Saturday, October 17, 2009
The Jackson movie - not my problem
Right.
I grew up in the disco era. I've always felt bad about that, though, and I realize this is hard to imagine, I did enjoy the dancing.
Jackson the superstar was after me. My generation is not responsible. It's a Gen X thing.
That makes me feel better.
The NY Times has about 70 blogs
This at a time that the classic feed reader is supposed to be defunct.
I already subscribe to about half a dozen (Krugman, Blow, Kristoff, Economix, Freakonomics* and more). I've now added Floyd Norris, Idea of the Day, Judith Warner, Olivia Judson, Stanley Fish and "The Lede".
I used to pay for the NY Times online. I wouldn't mind paying again. I just don't want newspaper.
PS. As long as I'm media topics, I should mention that a formerly great news journal has resurrected their paywall. They offered a $12 subscription of some kind to registered online readers. Alas, I don't want the paper. Oddly enough the feeds appear to still be free, so I continue to follow the remaining good bits of The Economist - Science, Technology, Africa, and, above all, the Obit.
The fears of the GOP base - last defenders of America
Democracy Corps: Republican Base Voters Living In Another World | TPMDCSee also:... "They believe Obama is ruthlessly advancing a 'secret agenda' to bankrupt the United States and dramatically expand government control to an extent nothing short of socialism," the analysis said." While these voters are disdainful of a Republican Party they view to have failed in its mission, they overwhelmingly view a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of this country's founding principles and are committed to seeing the president fail."
The analysis argues that Obama's unpopularity among conservative Republicans is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from liberal Democratic ire against George W. Bush -- that the GOP is more heavily conservative than the Democrats are heavily liberal, and that the hatred of Obama is more intense than Dem hatred of Bush was...
... The voters in these focus groups saw Obama as being deliberately out to destroy the American economy in order to undermine personal freedoms, and that the speed of his agenda was a part of this strategy...
... Conservatives see themselves as an oppressed minority, holding on to knowledge that isn't represented in the wider media and culture: "Conservative Republicans passionately believe that they represent a group of people who have been targeted by a popular culture and set of liberal elites - embodied in the liberal mainstream media - that mock their values and are actively working to advance the downfall of the things that matter most to them in their lives - their faith, their families, their country, and their freedom."
So who are the protectors of this knowledge, the sources of information they trust. Obviously, Rush Limbaugh is widely admired -- but at the same time, he's seen as being overly abrasive at times.
The real unblemished champion, the one they most identify with on a personal level, is Glenn Beck: "Two aspects of the discussion on Beck among conservative Republicans were particularly noteworthy. One was a common fear among the women for his personal safety, a belief that his willingness to stand up to powerful liberal interests was putting his life, as well as the lives of those working with him, in danger. Of course, his willingness to face this danger head on only adds to his legend."
And the base sees themselves as an emerging, growing movement -- manifested in the Tea Parties -- that will restore the country to its proper roots, but that is dismissed by the media ...
--
Planning for the collapse of Goldman Sachs
I suppose they would say that they know how to use these innovations safely. Their rivals were simply too dull, too weak, to use such powerful tools.
If Goldman is lucky their leaders will rule like kings. If they are unlucky their leaders will rule like barons -- and we'll be picking up the pieces.
Friday, October 16, 2009
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 …
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:
Google reader micro-blogging and changes to Gordon Notes
Jim Carrey - enemy of the enlightenment
Carrey joins Oprah in the class of people who combine non-rational and harmful beliefs with the power of wealth and celebrity.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
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.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The treacherous heart of the BlackBerry
BlackBerry Aims to Suit Every User - NYTimes.comThe 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.... 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.”
When galaxies collide
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
Why the far left and the far right both oppose swine flu vaccinations. - By Christopher Beam - Slate MagazineFortunately for this vaccine campaign, few remember the Cheney/Bush smallpox fraud. That Iraq war ploy injured and killed some volunteers.