Being "always on" is being always off, to something.
Eggheads
Topic: Science
10:49 am EDT, Sep 23, 2007
Social structure is link structure is intelligence.
In a growing recognition of the genius of birds, scientists are now studying various birds to explore everything from spatial memory to the grammatical structure of human language. This research is helping to reveal the secrets of the human brain. But it is also overturning the conventional evolutionary story of intelligence, in which all paths lead to the creation of the human cortex. The tree of life, scientists are discovering, has numerous branches of brilliance.
Intricate social structures mean that many birds are subject to the same social challenges as primates. It is these challenges, the research suggests, that make them so smart.
... a lover not of war but of war stories, the grit and stink of combat, be it military, political, bureaucratic or some combination thereof.
... an outsize but fascinating epic directed simultaneously to battle buffs and pacifists, history enthusiasts and political moralists. With sometimes numbing detail and elegant maps, it evokes the nobility and crazy heroism of outnumbered American grunts in a dozen of the war’s critical engagements, cinematic scenes that alternate with crisp essays about the mindless way the war began, the reckless way it was managed and the fruitless way it ended.
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MacArthur ordered the swift conquest of all North Korea, confident that the Chinese would not dare challenge him. But hundreds of thousands of Chinese lay in wait to spring American history’s greatest ambush. Halberstam writes: “The bet had been called, and other men would now have to pay for that terrible arrogance and vainglory.”
Yet again the Americans were routed, and MacArthur’s obsessive reaction was to agitate for total war against China, nuclear if necessary. He had to be fired by Truman in April 1951 so that more sober generals could settle for “a grinding, limited war” that asked men to “die for a tie,” a stalemate that eventually restored the original border between the Koreas.
Many people will say it is morally acceptable to pull a switch that diverts a train, killing just one person instead of the five on the other track. But if asked to save the same five lives by throwing a person in the train’s path, people will say the action is wrong. This may be evidence for an ancient subconscious morality that deters causing direct physical harm to someone else. An equally strong moral sanction has not yet evolved for harming someone indirectly.
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, lamented St. Paul, and this engrossing scientific interpretation of traditional lore backs him up with hard data. Citing Plato, Buddha and modern brain science, psychologist Haidt notes the mind is like an "elephant" of automatic desires and impulses atop which conscious intention is an ineffectual "rider." Haidt sifts Eastern and Western religious and philosophical traditions for other nuggets of wisdom to substantiate—and sometimes critique—with the findings of neurology and cognitive psychology. The Buddhist-Stoic injunction to cast off worldly attachments in pursuit of happiness, for example, is backed up by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's studies into pleasure. And Nietzsche's contention that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger is considered against research into post-traumatic growth. An exponent of the "positive psychology" movement, Haidt also offers practical advice on finding happiness and meaning. Riches don't matter much, he observes, but close relationships, quiet surroundings and short commutes help a lot, while meditation, cognitive psychotherapy and Prozac are equally valid remedies for constitutional unhappiness. Haidt sometimes seems reductionist, but his is an erudite, fluently written, stimulating reassessment of age-old issues.
On July 7–8, 2007, the William A. Haseltine Foundation for Medical Sciences and the Arts sponsored a series of high-concept talks about neuroscience for this prestigious gathering. Featuring some of the top scientists in the field, a conference track titled "Your Brain and Yourself" drew large audiences, and for these intelligent but mostly nonscientific attendees, the researchers stepped back from their usual data-driven styles to discuss neuroscience's larger challenges.
Much of the current boom in neuroscience, which conference organizer Eric Haseltine referred to as the field's new "golden age," has been driven by the development of new technologies for peering inside working brains. What we're seeing is at once fascinating, mysterious, and in some cases, more than a little bit frightening. Besides opening the door to potentially revolutionary diagnostic and therapeutic strategies, the new technology could cause a wholesale re-evaluation of some of our most fundamental social beliefs.
The basic premise is that every step in evolutionary change is stochastic and adaptive. No new structure that appears in this way persists unless it is immediately adaptive, even if just one more step might produce something very superior. Thus green leaves dominate because they happen to have come along before black ones, and also because chance uncovered no route from green to black that was adaptive at every new step.
Solms is the place to go, if you want to find the most beautiful mechanical objects in the world.
Automobiles need gas, whereas the truest mechanisms run on nothing but themselves.
... durable, companionable, costly, and basically unchanging, like a spouse.
The great inventions, more often than not, are triggered less by vast historical movements than by the pressures of individual chance.
This is not just a question of ergonomics ... Rather, it has to do with ... the illusion, fostered by a mere machine, that the world out there is asking to be looked at —— to be caught and consumed while it is fresh, like a trout.
While a number of artists examine how catastrophic histories are inscribed into geography or architecture, Danh's work is far more organic. It is not just the material that calls attention to the organic - his material is foliage - rather it is the process by which the images are formed and the very quality of them. Danh, in fact, invented an entirely new technique in order, not just to superimpose, but rather to grow the image into the leaf.
In a stunning indictment of the Bush administration and Congress, best-selling author Naomi Wolf lays out her case for saving American democracy. In authoritative research and documentation Wolf explains how events of the last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the 20th century’s worst dictatorships such as Germany, Russia, China, and Chile.
I have written this warning because our country -- the democracy our young patriots expect to inherit -- is in the process of being altered forever.
Americans expect to have freedom around us just as we expect to have air to breathe, so we have only limited understanding of the furnaces of repression that the Founders knew intimately.
There are ten steps that are taken in order to close down a democracy or crush a prodemocratic movement, whether by capitalists, communists, or right-wing fascists. These ten steps, together, are more than the sum of their parts. Once all ten have been put in place, each magnifies the power of the others and of the whole. Impossible as it may seem, we are seeing each of these ten steps taking hold in the United States today.
A spectre is haunting global capitalism, the spectre of Naomi Klein. Wherever globalists wander, they find her standing in their way, sternly shaking her finger like a schoolteacher handing out bad marks.
Her new book, The Shock Doctrine, requires that we hack through a thicket of self-contradictions and wild overstatements. For her, hyperbole is not a literary device, it's a way of life.
If you can manage to read Klein, you need read no more. Learn her way of thinking and you'll not be required to think again.
