculpture or ceramics.
Some set out specifically to find their twin, in an engaging pastime that gives museum visits a new focus. Others, like the Duffins, have stumbled on theirs as they wander.
As anyone who regularly looks at a social media feed knows by now, millions more need never leave home or cross a border to find that uniquely familiar face on some obscure etching. They just upload a selfie and let technology do the sleuthing….’
Combating addiction:
‘Tristan Harris a former “design ethicist” at Google, says today’s candy colored interfaces are addictive. One way to make your phone less appealing, it to make the display grayscale….’
Via Boing Boing
‘There’s a fascinating linguistic fight brewing in Kazakhstan, due to the president’s decision to adopt a new alphabet for writing their language, Kazakh.
The problem? It’s got too many apostrophes!
For decades, Kazakhs have used the Cyrillic alphabet, which was imposed on them by the USSR back in the 30s. Now that Kazakhstan has started moving away from Russia — including making Kazakh more central in education and public life — the president decided he wanted to adopt a new alphabet, too. He wanted it based on the Latin one.
But! Kazakh has many unique sounds that can’t be easily denoted using a Latin-style alphabet.
Kazakhstan’s neighbors solved that problem by following the example of Turkey, where they use umlauts and phonetic symbols. But Kazkhstan’s president didn’t want that — and instead has pushed for the use of tons of apostrophes instead.
Kazakhstan’s linguists intellectuals think this is nuts…’
Via Boing Boing
Hint: not the same as putting you to sleep:
‘inhibits “communication between neurons across the entire brain in a systematic way that differs from just being asleep. In this way it is very different than a sleeping pill.”…’
Via Big Think
What Happens When AI Makes Music?
‘The first full-length mainstream music album co-written with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) was released on 12 January and experts believe that the science behind it could lead to a whole new style of music composition…’
‘…the increased forgetfulness and inattention some women experience during pregnancy does, in fact, exist…’
“…A massive fraud, the evil sum of his deficiencies, devoid of everything but the hollow ideology of a megalomaniac.”
‘Roth, when asked if he could have predicted today’s political and cultural landscape responds that, “No one I know of has foreseen an America like the one we live in today. No one (except perhaps the acidic H. L. Mencken, who famously described American democracy as “the worship of jackals by jackasses”) could have imagined that the 21st-century catastrophe to befall the U.S.A., the most debasing of disasters, would appear not, say, in the terrifying guise of an Orwellian Big Brother but in the ominously ridiculous commedia dell’arte figure of the boastful buffoon.” He adds, “How naïve I was in 1960 to think that I was an American living in preposterous times! How quaint!”…’
Via Salon
In the same week that his racism is reaffirmed by his
‘shithole’ comment:
‘The tweet — half misleading and half downright false — demonstrates how inaccurate information can trickle to the president’s social media, which is then is viewed by millions of people on Twitter and Facebook.
Survey Monkey’s results, provided to The New York Times, show that Mr. Trump’s approval ratings among black Americans actually declined from 20 percent in February 2017, his first full month in office, to 15 percent in December. (This is consistent with polling from the Pew Research Center and Reuters.)….’
Via New York Times
Pentagon Suggests Countering Devastating Cyberattacks With Nuclear Arms:
‘A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on American infrastructure, including what current and former government officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.
For decades, American presidents have threatened “first use” of nuclear weapons against enemies in only very narrow and limited circumstances, such as in response to the use of biological weapons against the United States. But the new document is the first to expand that to include attempts to destroy wide-reaching infrastructure, like a country’s power grid or communications, that would be most vulnerable to cyberweapons….’
Via New York Times
“One billionaire president in a decade is going to be plenty for us”
‘While plenty of people have evinced a belief that delivering a single speech qualifies Oprah to be president (presumably with Dr Oz as Surgeon General and history’s smoothest selljob for invading other countries on flimsy pretenses), the young, motivated Warren-Sanders wing of the Democratic party are a lot less enthusiastic.
As Justice Democrats director Corbin Trent says, “From our perspective as an organization, part of what we’re trying to do is create paths to high office that don’t run through the billionaire class. One billionaire president in a decade is going to be plenty for us.”…’
Via Boing Boing
This is what happens when the metric of how much time users spend using your thing supersedes the goal of providing legitimate value to your users. The tricks, hooks, and tactics Facebook uses to keep people coming back have gotten more aggressive and explicit. And I feel that takes away from the actual value the platform provides.
There are of course plenty of weighty, important topics worth criticizing Facebook for, from their perpetuating fake news to their role in influencing the election to enabling the surveillance state and so on. But even this seemingly benign topic has huge ramifications on how people spend their time and live their lives. As users, it’s important to be aware of how the platform is manipulating you. As designers, it’s important to be mindful of how much attention we’re demanding from users and why we’re demanding that attention in the first place.
So that’s where I’m at. I’m likely not going to delete Facebook entirely since I do genuinely enjoy staying in touch with the people in my life, and for better or worse Facebook is where those people hang out. But I want to do use Facebook on my own terms, not theirs.
Source: Brad Frost
Google … feels a lot more insidious than Facebook. Unlike Facebook, Google isn’t just a place you go. It’s built into the infrastructure of your life. It’s your house. It’s the roads and sidewalks you travel on. Google is a lot more infrastructural than Facebook, which is why breeches of trust feel a lot weirder and scarier.
…A few friends made earnest efforts to switch over to Android, only to quickly return their devices after being totally creeped out.I’m not a crazy, paranoid, security nerd kind of person. Although I probably should be. I guess I’m just saying that people shouldn’t feel like their every movement is being tracked by the company that makes the phone’s software. Actually, let me rephrase that: I guess I’m just saying that people shouldn’t have their every movement tracked by the company that makes the phone’s software. That seems like a reasonable request.
Source: Brad Frost
Ten quick thoughts on Trump’s shitholing of America:
Source: Dave Pell – Medium
“Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!” (for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off).”
‘…The moment Alice arrives in Wonderland, she goes through a series of strange metamorphic changes, becoming larger or smaller after ingesting certain foods and liquids. These sensations are also experienced by individuals with a certain medical condition termed Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS).
AIWS was first described in 1955 by a British psychiatrist Dr. John Todd, who noticed that many of his younger patients experienced distortions in the size of objects or body parts (metamorphopsia) as a result of their migraines. He noted a strong association between these symptoms and migraines, and determined that AIWS may constitute a rare ‘migraine variant’. In fact, Lewis Carroll himself is reported to have suffered from migraines and manifested his experiences in his writing….’
Explosive Stimulation (ES):
‘In ES, a small stimulus can lead to a dramatic synchronized reaction in the network, as can happen with a power grid failure (that rapidly turns things off) or a seizure (that rapidly turns things on). This phenomenon was, until recently, studied in physics rather than medicine. Researchers say it’s a promising avenue to explore in the continued quest to determine how a person develops fibromyalgia.
“As opposed to the normal process of gradually linking up different centers in the brain after a stimulus, chronic pain patients have conditions that predispose them to linking up in an abrupt, explosive manner,” says first author UnCheol Lee, Ph.D., a physicist and assistant professor of anesthesiology at Michigan Medicine. These conditions are similar to other networks that undergo ES, including power grids, Lee says….’
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“There’s been concern that’s been expressed on both sides of the aisle.”
‘Questions about Donald Trump’s mental fitness have dogged him since he entered office last year. And lately his Twitter threats about having a bigger and more powerful “nuclear button” than the North Korean regime, and Michael Wolff’s dishy new book depicting him as erratic and impulsive, have renewed the push to do something about a seemingly out-of-control president.
The only legal mechanism that exists to remove a sitting president from office is the 25th Amendment. Ratified after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, the amendment was created to allow the vice president to take over if a president became severely physically or mentally incapacitated. In the era of Trump, it’s being talked about as a way to remove him if there are enough concerns about his mental fitness.
To do that, the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet would have to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office….’
Via Vox
Women are chimeras, with genetic material from both their parents and children. Where does that leave individual identity?
‘Within weeks of conception, cells from both mother and foetus traffic back and forth across the placenta, resulting in one becoming a part of the other. During pregnancy, as much as 10 per cent of the free-floating DNA in the mother’s bloodstream comes from the foetus, and while these numbers drop precipitously after birth, some cells remain. Children, in turn, carry a population of cells acquired from their mothers that can persist well into adulthood, and in the case of females might inform the health of their own offspring. And the foetus need not come to full term to leave its lasting imprint on the mother: a woman who had a miscarriage or terminated a pregnancy will still harbour foetal cells. With each successive conception, the mother’s reservoir of foreign material grows deeper and more complex, with further opportunities to transfer cells from older siblings to younger children, or even across multiple generations….’
Via Aeon
Correcting misconceptions about the 1918 flu pandemic:
‘This year marks the 100th anniversary of the great influenza pandemic of 1918. Between 50 and 100 million people are thought to have died, representing as much as 5 percent of the world’s population. Half a billion people were infected.
Especially remarkable was the 1918 flu’s predilection for taking the lives of otherwise healthy young adults, as opposed to children and the elderly, who usually suffer most. Some have called it the greatest pandemic in history.
The 1918 flu pandemic has been a regular subject of speculation over the last century. Historians and scientists have advanced numerous hypotheses regarding its origin, spread and consequences. As a result, many of us harbor misconceptions about it….’
Via The Conversation
Even though you know it’s wrong:
‘According to a recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins University neuroscientists, and published in the journal Neuron, we only have a few milliseconds to change our minds and stop our actions after the initial go-ahead signal sent by our brains. That’s why we often know we’re making a mistake while it happens. Previously, scientists thought that only one region of the brain was active when people attempted to alter course, but they’ve now realized that halting yourself in such a way requires speedy choreography between several different areas of your brain, and as we age that becomes more difficult. As senior author Susan Courtney points out, three areas of the brain have to communicate successfully in order for us to stop—including the “oops” area of the brain where Courtney says we continue to conclude what we should have done—and the whole process has to happen very quickly…’
Via Lifehacker
“If Trump lies during this interview, he will be guilty of a felony.”
‘President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he would testify under oath about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election. But now it looks like Trump’s lawyers are worried about a potential interview with special counsel Robert Mueller — and are seeking ways to avoid it….’
Via Vox
The black kite (pictured, an animal at Madagascar’s Tsimbazaza Zoo) is one of the birds thought to spread fire in Australia.
‘Australia’s indigenous peoples have long observed “firehawks” spreading wildfires throughout the country’s tropical savannas….’
‘The ozone hole feels like the quintessential ‘80s problem, but unlike car phones and mullets, it remains relevant in a number of ways. For starters, it’s still there, chilling over Antartica. More importantly, it’s slowly healing, and a new study offers some of the best evidence yet that sound environmental policy is responsible.
It’s been nearly 30 years since the world adopted the Montreal Protocol, a landmark treaty banning the use of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). But despite a firm scientific understanding of the link between CFCs and ozone depletion, it’s been tough to tell how much of a success the protocol was, because the ozone hole didn’t start showing signs of recovery until a few years back….’
Via Earther.com
(It’s Very Bad News):
‘As the scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just explained, cacao plants are on the road to becoming extinct by 2050.
In essence, climate change is going to suck far more moisture out of soil and plants in Africa.
There probably won’t be enough rainfall to offset this sucking.
That will drive cacao farms — which are mostly in West Africa — up the mountains. There, though, the conditions aren’t ideal. And much of the mountain areas are already designated as wildlife preserves.
We, the chocolate lovers of the world, are likely doomed….’
Via Inc.com
…Or shaking it in disbelief:
‘The intriguing advertisements were compiled by All That Is Interesting and range from confusing to controversial, from hilarious to offensive. Yet, they are curious to scroll through, as they reveal past-time trends and attitudes which were socially acceptable just a handful of decades ago….’
I have a different take on this. Instead of showcasing how far we’ve come in only a few decades, I see these as testimony to how primitive and backward we still are.
William Stafford from The Way It Is, Graywolf Press (1998):
“It’s love,” they say. You touch
the right one and a whole half of the universe
wakes up, a new half.
Some people never find
that half, or they neglect it or trade it
for money or success and it dies.
The faces of big dogs tell, over the years,
that size is a burden: you enjoy it for a while
but then maintenance gets to you.
When I get old I think I’ll keep, not a little
dog, but a serious dog,
for the casual, drop-in criminal—
My kind of dog, unimpressed by
dress or manner, just knowing
what’s really there by the smell.
Your good dogs, some things that
they hear they don’t really want you to know—
it’s too grim or ethereal.
And sometimes when they look in the fire
they see time going on and someone alone
but they don’t say anything.
Via 3quarksdaily
Fire investigated as arson:
‘Tina Johnson accused Roy Moore of sexually assualting her in 1991, when she was 28, making her a rare adult to be preyed upon by the delusional pedophile mall-crawler.
Last week, her home in Gadsden, Alabama burned down. Now, the fire is being investigated as a possible arson by the Etowah County Arson Task Force….’
Via Boing Boing
CDC: “planning and preparation efforts for a nuclear detonation are similar and different from other emergency response planning efforts.”
‘In what serves as a very sad commentary on the current state of geopolitical affairs, the US Centers for Disease Control will hold a special session later this month to discuss ways in which American citizens should plan and prepare for nuclear war….’
Via Gizmodo
Trump as befuddled, fearful, philandering, confused, treasonous, angry, sycophantic, idiotic and absurdly coiffed.
The connection between a melting Arctic and frigid temperatures on the East Coast:
‘…the Arctic has less sea ice than at any time in the 37 years that satellites have been measuring ice coverage. And while most of eastern North America is expected to be even colder by Friday, with temperatures set to plunge, Juneau, Alaska, will be a relatively balmy 6℃ (42℉).
What about climate change? The fact that it is cold today in Palm Springs and warm in Juneau is weather. Climate is long-term trends—years—of weather. And one of those trends is increased extreme weather, including winters too warm to ski and winters too cold to go outside….’
Via Motherboard
James Hamblin MD, a senior editor at The Atlantic, writes, “It is best not to diagnose the president from afar, which is why the federal government needs a system to evaluate him up close.” As readers know, I have weighed in on the urgency of ignoring the supposed ethical standard called the ‘Goldwater Rule’ in the face of Trump’s malignant narcissism and the imminent danger it represents to our health and survival. Can we diagnose this personality disorder from afar? I have argued that such potent narcissism, being an unquenchable thirst for adulation, plays itself out largely on the public stage and can accurately be recognized from afar.
Should it be taken into account in assessing Trump’s fitness? Such psychiatric luminaries as Allen Frances, a leading author of the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) to include personality disorders, argue along the lines that ‘the goal of mental-health care is to help people who are suffering themselves from disabling and debilitating illnesses. A personality disorder is “only a disorder when it causes extreme distress, suffering, and impairment.” I beg to differ, and would venture to say that most mental health professionals practice with a different understanding. Some psychiatric symptoms function to defend the sufferer from the experience of their own distress and in so doing cause those around them to suffer. Narcissistic personality disorder is among those. One role frequently played by the mental health profession has been to evaluate and treat people who have not voluntarily sought relief from their own suffering when it is necessary for the protection of those around them. And Trump’s conduct causes a clear and present threat to the health and wellbeing of people across this country and the world.
A further specious argument against attributing Trump’s difficulties to mental illness is that it stigmatizes the mentally ill. I fight strongly against the stigmatization of my patients, but frankly this is a false syllogism. You see how it works: “Trump is execrable or evil. Trump is mentally ill. Therefore all mentally ill people are execrable or evil.” But let us not be politically correct. Because patients with mental health dificulties are suffering and usually courageous people struggling against great odds, and on aggregate do no more harm to others than those without illness, it does not mean that none of them ever, anywhere, do any harm. While the long raging debate about whether evil and malevolence are per se evidence of mental illness has never been (and will probably never be) resolved, that does not mean that evil is never done by those with a mental health diagnosis.
Yet psychiatric concern, especially in today’s hyperpolarized world, is too easily dismissed as partisanship. But how about something more objective and incontrovertible than a psychiatric diagnosis? While diagnosing a mental disorder and particularly a personality disorder will always be a judgment call, Dr Hamblin’s article describes another cause for alarm — observable evidence of Trump’s neurological dysfunction. Viewers of his speeches have noticed minor but suggestive abnormalities in his movements and at least one incident of garbled speech, which could have represented either dysarthria — interference with the articulation of sounds from anywhere in the speech-producing machinery — or aphasia — problems at the level of the brain’s control of language, e.g. from a transient ischemic attack or an acute stroke. But, more important, there is clear evidence in the public record, the significance of which cannot be disputed, of a drastic deterioration in Trump’s verbal fluency and impoverishment of his vocabulary over the years. It is chilling to compare the examples, as this article does, from interviews he gave in the 1980s or 1990s with almost any section of any statement he has made in the last few years (except when he is kept to task delivering speeches written by others presumably neurologically intact). Of course, verbal fluency predictably declines with age. (I am sure you would notice the phenomenon across the 18 years of posts here on FmH, for example.) But experts agree that the decline in Trump’s linguistic sophistication is far in excess of the normal regression of cognitive function expected with age.
Why should we be alarmed? So what if his stories, or even his sentences, don’t have beginnings, middles, and ends? if his associational leaps are rarely clear? This is not the folksy simplicity and vernacular that, say, GW Bush adopted to appear to be a Texas man of the people instead of from an Eastern patrician clan. This is evidence of a progressive process of cognitive impairment, more than not likely to be a dementia, i.e. one that affects far more than language alone, iindiciative of cognitive impairment in skills such as deployment of attention and concentration, resistance to distraction, control of impulsivity, concept formation, judgment, problem-solving and decision-making. Many of these can be objectively assessed and measured by neuropsychological examinations accepted as standards.
I was one of a number of health professionals taking note of the evidence of Ronald Reagan’s dementia by the time he was running for reelection. Perhaps you saw me, dressed in my white coat, interviewed on the Boston evening news when he gave a speech here at City Hall Plaza at which a number of us demonstrated. It is now common knowledge that he was mentally disabled during his term in office but at the time it was a public outrage to talk about the Emperor’s nakedness. And, even though the evidence now regarding Trump is far more definitive and unavoidable, and the consequences of ignoring it far more dire, the taboo appears to remain as strong.
The entertainment never ends!
‘Bannon said some remarkable things about the Russia investigation. Trump said Bannon has “lost his mind.” A gossipy forthcoming book on the Trump White House has caused the long-simmering tensions between President Trump and his former chief strategist Steve Bannon to erupt into all-out warfare…’
Source: Vox
The bomb that’s approaching the East Coast is a threat, for sure, but the way we talk about it makes it that much more frightening.
via Atlas Obscura
1990-2017:
‘Erica Garner, the daughter of police brutality victim Eric Garner, died early Saturday aged 27. Inspired to activism by her father’s killing, she suffered a massive heart attack on Christmas Eve and fell into a coma…
Eric Garner was choked to death by New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo, who had attempted an illegal chokehold while arresting Garner for selling untaxed cigarettes. Pantaleo was not charged with a crime despite the death being ruled a homicide, and video of the attack being recorded by a bystander. The NYPD settled the family’s lawsuit for $5.9m to avoid a civil trial….’
Via Boing Boing
New Year Sunrise
This is the annual update of my New Year post, a longstanding FmH tradition. Please let me know if you find any dead links:
I once ran across a January 1st Boston Globe article compiling folkloric beliefs about what to do, what to eat, etc. on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year to come. I’ve regretted since — I usually think of it around once a year (grin) — not clipping out and saving the article. Especially since we’ve had children, I’m interested in enduring traditions that go beyond getting drunk [although some comment that this is a profound enactment of the interdigitation of chaos and order appropriate to the New Year’s celebration — FmH], watching the bowl games and making resolutions.
A web search brought me this, less elaborate than what I recall from the Globe but to the same point. It is weighted toward eating traditions, which is odd because, unlike most other major holidays, the celebration of New Year’s in 21st century America does not seem to be centered at all around thinking about what we eat (except in the sense of the traditional weight-loss resolutions!) and certainly not around a festive meal. But…
Traditionally, it was thought that one could affect the luck they would have throughout the coming year by what they did or ate on the first day of the year. For that reason, it has become common for folks to celebrate the first few minutes of a brand new year in the company of family and friends. Parties often last into the middle of the night after the ringing in of a new year. It was once believed that the first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or bad luck the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor happened to be a tall dark-haired man.
“Traditional New Year foods are also thought to bring luck. Many cultures believe that anything in the shape of a ring is good luck, because it symbolizes “coming full circle,” completing a year’s cycle. For that reason, the Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune.
Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by consuming black-eyed peas. These legumes are typically accompanied by either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas and other legumes have been considered good luck in many cultures. The hog, and thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes prosperity. Cabbage is another ‘good luck’ vegetable that is consumed on New Year’s Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper currency. In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on New Year’s Day.”
Fireworks over Edinburgh on New Year’s Eve
The further north one travels in the British Isles, the more the year-end festivities focus on New Year’s. The Scottish observance of Hogmanay has many elements of warming heart and hearth, welcoming strangers and making a good beginning:
“Three cornered biscuits called hogmanays are eaten. Other special foods are: wine, ginger cordial, cheese, bread, shortbread, oatcake, carol or carl cake, currant loaf, and a pastry called scones. After sunset people collect juniper and water to purify the home. Divining rituals are done according to the directions of the winds, which are assigned their own colors.
First Footing: The first person who comes to the door on midnight New Year’s Eve should be a dark-haired or dark-complected man with gifts for luck. Seeing a cat, dog, woman, red-head or beggar is unlucky. The person brings a gift (handsel) of coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity in the New Year. Mummer’s Plays are also performed. The actors called the White Boys of Yule are all dressed in white, except for one dressed as the devil in black. It is bad luck to engage in marriage proposals, break glass, spin flax, sweep or carry out rubbish on New Year’s Eve.”
Here’s why we clink our glasses when we drink our New Year’s toasts, no matter where we are. Of course, sometimes the midnight cacophony is louder than just clinking glassware, to create a ‘devil-chasing din’.
In Georgia, eat black eyed peas and turnip greens on New Year’s Day for luck and prosperity in the year to come, supposedly because they symbolize coppers and currency. Hoppin’ John, a concoction of peas, onion, bacon and rice, is also a southern New Year’s tradition, as is wearing yellow to find true love (in Peru and elsewhere in South America, yellow underwear, apparently!) or carrying silver for prosperity. In some instances, a dollar bill is thrown in with the other ingredients of the New Year’s meal to bring prosperity. In Greece, there is a traditional New Year’s Day sweetbread with a silver coin baked into it. All guests get a slice of the bread and whoever receives the slice with the coin is destined for good fortune for the year. At Italian tables, lentils, oranges and olives are served. The lentils, looking like coins, will bring prosperity; the oranges are for love; and the olives, symbolic of the wealth of the land, represent good fortune for the year to come.
A New Year’s meal in Norway also includes dried cod, “lutefisk.” The Pennsylvania Dutch make sure to include sauerkraut in their holiday meal, also for prosperity.
In Spain, you would cram twelve grapes in your mouth at midnight, one each time the clock chimed, for good luck for the twelve months to come. (If any of the grapes happens to be sour, the corresponding month will not be one of your most fortunate in the coming year.) The U. S. version of this custom, for some reason, involves standing on a chair as you pop the grapes. In Denmark, jumping off a chair at the stroke of midnight signifies leaping into the New Year.
In Rio,
The crescent-shaped Copacabana beach… is the scene of an unusual New Year’s Eve ritual: mass public blessings by the mother-saints of the Macumba and Candomble sects. More than 1 million people gather to watch colorful fireworks displays before plunging into the ocean at midnight after receiving the blessing from the mother-saints, who set up mini-temples on the beach.
When taking the plunge, revelers are supposed to jump over seven waves, one for each day of the week.
This is all meant to honor Lamanjá, known as the “Mother of Waters” or “Goddess of the Sea.” Lamanjá protects fishermen and survivors of shipwrecks. Believers also like to throw rice, jewelry and other gifts into the water, or float them out into the sea in intimately crafted miniature boats, to please Lamanjá in the new year.
In many northern hemisphere cities near bodies of water, people also take a New Year’s Day plunge into the water, although of course it is an icy one! The Coney Island Polar Bears Club in New York is the oldest cold-water swimming club in the United States. They have had groups of people enter the chilly surf since 1903.
Ecuadorian families make scarecrows stuffed with newspaper and firecrackers and place them outside their homes. The dummies represent misfortunes of the prior year, which are then burned in effigy at the stroke of midnight to forget the old year. Bolivian families make beautiful little wood or straw dolls to hang outside their homes on New Year’s Eve to bring good luck.
In China, homes are cleaned spotless to appease the Kitchen God, and papercuttings of red paper are hung in the windows to scare away evil spirits who might enter the house and bring misfortune. Large papier mache dragon heads with long fabric bodies are maneuvered through the streets during the Dragon Dance festival, and families open their front doors to let the dragon bring good luck into their homes.
The Indian Diwali, or Dipawali, festival, welcoming in the autumnal season, also involves attracting good fortune with lights. Children make small clay lamps, dipas, thousands of which might adorn a given home. In Thailand, one pours fragrant water over the hands of elders on New Year’s Day to show them respect.
In Germany and Austria, lead pouring” (das Bleigießen) is an old divining practice using molten lead like tea leaves. A small amount of lead is melted in a tablespoon (by holding a flame under the spoon) and then poured into a bowl or bucket of water. The resulting pattern is interpreted to predict the coming year. For instance, if the lead forms a ball (der Ball), that means luck will roll your way. The shape of an anchor (der Anker) means help in need. But a cross (das Kreuz) signifies death. This is also a practice in parts of Finland, apparently.
El Salvadoreans crack an egg in a glass at midnight and leave it on the windowsill overnight; whatever figure it has made in the morning is indicative of one’s fortune for the year.
Romanians celebrate the new year by wearing bear costumes and dancing around to ward off evil“It’s a bit bizarre when you think about it. A short British cabaret sketch from the 1920s has become a German New Year’s tradition. Yet, although The 90th Birthday or Dinner for One is a famous cult classic in Germany and several other European countries, it is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, including Britain, its birthplace.” (Watch on Youtube, 11 min.)
So if the Germans watch British video, what do you watch in Britain? A number of sources have suggested that it is Jools Holland’s Hootenanny, “even though it’s awful and everyone hates it.”
On a related theme, from earlier in the same week, here are some of the more bizarre Christmas rituals from around the world.
Some history; documentation of observance of the new year dates back at least 4000 years to the Babylonians, who also made the first new year’s resolutions (reportedly voews to return borrowed farm equipment were very popular), although their holiday was observed at the vernal equinox. The Babylonian festivities lasted eleven days, each day with its own particular mode of celebration. 
The traditional Persian Norouz festival of spring continues to be considered the advent of the new year among Persians, Kurds and other peoples throughout Central Asia, and dates back at least 3000 years, deeply rooted in Zooastrian traditions.Modern Bahá’í’s celebrate Norouz (”Naw Ruz”) as the end of a Nineteen Day Fast. Rosh Hashanah (”head of the year”), the Jewish New Year, the first day of the lunar month of Tishri, falls between September and early October. Muslim New Year is the first day of Muharram, and Chinese New Year falls between Jan. 10th and Feb. 19th of the Gregorian calendar.
The classical Roman New Year’s celebration was also in the spring although the calendar went out of synchrony with the sun. January 1st became the first day of the year by proclamation of the Roman Senate in 153 BC, reinforced even more strongly when Julius Caesar established what came to be known as the Julian calendar in 46 BC. The early Christian Church condemned new year’s festivities as pagan but created parallel festivities concurrently. New Year’s Day is still observed as the Feast of Christ’s Circumcision in some denominations. Church opposition to a new year’s observance reasserted itself during the Middle Ages, and Western nations have only celebrated January 1 as a holidy for about the last 400 years. The custom of New Year’s gift exchange among Druidic pagans in 7th century Flanders was deplored by Saint Eligius, who warned them, “[Do not] make vetulas, [little figures of the Old Woman], little deer or iotticos or set tables [for the house-elf] at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks [another Yule custom].” (Wikipedia)
The tradition of the New Year’s Baby signifying the new year began with the Greek tradition of parading a baby in a basket during the Dionysian rites celebrating the annual rebirth of that god as a symbol of fertility. The baby was also a symbol of rebirth among early Egyptians. Again, the Church was forced to modify its denunciation of the practice as pagan because of the popularity of the rebirth symbolism, finally allowing its members to cellebrate the new year with a baby although assimilating it to a celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. The addition of Father Time (the “Old Year”) wearing a sash across his chest with the previous year on it, and the banner carried or worn by the New Year’s Baby, immigrated from Germany. Interestingly, January 1st is not a legal holiday in Israel, officially because of its historic origins as a Christian feast day.
Auld Lang Syne (literally ‘old long ago’ in the Scottish dialect) is sung or played at the stroke of midnight throughout the English-speaking world (and then there is George Harrison’s “Ring Out the Old”). Versions of the song have been part of the New Year’s festivities since the 17th century but Robert Burns was inspired to compose a modern rendition, which was published after his death in 1796. (It took Guy Lombardo, however, to make it popular…)
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
And here’s a hand, my trusty friend
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne
Here’s how to wish someone a Happy New Year around the world:
- Arabic: Kul ‘aam u antum salimoun
- Brazilian: Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo means “Good Parties and Happy New Year”
- Chinese:
Chu Shen TanXin Nian Kuai Le (thanks, Jeff)- Czechoslavakia: Scastny Novy Rok
- Dutch: Gullukkig Niuw Jaar
- Finnish: Onnellista Uutta Vuotta
- French: Bonne Annee
- German: Prosit Neujahr
- Greek: Eftecheezmaenos o Kaenooryos hronos
- Hebrew: L’Shannah Tovah Tikatevu
- Hindi: Niya Saa Moobaarak
- Irish (Gaelic): Bliain nua fe mhaise dhuit
- Italian: Buon Capodanno
- Khmer: Sua Sdei tfnam tmei
- Laotian: Sabai dee pee mai
- Polish: Szczesliwego Nowego Roku
- Portuguese: Feliz Ano Novo
- Russian: S Novim Godom
- Serbo-Croatian: Scecna nova godina
- Spanish: Feliz Ano Nuevo
- Swedish: Ha ett gott nytt år
- Turkish: Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
- Vietnamese: Cung-Chuc Tan-Xuan
[If you are a native speaker, please feel free to offer any corrections or additions!]
Which of these customs appeal to you? Are they done in your family, or will you try to adopt any of them? However you’re going to celebrate, my warmest wishes for the year to come… and eat hearty!
[thanks to Bruce Umbaugh (here or here) for research assistance]
Ezra Klein writes:
‘…This is the president of the United States speaking to the New York Times. His comments are, by turns, incoherent, incorrect, conspiratorial, delusional, self-aggrandizing, and underinformed. This is not a partisan judgment — indeed, the interview is rarely coherent or specific enough to classify the points Trump makes on a recognizable left-right spectrum. As has been true since he entered American politics, Trump is interested in Trump — over the course of the interview, he mentions his Electoral College strategy seven times, in each case using it to underscore his political savvy and to suggest that he could easily have won the popular vote if he had tried.
I am not a medical professional, and I will not pretend to know what is truly happening here. It’s become a common conversation topic in Washington to muse on whether the president is suffering from some form of cognitive decline or psychological malady. I don’t think those hypotheses are necessary or meaningful. Whatever the cause, it is plainly obvious from Trump’s words that this is not a man fit to be president, that he is not well or capable in some fundamental way. That is an uncomfortable thing to say, and so many prefer not to say it, but Trump does not occupy a job where such deficiencies can be safely ignored.’
via Vox
Dean Obeidallah writes:
‘After reviewing scores of statements made by politicians this year, it has declared that the big winner of “Lie of the Year” for 2017 goes to one told by (cue the drum roll and prepare the confetti) Donald J. Trump! That has to bring some joy for Trump as he spends time this week at his exclusive, for-profit country club Mar-a-Largo — or as he has nicknamed it the “Winter White House.”
You might be asking which Trump lie did PolitiFact choose, considering Trump has served up more “whoppers” than Burger King. …’
Source: CNN
‘Despite incredible advances in biomedicine, a true cure for HIV has remained elusive. Antiretroviral drugs have transformed HIV into a manageable condition instead of a death sentence. But HIV permanently integrates into the genome of an infected cell and then hides, dormant, in the body, making it nearly impossible to eradicate. Since the 1980s, researchers have been hopeful that gene therapy, in which the body’s genetic material is altered, could provide a new route to treating HIV, and maybe even a cure. Brown’s case made many in the field optimistic, but scientists are still stumped as to exactly how his cure worked.
A new study published Thursday in PLOS Pathogens shows a new potential route to curing HIV—though it also highlights the extreme difficulties facing researchers….’
Via Gizmodo
…And you can tell:
‘Speaking with The New York Times, Julian Pittman, a professor at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at Troy University, says that fish not only suffer from depression, they can be easily diagnosed. Zebrafish dropped into a new tank who linger at the bottom are probably sad; those who enthusiastically explore the upper half are not.
In Pittman’s studies, fish depression can be induced by getting them “drunk” on ethanol, then cutting off the supply, resulting in withdrawal. These fish mope around the tank floor until they’re given antidepressants, at which point they begin happily swimming near the surface again.
It’s impossible to correlate fish depression with that of a human, but Pittman believes the symptoms in fish—losing interest in exploring and eating—makes them viable candidates for exploring neuroscience and perhaps drawing conclusions that will be beneficial in the land-dwelling population….’
Via Mental Floss
Is biodiversity inherently good?
‘Intuitively, it seems like we wouldn’t really want to eradicate any living species, even the annoying and the dangerous ones. We worry over the endangered status of the northern white rhino, for instance, not because of their contributions to the world, but because as life-forms, they have inherent worth. But does that value derive from the particular kind of animal they are? Or is it simply based on the fact that they are living creatures? In other words, are we speciesist? Or do we think that biodiversity is an intrinsic good?…’
Via JSTOR Daily
The arms race between the advertisers and the blockers:
‘30.5 percent of the top 10,000 sites on the web as measured by Alexa are using some sort of ad-blocker detection, and 38.2 percent of the top 1,000… A much larger fraction of websites than previously reported are “worried” about adblockers but many are not employing retaliatory actions against adblocking users yet.
It turns out that many ad providers are offering anti-blocking tech in the form of scripts that produce a variety of “bait” content that’s ad-like — for instance, images or elements named and tagged in such a way that they will trigger ad blockers, tipping the site off. The pattern of blocking, for instance not loading any divs marked “banner_ad” but loading images with “banner” in the description, further illuminates the type and depth of ad blocking being enforced by the browser.
Sites can simply record this for their own purposes (perhaps to gauge the necessity of responding) or redeploy ads in such a way that the detected ad blocker won’t catch….’
Via TechCrunch
The past twelve months, contemplated in tree time:
‘Here’s how some of the world’s oldest trees might have summed up this past year….’
Via Atlas Obscura
Scientists Discovered What Causes Dementia. Researchers claim to have found direct correlation between age-related dementia changes and toxic brain urea levels. The question: elevated how?..(Read their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.)
Why You Can Miss Things Happening Right in Front of You. It is called change blindness, and you probably have it…
‘Let the Soul Dangle’: How Mind-Wandering Spurs Creativity. The benefits of keeping an idle mind.
Human CRISPR Trials Will Happen in 2018. They’ll Look Like This.. In vivo editing of the human genome.
Life Should Be Widespread Throughout the Universe, Study Finds. Recent discoveries establish that microbial life on earth arose much earlier than previously suspected, confirming that it is not difficult for primitive life to evolve in conditions we might have considered inhospitable. So life elsewhere in the universe could be much more prevalent.
How a Wild Theory About Nelson Mandela Proves the Existence of Parallel Universes. ‘In 2017, the Mandela Effect was invoked by people who thought the CERN supercollider created a rip in reality and we are now living in one where Donald Trump is President…’ [I wish I could enter an alternative reality in which it was not so…]
Energy Drinks and Junk Food Are Destroying Teenage Brain Development
Scientists Accidentally Invent Glass You Can Fix in a Literal Pinch. First real-world-usable, truly self-healing material for phones — a little time, a little pressure and, voila, no more cracked screens….
Profound Effects on Brain Function from Ketogenic Diets
Calculator Indicates How Many More Years of Good Health You Have Left
Can This North Korean Weapon Take Out 90% of American Populace?
New York Removes Old Nuclear Fallout Shelter Signs:
‘Experts on nuclear confrontation say that a nuclear war is a very real possibility here in the 21st century. The US and North Korea are just one misstep away from nuclear destruction. But that hasn’t stopped New York City officials from beginning to take down outdated nuclear fallout shelter signs posted at public schools. And even though it might be a practical decision, removing the signs somehow feels premature….’
Via Gizmodo
“Where is Everybody?” asked Enrico Fermi.
‘The Zoo Hypothesis, proposed by the MIT radio astronomer John A. Ball in 1973, says that aliens may be avoiding contact with us on purpose, so as not to interfere with our evolution and the development of our societies. The human civilization could be essentially living in a “zoo” or a space wildlife sanctuary, where others populating the cosmos dare not go. By staying clear of us, they avoid interplanetary contamination.
Perhaps the aliens are waiting for us to reach a certain technological or moral point before they will talk to us. Or they may be simply trying to protect us and themselves. You’ve seen “Independence Day” – there may be a similar movie made thousands of light years away about us….’
Via Big Think
Questions About Mental Fitness Dogged Presidents Long Before Trump :
‘The president is a “narcissist.” He is “paranoid.” He is “bipolar.”
No, not President Trump.
These labels were applied to Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Theodore Roosevelt, respectively. And the list goes on. John F. Kennedy had psychopathic traits, according to one academic study. And Abraham Lincoln apparently experienced suicidal depression.
“Many of our greatest politicians have had psychiatric vulnerabilities,” says Ken Duckworth, a psychiatrist and medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. But that didn’t necessarily make them incompetent or unfit for office, he says.
So it’s troubling that there have been so many armchair diagnoses of Trump in 2017, Duckworth says….’
Via NPR
Duckworth is plain wrong. The point is not whether a president, or anyone else, carries a mental health diagnosis. It is the nature of the diagnosis. Some mental health difficulties, particularly if compensated, arguably have no impact on fitness for office — e.g. bipolar disorder or depression. This makes them the private health issue of the bearer and none of our business.
Other mental health labels, such as psychopathic traits (one should more properly say ‘sociopathic’), may even be enhancements. Many writers say that sociopathy is closely related to effective executive skills in the corporate or political worlds. Even moderate narcissism can be adaptive (although one might argue that it played into Clinton’s shortfalls). On the other hand, Trump’s malignant narcissism is unprecedented, and causes direct profound impairment to his capacity as President and to our health and wellbeing. One need not go into details that have been highlighted here and in countless more articulate sources for at least a year now.
As to Duckworth’s disparagement of ‘armchair diagnosis,’ the nature of Trump’s narcissism, unlike the other diagnoses referred to above, is that it is played out on the public stage, right in our faces, because it all about his insatiable thirst for public adulation. Thus, only the three monkeys who ‘see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil,’ will avoid raising the issue of his mental fitness in the face of the clear and present danger he represents to all of us. The time is long past for standing on the empty ceremony of the Goldwater Rule in the face of this emergency.
Finally, Duckworth’s remit as the medical director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill has much to do with advocating for his constituency by combating stigmatizing attitudes toward those with mental health difficulties. Sure, let’s not stigmatize them in general… but, hey, that doesn’t mean that no one with mental health difficulties is malignant! Political correctness only goes so far.
An Exhibition of 8,000 Chopstick Sleeve Sculptures Left Behind at Restaurants
‘Yuki Tatsumi was working as a waiter in a restaurant when one day, as he was cleaning up a table, he noticed that a customer had intricately folded up the paper chopstick sleeve and left it behind. Japan doesn’t have a culture of tipping but Tatsumi imagined that this was a discreet, subconscious method of showing appreciation. He began paying attention and sure enough noticed that other customers were doing the same thing. Tatsumi began collecting these “tips” which eventually led to his art project: Japanese Tip.
Since 2012, Tatsumi has not only been collecting his own tips but he’s reached out to restaurants and eateries all across Japan communicating his concept and asking them to send him their tips. The response has been enormous. He’s collected over 13,000 paper sculptures that range from obscure and ugly to intricate and elaborate….’
Via: Colossal
Matthew Salton writes:
‘…[W]ould it be too far-fetched to propose that the story of our modern Santa Claus, the omnipotent man who travels the globe in one night, bearing gifts, and who’s camped out in shopping malls across the United States this month, is linked to a hallucinogenic mushroom-eating shaman from the Arctic?
I don’t think so. And neither do a number of scholars. As it turns out, the shamanic rituals of the Sami people of Lapland, a region in northern Finland known for its wintry climate and conifer forests, bear an uncanny semblance to the familiar narratives of Santa and Christmas that we have come to know….’
Source: New York Times
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it… however.
