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POPS6 Key Social Skills Obvious? Perhaps not - judging by how people often respond in social situations - where 'me' is the most important subject
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POPSTigers in the Air 10x to alanocu graves clip i came to know this site. Maybe the reasons are grave -)) but the art & the visual expressions are quite impressive. more about this artist at source.
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POPSIt is not the dope, it's the dopamine :) I think this finding is interesting in the light of the latest and fast growing body of experimental results in neuroscience; finding correlation (some are straight forward, and not very complex) of so called unique attributes to genetics and physiology. this might carry with it a fundamental perceptual change. first we learned that the earth is not the center, than we realized that the human emergence is part of a bigger continuum (evolution that is) and now we come to know that one own psyche is not unique...
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POPSWhy hate Gore? Granted, giving Gore the Nobel Prize may well be a political stunt somewhat out of proportion with the relevance of his actions. On the other hand humorless extreme conservatives have even more distorted notion of Gore. Their obsessive hatred of him is even more surreal than the hype. Why do they care so much about him? Why froth at the mouth over just one politician? Klugman provides some interesting answers, but also seems a little to simplistic. I have long been puzzeled on the vhemence with which conservatives react against environmentalism, and I don't think its as simple as pure greed.
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POPSARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION? we need not assume that the thesis of substrate-independence is necessarily true (either analytically or metaphysically) – just that, in fact, a computer running a suitable program would be conscious
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POPSI am a transhumanist, thanks I say, fear not. If you have clearly transhumanist beliefs, like the notion that human enhancement is coming in the next few decades and will be a big deal, then don’t be afraid to call yourself one. As Dr. Wittgenstein, one of my favorite philosophers ever, used to argue, words are just labels we fill with our own content. To think that a word has any inherent meaning aside from its use in language is absurd.
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POPSWhy The Media Should Apologize To Sarah She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul. Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.”
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POPSMIT Team Use Viruses to Build Nex-Gen Batteries Bio-battery technology could open up a whole new field of science with exotic new applications. The study was partly funded by the Army Research Office Institute of Collaborative Biotechnologies, and the Army Research Office Institute of Soldier Nanotechnologies, which suggests that the Army has some interest in this type of research. One can only imagine the strange and/or nefarious possibilities of fusing batteries into living organisms. However, Belcher diffuses any excitement over possible cyborg applications.
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POPSBoredom a sickness or a creative tool? "In experiments in the 1970s, psychiatrists showed that participants completing word-association tasks quickly tired of the job once obvious answers were given; granted more time, they began trying much more creative solutions" "In a recent paper in The Cambridge Journal of Education, Teresa Belton and Esther Priyadharshini of East Anglia University in England reviewed decades of research and theory on boredom, and concluded that it’s time that boredom “be recognized as a legitimate human emotion that can be central to learning and creativity.”
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POPSSexual Desires Don't Have To Fade I get so tired of that shit thrown at everyone by the media that only the young and beautiful are to enjoy the privilege of satisfying sex and everyone else is either a pervert or unworthy somehow. Why should anyone be denied the beauty of that sort of closeness between two human beings and who has the right to qualify that in any way? It's a part of the celebration of life and older adults should never feel somehow shameful or dirty for enjoying their lives to the fullest. YAY for them.
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POPSThe Behavioral Revolution it’s just that most of the action takes place below the level of awareness. Looking at and perceiving the world is an active process of meaning-making that shapes and biases the rest of the decision-making chain. This meltdown is not just a financial event, but also a cultural one. It’s a big, whopping reminder that the human mind is continually trying to perceive things that aren’t true, and not perceiving them takes enormous effort. Very interesting, read it!
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POPS Can boredom becomes a tool for learning and creativity...? "Boredom as a temporary state is another matter, and in part reflects the obvious: that the brain has concluded there is nothing new or useful it can learn from an environment, a person, an event, a paragraph. But it is far from a passive neural shrug. Using brain-imaging technology, neuroscientists have found that the brain is highly active when disengaged, consuming only about 5 percent less energy in its resting “default state” than when involved in routine tasks, according to Dr. Mark Mintun, a professor of radiology at Washington University in St. Louis"
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POPSWhen healthy, you don't need the I "For example, Dr. Pennebaker has found that men tend to use more articles (a, the) and women tend to use more pronouns (he, she, they). The difference, he says, may suggest that men are more prone to concrete thinking and women are more likely to see things from other perspectives. "
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POPSBack-to-School Season for Your Immune Cells In fact, "backpack" is a near-perfect analogy for this technology. The synthetic patch application consists of three layers of polyelectrolytes (certain types of polymers). Inside, the middle layer is whatever the scientists want the cell to be carrying: examples include a vaccine, a protein marker, or magnetic nanoparticles for controlled direction. The bottom layer of the patch is a polymer that attaches to the surface of the immune cell, and the top layer binds to other cells.
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POPSThe profit from obesity Nevertheless, there are enormous profits to be had from obesity. The foods that maximise profit just happen to be those high in sugar or fat. They are cheap to produce, easy to brand and market, and easy to stock in supermarket aisles. And there are numerous ways to encourage people who are pre-obese to buy these foods. Sedentary behaviour is also profitable, and encouraged by industry. A moped is more glamorous than a bicycle. A new computer game will re-invigorate peoples' interest, but not their bodies.
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POPSWhy cultural transformation is possible "If we are to move beyond the current destructive phase of capitalism, we will do so because we tap the spiritual energy that progressives have yet to tap in any coherent way. Values hold the key. The hungers of the heart can be the bedrock on which we build a new social order."
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POPSWorm-like Marine Animal Providing Fresh Clues About Human Evolution The human genome has only about 25 percent more genes than the amphioxus genome, according to Holland. During evolution, humans have duplicated genes for different functions. Such duplication has given humans and other vertebrates a much larger "toolkit" for making various structures that are absent in amphioxus, including cells for pigment and collagen type II-based cartilage, for example.
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POPSOur remarkable ability to see and understand the 3-dimensional structure of objects As a first step toward this neuroaesthetic question, the Connor laboratory plans to collaborate with the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore to study human responses to sculptural shape. .My interest is in finding out what happens between a visitor's brain and a work of art," said Vikan. "Knowing what effect art has on patrons' brains will contribute to techniques of display -- lighting and color and arrangement -- that will enhance their experiences when they come into the museum".
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POPSAnti-intellectual Presidency book review
One might also question whether public engagement with policy issues was, in truth, significantly higher when presidential speeches were pitched higher. How many ordinary Americans could wax eloquent about the pros and cons of the gold standard in the 1890s, despite the fact that orators of the level of William Jennings Bryan were making the rounds? The electorate that listened to Wilson went on to elect Harding, partly because he was handsome and partly because he made speeches high on pathos. Moreover, his “return to normalcy” mantra used a word many considered not even to exist. Nevertheless, amid the impressionistic plaints so common against the dumbing down of American culture, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency is a useful empirical demonstration of one facet of a larger cultural transformation. In our come- as-you-are America, Dick Cheney’s response to an interviewer’s observation about widespread public opposition to the war in Iraq with “So?” is business as usual. We might di
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