dreadful dreams

This blog has moved to dreadfuldreams.blogsome.com

2006-04-18T04:21:00.000-04:00

I've decided to move Dreadful Dreams to Blogsome, because, as much as I love Blogger, there are still some bugs and annoying downtime during peak hours. Besides, I figured it's time I figure out this whole WordPress thing. So the new address is dreadfuldreams.blogsome.com, only a three letter difference. The new feed is dreadfuldreams.blogsome.com/feed. See ya on the other side.

Sound of silence, subvocal speech recognition

2006-03-27T00:48:00.000-05:00

NASA's Charles Jorgensen is developing sebvocal speech recognition technology, which can recognize what you say even if you don't make a sound. Normally, when we speak we shape words with our articulator muscles as we force air past the larynx. However, these muscles work even when there is no air pushed through. Just saying words to yourself sends weak electrical signals, known as electromyograms, to your mouth. Electromyograms can be recorded, processed with statistical algorithms, and turn into speech, all without wasting precious air. This technology would be especially useful to astronauts, scuba divers, fighter pilots, as well as anybody working in loud, chaotic environments. Researchers have already used subvocal commands to drive a car (virtually) and navigate the web, while Japanese NTT Docomo hopes to apply subvocal speech recognition to make a silent cel phone. This would be great, because then we would not have all these people with tiny headsets going around seemingly talking to themselves like schizophrenics.

Silent Speaker, Forbes.com

Delusional misidentification, are these my things?

2006-03-23T00:01:00.000-05:00

A 55-year-old woman with grandmal epilepsy was found to have a very rare form of delusional misidentification syndrome in which she believed that her sons were replacing her possessions with substitute imitations. What makes this case especially weird is that there was no evidence of dementia, nothing wrong with her memory and brain scans revealed no signs of injury or abnormality. Still, whenever she bought something new, she soon felt that it had been replaced.

There are many delusional misidentification syndromes. The most common form is Capragas syndrome, the belief that people you know (usually relatives or spouse) have been replaced by identical impostors. A variation on the theme is Fregoli delusion, the belief that different people are actually the same person in disguise. But delusional misidentification can get even weirder, e.g. Intermetamorphosis, the belief that different people swap identities with each other while maintaining the same appearance, or the delusion of subjective doubles, that a doppelganger of the person is performing independent actions of their own free will; known as clonal pluralization, when a person thinks there are more than one of them in existence. This case would fall under the delusion of inanimate doubles, that is unless her sons are in fact trying to gaslight her, which would be hilarious.

A variant of Capgras syndrome with delusional conviction of inanimate doubles in a patient with grandmal epilepsy, Blackwell Synergy: Acta Neuropsychiatrica

Delusional misidentification syndrome, Wiki

Bryn Mawr book sale

2006-03-22T22:49:00.000-05:00

The 75th annual Bryn Mawr-Wellesley book sale is going on this week, March 22-26, at the Priceton Day School, 32 Vandeventer St., Princeton, NJ, with proceeds going towards scholarships. This is a can't-miss event for any true bibliophile. If you're in the area the hours are:

Wednesday, March 22
10am - 2pm - Preview Sale (Admission $20)
2pm - 9pm

Thursday, March 23
Friday, March 24
10am - 9pm

Saturday, March 25
10am - 7pm (Half-price day)

Sunday, March 26
11am - 3pm (Box day, as many books as you can fit into a box for a flat fee! Not sure how much it is this year)

The Bryn Mawr Club of Princeton

Marijuana impairs brain functions, or does it?

2006-03-21T02:01:00.000-05:00

A recent study published in the March 14 issue of Neurology claims that marijuana deteriorates cognitive abilities. Researchers took 20 long-term smokers (10+ years), 20 short-term (5-10 years), and 24 control subjects (who smoked 1-20 times in their lives), ages 17-49. All the users were classified as "heavy users," smoking 4 or more joints a week. Unsurprisingly, the study found that the smokers did worse on cognitive tests including delayed recall, recognition, divided attention, verbal fluency and executive functions of the brain (Stoners fail tests? That's unpossible). Thing is, before the tests were performed, participants abstained from marijuana for at least 24 hours. Now, THC (pot's main active ingredient) stays in your system for 10 days if you smoke occasionally. But with habitual smokers, as in this study, it can stay for 45-90 days, depending on metabolism and body fat (THC is fat soluble). Many long-term studies suggest that the negative cognitive effects that accompany getting high are not permanent and disappear once the drug is actually out of the system. Furthermore, when someone who has been using any drug regularly for 5-10 years suddenly stops, there are bound to be some withdrawal symptoms (depression, anxiety, tremors), symptoms that would inevitably impair cognitive functions, probably more so than the drug itself. But even ignoring all these objections, how are you going to compare three small groups of random people of varying ages/sexes and then blame all their shortcomings on weed, when it is entirely possible that they could as easily have been "impaired" had they never touched the whacky tobaccy. Studies like this are the reason why marijuana is still illegal in the US, where people can do time for possession and college students arrested for pot lose federal financial aid (while robbers, killers and rapists remain eligible). Meanwhile, it is legal to have up to an ounce in Canada and yet they seem to be doing just fine.

Memory, speed of thinking get worse over time with marijuana use, AAN.com (American Academy of Neurology)

Top 1000 library titles

2006-03-21T00:40:00.000-05:00

The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), a nonprofit service comprised of 53,548 member libraries in 96 countries, has a list of the top 1000 book titles, decided by the libraries' "purchase vote" in '05. Here are the top 10:

1. The Bible
2. US Census
3. Mother Goose
4. The Divine Comedy
5. The Odyssey
6. The Iliad
7. Huckleberry Finn
8. Lord of the Rings
9. Hamlet
10. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The complete list of the Top 1000 from 2005, OCLC.org

Veni, vidi, V for Vandetta

2006-03-18T03:14:00.000-05:00

Remember remember the fifth of November,
gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason, why gunpowder treason,
should ever be forgot...

V for Vandetta

Tufts' gravity stone

2006-03-17T04:54:00.000-05:00

Newspapers wrong about neuro conditions 20% of the time

2006-03-17T04:52:00.000-05:00

A joint study between the Mayo Clinic physicians and Arizona State school of journalism examined 1,203 newspaper articles about neurological conditions from 2003 and found that 20% of them had medical errors or exaggerations. The articles were taken from the New York Times and eight other regional newspapers with circulation over 200,000. The most common mistake was exaggerating the effectiveness of treatments. Aren't you glad you get your brain news on the internet?

Newspaper coverage of neurologic conditions incorrect 20 percent of the time, study shows, EurekAlert.org
Mayo Clinic News

Double helix nebula found at galactic center

2006-03-16T04:43:00.000-05:00

Astronomers using the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered an double helix nebula 80 light years in length near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. "We see two intertwining strands wrapped around each other as in a DNA molecule," said Mark Morris, a UCLA physics/astronomy professor and lead author of the article published today in Nature. "Nobody has ever seen anything like that before in the cosmic realm... What we see indicates a high degree of order." The double helix nebula is about 300 light years from the enormous black hole at the center of our galaxy (Earth is c. 25,000 light years from it). "We know the galactic center has a strong magnetic field [1,000 times that in our galactic suburbs] that is highly ordered and that the magnetic field lines are oriented perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy," Morris said. It is interesting how the astronomical macrocosm can mirror the biological microcosm. Seems likely this discovery will be enlisted towards the argument for intelligent design, as well as the fractal/holographic universe.

Astronomers report unprecedented double helix nebula near center of the Milky Way, EurekAlert.org
The Double Helix Nebula: a magnetic torsional wave propagating out of the Galactic centre, Arxiv.org

Blame taints memory

2006-03-16T04:07:00.000-05:00

In a recent study Cornell psych professor David Pizarro found that viewing people as immoral can distort memory, making them out worse than they really are. Pizarro and colleagues took 283 college students and gave them two stories about a man who walked out on his restaurant bill. Half were told that he left because he was a "jerk who liked to steal," other half because he received an emergency phonecall, both were told the same amount for the bill. When questioned a week later, the people told the jerk story remembered the bill to be 10-25% higher than it was, while those who heard the emergency-call reason tended to remember a slightly lower bill. There have been similar studies, including one that found that thinking that someone is good in one area influences judgments about them in other areas, but this is the first one that examines the relationship between blame and memory. The results put the reliability of eyewitness testimonies in question. New information about the moral character of someone could taint people's memories of them, even concerning events long past, memories judges and juries rely on in determining guilt. His co-authors include Elizabeth Loftus, UC-Irvine (whose work on memory included showing that subjects viewing a video of an accident estimated speeds of cars differently when the question used words 'hit', 'collide' or 'mash'). The article will be published in the forthocoming issue of Memory and Cognition.

Moral judgments affect memory, News.Cornell.edu

Ambien, sleepwalking and memory gaps

2006-03-16T02:44:00.000-05:00

Ambien, the most popular sleep medication in the US with over 24 million prescription in 2004, may cause sleep-walking, driving, talking, even stealing. Timothy Morgenthaler of the Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorders Center says he has seen many cases of people sleepwalking and sleep-eating after taking the drug, behavior that stopped when they went off Ambien. He reported 5 such cases in the journal Sleep Medicine in 2002 and others at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center reported 19 more last year. Reports to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) show more instances of sleepwalking with Ambien than with all the other sleep aids combined.

Somnambulism, or partial arousal, is a disorder in which a person is neither awake or asleep. Ambien might prevent people from waking up completely when something disturbs their sleep, so they end up in partial arousal. This would explain why they are able to carry out routine tasks, albeit imperfectly at times, and why they do not remember doing so when questioned afterwards. The most absurdly hilarious case of Ambien-related somnambulism is probably Lt. Judith Renee Lasswell, 39. Last September, she was arrested for shoplifting after she sleepwalked into a Navy base exchange, picked up an "X-Files" DVD and tried to return it for store credit. As a result, her top-secret security clearance was revoked and, in addition to larceny charges, she could face a dishonorable discharge. "I've never had a problem before in my life until I took Ambien, and it's literally ruined my career and everything I ever worked for," said Lasswell. "I have gaps in memory from the whole time I was on Ambien, which is very terrifying."

On March 6, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Sanofi-Aventis in a federal court. Among those involved, a few face criminal charges for things they did while sleepwalking or driving on Ambien, while others claim to have been sexually assaulted while partially aroused (pardon the pun). It's interesting to see whether the sleepwalking defense, automatism in law jargon, will work in these cases. The U.S. People v Huey Newton (1970) 8 CA3d 359 ruled that unconsciousness, (when not deliberetaly self-induced) is a complete defence to a criminal act, even if acts seem soberly goal-oriented. But then what do in cases like the somnambulist Cesare, who went around killing people in the classics film 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' (1920, remake 2005)? In all fareness to Sanofi-Aventis, they do cite sleepwalking among Ambien's various side effects.

To Sleep, Perchance to... Walk, WashingtonPost.com

Sleepwalking, Wiki
Automatism (case law), Wiki

Beware the Ides of March

2006-03-15T01:04:00.000-05:00

Today marks the date of the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, the 15th day of the Roman month of Martius, Idus Martiae. The term Ides comes from the earliest Roman calendar, said to have been created by Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome. While the calendar was displaced in the 3rd century AD by one close to the modern, the term Ides stayed in the vernacular for centuries to come. So when Shakespeare had the soothsayer (named Spurinna according to Suetonius and Plutarch) tell Caesar to "Beware the Ides of March" in 1599, he assumed that the audience knew when the Ides was.

The unfortunate day was marked by numerous omens, some mentioned by Shakespeare. A sacrificial animal was found to have no heart. During construction in Capua sponsored by Caesar, the tomb of Capys, believed to be one of the region's founders, was uncovered with an inscription warning that the man responsible for the disturbance would be slain by his countrymen. On March 14, a king-bird carrying a laurel (sign of peace) into the Curia of Pompeii was torn apart by other birds. Livy recorded that Caesar's wife Calpurnia dreamt that the star set upon their house by the Senate had fallen. Another version has her dream Caesar stabbed in her arms. Despite these warnings, Caesar went about his business, which involved being stabbed 23 times by the conspirators, some his friends. Et tu Brute?

Hunch engine, intuitional software

2006-03-15T00:56:00.000-05:00

Several software companies are working on a new type of software, the hunch engine, that can be used to enhance human intuition. Abstractly, the user is presented with a starting point, the seed, and a set of mutations. When the user selects the mutation that looks good, a new set of mutations is generated from which he can select again, and again, and so on until the desired mutation is found. The idea behind it is what Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward called the "obscenity principle", the user may not know what they are looking for, but they will know when they see it. Others call the process guided natural selection.

Such software can have a wide range of applications. Eric Bonabeau, founder of Icosystem, demonstrated at the O'Reilly conference in San Diego last week how the hunch engine can be used to improve digital images by picking from mutations, without any understanding of programs like Photoshop. It has also been used in France to optimize postal routes to allow more intangible benefits while still fulfilling management's requirements. Meanwhile, Coalesix is gearing the engine towards drug discovery. Their software, called Mobius, allows pharmaceutical chemists to examine 12 molecules (mutations) at a time, from which they pick the ones that look promising, which then recombine into 12 more that are hopefully closer to the drug they are searching for.

What gives the hunch engine an edge over traditional software, is that it can provide a result that the user could not predict. As Dave Weindberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, pointed out, we design many things, but our hunches are usually predictable and repetitive, mutation can take us in new unforeseen directions.

Software Helps Develop Hunches, Wired.com
'Hunch engine' sharpens up your half-baked ideas, NewScientist.com ($)

Icosystem

Madness, genius and transcranial magnetic stimulation

2006-03-11T05:17:00.000-05:00

The Yale School of Medicine is researching the application of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to silence the voices in the heads of people with schizophrenia. TMS is the non-invasive use of rapidly changing magnetic fields to induce specific electromagnetic fields in the brain. Stimuli are applied to an area of the brain several times per second for several seconds. The quantity, strength, duration and interval between stimuli are refered to as the stimulation parameters. While electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow researcher to see which parts of the brain activate when a subject performs a certain task, they can't prove that those parts are in fact used for the task. But if they can suppress the activity through TMS stimulation, then the part is probably used in the performance. So, by holding magnets over parts of the skull for a few minutes a day, it's possible to alter the very biochemistry of the brain, stimulating or suppressing different regions, with effects that can last beyond the duration of the application. Yale psychiatrist Ralph Hoffman MD hopes to use this technology to treat tha auditory hallucinations of schizoprenics. By focusing on the Wernicke's region in the left temporal lobe and another region on the opposite side of the brain (parts used in perceiving words spoken by others), he was able to reduce these hallucinations.

Auditory hallucinations are not the only applications for TMS. Tony Ro at the Rice University, TX, applied TMS to the visual cortex (in the back of the brain, used for seeing) to interrupt the normal visual pathway, thereby enducing the peculiar phenomenon of zombie vision. Better known as 'blindsight', it is the condition found in some patients with brain damage who report not seeing something but correctly identify the shape and location when forced to guess. In Ro's experiments, subjects were shown vertical and horizontal lines on a computer screen, but because the pathways were jammed while under TMS they reported seeing nothing. Still, when asked to guess they gave the right answer 75% of the time. In a similar experiment with red and green dots, their accuracy rose to 81%. "This high degree of accuracy for both the directional orientation and color tasks was significantly above chance," says Ro. "It's clear that detailed visual information was still being processed unconsciously."

TMS can also enhance areas of the brain, making people exhibit dazzling latent intelligence, sparks of genius one sometimes finds in autistic people. Alan Snyder of the University of Sydney conducted many experiments on university students in which he used TMS to stimulate the frontal lobe and measured subjects' ability to draw, proofreed and do math. After repeated controlled experiments he found that 40% of the volunteers exhibited extrodinarily inhanced abilities: drawing better than they thought they ever could, catching mistakes they missed before TMS, and solving math problems faster. This has led Snyder to believe that autistic thought is not a biological fluke like some supposed, but rather a variation on thinking we may all be capable of.

Clearly, transcranial magnetic stimulation has many uses. It can strip us of our senses, rendering us unable to perform even the most basic tasks, or it can open our minds, stimulating hidden talents we never knew we had. TMS machines still run for $25,000-50,000 and are not sold to the general public, limiting their use to hospitals and universities. Nor are there any schematics for how to make one on the internet, unlike the make-your-own EEG. So, if you want to get hooked-up, your best bet is probably volunteering for neurology/cognitive science research.

Yale expands research using magnetic stimulation for schizophrenia, EurekAlert.org
Out of sight, out of mind? EurekAlert.org
Savant for a day, NYTimes.com
Transcranial magnetic stimulation, Wiki

Superior mirages and UFOs

2006-03-09T04:59:00.000-05:00

Dr. Stephen Hughes, a physics/astrophysics lecturer at Queensland Institute of Technology, suggested that some UFO sightings can be explained using a rare atmospheric phenomenon known as a 'reverse' or superior mirage. Why superior? Well, a standard or inferior mirage is when something on the horizon looks like it's reflected in water. This illusion is caused by the inversion layer between the cold air near the ground and the warm air above. When light passes from the cold layer into the warm one, it's reflected downwards and thus projects over the horizon. But temperture inversions can also occur high up, bouncing light from astronomical bodies, as well as aircrafts. So, if a plane flies into a spot occupied by an inversion layer, a light can appear to travel very quickly from miles away on the horizon towards the aircraft. As soon as the plane flies out of the inversion layer, the light will rush back towards the horizon. This erratic back and forth motion can be repeated multiple times, given multiple inversion spots. Consequently, what may look like a UFO zig-zagging at great speeds across the sky, could just be an optical illusion.

Blinded by power of illusion, Courier-Mail.new.com.au

Happy International Women's Day

2006-03-08T20:12:00.000-05:00

March 8th is International Women's Day. IWD was first observed on February 28th, 1909 in the US, after a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. Towards the end of WWI, women across Europe held peace rallies on March 8, 1913. Then, following the Russian October Revolution (second part of the February Revolution) in 1917, Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai convinced Lenin to make March 8th an official holiday, although it remained a working day until 1965. The United Nations gave official sanction/sponsorship to IWD in 1975. While in 2005, the British Trades Union Congress overwhelmingly approved the designation of the day as a public holiday in the UK. IWD is still celebrated in much of Europe, India and Mexico. The image is this year's official IWD logo, which kind of looks like something you might see after you've been thrown down a well.

Social networking sites on the rise

2006-03-08T03:28:00.000-05:00

Alexa Internet, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, a provider of web traffic statistics, has a list of the Top 500 English language web-sites, a curious read. As of March, Yahoo still reigns at number one, followed by MSN, Google and Ebay. What's a little surprising is that the social networking site MySpace is at number five. Then again, with over 61 million profiles at the time of this post, it may not be that strange. After all, the Daily Show recently had a segment about MySpace, doubtless boosting it's popularity further, meanwhile the top unsigned musician from MySpace's artist section, Tila Tequila, adorns the cover of the current issue of Stuff magazine. Though MySpace is the most popular social networking site (probably because it's free), it's not the only one. Euphemistically named AdultFriendfinder, an international site for people who just want anonymous sex in its different varieties, weighed in at #22. The Dr. Phil endorsed Match.com dating site came in at #37, followed by the school-oriented Facebook.com at #44, while the invitation-only Friendster.com trailed behind at #51. It's pretty amazing how many people already use these sites, with TV commercials only now beginning to air for them. I guess it's true, we're all connected. Blogging sites too shared in the glory, with Blogger.com (my host) at #10, Xanga.com at #24, and Photobucket.com at #66.

Top 500, Alexa.com

Brain shrinks from stress

2006-03-08T02:32:00.000-05:00

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh found that parts of the brain shrink because of stress. Alasdair MJ MacLullich and co. looked at the anterior cingulate cortex, which responsible for controlling stress hormones. After analzing hormone levels and brain volume in two groups of volunteers, ten healthy males ages 65-70 each, they found that those with the smaller anterior cingulate cortex experienced more stress. This area usually shrinks with age and may be a cause depression and Alzheimer's disease. What's weird is that our environments can alter the very physical composition of our brains. MacLullich said that "the discovery deepens doctors' understand of ageing, depression and Alzheimer's diseases, and will help in the development of treatments based on reducing high levels of stress hormones."

Scientists gain new understanding of age-related depression and dementia, EurekAlert.org

Crimson rain, alien bacteria

2006-03-07T04:57:00.000-05:00

Milton Wainwright, a microbiologist at Sheffield University, is testing samples from one of the strangest events in meteorological history. Starting July 25, 2001, it rained red over the Kerala district (western India), and the rain stayed red for two months. The downfall burned the leaves on trees and turned everyone's clothing pink. If that wasn't strange enough, hours before the first ruby drop fell, people heard a loud sonic boom that shook houses in the region. Recent analysis of samples from the incident reveal some curious particles. At 50% carbon, 45% oxygen, with pinches of iron and sodium, they just may be extra-terrestrial biological material. The theory first proposed by Godfrey Louis, physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, is that a piece may have broken off a passing comet and fell towards the coast, which could explain the sonic boom. Many scientists believe that comets may carry organic chemicals and some even suggested that we evolved from microbes that were brought to Earth via comet (Fred Hoyle). So, it's possible that the weird stuff that made it rain blood was in fact some sort of alien biomatter, absorbed by the clouds as the meteor broke up in the atmosphere, which gave the rain it's hue and strange properties. There have been other meteorites with organic chemicals, like the one that fell in Murchison, Australia in 1969 with high concentrations of amino acids (c. 100 ppm). Since many comets are largely ice, they can be rich in organic compounds. They may have also created the Earth's oceans. But now that I've soothed you enough, aren't crashing thunder and rain of blood things that happen on the first day of the Apocalypse?

Red rain could prove that aliens have landed, Guardian.co.uk
Astrobiology:Missions, Nasa.gov
Exobiology: Interview w/Stanley L. Miller, AccessExcellence.org

Marijuana, depression and the brain

2006-03-05T05:08:00.000-05:00

The largest study of marijuana and depression to date, conducted at SUNY-Albany and published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, has found that daily and weekly marijuana users had about 30% fewer symptoms of depression than non-users. Further, they were more likely to report good moods and had fewer physical complaints like sleeplessness. Which is interesting, considering that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Director John Walters said that "marijuana... can lead to depression, thoughts of suicide and schizophrenia." Of course this knowledge is nothing new, clergyman Robert Burton claimed marijuana as a treatment for depression in The Anatomy of Melancholy as early as 1621. But how does weed alleviate depression? Recent experiments with rat brains and a synthetic cannabinoid HU210 conducted by Xia Zhang, University of Saskatchewan-Suskatoon, Canada, found that two high doses a day for 10 days increased the neurogenesis (nerve cell formation) in the hippocampus (part associated with learning, memory and moods) by as much as 40%. Moreover, when placed under stress, rats that received the cannabinoid showed fewer signs of anxiety and depression than rats that didn't. When neurogenesis was stopped using x-rays, the behavioral effects disappeared. Other studies have shown that hippocampus nerve cell growth is suppressed by other common drugs like alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine. So, when life's getting you down, instead of drinking yourself into a stupor, leaving your hopes and dreams buried under tobacco leaves, why not put the 'can' in cannabis, the 'merry' in marijuana, and the 'blunt' in your mouth. You may just grow some brain cells instead of killing them.

Marijuana users less depressed, MPPP.org
Marijuana might cause new cell growth in the brain, NewScientist.com

Altruism linked with happiness and romantic love

2006-03-03T05:49:00.000-05:00

A survey conducted by NORC of the University of Chicago, "Altruism and Empathy in America: Trends and Correlates," authored by Tom W. Smith, found a connection between altruism and strong romantic relationships. 1,329 people were surveyed. First, they were asked to rate their agreement with statements like "I'd rather suffer than let the one I love suffer" to measure their level of altruism. Then, they were asked to rate their happiness in their lives and marriages. Those who scored high on altruism were more likely to come out "very happy." Women tended to have a greater empathy and altruism than men, and children who grew up with both parents were morempathicic than those who didn't. Least altruistic were girls raised only by a father. Money had little to do with it. The Fetzer Institute conducted a similar study in 2002, allowing researchers to note that altruistic behavior has been growing over the years. About 5% (at 75%) more people reported having concerned feelings for the less fortunate than in '02, while the number of people who felt they shouldn't worry about others dropped by 7% (to 25%). So, it seems true that the selfless are happier than the selfish, karma.

Survey links altruism and romantic love, UChicago.edu

Coleridge's Kubla Khan

2006-03-02T04:32:00.000-05:00

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

The story goes that this poem came to Coleridge in a dream. He had fallen asleep after taking "an anodyne ... in consequence of a slight disposition", which is code for getting high on laudanum (a liquid form of opium) and passing out. In his dreams/hallucinations he supposedly composed some two-three hundred lines, which he tried to capture on paper as soon as he woke up. But after writing down the first three stanzas, he was interrupted by a "person on business from Porlock" who kept him for over an hour. When the man finally left, Coleridge had forgotten the rest of the poem. To this day, the person from Porlock is used as a metaphor for the annoying sublunar distractions that get in the way of artistic genius.

America most patriotic, Germany least

2006-03-01T04:43:00.000-05:00

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) of the University of Chicago surveyed 33 nations to determine which people are the most proud of their country. They distinguished between pride over specific accomplishments and general national pride, assigning a score to each nation. United States (4.0) topped the pride over accomplishments survey, followed by Venezuela (3.6), Australia (2.9), Austria (2.4), South Africa (2.7), Canada (2.4), Chile (2.6), the Philippines (2.3) and Israel (2.3). The general national pride was strongest in Venezuela (18.4), then United States (17.7), Australia (17.5), Austria (17.4), South Africa (17), Canada (17), Chile (17.1), New Zealand (16.6) and Israel (16.2). What this seems to suggest is that national pride is strongest in relatively new nations that were once colonies. In 1995-96, NORC conducted a similar survey with 23 countries, which allowed researchers to examine changes over the past decade. This comparison suggests that the nations that experienced recent terrorist attacks on their citizens (US and Australia) have the fastest growing national pride. Meanwhile, established nations (especially in Europe) have the lowest national pride. "It could be that those nations are experiencing a response to globalism, particularly among young people. Many identify as much as being Europeans as they do as being citizens of their own country. In some European nations, the concept of strong patriotism also has negative connotations," said Tom Smith, Director of the General Social Survey at NORC. At the bottom of the list, starting with the least patriotic, Germany, Latvia, Sweden, Slovakia, Poland, Taiwan, France, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic.

Americans and Venezuelans lead the world in national pride, EurekAlert.org
NORC, UChicago.edu

Cocoa reduces risk of death and cardiovascular problems

2006-03-01T04:11:00.000-05:00

A new study documented in the February 27 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine (JAMA/Archives journal), eating or drinking cocoa can lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of dying. Brian Buijsse M.Sc. of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, Netherlands, and company studied 470 Dutch men ages 65-84 since 1985. After the initial physical examinations and interviews about their diets (used to place them into one of three groups depending on their cocoa consumption), they had follow-up visits in 1990 and 1995. For those who didn't show up, records of illnesses and deaths were obtained from hospitals or the government. During those 15 years, 314 men died, 152 because of cardiovascular diseases. The study showed that men with the highest cocoa consumption were half as likely to die from cardiovascular problems, regardless their smoking habits, fitness, or alcohol intake. Furthermore, they were also less likely to die of any cause. Cocoa contains a chemical called flavan-3-ols, which can lower blood pressure and improve the function of cells lining the blood vessels. But, the authors believe there's more to the story. "The lower cardiovascular mortality risk associated with cocoa intake could not be attributed to the lower blood pressure observed with cocoa use, our findings, therefore, suggest that the lower cardiovascular mortality risk related with cocoa intake is mediated by mechanisms other than lowering blood pressure." Makes you wonder what's the life expectancy in Hershey, PA?

Cocoa intake linked to lower blood pressure, reduced risk of death, EurekAlert.org

New Loremo LS gets 157 miles to the gallon

2006-02-28T06:43:00.000-05:00

At the Motor Show '06 in Geneva next week, German company Loremo AG will show off it's LS with a 2 cylinder Turbo diesel engine, 20 horse-pwer and a 160 km/h (100m/h) top speed. The kicker's that it uses 1.5 literes per 100 km, that's 157 miles per gallon. The car only weighs 450 kg (992 lb), but still seats four. The planned pricetag on the LS is less than 11,000 Euro ($13,000). Later, Loremo plans to release the GS, which will have a stronger engine (50 hp, 27l/100km) and a top speed of 220km/h (136m/h).

Loremo.com

Psychology and brain portals opened on Wikipedia

2006-02-28T05:57:00.000-05:00

The free-content multilingual online encyclopedia, Wiki, has launched two new portals: the mind and brain portal started by Lacatosias (Italian philosopher Francesco Franco), the psychology portal started by Zelifg (New York philosophy/psychology student). In addition to the usual reference entries, these portals feature psychology and neuroscience news, as well as recent research. Wikipedia has many other portals, including religion (from Baha'i to Zoroastrianism), history (incl. egyptology, war), arts and culture (anime and manga, fictional countries and worlds), science, sports, and technology. There are also geographically specific portals for a good number of countries around the world.

Mind and brain porta l, Wiki
Psychology portal, Wiki

Pluto's two newly discovered moons

2006-02-24T05:32:00.000-05:00

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed two new moons around the planet Pluto. The moons were first discovered with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in May 2005, but on Feb. 15, 2006 they took a look for additional satellites and characterized the orbits of the moons. These further observations rule out the possibility of other satellites of roughly similar size orbiting Pluto inside the orbits of the two moons. The moons, provisionally named S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2, are approximately 40,000 and 30,000 miles away from Pluto. In the pic, Pluto is in the center and Charon is just below it. P 1 is to the right and just below Charon. P 2 is to the right of Pluto and Charon. The satellites fall under the category of plutinos, trans-Neptunian objects with a 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune that form the inner part of the Kuiper belt. Plutinos are usually named after underworld deities, like Pluto's moon Charon, the ferryman who took the recently deceased across the river Acheron (not Styx) provided they had an coin (obolus) to pay for their ride (which was customarily placed under the tongue of the dead). Neither of the moons, nor the ninth planet for that matter, have yet been officially named, a process that requires the approval of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory), A. Stern (Southwest Research Institute) and the HST Pluto Companion Search Team

Quantum computer that works when not working

2006-02-24T04:52:00.000-05:00

Onur Hosten of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and colleagues have created a quantum computer, which uses the laws of quantum mechanics to perform multiple calculations simultaneously. The quantum computer uses lasers, mirrors and light detectors, to encode information in the quantum states of photons. Quantum objects such as atoms and photons can be put in different mixtures of states, called 'superposition' states. Each photon is placed in a superposition where it both is and isn't fed into a 'black box' (which processes the quantum states through an algorithm). This allows the computer to work both when it's on and off. "Some people like to think of this as two different universes", says computer scientist Richard Josza of Bristol University in England. Because a not-running computer is working in a parallel universe, "you wouldn't be charged for the cost of running it."

The downside is that quantum processes give probabilities rather than exact answers. Eight years ago, researchers thought that the success rate of a quantum computer would be little better than guessing. But Hosten and co. proved them wrong by incorporating a phenomenon known as the quantum Zeno effect, named after the 4th century Greek philosopher famous for his paradoxes. Also known as "the watched pot never boils", the effect is that you can change the probability of a particular outcome simply by looking for it. So, by looking at the photons in the not-running state (those that didn't pass through the black box), it was possible to significantly increase the probability of the computer finding the right answer. "It's a very beautiful experiment that probes the strangeness of quantum theory," says Josza.

The computer that works when it's idle, Nature.com

Tantra

2006-02-23T20:17:00.000-05:00

Tantra is an esoteric system of ritual and yoga in the Hindu, Taoist and Buddhist traditions. It is characterized by complex uses of chanted mantra, the visual meditations on symbolic diagrams or mandala, and the imporantce of female deities called Shakti. Tantric practices include cremation-ground practices such as meditation of corpses and the ritual use of wine, meat, and sexual intercourse. These practices use ritual and meditation to unify the devotee with the chosen deity. In Buddhism, rituals that appear to break basic moral precepts have for the most part been dropped, but the complex meditation practices have been retained.

Hindu Tantra

There are two different paths: dakshinachara and vamachara, translated as Right-Hand Path and Left-Hand Path respectively. Dakshinachara consists of traditional Hindu practices such as asceticism and meditation, while vamachara also includes ritual practices that go against the grain of mainstream Hinduism, including sexual rituals, consumption of alcohol and other intoxicants, animal sacrifice and flesh-eating. The two paths are viewed by as equally valid approaches to liberation. Vamachara, however, is considered to be the faster and more dangerous of the two, not suitable for all practitioners.

There are three classes of devotees: The animal devotee, one who is still mired in darkness (tamas), performs rituals with material symbols, following the teachings even when lacking understanding of their meaning. The heroic devotee, driven by activity (rajas), uses the five elements, called the five m's: fish (matsya), meat (mamsa), wine (madya), aphrodisiac cereals (mudra), and sexual intercourse (maithuna) in his development. The divine devotee, in whom goodness (sattva) predominates, symbol and ritual are internalized, making it possible to awaken kundalini energy.
The universe is a manifestation of pure consciousness, divided into two interdependent poles. Shiva, the masculine element, is static, and is identified with unmanifested consciousness. It has the power to be but not to become or change. The other, Shakti, is the feminine aspect, which is dynamic and creative. She is the mother of the universe from whom all form is borm [Note that in Buddhist Tantra, or Vajrayana, in contrast to the Hindu, the female principle of 'wisdom' (prajna) is seen as static, whereas the male, or 'means' (upaya), is active].

The human body is a microcosm of the universe. In people, the feminine Shakti element is called Kundalini. The practice of Kundalini Yoga aims to awaken this feminine energy and make it ascend through the chakras (psychic centers) along the spine to the crown of the head, where it merges with the masculine Shiva element. Each of the chakras corresponds to one of the elements of which the world is composed. Muladhara represents solidity; Svadhisthana, liquidity; Manipura, the gaseous; Anahata, the aerial; Vishuddha, the etheric, or space. Hence, the ascent through the body is symbolic of one through the macrocosm of the universe. The Kundalini is usually pictured as a fiery serpent, while the chakras are represented as lotuses. The increasing number of lotus petals in ascending order may indicate the rising energy vibration frequencies of the chakras. When the serpent reaches a flower, the petals open and the lotus lifts, symbolizing the activation of its energies; when it leaves, the lotus closes and hangs down, it's energies assimilated into the Kundalini. Once the snake reaches the last chakra, Kundalini merges with Shiva and the duality is dissolved in an ecstatic union. Afterwards, the serpent slowly descends back to the root chakra.

Taoist Alchemy

In Taoist tantra, the main aim is the search for immortality or at least a long life. Likely influenced by the Kundalini forms of Hindu tantra, Taoist tantric alchemy involves breath, muscle control and concentrates on retention of vitality. Most men can repopulate an entire continent with a single ejaculation, while most women are born with enough eggs to generate hundreds of lives. Consequently, when the hormones and nutrients of sexual activity are not used towards procreation, they should be harnessed to make our own life longer, healthier and more enjoyable.

The practice relies very little on external objects, focusing mainly on internal processes. The Taoist Canon recalls a group of Aryans who were shipwrecked on the South China shore thousands of years ago. They did not die, nor have children, and became known as the Shining Ones. They transmitted their secret magical and healing practices to the shamans. When Buddhism came to China, shamans were persecuted, like witches in the west, so they became Taoists, rivals to the Buddhists, and continued their practices in secret, using only internal energy, internal alchemy, without the use of accessories to identify themselves. The saying goes "you cannot tell a sage by his clothes."

A clear tantric parallel with Kundalini yoga can be seen in the Taoist Golden Light or Microcosmic Orbit Meditation. This technique uses a visualization of a ball of energy (sometimes a serpent), which represents jing, ['essence', sometimes synonymous with semen but feminine (yin) in nature, the dense energy residing in the genitals] that slowly rises from the base of the spine to the back of the brain, where it is absorbed by the Nirvana Chamber in the brain's center, mixing with shen, [the 'soul', the male (yang) element, residing in the head], and then returns downward, replenishing the body's vital energy. While the terminology is different and there is some disagreement concerning the body's energy centers,

The third major type of energy is qi, or 'breath', seen by extension as 'life force' or 'spirit' that is part of everything. It is harnessed through meditation and the practice of qigong, or 'qi work', which uses the coordination of various breathing patterns, physical postures and motions of the body to manage the breath and promote good health. While bearing some resemblance to hatha yoga, qigong is more dynamic, as it aims at a perpetual circulation of energy.

New virus more complex than bacteria

2006-02-22T04:55:00.000-05:00

Recent research conducted at the Mediterranean University in Marseille, France, has identified a new virus, Mimi, that is vastly more complex than all previously discovered viruses (as well as a number of bacteria). A precursor, over the past few years J. Craig Venter, who decoded the human genome, sailed around and every few hundred miles analyzed the ocean water. With each sample, he discovered millions of new viruses that increased the number of known genes 10-fold. According to Didier Raoult, one of the researchers that discovered Mimivirus, "this thing shows that some viruses are organisms that have an ancestor that was much more complex than they are now. We have a lot of evidence with Mimivirus that the virus phylum is at least as old as the other branches of life and that viruses were involved very early on in the evolutionary emergence of life." Mimi is one of the few viruses visible under a standard light microscope (1 millionth of a meter) and weighs 10 times the average virus (at 1.2 million letters). Moreover, it contains genes for translation of proteins and DNA repair enzymes, functions thought to be exclusive to cellular organisms. So it's not surprise that Mimi is blurring the line separating virus and bacteria. Approximately 1 percent of the living things on the planet have been officially discovered and documented, and with about 10 times more viruses than organisms, who knows what else they can do.

Unintelligent design, Discover.com

Mimetic desire and the single victim mechanism

2006-02-21T01:47:00.000-05:00

Get behind me, Satan, for you are a scandal to me.
Jesus Christ (Mt 15.23)

French philosopher Rene Girard has a fascinating theory of mimetic desire and the single victim mechanism (scapegoating).

All desire is inherently mimetic. We want what other people want. This is most evident in today's society, when we are barraged with advertisements for things and lifestyles that will supposedly make us the shiny happy people smiling that at us from the TV screen. However, as anyone who's pursued this way of life knows, this approach is not sustainable. As newer better things come into production, the old lose their value, and given enough time, what once made you the most popular person on the block, can turn you into an object of ridicule. What's worse, though, is that chasing these material dreams locks us in mimetic rivalry with each other. We compete with our neighbor in perpetual one-upmanship, trying to have the better house, car, computer, as if having better things than the next guy will make us happier. Further, studies reflect that relative income is more important to happiness than absolute income. This is the mimetic cycle, the work of Satan the Seducer.

Because our neighbor is the model of our desire, he is also our rival. We try to protect ourselves with laws and prohibitions, but in time they are inevitably transgressed. This leads to mimetic crisis and scandal ensues in a community. There is all this tension and frustration between people, since they are competing with each other in a never-ending race. Befuddled, they look for someone to blame. This is the time, when someone casts the first stone, the role of Satan the Accuser. A victim is chosen and blamed for all the problems plaguing the community. Once he's isolated and defenseless, the anger of the many converges on the scapegoat, without the least fear of reprisal. Effectively, the community focuses the blame for thousands of scandals scattered throughout it on a single victim substitute. This ganging up of all-against-one unites a previously divided group, as they hunt, torture and destroy the accused individual. Since the group really believes the scapegoat to be the source of their problems, once he is eliminated, the community experiences a sudden harmony, purified of its tensions, divisions united. So, the single victim mechanism has a dark but logically explicable ability of restoring peace to groups ravaged by internal conflict. In the words of high priest Caiaphas, "It is better that one man die and that the whole nation not perish."

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Rene Girard

Ophelia's Song

2006-02-14T04:55:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day,
All in the morning betime,
And I, a maid, at your window,
To be your Valentine.

The young man rose and donned his clothes,
And dupped the chamber door,
Let in the maid that out, a maid,
Never departed more.

Quoth she, Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed,
That would I have done, by yonder sun,
If thou hadst not come to my bed.

By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Away and fie for shame.
Young men will do it, when they come to it,
By cock, they are to blame.

Hamlet, Act IV, Scene V

Three bloody Valentines

2006-02-14T04:32:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder who this Valentine was anyway? The Catholic Encyclopedia lists not one, but three St. Valentines, all martyrs, who died on February 14. One was a Roman priest, another a bishop of Interamna (Terni), the last an obscure martyr from North Africa. The feast of St. Valentine was first declared by Pope Gelasius I in 456. Later, in the 19the century, Pope Gregory XVI donated various relics associated with St. Valentine to Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland, making it the hotspot for pilgrimage on February 14. However, in 1969, the Catholic Church removed Valentine's Day from the official holiday calendar, because of its largely legendary origin. But, this didn't end the celebration of Valentine's Day, the popularity of which had been blossoming in America since the 19th century, when Esther Howland first mass produced valentines of embossed paper lace. Today, February 14th is the second largest card-sending holiday after Christmas, with over a billion cards sent annually.

Valentine's Day, Wiki

10 weird USB devices

2006-02-12T21:21:00.000-05:00

Fosfor Gadgets has an interesting list of the "Top 10 Weirdest USB Devices". Have a summary:

10. George Foreman's iGrill
9. Air darts
8. Ghost radar (electromagnetic field detector)
7. Heated slippers
6. Massage ball
5. Self-destruct button
4. Flowerpot speaker
3. Heated gloves
2. Eye massager
1. Vibrator (w/5 interchangable probes)

The 10 weirdest USB devices ever, Fosfor Gadgets

Iranian girl sentenced to death for self-defense

2006-02-12T20:44:00.000-05:00

On January 7th, in Iranian city of Tehran, home of the fountain of blood, a court sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she confessed to unintentionally killing a man trying to take advantage of her and her niece. Nazanin, 17 at the time and Somayeh (16), were in a park with their boyfriends when three men started throwing stones at them. The boyfriends quickly escaped on their motorbikes, while the men pushed the girls to the ground with the aim of raping them. At this point, Nazanin took out a knife and stabbed one of the men in the hand and when they wouldn't let off, stabbed another in the chest. In tears before the court, she said that she didn't want to kill anybody, but was merely trying to protect herself and her niece. Nonetheless, she received the death sentence. But hanging young girls is nothing new for Iran, last month in Rasht, 17 year-old Delara Darabi was hanged for murder. While, in August 2004, 16 year-old Atefeh Rajabi was executed for "acts incompatible with chastity". Atefeh was not allowed a lawyer and defending herself pleaded that the judge should punish those who force women into adultery instead of the victims. She was executed in a public hanging in the northern town of Neka.

Iran to hang teenage girl attacked by rapists, IranFocus.com

Something wrong with your eyes?

2006-02-07T04:42:00.000-05:00

Music and wine sale

2006-02-07T04:16:00.000-05:00

Adrian North, University of Leicester, UK, conducted a market research experiment in which he played traditional French accordion and traditional German brass music for costumers and analyzed the sales of wine from the experimental shelves containing French and German wine. On French music days, 77% of the wine sold was French, German days, 73% German. Only 1/44 costumers immediately stated that the music was the reason they chose the wine they did, while the others, when asked if the music effected their choice, 86% said 'no'. So, eventhough there is a definite influence here, most people are unaware of it.

Music, wine and will, MindHacks.com

Will the N machine revolutionize energy production?

2006-02-05T03:26:00.000-05:00

Bruce DePalma, former physics professor at MIT, claims to have an electrical generator capable of providing cheap, self-sustaining, non-polluting energy - the N machine. Modelled after the Faraday homopolar generator, it's basically a simple magnetized flywheel, a cylindrical conductor rotating at high speed with the help of a motor. According to DePalma, the current versions of the N Machine can generate 5x more power than it consumes. Prototypes have been built as early as 1978, when a large N machine called Sunburst was constructed in Santa Barbra, CA. Sunburst was independently tested in 1986 by Dr. Robert Kincheloe of Stanford, who noted the drag of the gyroscope was only 13-20% of a conventional generator operating at 100% efficiency, meaning the machine could generate power at 500% normal. DePalma believes his machine releases free energy present in the space around us. Basically, there is no such thing as empty space, even in a vacuum, there are fluctuations that suddenly release large amounts of energy. A theory of zero point energy developed by Puthoff of Stanford, accounts for the copious power found in space.

While applications are in the hundreds, no one has a patent for the N machine because the U.S. Patent office flat out denies patents to anything that purports to make more energy than it consumes (though according to DePalma the N machine is a new way of extracting energy, rather than a perpetual motion machine based on conventional power sources). Meanwhile, there has been a growing interest in the machine from Japan's scientific community, largely thanks to Shiuji Inomata, president of the Japan Psychotronics Institute. Panasonic/National is pursuing research, while Kazama Giken Co. is commercially supplying small N machines for research and educational purposes. The Japan Science Foundation has also awarded several grants to advance the technology.

Unfortunately, I don't have one of these gadgets, so I can't say if it really works. But if it does, it may soon revolutionize energy production forever. The research on the N machine is something to keep a keen eye on, maybe buy some Panasonic stock.

Homopolar "free energy" generator test, Robert Kincheloe
Scientists claim to tap the free energy of space, ForThePeople
Bruce Depalma: the man who wouldn't be stopped, RumorMillNews.com
The Home of Primordial Energy

Magic mushroom luminescence test kit

2006-02-04T06:19:00.000-05:00

Australian researcher Nicole Anastos has developed a new test for hallucinogenic mushrooms that produces a glowing light if they contain the psychoactive illegal ingredient. The technique uses chemiluminescence, a light reaction that happens when certain chemicals come into contact, to detect psilocybin and its metabolit psilocin (the serotonin-like psychoactive ingredients in shrooms). Apparently glowing happens when you mix psilocin with acidic potassium permanganate, likewise with psilocybin and ruthenium. These tests already exist for many drugs, including weed, coke and heroin, but this is the first one for fungui. Species used in this research were psilocybe subaeruginosa, hypholoma aurantiaca and panaeolina foenisecii. Anastos hopes that her research will be used and developed by the police.

Test for magic mushrooms glow in the dark, ABC.net.au

Universal heart of darkness

2006-02-04T05:57:00.001-05:00

Physicists currently estimate that only 4% of the universe is made up of baryonic matter, which we can detect and measure with our current senses and instruments. So, 96% of what makes up the universe is in a form that has never been observed directly in a laboratory: 73%t is believed to be dark energy and 23% dark matter. Dark matter cannot be seen because it emits no light. It was hypothesized 50 years ago to explain why the outer limits of a galaxy travel at the same speed as the dense center. With so much of the 'verse still invisible to us, a unified Theory of Everything may be further away than we'd hoped.

The darkness inside of everything, TheAge.com.au

Artificial gills let you swim "LikeAFish"

2006-02-03T02:08:00.000-05:00

Israeli inventor Alon Bodner is developing an underwater breathing system "LikeAFish" that squeezes oxygen from seawater. The battery-powered artificial gill uses a high-speed centerfuge to lower the pressure of seawater in a sealed chamber, allowing the dissolved air to turn into gas (like CO2 is released when you change the pressure in a soda can by opening it). This air is then transferred to an airbag for the diver's use. On average, a liter of water is about 1.5% oxygen, so the device needs to circulate about 200 liters/minute to provide enough air for a single person. The air-supply is limited only to battery-power, which at this point rounds out to about 1 kg. (battery)/hour of dive time. There are concerns, like dead-zones that have less oxygen and water pollution, so Bodner does not expect a functional prototype for another two years.

Inventor develops 'artificial gills', BBC.co.uk
LikeAFish.biz

MIT's OpenCourseWare for Brain and Cognitive Science

2006-02-03T02:06:00.000-05:00

MIT has a free open educational resource, the OpenCourseWare (OCW), where it shares reading lists, lecture notes and problem sets, for many of its undergraduate and graduate courses from an array of disciplines including 'Brain and Cognitive Science', 'Linguistics and Philosophy', and 'Science, Technology, and Society.' Susan Hockfield, MIT's president, believes the OCW "expresses in an immediate and far-reaching way MIT's goal of advancing education around the world." Word, I could read this site for weeks, it's an invaluable resource and I'm beaming I found it. A few of the many available course materials are:

Animal Behavior
Human Memory and Learning
Cognitive and Behavioral Genetic s
Language and Thought
Mind and Machine s
Cultural History of Technology
Drugs, Politics, and Culture

Full listings at OCW.mit.edu

Meditation thickens gray matter

2006-02-02T14:56:00.000-05:00

Researchers at Harvard, Yale and MIT found that meditation can alter the physical structure of the brain. Scans showed that experienced meditators had increased thickeness in parts of the brain's cortex (or 'thinking cap', part dealing with attention and processing sensory input), which normally get thinner with age. According to Sara Lazar, Harvard Medical School psychologist, "these increases are proportional to the time a person has been meditating during their lives... this suggests that the thickness differences are acquired through extensive practice and not simply due to differences between meditators and nonmeditators." The increase of gray matter thickeness was .004-.008 inches. "Data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being," says Lazar.

Meditation found to increase brain size, Harvard Gazette

Sex eases public speaking

2006-02-02T08:24:00.000-05:00

According to a study by Stuart Brody, psychologist at University of Paisley, UK, penetrative sex can ease the stress of nervous public speakers. 24 women and 22 men were asked to keep a diary of their sexual activity for two weeks and then had to make a speech in public and perform mental arithmetic out loud. Those who had sex during the previous week had the least stress, as their blood presure returned to normal fastest. Oral sex and masturbation were much less effective. "The effects are not attributable to the short-term relief afforded by orgasm but, rather, endure for at least a week," says Brody, who thinks that sex releases a special pair-bonding hormone called oxytocin that produces the calming effect.

Sex before public speaking calms nerves, NerdShit.com
Blood pressure reactivity to stress is better for people who recently had penile-vaginal intercourse than for people who had other or no sexual activity, ScienceDirect.com

Development of brain enhancements

2006-02-02T06:18:00.000-05:00

As our computing power grows bigger and our iPods get smaller, the question of cybernetic implants becomes more a reality. Though some still dismiss it as science fiction, scientists have already made the blind see, the deaf hear, and the paralyzed type and move cursors, all through a brain-machine interface. So it's only a matter of time before entire portions of the brain can be enhanced/replaced by implants.

We see commercials for Red Bull and FocusFactor, promoting concentration and awareness, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The prescription of cerebral enhancers like Adderall and Ritalin is growing every year, with a significant portion of the drugs overflowing into the black market. As this trend continues, people without learning disabilities might be forced to take cerebral enhancers just to compete in their school/work environment (this argument echoes the movie Gattacca). That, or we have a whole generation hopped up on goof balls.

Later, as cybernetic brain implants develop, at first to battle things like Alzheimer's - only to spread into the general market, people will have to choose again, enhance or fall behind (evolve or perish, if you're extremist). Some think this won't happen for a while, but as soon as the technology arrives, there'll be someone who's willing to put it inside them. We already have plenty of unneccesary surgery: nose jobs, breast implants, hair grafts. If you're going to put silicone in your breasts, why not silicon in your head?

All this raises a curious question in the philosophy of mind, one that echoes a riddle from the classics. If you have a ship and, as parts of it break, you replace them to the point that none of the original parts remain, is it still the same ship? (Further, if someone takes the discarded parts and reassembles them into another ship, which one is the original?) Now apply this to the brain. If you replace it bit by bit until it's all cybernetic, is it still you? Those who don't believe that a machine can be conscious will say no, but then what happens to you as you replace those parts? Does your consciousness fade gradually? Is there a specific point when you go from man to machine and your self-awareness vanishes? Perhaps soon we'll find out.

There's no stop in the race for human re-engineering, Guardian.co.uk

Congress traced doctoring Wikipedia

2006-02-02T05:28:00.000-05:00

Investigation on the part of Wikipedia revealed 1,000+ edits to the open source encyclopedia traced to IP addresses reserved for the Senate and the House of Representatives. According to Wiki, these edits contained libelous statements, childish insults, or removed content with malice. The investigation was prompted when on January 27, Lowell Sun of Massachusetts published "Rewriting history under the dome", in which Matt Vogel, the chief of staff for Congressman Marty Meehan, said he authorized an intern to replace the Wiki entry for the congressman with a staff-written one, which omitted the references to Meehan's broken term-limits pledge and massive compaing war chest. Some of the sillier ones uncovered during Wiki's investigation included listing White House press secretary Scott McClellan under the entry for "douche". Thus far only one IP address has been blocked (one tied to Meehan) and a "request for comments" page has been opened.

Rewriting history under the dome, Lowell Sun
Congress caught making false entries in Wikipedia, News.com

Norway's doomsday vault

2006-02-01T05:05:00.000-05:00

Norway is planning to build a vault in a mountain near the north pole that will store a vast seed bank of all known varieties of the world's crops, on the off chance that we have a nuclear war, radical climate change or meteor strike. The vault will be in the permafrost (which will keep the seeds viable even with global warming) of a sandstone mountain on the island of Spitsbergen, 625 miles from the North Pole, behind 3.25 ft. thick concrete, two airlocks and blast-proof doors. The $3 million facility will hold around 2 million seeds. So remember, when the smoke clears the seeds are in Spitsbergen.

'Doomsday vault' to hold world's seeds, PhysOrg.com

Internet and the rise of networked individualism

2006-02-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

A survey by US-based Pew Internet think-tank found that the internet has played a vital role in the decisions of 60 million Americans.

21 million Americans use it to get additional career training
17 million for dealing with major illness
17 million for choosing a school for a child
16 million to buy a car
16 million for a major financial decision
10 million for finding new place to live
8 million when changing job
7 million to cope with family illness

Co-author of the report, sociologist Barry Wellman, sees this as evidence of what he calls networked individualism - where internet users are less bound to local groups and increasingly part of more geographically scattered networks. Moreover, the research suggests that email tends to solidify real friendships, rather than replace them.

Tha Strength of Internet Ties, Pew Internet [PDF]
Internet serves as 'social glue', BBCNews.co.uk

Paracelsus, the devil's doctor

2006-01-31T06:10:00.000-05:00

Motto: Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest
(Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself)

Paracelsus (1493-1541), born Theophrast von Hohenheim in Einsiedeln, Switzerland, is sometimes called the father of toxicology. A pioneer in the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine, he was the one who named the element zinc (from "zinke" German for pointy). An alchemist (initiated by Henry Cornelius Agrippa), he worked off the hermetic view of health centered around the harmony between the microcosm, Man and the macrocosm, Nature. Despite the risk, he investigated the plague firsthand. He also came up with a chemical diagnosis of madness and was the one who invented the Alphabet of the Magi used for engraving angelic names on talismans. Though a pacifist, he always had a huge broadsword at his side, even when he slept. His search for occult knowledge took him through Germany, France, Hungary, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, China, to Constantinople, where an Arabian adept supposedly imparted Paracelsus with the supreme secret of a the alkahest, a hypothetical universal dissolvent. Another story has it that the devil gave him a white horse, but considering the historical Paracelsus died in a White Horse Inn makes the similarity questionable. A new book by Phillip Ball, Devil's Doctor, explores the life of this mysterious figure. Today, Paracelsus still crops up in Harry Potter books.

Ragged-trousered alchemist, Guardian.uk.com
Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, Phillip Ball

Cosmic rays, cloudy days

2006-01-31T03:25:00.000-05:00

Having examined 50 years of solar radiation measurments, Giles Harrison and David Stephenson of the University of Reading, UK, found that cosmic rays can increase the chances of a cloudy day by nearly 20%. Normally, solar cosmic rays are about 90% protons (hydrogen) and 9% alpha particles (helium). However, during a solar flare - exlosion on the Sun that happens when energy stored in twisted magnetic fields, typically above sunspots, is suddenly released - there is a significant burst of radiation across the spectrum (radio, x-rays, gamma rays), flares are classified according to x-ray brightness (1-8 Angstroms). So, the bright side of a cloudy day is that you're shielded from radiation. Further, this may be a clue to explaining some of the mysterious climate changes our planet has experienced in the past (Big Ice Age, Little Ice Age).

(Proceedings of the Royal Society A, DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2005.1628).
Cosmic rays linked to cloudy days, New Scientist.com
SpaceWeather.com

Virtues of the Western world

2006-01-30T01:56:00.000-05:00

4 Classical Human Virtues: Health, beauty, strength and wealth

4 Classical Divine Virtues: Prudence, moderation, justice and courage

3 Medieval Theological Virtues: Faith, hope and charity

2 Scholastic Virtues: Patience and fortitude

7 Christian Virtues: The three theological virtues and the four divine or in this case “moral” virtues, i.e. faith, hope, charity, prudence, moderation, justice and courage (sometimes called strength)

7 Medieval Liberal Arts: artes sermocinale: Philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, artes reales or physicae: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music

3 in 4 teens experimenting with the supernatural

2006-01-30T01:46:00.000-05:00

Ministry to Mosaics: Teens and the Supernatural, a study conducted by the Barna Group, interviewed over 4000 teens ages 13-18 and found that 73% of America's youth have taken part in some type of psychic or occult activity (beyond media exposure or horoscope usage). Most common occult activity was using a Ouija board or reading about witchcraft (1/3 teens), 1/10 participated in a seance, 1/12 tried to cast spells or mix potions. 30% had their palm read, while 27% had their fortune told in some other way. 14% claim to have witnessed someone else using psychic powers. No wonder Underworld 2 is the highest grossing movie in the country.

New research explores teenage views and behavior regarding the supernatural, Barna.org

Happy Chinese New Year!

2006-01-29T04:30:00.000-05:00

Today marks the new lunar year, 4703 by the Chinese calendar. The year is balled bingxu, based on the 'stem-branch' system used in China, which uses 60-year cycles composed of five 12-year ones. Each year in the 12 year cycle is named after an animal from the Chinese zodiac, while each cycle is named after an element. So, this year will be the year of the Fire Dog (hotdog), the 7th year in the current 60-year cycle. Now go set off some fireworks.

Meanings of playing cards

2006-01-29T04:26:00.000-05:00

Here are some notes I took on the meanings of playing cards. First, I list the older meanings linked with tarot and the occult, then, their Medieval counterparts.

Spades: Air, swords, a leaf, cosmic tree, fall/winter, intellect, action, destiny, death (esp. Ace)
King: Saturn, King David
Queen: Pallas Athena/Minerva
Knave: Mercury, Hogier the Dane (Charlamagne's paladin)

Hearts: Water, cups, spring/summer, light, knowledge, watery creation, love, fertility, chalice, joy
King: Neptune, water, Charlamagne
Queen: Venus, love, Judith (of the Bible)
Knave: Mars, La Hire a.k.a. Etienne de Vignoles (French warrior)

Clubs: Fire, wands, trefoils, fall/winter, night and darkness, oppose diamonds, energy, will, wealth, work, luck
King: Zeus, Alexander the Great
Queen: Hera, Argine An (anagram of Regina)
Knave: Apollo, Lancelot

Diamonds: Earth, pentacles, feminine power (contrast w/clubs), earthly matter, money, courage, energy
Ace: the single entity
King: king of fire, spirit and father, Julius Caesar
Queen: fuel for king's fire, soul and mother, Rachel (of the Bible)
Knave: warrior, the ego, Hector of Troy

Joker: the ethereal, void

Short meditation guide

2006-01-28T15:36:00.000-05:00

Posture

Legs should be crossed. All the classic sitting meditation positions involve a stable three point base. So, you should sit in either the Lotus Position (padmasana), Half-Lotus or in the "Indian" or "tailor" fashion. In the Lotus, you sit with each foot placed on the opposite thigh, the way Sakyamuni Buddha is usually depicted. Unless you're really limber or practice yoga, you'll probably find this position difficult if you don't sit on a cushion. Tibetan Buddhists use square cushions, Zen use round zofu, but a pillow or a folded blanket work as well. For the three point base to work, both of your knees must rest on the floor. Plant yourself firmly.

There are many hand positions for meditation, called mudra. But most place their hands either on the knees or in the cosmic mudra (The dominant hand is held palm up holding the other hand, also palm up, so that the knuckles of both hands overlap. The thumbs are lightly touching, thus the hands form an oval, which can rest on the upturned soles of your feet if you're sitting in Full Lotus).

The back is kept straight, like an arrow or a stack of coins. Extend your neck as though reaching toward the ceiling with the top of you head. Your ears should be in a line parallel to your s in Soto (Gradual Enlightenment) Zen; while others meditate facing the world like Sakyamuni Buddha, as in the Rinzai (Sudden Enlightenment) School. Choose the way that works better for you.

The hara, which literally means 'belly', refers to the center of gravity, located in the abdomen three fingers below and two fingers behind the navel. Called the dantian in Chinese ('red field') and the Svadhisthana Chakra in Kundalini Yoga. It is considered the seat of one's spiritual energy. You should anchor your mind in the hara, thinking with your guts, not with your head. When you breathe, you should imagine the breath going down to the hara and returning from there.

Breathing

There are different pranyama, or breathing techniques for meditation. But one should begin by counting the breath, either on each inhalation, exhalation, or counting both. When you get to ten, start over at one. If you wish, you can count up to ten and then down to one. The counting is a feedback to help you know when your mind has drifted off. If you get distracted and lose count, don't worry and just start over. After a while, you'll notice your thoughts settling as you gain mastery over your mind. As your thoughts quiet down, counting becomes easier. When you feel your mind is sufficiently calm, you can stop counting and just focus on the in-out breath. Over time, you'll notice your breathing slow down. While on average a person at sea-level breathes fifteen times a minute, one in deep meditation breathes at a rate of only two or three breaths a minute. Heart rate, circulation and metabolism also slow down, which is why masters are able to live on little or no sleep and one or less meal per day.

Concentration

By focusing on the breath, you bring your attention to what you're doing in the present moment. Sati, or mindfulness, is the awareness of your thoughts and actions here and now. It applies equally to bodily actions and the mind's thoughts and feelings. Right mindfulness, samma sati, is the seventh of the Buddha's Eightfold Path and is a prerequisite for right concentration. You must develop an awareness of yourself before you can reach the awareness of everything else.

Buddhist meditation consists primarily of two aspects. Shamatha is the gradual development of mental and physical calmness (in Tibetan it is zhi gnas or 'peaceful abiding', in Chinese chih or 'stopping'). Vipashyana is the heightening of awareness, sensitivity and observation (a.k.a. lhag thong or 'penetrating vision', kuan or 'seeing'). Some meditations are calming, others aim for clarity, yet others do both. It is important that a balance is maintained and that one aspect is not enhanced at the expense of the other. Calmness without awareness is dozing; awareness without calm is 'tripping'.

Samadhi is the Sanskrit word for concentration or one-pointedness. It is the ability to fully focus all your attention on the object at hand, keep it there for as long as necessary and shift it effortlessly at the appropriate time. Concentration is detachment. It is only by being able to let go of everything else, that we can fully concentrate on any one thing. Each time you return to the breath, you are training your ability to direct the mind where you want it to go. Fully developed, this is right concentration (samma samadhi), the eighth of the Eight Fold Path that leads to the realization of the noble truth: the way out of suffering is to eliminate attachment and desire.

Above all, perseverance. Don't get discouraged by physical pain or psychological discomfort. They will pass as your mind-body get used to sitting. It is said that when Bodhidharma came to China, in order to attract students he sat in meditation in front of a cave for nine years. The first three years, people would come by and make fun of him. During the second three years, people grew tired of bothering a boring statue and they ignored him. In the final three years, a few realized his great accomplishment of sitting in meditation for so long despite the hardship and began to join him. By the end of the nine years, Bodhidharma spoke in front of thousands of totally receptive students, every one of them became instantly enlightened. His sermon was called the Lotus Sutra, the lotus symbolizing the anabasis through a world of ignorance and suffering, just as the flower rises above the muddy water from which it grows.

Congratulations! You are now enlightened. Just kidding. Now go meditate.

Archimedes' death ray tested at MIT

2006-01-27T02:30:00.000-05:00

Several Ancient Greek and Roman sources (Polybius, Plutarch and Pliny the Elder) tell that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (mathematician and subject of Hiero II) constructed a burning glass to set fire to the Roman warships, anchored within arrow range. Though it's often pictured as a large lens, the death ray was probably an assembly of mirrors, as recorded by Anthemius of Tralles (474-534), architect of the Hagia Sophia. Purportedly, Proclus used a similar method in 514 against the ships of Vitellius. The death ray is still considered by many as fiction, TV's MythBusters were not able to recreate the feat. But after doing some calculations to see if it was possible, the MIT's 2.0009ers decided to give it a try. Running into some difficulties at first, once the clouds cleared they succeeded in setting fire to 1" thick red oak using only mirrors.

2.009 Product Engineering Processes: Archimedes, MIT.edu

Mozart turns 250

2006-01-27T02:27:00.000-05:00

Today is German composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 250th birthday. Probably the most famous classical composer, Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria, into a musical family. A child prodigy, he played all around Europe and even jammed with J. C. Bach (one of J. S. Bach's sons) in London. Later, he became close friends with composer Joseph Haydn, they even joined the same Catholic Masonic lodge. The opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote) is filled with Freemason and Enlightenment symbolism. For a while there was a belief that listening to Mozart made you smarter, the so-called Mozart effect. However, as other composer-effects were reported, it turned out that lively classical music in a major key speeds up the heart bringing more blood to the brain, making listeners more awake and better at test-taking. Mozart's extensive body of work was cataloged by Ludwig von Kochel in 1862, the Kochel number is usually used to refer to Mozart's pieces instead of the usual Opus-number.

Dalai Lama speaks at neuroscience meeting despite controversy

2006-01-27T01:42:00.000-05:00

Over much nay-saying, the Dalai Lama spoke at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting. Protesters claimed that the Tibetan leader, 14th reincarnation of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, is not qualified to speak about the brain. Further, that his presence confuses the distinction between science and faith. The aim of meditation (central to Buddhism) is to tame and control the brain, a skill honed and perfected by Tibetan Buddhism so much so that it is called the Diamond Vehicle (Vajrayana), the quickest road to enlightenment. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama is open to the scientific method and has stated his willingness to abandon Buddhist doctrines shown by science to be false (some beliefs like reincarnation are untestable, therefore remain insulated). There was an online petition to protest the talk, it was quickly hacked by supporters of the Lama.

Buddha on the Brain, Wired.com

LSD conference celebrates creator's centennial

2006-01-25T16:25:00.000-05:00

When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.
- Albert Hofmann.

January 13-15, Basel, Switzerland hosted the conference LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug, an International Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25), a derivative of lysergic acid found in the alkaloids of the ergot grain fungus was discovered by Hoffman in 1938. During the 1950s and 1960s, LSD a.k.a. acid was found to be a promising tool for psychiatry and psychotherapy and was studied by the CIA as a potential interrogation weapon (Project MKULTRA). But it has been illegal worldwide since the mid-1960s, after the great acid wave that washed over popular youth culture. Dr. Andrew Sewell, a psychiatrist and neurologist from the Harvard Medical School says "There is no evidence that LSD causes permanent brain damage -- and quite a lot of evidence that it doesn't."
While acid flashbacks exist, they're rare and not as dangerous as the media makes them seem. Further, no one has died of an LSD overdose. While doubtless there have been people who've done some really stupid things while tripping, still others have accomplished great feats, like Pittsburgh's Doc Ellis who pitched a perfect game on acid in 1970. Among the first to popularize the drug was author Aldous Huxeley in Doors of Perception and Dr. Timothy Leary, ex-Harvard psychologist turned LSD crusader. Nobel-prize-winner Francis Crick, discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA, told friends he received inspiration for his ideas from LSD. Many computer pioneers also credit LSD as their inspiration, including Douglas Englebart, the inventor of the mouse, and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who considers it as "one of the two or three most important things he has done in his life." So it's no surprise that some computer companies, e.g. Cisco Systems, have banned drug testing for their technologists. During the LSD symposium, mythologist Carl P. Ruck and chemist Peter Webster presented their research supporting the popular theory that an ergot preparation was the active ingredient for the Kykeon beverage used during the ritual of the Eleusinian Mysteries of the Ancient Greek cult of Diana. Others have linked ergot poisoning to explain the Salem witch trials, as well as the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug? Wired.com
LSD Symposium

China building artificial sun

2006-01-25T07:44:00.000-05:00

Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei (capital of Anhui province) is building a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed "artificial sun," which aims to generate near-infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy. The scientists behind project EAST (experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak) believe that they can get a huge amount of energy from a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction under temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius (hence the nickname), the energy produced by the detrium extracted from one liter of sea water will yield that equal to 300 liters of gasoline. The device will be finished in March or April, with experiments to start in July-August.

China to build world's first "artificial sun" experimental device, People's Daily Online

MPAA illegally copies movie

2006-01-24T20:48:00.000-05:00

The Motion Picture Association of America, the vanguard in the war against movie piracy, is being accused of unlawfully making a bootleg copy of a documentary that takes a critical look at the MPAA's film ratings system. The MPAA admitted Monday that it had duplicated "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" without the filmmaker's permission after director Kirby Dick submitted his movie in November for an MPAA rating. The Hollywood trade organization said that it did not break copyright law, insisting that the dispute is part of a Dick-orchestrated "publicity stunt" to boost the film's profile. Meanwhile, the MPAA website clearly states that "manufacturing, selling, distributing or making copies of motion pictures without the consent of the copyright owners is illegal... Movie pirates are thieves, plain and simple... ALL forms of piracy are illegal and carry serious legal consequences." Considering all the absurd lawsuits against kids over downloading in the recent years, it would be a shame if the MPAA gets off scot free. Who watches the watchmen?

MPAA finds itself accused of piracy, LATimes.com

Glow-in-the-dark pigs

2006-01-24T06:23:00.000-05:00

Three glow-in-the-dark transgenic pigs, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into the ambrio.

Taiwan breeds green-glowing pigs, BBCNews
Green tinged farm points the way, BBCNews

Iceland first to abandon oil-power

2006-01-24T05:23:00.000-05:00

The island nation of Iceland, which has brought us Björk and Sigur Rós, was formed by volcanoes and to this day has huge boiling underground lakes heated by molten rock. Cities pipe the hot water and store it in giant tanks to heat homes and business. Now, the environmentally friendly country is the first to take the step of abandoning gasoline power in favor of hydrogen. In electric engines, electrodes split water into hydrogen and oxygen, as hydrogen electrons pass through a conductor they create a current of power. Hydrogen fuel is 2-3 times more expensive than gas, but also gets up to 3 times the mileage, all without carbon emissions (only water vapor). Capital Reykjavik is already testing three electric buses. Marie Maack of the Hydrogen Research Project believes that "If we make hydrogen and use that as a fuel for transportation then we can run the whole society on our own local renewable energy sources." Iceland hopes to be free of gasoline-powered cars by the middle of the century.

Iceland the First Country to Try Abandoning Gasoline, ABCNews.com

Martian glaciers caused by snow

2006-01-23T16:47:00.000-05:00

Pictures of the red planet taken in the last few years have shown ice-rich landforms near the equator that suggest glacial movements as recently as 350,000 - 4 million years ago. Scientists believe these deposits on Mars to be remnants of snow. The theory is that Mars used to have a different tilt, with the poles pointing more towards the sun. As a result, the polar ice caps melted releasing vapor, which was blown south over the Tharsis Montes and Olympus Mons volcanoes, and turned to snow as it cooled and condensed, thus forming the glaciers. The model is described in the Jan. 20 journal Science. "The findings are important because they tell us that Mars has experienced big climate changes in the past, the kinds of climate change that led to the Great Ice Age here on Earth," said Brown University's planetary geologist James Head. "The findings are also interesting because this precipitation pattern may have left pockets of ice scattered across Mars. This is good information for NASA as officials plan future space missions, particularly with astronauts."

Snow on Mars Created Glaciers Near Equator, Space.com

True wealth

2006-01-23T05:25:00.000-05:00

The perception of what exactly makes up wealth has been shifting away from materialism. What good is money if you can't get what you want with it, what good are things if they don't improve the quality of your life? Economists too noticed that much of our wealth comes from factors other than labor and capital. First reported by Nobel Laureate Robert Solow, the Solow Residual is the part of economic growth that cannot be explained through capital accumulation. According to a recent World Bank study, nowadays the residual is quite large. Looking at the total wealth of rich countries, its natural resources usually account for only 1-3%, their buildings and machines about 17%, with the other 80% in intangible capital. 93% percent of this intangible capital is accounted for by the rule of law (57%) and education (36%). The rule of law is simple, what good is having cool stuff, if people keep steeling it from you. The World Bank's Rule of Law Index rates how much different countries believe in and submit to the laws of their society. US scored 92/100. Switzerland unsurprisingly came out on top with 99. The more renegade states include Nigeria at 4.8 and Burundi at 4.3, while Iraq comes in at 0.5. Other intangible factors in this area: voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and control of corruption. Education also plays a large part in a nation's wealth, a one year increase in a poor country's average level of school would increase its intangible capital by $838/person. Considerable, since right now their education spending averages $51/person.

The Materialism Fallacy, TCSDaily.com
The Intangible Wealth of Nations, Reason.com
Where is the Wealth of Nations? Measuring Capital for the 21st Century, [PDF] WorldBank.org

Jacob Bohme's fractal universe

2006-01-21T17:26:00.000-05:00

German Protestant mystic Jacob Bohme (1575-1624) started out as a cobbler in Gorlitz, in his spare time he would study scripture and theology. Then one day he had a mystical experience that he summed up in the phrase "In Yes and No all things consist" (Philip K. Dick had a very similar experience/revelation from a beam of pink light). From it he developed a system of Christian Gnosticism, which has influenced Swedenborg, Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, George Fox (founder of the Quakers), Adam Weishaupt (founder of the Illuminati), the theosophists and high grade Freemasonry, to name a few. The "eye in the pyramid" on the back of the dollar bill was one of Bohme's trademark images.

His cosmology consisted of the Trinity +1. The first person, God the Father, is the primal, unmanifested reality, the Abyss that contains all potentiality. The second person, the Son, is the desire of the Abyss to reveal Himself, which is accomplished through divine introspection/self-contemplation. So, the third person, the Holy Spirit, is the process of God's self-reflection. However, this process involves a divine mirror, which Bohme calls Sophia or "Virgin Wisdom", sometimes viewed as the fourth person. It was seeing the images in the mirror of Wisdom that made God want to manifest potentialities in reality through Creation. This suggests that God is a kind of fractal, a self-replicating binary-based matrix of tension between potentiality and actuality, perpetually growing in complexity. Good and evil become the positive and negative aspects of Creation, one strives to differentiate itself, the other to sink back into oblivion. The Neoplatonist influence is especially noticeable here, as evil is defined as an absence of good. Furthermore, the Fall, departure from God, was a necessary step for humanity to evolve to a state of redemption superior to original innocence. Superior because it is achieved through free will and deliberate action, while original innocence can only be maintained through ignorance of good and evil (as in the Garden of Eden before the fruit incident).

Jacob Bohme, Invisible Basilica
Jacob Bohme, Rotten.com
Jacob Bohme Resources, UCF.edu

Smoking pot strengthens bones

2006-01-21T07:20:00.000-05:00

Researchers at Hebrew University found that certain properties of the cannabis plant can strengthen human bones, ergo preventing osteoporosis. The article appeared this week in the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.) journal. The research team, headed by Prof. Itai Bab, and partially funded by the US NIH (National Institutes of Health), found that plants like marijuana contain substances that activate CB2-receptors, endocannabinoids ("inner weed"), fatty acids produced mainly in the brain but also found in bones and the immune system. Many CB2-receptors were found in mice bones and shown to be key in preserving normal bone density. However, pot also activates the CB1-receptors, mostly present in the nervous system, and it is this reaction that gives cannabis its psychoactive aspect. For this reason, the researchers have already developed a synthetic compound called HU-308, which battles osteoporosis without the high. Still, looks like another point for team Medical Marijuana.

HU Scientists Develop Prototype Drug to Prevent Osteoporosis Based on Cannabinoids Produced by Body, HUNews
Pot-like substances help fight osteoporosis, ScienceBlog.com

Crow intelligence

2006-01-20T21:38:00.000-05:00

Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed to have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The crow has a cunning rep in the avian kingdom. It is the messenger for the Zoroastrian good god Ahura-Mazda, as well as for Hermes (Mercury) and Apollo. Norse god Odin, had two ravens, Huginn and Munnin (Mind and Memory), one on each shoulder. There is a Greek myth that recounts how the crow became black, the love story of Coronis and Ischys. Coronis was pregnant with Apollo's baby, but before she had the kid, she went and shacked up with Ischys. Apollo found out about this from a crow and in his anger turned the crow black for bringing bad news and then proceeded to kill Ischys and the pregnant Coronis (for what it's worth, he did feel bad as his lover was lying on the funeral pyre, so he saved the kid by performing the first c-section, the child was Aesclepius, future father of medicine). This identification as a harbinger is possibly why a gathering of crows is a "murder", of ravens an "unkindness."

Crows and other corvidae top the bird IQ scale, followed by falcons, hawks, herons and woodpeckers. They have unusually large brains for their size, about the size of a chimpanzee's, while rivaling the great apes in intelligence. They use traffic stops to crush nuts, setting and retrieving them during red lights. Like other scavengers they know to follow armies for carrion. They can talk, make tools out of wire, and form complex hierarchical societies. They can even lie.

Dr Bungyar, University of Austria, conducted an experiment to see what ravens learned from each other while foraging. He had two birds, one dominant and one subordinate, named after Odin's. Their task was to work out which color-coded film containers held cheese, open them and eat. The subordinate was far better at this than the dominant. But as soon as he'd start eating, the dominant one would bully him away to gain access to the food. So then the subordinate headed over to a set of empty containers, opened them enthusiastically, and pretended to eat. The dominant followed, whereupon the subordinate rushed to the loaded containers, having clearly misled the other. But that's not all, the dominant one soon grew wise and stopped falling for the tactic, at which point the subordinate got angry and started throwing things about. Crows not only lie, but they can tell when others lie, and even get upset when they're found out.

Quoth the raven, Economist
Crows as clever as great apes, study says, National Geographics
Crows and jays topbird IQ scale, BBC

Free therapy via internet

2006-01-20T10:24:00.000-05:00

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a psychological treatment which believes that thoughts are the causes of emotions (not vice versa) and that mental disorders stem from irrational thoughts which can be replaced by more realistic substitutes. Still, therapy takes time, effort and money, meanwhile cognitive therapist are few and far between. Fortunately, now you can be treated for depression over the internet from the comfort of your own home, and the British Journal of Psychiatry will vouch for it. One of the examples of online treatment is Australian National University's open-access MoodGym, free to use, confidential and backed by several studies. Though it's recommended that such treatments be used as supplements to normal therapy, people have showed improvement from the internet versions alone.

MoodGym, ANU.edu
Internet-based self-help for depression: randomized controlled trial, British Journal of Psychiatry

Musical training sharpens the perception of emotions in others

2006-01-19T07:36:00.000-05:00

A curious group study led by William Thompson examined the link between musical training and the ability to percieve emotions in others. They recorded a person saying ordinary sentences like "the chairs are made of wood" with different emotions: happy, sad, angry, fearful. Then, by calculating the average pitch of each syllable, the recordings were transformed into musical sequences. What they were using was speech prosody, the musical aspects of speech such as pitch, pace, vocal stress, and duration of pauses. The processed clips were played for two groups - one of adults with no musical training, the other with 8-13 years of music lessons - who were asked to judge whether the corresponding sequence was angry, sad, happy, or fearful. In every case, the trained group came out on top, especially in detecting sadness.

So, it seems that an understanding of musical harmony can lead to insight into social harmony. But then that idea is nothing new. Music training has been emphasized by many, including the Ancient Greek philosopher/mystic Protagoras, Chinese sage Confucius, and Friedrich Nietzsche who said that "without music life would be a mistake".

Thompson, W.F., Schellenberg, E.G., & Husain, G. (2004). Decoding speech prosody: Do music lessons help? Emotion, 4(1), 46-64.

Music training helps people understand emotions in speech, CognitiveDaily.com

Come die in Oregon, Supreme Court Assisted Suicide ruling

2006-01-18T08:35:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, January 17, in a 6-3 vote, the US Supreme Court validated Oregon's unique 1997 physician-assisted suicide statute, the Death with Dignity law, used to end the lives of 200+ terminally ill patients. The ruling backed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that former-Attorney General John Ashcroft's "unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide." Consequently, the Bush administration improperly tried to use federal drug law to prosecute Oregon doctors who prescribe overdoses. "The authority desired by the government is inconsistent with the design of the statute in other fundamental respects. The attorney general does not have the sole delegated authority under the (law)," Kennedy wrote for himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.

The Court's Ruling, SupremeCourtUS.gov
DeathWithDignity.org

Future Technology Timeline

2005-08-30T05:08:00.000-04:00

BT's futurology department has compiled a Technology Timeline for the next 60+ years. In the past they've correctly predicted text messaging, email spam and internet search engines. Here's a sample:

2006 - 2010 Emotionally responsive toys. Electronic medical prescriptions. Video tiles.
2008 - 2012 Medicine delivered via fruit. Video tattoos. Heart rate/temperature sensitive fabrics.
2011 - 2015 Self-driving car. Tooth regeneration. Microchips in food.
2013 - 2017 Active make-up. Robots guiding the blind.
2016 - 2020 Electornic life forms get basic rights. Viewers play film roles. Emotion control devices.
2021 - 2025 E-translation. Holographic TVs.
2026 - 2030 3D home printers.
2031 - 2035 Biostasis in space travel. Computer geniuses.
2036 - 2040 Space elevator.
2041 - 2045 Moon base
2046 - 2050 Mars colony. Nuclear fusion.
2051+ Brain downloads.

Technology Timeline, [PDF]
Technology Timeline Home, BTPLC.com

Development of ape culture

2005-08-29T03:05:00.000-04:00

By training captive chimps to use tools in different ways, a team at the University of St Andrews in the UK and the National Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, US, have shown experimentally that primates develop cultural traditions through imitation. They presented two different groups of chimps with a problem: how to retrieve an item of food stuck behind a blockage in a system of tubes. One chimpanzee from each group was secretly taught a novel way to solve the problem. Ericka was taught how to use a stick to lift the blockage up so that the food fell out. Another female chimp, Georgia, was shown how to poke at the blockage so that the ball of food rolled out of the back of the pipes. Each chimp was then reunited with its group, and the scientists watched how they behaved. They found that the chimps gathered around Ericka or Georgia and soon copied their behaviour. By the end of two months, the two different groups were still using their own way of getting at the food and two distinct cultural traditions had been established.

Chimpanzee Culture Confirmed, BBC.co.uk.

Placebos Trigger Opioid Release in the Brain

2005-08-28T16:25:00.000-04:00

Jon-Kar Zubieta's team at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, US, has confirmed that placebos relieve pain by boosting the release of endorphins. Fourteen healthy males in their twenties volunteered to try what they were told was "a medication that may or may not relieve pain". To induce pain, the researchers gave the young men infusions into the jaw that made them ache. All the volunteers, who were given a placebo of salt solution, reported feeling less pain. But the researchers did not simply take their word for it: instead, they scanned the volunteers' brains using positron emission tomography (PET). They had injected the volunteers with a radioactive tracer that binds to the same mu-opioid receptors as endorphins do, which allowed them to figure out the level of endorphins produced in each volunteer's brain. The scans revealed that after the volunteers took the placebo, their brains released more pain-relieving endorphins than normal. Zubieta thinks the placebo effect is piggybacking on the body's innate painkilling system. "[The system] is there to ensure the survival of the organism," he says. "The placebo effect is acting through these mechanisms." But exactly how it does this remains a mystery.

Placebos trigger and opioid hit in the brain, NewScientist.com.

Atop the Mountain, Closer to God

2005-08-28T03:57:00.000-04:00

Abstract: The fundamental revelations to the founders of the three monotheistic religions, among many other revelation experiences, had occurred on a mountain. These three revelation experiences share many phenomenological components like feeling and hearing a presence, seeing a figure, seeing lights, and feeling of fear. In addition, similar experiences have been reported by non-mystic contemporary mountaineers. The similarities between these revelations on mountains and their appearance in contemporary mountaineers suggest that exposure to altitude might affect functional and neural mechanisms, thus facilitating the experience of a revelation. Different functions relying on brain areas such as the temporo-parietal junction and the prefrontal cortex have been suggested to be altered in altitude. Moreover, acute and chronic hypoxia significantly affect the temporo-parietal junction and the prefrontal cortex and both areas have also been linked to altered own body perceptions and mystical experiences. Prolonged stay at high altitudes, especially in social deprivation, may also lead to prefrontal lobe dysfunctions such as low resistance to stress and loss of inhibition. Based on these phenomenological, functional, and neural findings we suggest that exposure to altitudes might contribute to the induction of revelation experiences and might further our understanding of the mountain metaphor in religion.

Why revelations have occurred on mountains? Shahar Arzya, Moshe Ideld, Theodor Landisb and Olaf Blankea

Light Faster Than Light

2005-08-27T04:52:00.000-04:00

A team of researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) has successfully demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to control the speed of light - both slowing it down and speeding it up - in an optical fiber, using off-the-shelf instrumentation in normal environmental conditions. Their results, to be published in the August 22 issue of Applied Physics Letters, could have implications that range from optical computing to the fiber-optic telecommunications industry.

Using their Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) method, the group was able to slow a light signal down by a factor of 3.6, creating a sort of temporary "optical memory." They were also able to create extreme conditions in which the light signal travelled faster than 300 million meters a second. And even though this seems to violate all sorts of cherished physical assumptions, Einstein needn't move over - relativity isn't called into question, because only a portion of the signal is affected.

Abstract: We demonstrate a method to achieve an extremely wide and flexible external control of the group velocity of signals as they propagate along an optical fiber. This control is achieved by means of the gain and loss mechanisms of stimulated Brillouin scattering in the fiber itself. Our experiments show that group velocities below 71 000 km/s on one hand, well exceeding the speed of light in vacuum on the other hand and even negative group velocities can readily be obtained with a simple benchtop experimental setup. We believe that the fact that slow and fast light can be achieved in a standard single-mode fiber, in normal environmental conditions and using off-the-shelf instrumentation, is very promising for a future use in real applications.

Light that travels... faster than light! ScienceBlog.com
Optically controlled slow and fast light in optical fibers using SBS, Miguel Gonzalez-Herraez, Kwang-Yong Song, and Luc Thevenaz

The Effect of Wealth Comparisons on Happiness

2005-08-26T22:23:00.000-04:00

Richer people tend to be happier than poorer people, according to sociological researcher Glenn Firebaugh, Pennsylvania State University, and graduate student Laura Tach, Harvard University. Their research is focused on whether the income effect on happiness results largely from the things money can buy (absolute income effect) or from comparing one's income to the income of others (relative income effect). They present their research in a session paper, titled "Relative Income and Happiness: Are Americans on a Hedonic Treadmill?," at the American Sociological Association Centennial Annual Meeting on August 14.

Firebaugh argues that, in evaluating their own incomes, individuals compare themselves to their peers of the same age. Therefore a person's reported level of happiness depends on how his or her income compares to others in the same age group. Using comparison groups on the basis of age, the researchers find evidence of both relative and absolute effects, but relative income is more important than absolute income in determining the happiness of individuals in the United States. This may result in a hedonic treadmill, because incomes in the United States rise over most of the adult lifespan.

This seems to be support French philosopher Rene Girard's theory of mimetic desire. While we assume that desire is either objective or subjective, in reality it usually rests on a third party. We want what others want. Opposition strengthens desire, because rivalry validates the object of desire as something worth pursuing. Inversely, quiet and untroubled possession weakens desire. E.g. The man whose wife I desire had perhaps ceased to desire her over time. His desire was dead, but upon contact with mine, which is living, it regains life.

Money can buy you happiness but only relative to your peer's income. Eurekalert.org
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Rene Girard

Hiatus

2005-08-18T01:01:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the absence. Crazy yet uneventful summer. But I'm back now, ready for some posting. Really, you don't believe me?

Ghosts detectors for sale

2005-04-26T22:06:00.000-04:00

Japanese company SolidAlliance has released its GhostRadar, a portable ghost detector/USB memory drive that can detect electromagnetic fields, as well as sense body heat.The company even has a forum on its website where people can report their parapsychological findings. For those who like an alternative, there is an old-school electromagnetic field meter available from Trifield for $179.

Electromagnetic fields have been known to alter perception by affecting the brain. People in areas with high EM concentrations sometimes experience hallucinations or have eerie feelings that go away when they leave the place. This has led some parapsychologists to propose that these fields may be ghosts or some other spirits, in turn sending them on ghosthunts for hotspots of EM activity in search of evidence. Now you can be a ghosthunter too. Who you gonna call?

GhostRadar, SolidAlliance.
TriField Natural EM Meter, TriField.

Rice, Now With Human Liver

2005-04-26T21:42:00.000-04:00

In the first modification of its kind, Japanese researchers have inserted a gene from the human liver into rice to enable it to digest pesticides and industrial chemicals. The gene makes an enzyme, code-named CPY2B6, which is particularly good at breaking down harmful chemicals in the body. Environmentalists say that no one will want to eat the partially human-derived food because it will smack of cannibalism. But supporters say that the controversial new departure presents no ethical problems and could bring environmental benefits. This continues the heated debate over Frankenfood, a term applied to the use of genetically modified organisms in food production, common in the US but largely frowned upon in Europe.

Frankenstein Foods: GM Industry Puts Human Gene into Rice, GNN.tv.

More on the Prophecies of St. Malachy

2005-04-25T23:02:00.000-04:00

Due to increased interest, here's some more info.

St. Malachy, a.k.a. Maolmhaodhog ua Morgairm, Maol Maedoc, and Malachy O'Morgair. Born in 1094 at Armagh, Ireland. Died November 2, 1148 at Clairvaux. He was the first Irish saint to be canonized by the pope, Clement III in 1190. He was reported to posses many powers, including levitation, healing (by laying on hands), and clairvoyance. He even correctly predicted the date of his death (though theoretically anyone could make a self-fulfilling prophecy like that, if they really want to).

While on his way to the Vatican to assume the post of papal legate of Ireland, he fell into a trance and had a vision of the 112 papal reigns from the succesor to Innocent II- Celestine II - through to the last pope, identified as Peter of Rome. Each pope was assigned a short description, rather than a specific name. However, these mottoes seem to refer at different times to family names, birthplace, coat-of-arms, or office held before papacy (e.g. Pius II, who reigned for only 26 days in 1503, was described De Parbo Homine - from a little man - his family names was Piccolomini, Italian for "little man"; Clement XIII, connected with the state of Umbria, whose emblem was a rose, Rosa Umbriae, Rose of Umbria). He presented the manuscript to Pope Innocent II, but it was forgotten until 1590.

The Last 10 Popes

1. Ignis ardens, The Burning Fire. PIUS X. 1903-1914. This Pope showed a burning passion for spiritual renewal in the Church.

2. Religio depopulata, Religion Laid Waste. BENEDICT XV. 1914-1922. During this Pope's reign saw Communism move into Russia where religious life was laid waste, and World War I with the death of millions of Christians who were carnage in Flanders Field and elsewhere.

3. Fides intrepida, Unshaken Faith. PIUS XI. 1922-1939. This Pope faced tremendous pressure from fascist and sinister powers in Germany and Italy, but he was an outspoken critic of Communism and Fascism which enraged Hitler.

4. Pasto angelicus, An Angelic Shepherd. PIUS XII. 1939-1958. This Pope had an affinity for the spiritual world and received visions which have not been made public. Peter Bander says Pius XII "has emerged as one of the great Popes of all time," and he "was in the truest sense of the word an Angelic Pastor to the flock..."

5. Pastor et nauta, Pastor and Mariner. JOHN XXIII. 1958-1963. John was a pastor to the world, much beloved, and the Patriarch of Venice. The connection to "mariner" is thus remarkable.

6. Flos florum, Flower of Flowers. PAUL VI. 1963-1978. Paul's coat-of-arms depicts three fleurs-de-lis, corresponding to Malachay's prophecy. His coat of arms included three fleurs-de-lis (iris blossoms).

7. De medietate lunae, Of the Half Moon. JOHN PAUL I. 1978-1978. John Paul I was elected Pope on August 26, 1978, when there was a half moon. He reigned 33 days, that is, about one month, when he died, although many think he was murdered. He was the 109th Pope - is "De Medietate Lunae" (Of the Half Moon). The corresponding pope was John Paul I (1978-78), who was born in the diocese of Belluno (beautiful moon) and was baptized Albino Luciani (white light). He became pope on August 26, 1978, when the moon appeared exactly half full. It was in its waning phase. He died the following month, soon after an eclipse of the moon.

8. Labor solis, The Labor of the Sun. JOHN PAUL II. 1978-2005. Pope John Paul II was the most traveled Pope in history. He circled the globe numerous times, preaching to huge audiences everywhere he went. He survived an assassination attempt. He has written a book which has enjoyed a large circulation. Like the sun which never ceases to labor and provides light daily, this Pope has been incessant. He was born on May 18, 1920. On that date in the morning there was a near total eclipse of the sun over Europe. Prophecy - The 110th Pope is "De Labore Solis" (Of the Solar Eclipse, or, From the Toil of the Sun). Like the sun he came out of the East (Poland).

9. Gloria olivae, The Glory of the Olive. The Order of St. Benedict has said this Pope will come from their order. It is interesting that Jesus gave his apocalyptic prophecy about the end of time from the Mount of Olives. This Pope will reign during the beginning of the tribulation Jesus spoke of. The 111th prophesy is "Gloria Olivae" (The Glory of the Olive). The Order of Saint Benedict has claimed that this pope will come from their ranks. Saint Benedict himself prophesied that before the end of the world his Order, known also as the Olivetans, will triumphantly lead the Catholic Church in its fight against evil.

10. Petrus romanus, PETER THE ROMAN - This final Pope will likely be Satan, taking the form of a man named Peter who will gain a worldwide allegiance and adoration. He will be the final antichrist which prophecy students have long foretold. If it were possible, even the very elect would be deceived. The 112th prophesy states: In persecutione extrema S.R.E. sedebit Petrus Romanus, qui pascet oues in multis tribulationibus: quibus transactis ciuitas septicollis diruetur, & Iudex tremêdus iudicabit populum suum. Finis. "In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Petrus Romanus, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The End."

Papal Prophecies, Crystalinks.com.
Prophecies of the Popes, Wikipedia.org.

Malachy's Prophecy for Pope Benedict XVI

2005-04-20T04:37:00.000-04:00

A.D. 1139, Saint Malachy O'Morgair, Archbishop of Armagh, Ireland, wrote down a list of 112 future Popes, each followed by a short phrase in Latin (except for the last one, who gets a lengthy apocalyptic description). Much has been made of this, since most popes have taken the names suggested in the prophesy (albeit, it is possible that the well-known existence of the prophecy makes it a self-fulfilling one). I could bore you with eariler examples, but seems it would be more fun to check out the new pope.

Benedict XVI, Malachy's motto: Gloria Olivae, the glory of the olive. The olive branch is one of the symbols of St. Benedict (which led some to suspect that he'd be a Benedictine), hence the choice of name is clear. But that's not all, Joseph Ratzinger was born April 16, the feast of St. Benedict Joseph Labre the Holy Pilgrim; Joseph, Benedict, weird. The olive branch, of course, is the symbol of peace, Benedict XVI chose Pax, peace, as his papal motto. Perhaps an omen, on the opening day of the conclave Cyprus elected a Turkish president who's trying to bring together the two sectors, the Cyprus flag has two olive branches. Interestingly, some suggested that the prophecy referred to St. Benedict the Black (the Moor), patron saint of African Americans, thereby implying that this pope would be black. However, St. Benedict himself wasn't Black. Some just mistook the Italian il moro to mean he was a Moor.

Soon, based on the prophecy and Mt 17:1-8, Benedict XVI will suggest that three buildings be builit in Jerusalem: a temple, a church and a mosque, to make the city a place of love and worship. He will work towards world peace, but ultimately fail. Soon after he dies, World War III will break out. This should take place circa 2010. The next pope is the last one mentioned in Malachy's prophecy.

Habemus Papum Benedictum XVI

2005-04-20T03:34:00.000-04:00

So we have a new pope now, neat. Here's some info from the Vatican website peppered with commentary.

Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dean of the College of Cardinals. Born on 16 April 1927 in Marktl am Inn, Germany. So, he just celebrated his 78th and three days later he's elected pope. Son of a police officer, he grew up in Traunstein and was called into the auxillary anti-aircraft service in the last months of WWII. According to the US Airforce website, the Fifteenth AF (composed of 80 B-17's and B-24's) bombed Traunstein on November 15, '44, so it's probably American planes Pope Benedict was gunning, but then again they were dropping bombs on him. Besides, there hasn't been a good warrior pope since Julius II, and we already have a warrior president. He studied philosophy and theology (hey, like me!) at the University of Munich and at the higher school in Freising. Ordained priest in 1951, he got a doctorate in theology in 1953 with a thesis called "The People and House of God in St. Augustine's doctrine of the Church". 1959-69 he taught dogma and fundamental theology in a couple German universities. 69- he was the Vice President and professor of dogmatic theology and of the history of dogma at the University of Regensburg. At age 35 he became a consultor at Vatican Council II. At 49, Paul VI made him Archbishop of Munich and Freising. A few months later, Paul VI made him Cardinal. After various honors, he was elected Vice Dean of the College of Cardinals, 6 November 1998, and Dean on 30 November 2002, and Pope on 19 April 2005. Here's what he had to say:

Urbi et Orbi Blessing (for the city and for the world)

Dear brothers and sisters, after our great Pope, John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in God's vineyard. I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools, and I especially trust in your prayers. In the joy of the resurrected Lord, trustful of his permanent help, we go ahead, sure that God will help. And Mary, his most beloved Mother, stands on our side. Thank you.

Ancient Greek Robots

2005-03-30T04:00:00.000-05:00

Automata: machines that imitate the behavior of living things. From Automatoi, the animated statues of animals and men created by the smith god Hephaestus. These examples reflect how, in some cases, people have been thinking about robotics as far back as 8 or 9th century BC.

Khalkotauroi (Bronze-footed Bulls) were two fire-breathing bull-shaped automata forged out of bronze by the smith-god Hephaestos as a gift for Aeetes, king of Kolkhis. When Jason and the Argonauts came to Kolkhis in searh of the Golden Fleece, Aeetes demanded the hero Yoke the bulls and plow field with dragon's teeth before he would hand over the fleece.

The Khryseiai Keledones or Celedones (Golden Charmers) were beautiful women-shaped automata. Crafted out of gold, they adorned the first temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Kuonkhryseos and Kuonargyreos were a pair of watchdogs, "deathless for ever and unchanging," one of gold, the other of silver, made for the palace of King Alkinous of the Phaiakians, visited by Odysseus (Ody. 7.87).

Kaukasian Eagle was a giant bronze robot, constructed by Hephaestus for the daily task of pecking out chained Titan Prometheus' regenerating liver.

Talos was a giant bronze robot which Hephaestos presented to Europa, Queen of Crete, on her wedding to Minos. The automaton would run around the entire island three times a day, patrolling for pirates whom he would drive off by throwing stones. Some claim that he was actually a bronze man from the bronze generation (mentioned by Plato in his Laws) , for he had one blood vessel that extended from his neck down to his ankles, where it was kept in place by a bronze bolt (Apollodorus 1.140). He was destroyed by Medea from Jason's ship. Out of range of Telos' rocks, she invoked the Keres (spirits of death), three times in song, three times in spoken prayer, and then focused her "malignity" on the robot. Then as Telos was picking up a big stone, he grazed his ankle on a sharp rock, "ichor ran from him like molten lead", he stood for a second, "high on the jutting cliff" and then "came down with a resounding crash" (Argonautica 4.1638).

The Tripodes Khryseoi were a set of twenty golden tripods on wheels made by Hephaestos for the Olympian feasts. They were endowed with self-animation and wheeled themselves in and out of the halls as they were required (Iliad 18.371).

The Hippoi Kabeiroi were a pair of fire-breathing horses which Hephaestos cast out of bronze for his sons, the Kabeiroi (?). Fire breathing robot horses!

The Kourai Khryseai were a two lifelike golden maiden automata. They were said to possess intelligence, strength and the gift of speech. They would help Hephaestus with his household.

27% of US Treated for Mental Problems/2 yr

2005-03-27T14:40:00.000-05:00

A national survey of the general adult population and of adults who have needed or received some form of mental health treatment find that more than a quarter (27%) of all adults have received some form of mental health treatment over a two-year period.

Among those patients who have received treatment in the past two years:
1/3 (34%) received both therapy and drugs.
1/2 (47%) of patients used prescription drugs but did not receive therapy.
1/5 (19%) of patients received therapy but did not use prescription drugs.

A modest majority of those who received treatment were extremely (15%) or very (39%) satisfied with their care, with a much larger share (85%) at least somewhat satisfied. There was little difference in levels of satisfaction among patients who received drugs and therapy, therapy only, or drugs only.

Quarter of US Adults Have Received Mental Health Treatment Over Two-Year Period, MedicalNewsToday.com.

RedTacton HAN lets you be the network

2005-03-25T14:57:00.000-05:00

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT, in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo) is developing an innovative Human Area Networking (HAN) technology called RedTacton (touch + action = tacton) that safely turns the surface of the human body into a data transmission path at speeds up to 10 Mbps between any two points on the body, giving peer-2-peer a whole new meaning. Using a novel electro-optic sensor (that bounces a laser beam off of an electro-optionc crystal and measures the reflected beam), NTT has already developed a small PCMCIA card-sized prototype RedTacton transceiver. RedTacton enables the first practical Human Area Network between body-centered electronic devices and PCs or other network devices embedded in the environment through a new generation of user interface based on natural human actions such as touching, walking, or stepping on a particular spot. RedTacton can be used for intuitive operation of computer-based systems in daily life, temporary one-to-one private networks based on personal handshaking, device personalization, security, and a host of other applications based on new behavior patterns enabled by RedTacton.

NTT News Release 050218, NTT.
RedTacton.com

Fascism Warning Signs

2005-03-23T06:33:00.000-05:00

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
5. Rampant sexism.
6. A controlled mass media.
7. Obsession with national security.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
9. Power of corporations protected.
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
14. Fraudulent elections.

Fascism Anyone? Laurence W Britt.

Fasting for Longevity

2005-03-23T03:44:00.000-05:00

"I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand."
Benjamin Franklin

Studies over the past 70 years have established that substantial calorie reduction - up to 50 percent in some studies - not only can reduce the rate of cell proliferation, it can extend the maximum life span of a variety of organisms, including rats, flies, worms and yeast. The results can be dramatic, with 30 to 70 percent increases in life span reported in the studies.

"Significant caloric restriction is the one and only thing that has been scientifically proven to extend life span," said Hellerstein, who has a joint appointment at UC San Francisco. He noted that while exercise and good nutrition can prevent premature death by disease, they have not been shown to extend a maximum life span.

Meanwhile, a staggering 67% of America is obese (30% over their ideal body weight). Although, the proportion of overweight people in parts of Europe has surpassed US. The portlier countries include Finland, Germany, Greece, the Chech Republic, Slovakia and Malta, as identified by the International Obesity Task Force.

Fasting every other day, while cutting few calories, may lower cancer risk, UC Newswire.
A Hunger Artist, Franz Kafka.

Trippin face with Dr Jekyll

2005-03-21T06:26:00.000-05:00

"Louis's mad behaviour... I think it must be the ergotine that effects his brain at such time."
Letter from Fanny Stevenson to William Henley.

A new theory suggests that Jekyll and Hyde creator Robert Louis Stevenson tripped on LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide aka acid) as a side effect of his tuberculosis treatment, ergotine (a derivetive of the fungus). Ergot, which grows on rye and wheat, has caused mass poisonings throughout history. Because of the accompanying hallucinations and paranoia, ergot poisoning was occasionally mistaken for demonic possession. Many witch trials including those in Salem, MA, in 1692, are believed to be tied to ergotism. Professor Robert Winston, the chair of the House of Lords select committee on science and technology, believes that Stevenson had an ergotine overdose that may have inspired him to write The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde two weeks later. Winston's argument's pretty tight, mainly because Stevenson always claimed that the plot for Jekyll and Hyde came to him in a fevered dream while he was seriously ill, it was just a matter of checking what drugs he was taking.

Drug took Stevenson face to face with Hyde, Times Online.

Hitachi unveils Storm Scooter, Toyota robot blows

2005-03-21T05:13:00.000-05:00

"We aimed to create a robot that could live and co-exist with people," Toshihiko Horiuchi, Hitachi's Mechanical Research Lab. Excellent Mobility and Interactive Existenceas Workmate - or Emiew, is the new robot for Hitachi, to be showcased at this month's World Fair. As you can see from prototypes Pal and Chum, the Emiew is a hybrid of a Star Wars storm trooper and a Segway scooter, some sort of storm scooter. It's 4.2 ft (1.3 m) tall, can move at 3.7 miles (6 km)/hour, has sensors on the head, waist and near the wheels, responds to commands from a vocabulary of about 100 words, and can be "trained" for practical use in 5-6 years. Sony and Honda have also made humanoid robots to showcase their engineering, in a recent robot race of one-upmanhip. I like Toyota's, because it plays trumpet. By 2007, it is predicted there will be c. 2.5 mil "entertainment and leisure" robots in homes (137,000 today), with c. 4.1 mil doing house work, according to the UNECE (UN Economic Commission for Europe) and the International Federation of Robotics.

Hitachi unveils 'fastest robot', BBC News.

Multitasking and the Brain

2005-03-20T05:35:00.000-05:00

The maximum # of variables a person can keep track of at a time is four, as mentioned in R A Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy. In a new study by Graeme S. Halford, U of Queensland, 30 academics were given incomplete verbal descriptions of statistical interactions between fictitious variables, with graphs that represented the interactions. Participants had to complete given sentences to describe the interactions in the graphs, interactions involving 2-5 variables. After each problem, they also expressed how confident they were of their solutions. Needless to say, performance and confidence dropped as complexity grew until accuracy was no better than chance with five-way interactions. After the four- and five-way interactions, participants said things like, "I kept losing information," and "I just lost track."

How much can your mind keep track of? PhysOrg.com.

History of Communications 35000BC-1998AD

2005-03-20T04:21:00.000-05:00

There's a neat timeline on Nathan.com tracing the development of communication through history, starting with the first paleolithic "writings" in the 36th century BC (though I suspect he may be using the word loosely, with liberal dating). The chronology is broken up by age: Nomadic, Agricultural, AD, [Scientific Revolution], Industrial, Steam, Electricity, Atomic, Data, Service, and Light Age, leaving off in 1998 with Motorola's Iridium global sattelite system beginning operation, termed the Eleventh Information Revolution. The history can also be broken down by area of communication: Language, Mathematics, Writing/Print, Broadcasting, or Computing. Still a work in progress, but worth a gander.

The History of Communications Timeline, Nathan.com.

Carroll's lost Alice chapter

2005-03-19T05:05:00.000-05:00

Alice began with a little scream of laughing, which she turned into a cough as well as she could. At last she managed to say gravely, "I can bite anything I want,"
"Not with a mouth as small as that," the Wasp persisted. "If you was a-fighting, now - could you get hold of the other one by the back of the neck?"
"I'm afraid not," said Alice.
"Well, that's because your jaws are too short," the Wasp went on: "but the top of your head is nice and round." He took off his own wig as he spoke, and stretched out one claw towards Alice, as if he wished to do the same for her, but she kept out of reach, and would not take the hint. So he went on with his criticisms...

Read the whole of A Wasp in a Wig, the lost chapter that was to follow the White Knight in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass."

Green guerrillas and eco-terrorism

2005-03-19T04:45:00.000-05:00

A recent post on Global Guerrillas outlines a potential development in eco-terrorism.
If activists adopt global guerrilla tactics, they could coerce a rapid move to clean energy alternatives. Small but effective attacks on major energy pipelines would quickly increase the costs of conventional energy such that clean power alternatives would become extremely attractive. This would be dictated by a direct economic comparison (costs) as well as indirect factors such as reliability of delivery. The "systems sabotage tax" would induce a tipping point in energy market equilibria towards green alternatives if it is extended over a long period (longer than one season) and is of a sufficient level. Moreover, green guerrilla activity would have few (if any) casualties and would probably be lost in the midst of the Islamic terror threat. Wonder if this is connected to the big NE blackout back August 14, 2003.

Effects of meditation and prayer on the brain

2005-03-19T02:44:00.000-05:00

"I think we are poised at a wonderful time in our history to be able to explore religion and spirituality in a way which was never thought possible," told Andrew Newberg, a radiologist at UPenn, to BBC's Discovery program. Using brain imaging, Newberg and friends studied a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks as they meditated for about an hour. When the monks attained concentration they were asked to pull a string that released an injection of radioactive tracer into their blood. The small amount of radioactive marker would be used to see how the die moved to active parts of the brain (this process was repeated in a normal waking state).

"There was an increase in activity in the front part of the brain, the area that is activated when anyone focuses attention on a particular task," Dr Newberg explained. Furthermore, a decrease in activity in the back part of the brain - the parietal lobe - responsible for orientation, reinforced the general suggestion that meditation leads to a lack of spatial awareness. "During meditation, people have a loss of the sense of self and frequently experience a sense of no space and time and that was exactly what we saw."

In an earlier study, Dr Newberg looked at the brain activity of Franciscan nuns during "centering" prayer. Though because of the verbal element additional parts of the brain were used, prayer also "activated the attention area of the brain, and diminished activity in the orientation area," supporting the theory that meditation and prayer have similar effects on the mind. "When someone has a mystical experience, they perceive that sense of reality to be far greater and far clearer than our usual everyday sense of reality. Since the sense of spiritual reality is more powerful and clear, perhaps that sense of reality is more accurate than our scientific everyday sense of reality."

Meditation mapped in monks, BBCNews.com. Listen.
Related:
Meditation gives brain a charge, WashingtonPost.com.
Meditation changes temperatures, Harvard Gazette.

Caligula Becomes Emperor, 37 AD

2005-03-19T01:56:00.000-05:00

On this day, the dead Roman emperor Tiberius' will was annulled and Gaius (Caligula) took the title of Augustus. The will named him and his cousin Tiberius Gemellus as joint heirs, but backed by Praetorian Prefect Q. Sutorius Marco, Caligula had it voided on grounds of insanity and then had his cousin killed just in case. Then, he had a pontoon bridge built leading across the sea from Baiae to Puzzuoli; a stretch of water two and a half miles long. With the bridge in place, Caligula, in the attire of a Thracian gladiator, mounted a horse and rode across. Once at one end, he got off his horse and returned on a chariot drawn by two horses. These crossings lasted for two days. The historian Suetonius explains that this was done because of a prediction made by an astrologer called Trasyllus to emperor Tiberius, that "Caligula had no more chance of becoming emperor than of crossing the bay of Baiae on horseback."

Also see: Alber Camus' "Caligula".

Brittle robots, metacognitive loops

2005-03-18T07:32:00.001-05:00

Brittleness, in a robot or program, is an inability to deal with unexpected developments, an important problem in AI. For examples of brittleness see the DARPA Grand Challange, $1 million competition for racing a robot across 142 miles of Mojave Desert in under 10 hours, which not one robot came close to doing, with some running into obstacles, others having navigation problems, and with one which couldn't start itself. Th solution proposed by Michael L Anderson and Donald R Perlis is a metacognitive loop, a mechanism whereby the robot or program can notice whether or not it is achieving its goals, and if not, it can then try something else or just perform random variations in behavior until it gets better results. No one wants a brittle robot.

Logic, self awareness and self-improvment; The metacognitive loop and the problem of brittleness, Michael L Anderson and Donald R Perlis, Journal of Logic and Computation 14, 2004.

Laser physicist awarded Templeton Prize for spirituality

2005-03-18T05:40:00.000-05:00

Dr Charles Townes, a physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for helping to invent the laser (not to mention the maser), was announced as the winner of the $1.5 million Templeton Prize, awarded annually for progress or research in spiritual matters. Keep in mind that currently the Nobel Prize is $1.3 million, making Templeton the world's biggest score. Past recipients of the prize include Mother Teresa, former Indian president Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Princeton's Dr Freeman J Dyson and Rev James McCord, and Seton Hall University's Benedictine monk astrophysicist Rev Stanley L. Jaki (NJ represent).

Dr Townes, 89, a longtime professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has long argued that science and religion are more alike than different and are destined to merge. In his seminal paper titled "The Convergence of Science and Religion", published in 1966 in the IBM journal "Think", he wrote: "Understanding the order in the universe and understanding the purpose in the universe are not identical, but they are also not very far apart."

Physicist is Awarded Templeton Prize in Spiritual Matters, New York Times.
TempletonPrize.org.

The Stem Cell Factory

2005-03-18T03:52:00.000-05:00

Embryonic stem cells - primal, undifferentiated cells which have the unique potential to produce any kind of cell in the body - have been mass produced using bioreactors. A bioreactor is a tissue-growing device, it has a chamber for holding polymer threads on which stem cells grow and another chamber for fluid that delivers chemical messengers (cytokines) to stem cells to keep them undifferentiated. It's better than a flask because it allows stem cells to grow in three dimensions, as cells normally do inside the body.

Shang-Tian Yang of Ohio State grew mouse embryonic stem cells on strands of polymer threads inside a bioreactor as well as in a flask for comparison. The bioreactor cell growth increased 193-fold in 15 days, with cell density anywhere from 10- to 100-fold higher than for conventional laboratory methods, yielding several hundreds of millions more stem cells. This is good since mouse embryonic stem cells are very similar to human stem cells and because, as Yang remarks: "There's more of a demand for an unlimited supply of embryonic stem cells." Ain't that the truth? The people need more stem cells!

The research was reported in San Diego, California at the 2005 national meeting of the American Chemical Society.