The evolutionary wonder of reading – hints from intracranial electrophysiology

I don’t know why creationists get hung up with the Platypus or the retina. I think it’s much more interesting that humans can read, despite it only being around for a few hundred years. For example …

Rare Procedure Pinpoints the Location, Speed and Sequence of the Brain's Language Processes: Scientific American

As part of preparation for their [epilepsy] surgery, three adults had electrodes implanted in Broca's area and anterior temporal cortex to allow doctors to pinpoint which areas of the brain would be best to remove. During the procedure, known as intracranial electrophysiology, researchers asked the patients to silently sound-out words they saw on a screen and to fill in the missing verb in the proper tense or the proper form of a missing noun. Meanwhile, the researchers were recording the local electric field potentials from the wired areas of subjects' brains to the nearest millisecond—and millimeter.

After studying the readouts, the researchers found that in these normally reading adults, word identification, grammar and pronunciation all activated parts of Broca's area—and in a very neatly defined sequence. Like clockwork, it took about 200 milliseconds to identify a word, 320 milliseconds for grammatical composition and 450 milliseconds for phonological encoding…

… Previous studies had shown that the brain takes about 600 milliseconds to form vocal speech. So the speed with which each of these processes occurred was not as big of a surprise to Sahin and his colleagues as the fact that these three distinct tasks were done separately, in a tightly timed sequence, and within millimeters of each other in the brain…

… The electrical readouts … help to dispel the theory that another part of the brain, Wernicke's area, is primarily responsible for reading and hearing language. Their data show that, in fact, Broca's area also activated during the reading and identification phases. These findings, "indicate that the role of Broca's area…should be characterized in more general terms," Hagoort and Levelt wrote…

Everyone wants to see this study repeated in persons with reading disorders, but this kind of opportunity is rare. We all owe thanks to these patients who helped out with this study while awaiting some pretty scary surgery.

See also:

• Hyperlexia: an explanation of why we can read? – 2004
• Reading and hand signals (2009)
• Be the Best You can Be- Understanding why reading is hard (Oct 2009)

Google reader micro-blogging and changes to Gordon Notes

Twitter is the most famous form of micro-blogging, but it doesn't fit into my memory management strategy and it doesn't help me communicate. So I don't do Twitter.

I do, however, love Google Reader. Many of the smaller blog posts I used to do are now iPhone authored comments on Google Reader articles I've shared and annotated.

So if you read this blog, you might like the Google Reader shared item stream. I've added a link to my GR share/annotation feed to my blogger template -- so it should show below each post.

 

For more of the tech details, hop over to Gordon’s Tech.

 

(Note: The first version of this post was removed due to apparent Google bugs with my shared item feed. These seem to have remitted for the moment, so I’m restoring the post)

 

--

My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Jim Carrey - enemy of the enlightenment

A recent NYT article about a non-rational attack on H1N1 immunization mentioned this group is now active against immunization, because of a faith-based belief that autism arises from immunization ...

Science-Based Medicine - Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, and “Green Our Vaccines”: Anti-vaccine, not “pro-safe vaccine”

...“Green Our Vaccines” rally, led by the celebrity couple Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey and organized and funded by Talk About Curing Autism (TACA), Generation Rescue (upon whose board McCarthy now sits)...

Carrey joins Oprah in the class of people who combine non-rational and harmful beliefs with the power of wealth and celebrity.

Anyone know of a rogues gallery of these enemies of enlightenment 2.0? We need an annual award ceremony where these sad fools receive appropriate recognition. Maybe SEFORA could launch one? Brad, you're good at this sort of thing ...

The epidemiology of suicide – human only?

Olivia Judson claims no other animal commits suicide. I wonder about cetaceans …

A Long, Melancholy Roar - Olivia Judson Blog - NYTimes.com

… Suicide rates have risen dramatically over the past 50 years. Worldwide, deaths from suicide now outnumber deaths from war and homicide together: the World Health Organization estimates that each year around one million people — predominantly men — kill themselves. The true number is probably higher, because for many countries there is no data. In some countries, suicide is now among the top ten causes of death. For the young, worldwide, it’s in the top five.

A huge effort has rightly been devoted to trying to understand the particular causes of suicide in different places — unemployment, drug addiction, relationship breakdown, intelligence, predisposing genes, what your mother ate while you were in the womb and so on.

But here’s another way to look at it. No other animal does this. Chimpanzees don’t hang themselves from trees, slit their wrists, set themselves alight, or otherwise destroy themselves. Suicide is an essentially human behavior. And it has reached unprecedented levels, especially among the young.

I’m not sure what this means. But it has made me think. We live in a way that no other animal has ever lived: our lifestyle is unprecedented in the history of the planet. Often, we like to congratulate ourselves on the cities we have built, the gadgets we can buy, the rockets we send to the moon. But perhaps we should not be so proud. Something about the way we live means that, for many of us, life comes to seem unbearable, a long, melancholy ache of despair.

Bite the apple, know despair.

I think of the human brain as a great pile of frantic evolutionary hacks, barely holding together at the best of times, a million years from getting sorted out. It’s a matter/antimatter drive bolted on to a goat cart. So it’s not surprising that it breaks in all kinds of ways.

The more surprising assertion is that rates are rising. I wonder first if that’s really true – historic data must be very hard to find. I also suspect that many suicide prone persons would die young in times of high external mortality, and that we’d expect suicide rates to rise as a population lives longer (suicide is much more common in the elderly).

One might speculate about growing awareness of the bleak realities of the material universe and suicide rates but I honestly don’t see any connection. Few people are as fond of bleak realities as I am.

How politics works ..

Yesterday was about employees perspective on PAC donations.

Today is about how to purchase a 21st century American Senator.

Scott Adams is on a roll.

(Click to go to the readable original)

Worse than 1981

I don’t remember the 1981-82 recession. I’d finished college, and I was off on a grand adventure (thank you Thomas J Watson).  I returned and started medical school.

Whatever that recession was like, this one is considerably worse …

Along With Layoffs, Recession’s Cost Can Be Seen in Pay Cuts - NYTimes.com

… The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track pay cuts, but it suggests they are reflected in the steep decline of another statistic: total weekly pay for production workers, pilots among them, representing 80 percent of the work force. That index has fallen for nine consecutive months, an unprecedented string over the 44 years the bureau has calculated weekly pay, capturing the large number of people out of work, those working fewer hours and those whose wages have been cut. The old record was a two-month decline, during the 1981-1982 recession…

Compensate Saudi Arabia for CO2 reductions?

Wow. I didn’t see this one coming….

Saudis Seek Compensation if Oil Exports Fall - NYTimes.com

Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist other oil-producing countries to support a provocative idea: if wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers…

The tactic has a familial resemblance to calls for wealthy nations to compensate less industrialized nations for the economic impacts of shifting away from low cost fuels.

I doubt even the Saudis really expect direct compensation, it’s much more likely to be a negotiating maneuver.

I’ll take this one as an encouraging sign that CO2 negotiations are getting real.

The treacherous heart of the BlackBerry

This is why carriers like the BlackBerry -- and why you won't (emphases mine)...

BlackBerry Aims to Suit Every User - NYTimes.com

... The company has also cut the manufacturing cost of BlackBerrys by using variations on its existing designs that have allowed retailers to sell the devices at prices matching much simpler phones. For example, the BlackBerry Curve, R.I.M.’s most popular phone, is offered at Wal-Mart for about $50 with a contract. About 80 percent of R.I.M.’s sales this year have been to consumers, not to employers.

Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M’s other co-chief executive, says that the low cost of BlackBerrys allows cellular carriers to make more profit from the BlackBerrys than from other touch-screen handsets.

“We help carriers be profitable,” he said. “We gave them a way to get into the data business. Now we are giving them a way to manage their costs when they are worried that all they have to sell is highly subsidized smartphones.”

The BB is very profitable for carriers, because it costs very little to produce, it comes with a mandatory data services account and a 2 year contract, and it's such a crummy net device that it makes no demands on carrier capacity.

So consumers get a "free" phone that costs a bundle and delivers very little value.

Great stuff for the carriers, but eventually consumers will catch on.

 

Update 10/14/09: On the other hand, when AT&T moves to bandwidth adjusted pricing, the BlackBerry will be rehabilitated. It’s costs will move inline with value delivered – a productivity oriented low-bandwidth consumption platform. At that point, however, it won’t be nearly as appealing to the carriers.

When galaxies collide

This msnbc blog post has links to other spectacular Hubble images. I've downloaded them all and added them to iPhoto and my slideshow folder:

A smashing view from Hubble - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com

Long ago, a galaxy far away smashed into another galaxy - creating a beautiful, terrible knot of cosmic chaos. The view of that galactic collision, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, serves as a preview of what might well happen when the Andromeda Galaxy slams into our Milky Way galaxy billions of years from now....

Natural selection and H1N1 immunization

Funny ...

Why the far left and the far right both oppose swine flu vaccinations. - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine

....Perhaps there's a simpler, more elegant explanation for why members of both political extremes refuse to get vaccinated: natural selection.

Fortunately for this vaccine campaign, few remember the Cheney/Bush smallpox fraud. That Iraq war ploy injured and killed some volunteers.

My family will be vaccinated of course. We're not seeking a Darwin award.

The problem with the corporate PAC

Dilbert - 10/13/2009

Downside of Rush's race baiting career

A downside to Rush's wealth creating formula. You might not be able to do business with the people you've been insulting ...

NFL players line up to block Rush Limbaugh's bid for the St Louis Rams

guardian.co.uk

... Some players have said they would not want to play for the Rams if Limbaugh succeeds. "I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of," the New York Giants footballer Mathias Kiwanuka told the New York Daily News...

I wouldn't bet against this deal though. The NFL is as bottom line as any other megacorp.

Nokia netbook exposes future AT&T wireless data plans

AT&T has added Nokia's Win 7 "netbook" (a $600 mini-laptop with a very slow CPU) to its lineup. The 2 year contract price is $200, but they really don't intend to sell many ...

Nokia’s Netbook Comes With Marathon Battery Life - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

... At the event, Glenn Lurie, the president of AT&T’s emerging device unit, said he understood that a $60-a-month data plan puts the device out of the range of many potential consumers. He said that AT&T will introduce other data plans with lower prices before the end of the year, possibly including prepaid plans and those that charge users only for the days they are actually online...

At $60/month AT&T is basically saying "don't buy this, you fool!". Their iPhone demolished network can't handle widespread netbook adoption.

I wonder if they had some kind of contractual launch agreement they couldn't dodge. This is really a silly launch.

The real news here, other than confirmation that Nokia is doomed, is that AT&T is going to give up on "all you can eat pricing".

That's a good thing - assuming we continue to real competition between Verizon, AT&T and Sprint/T-mobile. Flat rate pricing for a capacity constrained service is economic lunacy -- a lose-lose formula for AT&T and customers alike.

Meanwhile, we all wait for the launch of the Verizon-Google Chrome OS netbook -- the day the roof comes down.

This is why I don't do early OS X updates

Some people soar over the battlefield of life. They ride the soft thermals ... until they crash and die.

But we won't go there.

That's not me. On the field of life I'm infantry. It's ok, I've got lots of company.

So I just know that this 10.6 bug would have whacked me ...

More on Snow Leopard deleting user accounts after guest login | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

... The problem seems to happen only when guest accounts were enabled for login under Leopard before updating to Snow Leopard...

It's quite a bug. It's a bit like a personal version of the Danger Microsoft Sidekick --log out and your data is gone. (Though it's perhaps possible to resurrect it, and everyone has backups ... Right?)

Good thing I still remember my scars from 10.4 and 10.5. So while we do use guest accounts on 10.5, we weren't affected because... we're still on 10.5.

There are some good things about 10.6. I'm looking forward to updating my MacBook around March 2010.

Apple needs to start doing open beta testing and give up on making their OS X releases great big secrets.

Update 10/13/09

Macintouch has some interesting 10.5 background:

Regarding the "Guest" account data loss issue, the symptoms sound very similar to those affecting Leopard users until the release of 10.5.5. Given the similarities, one might suspect the reuse of buggy code.

The 10.5 flaw actually had two facets - one is that the wrong home folder may be deleted. The other is that the same flaw permits login to non-Guest accounts without a password. See CVE-2008-3610 here:

About the security content of Mac OS X v10.5.5 and Security Update 2008-006
Description: A race condition exists in Login Window. To trigger this issue, the system must have the Guest account enabled or another account with no password. In a small proportion of attempts, an attempt to log in to such an account will not complete. The user list would then be presented again, and the person would be able to log in as any user without providing a password. If the original account were the Guest account, the contents of the new account will be deleted on logout. This update addresses the issue by properly clearing Login Window state when the login does not complete. This issue does not affect systems prior to Mac OS X v10.5.

Based on reports on the web, it appears that both aspects are present in Snow Leopard, and some users claim to have established the requirements for reproducibility. I don't have Snow Leopard so unfortunately can't test things for myself, but because of the implications, will refrain from posting a link to instructions. If confirmed, the key point would be that unlike Apple's assurances that it is something that occurs only in extremely rare cases, it may well be something that is guaranteed to be triggered based on a specific sequence of events, the likelihood of which may not be so "extremely rare" depending on an individual's habits.

Regardless, since the file deletion appears to be directly tied to the resetting feature of the "Guest" account, disabling GUI login for "Guest" should prevent that aspect from being triggered, and not having any passwordless accounts enabled (including "Guest") should take care of the other

I'd disabled the Guest account on my 10.5 machine, but based on this post I didn't have too. This was fixed for 10.5. Interesting that it could also hit accounts that have no password (eg. my mother's).

Pretty depressing if Apple restored a 10.5 bug of this magnitude in 10.6.

Fear the Cloud: Microsoft Danger was well named

Maybe the name was intended as a warning.

Microsoft "Danger", formerly independent creators of the Sidekick Cloud-centric phone, died when they destroyed their customer's data. They haven't been buried yet, but they're an ex-Parrot.

I warned you guys.

Fear the Cloud. Fear any time you don't have full control over a useable copy of your own data, and a proven restore path.

The Sidekick was particularly vulnerable because it cached server data, it didn't maintain a full local instance. Anyone who knows synchronization is hell can sympathize with the cache approach, but the responsibility of the parent company is then immense.

Publicly traded companies don't do well with that kind of responsibility.

Glenn Feishman tells us that sync-based solutions are less vulnerable. Technically that's true -- but ActiveSync-class Push solutions can behave like a Sidekick cache. Depending on sync behavior, lost data on the server may wipe local copies. How many people can then restore an old local copy from backup? (Do you know how to do that for an iPhone? I didn't think you did.)

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

What should we look for?

We should look for a NTSB-like approach that treats Cloud data loss like an airplane crash. We need experts in error to identify the proximal cause, the 2nd cause and the 3rd cause. We need to turn each instance of data loss into a program to avoid an entire class of future disaster.

Failing that, maybe you should print reports of your key Cloud data every few weeks.

Oh, and run from Microsoft as fast as your little legs can carry you.

Update 10/12/09: As a free market alternative to an NTSB equivalent, how about we require corporations who own our data to post substantial bonds? So Microsoft would post a $5,000 bond for every Cloud customer. As long as the they don't blow it the money is theirs. Come the Dapocalypse though their customers get a reasonable pay out and Microsoft is out a few billion. that would concentrate their mind, though it would provide customers with some perverse security-testing incentives ...