Want to Learn? Avoid School!

Most schools do everything but allow kids to experience life. If kids want to learn about what goes on in the real world, they have to go out into the real world, play some role in it, and have that motivate learning. Errors in learning by doing bring out questions, and questions bring out answers.

What kids learn in high school or college is antilearning....The problem is that schools want everyone to be in lockstep: everyone has to learn this on this day and that on that day. School is a wonderful baby-sitter. It lets the parents go to work and keeps the kids from killing each other.

Learning takes place outside of school, not in school, and kids who want to know something have to find out for themselves by asking questions, by finding sources of material, and by discounting anything they learned in school as being irrelevant. _Roger Schank Chapter 9 "ThirdCulture"

I disagree with Dr. Schank about one thing: school is not a wonderful baby-sitter. Kids do indeed kill each other in schools. They also get each other addicted to drugs and delinquency. Kids (often with help from teachers) get each other knocked up, dumbed down, stoned, and socialised into an infantile group psychological neoteny. Kids succeed despite school, when they succeed at all.

University schools of education -- where schoolteachers are trained -- are little more than indoctrination centers for politically correct mind-melting and reagglutination. The average IQ of schoolteachers is less than 110. For African Americans, that is almost 2 standard deviations above the mean for AAs, but for Euro-Americans it is less than 1 standard deviation above the mean for EAs. In other words, a significant number of non-black school children will be more intelligent than most of their teachers -- often much more intelligent.

Government schools spend large sums of money on special education -- educating students with learning deficits and developmental disorders. But these state schools spend very little on educating gifted students, the future innovators and leaders of society.

If one were the parent of a gifted child -- but could not afford to send the child to a private school equipped to provide an accelerated education -- it might be better to give the child a library card and a general "curriculum" for reading, rather than to send them to government school. Of course that isn't practical for very young children, or for children of an age where the parent might be sent to jail for taking that approach.

Such a parent may be forced to send their children to government schools. But they must be prepared to provide extra-curricular compensatory training and guidance in self-directed reading, research, and learning. The real learning will take place away from school.

Most schools are scams of one type or another. Such is true all the way to university graduate levels. Exceptions to that rule would include "hard" engineering, "hard" sciences, medical and dental schools, and a few other fact, skill, and research oriented areas. Law school is half scam and half value, so take it for what it is worth.

A library card and an internet connection can give you far better value, educationally speaking, than most schools. But everyone needs some guidance. "Great Books", "Harvard Classics", etc etc . The brain must be fed some grist for the mill. It needs high value content -- factual and rhetorical.

Practical learning can be a bit harder to come by, although it shouldn't have to be. There is a lot of work to be done in that area by those who want to see a more competent population and workforce.

The Al Fin website provides a "basic reading" section at the top of the sidebar. Almost all links are to online books and papers that are freely available for download. But Al Fin also wants to provide a curriculum of sorts. A variable curriculum that could be plugged into at various points for virtually any stage of life.

We actually do live in an Idiocracy. That needs to be changed.

400,000 Year History of Climate for Dummies

Don't miss this pictorial presentation of global climate history by JoshStorrs For a bit of background on how temperatures are derived from ice cores (using isotopes -- not CO2 in air bubbles) from up to many thousands of years ago, see here.

Briefly: In a warmer year, more sea water evaporates which causes a relative excess of deuterium (and O18) in the atmospheric water vapour. Rain and snowfall deposits this excess deuterium. If that year's precipitation is trapped in ice over many years (as in Greenland or Antarctica), scientists can take ice cores hundreds or thousands of years later, and determine the approximate relative temperatures over time.

The Vostok core is one of the most famous ice cores in climate research.

The record presented by Jouzel et al. (1987), based on data in a 2083-meter ice core from the Russian Vostok station in central east Antarctica, was the first such record to span a full glacial-interglacial cycle. Drilling continued at Vostok until January 1998, reaching a depth of 3623 m, and a corresponding time of ~420 kyr BP. More recently, a 740-kyr deuterium record has been extracted from an ice core taken at Dome C (EPICA Community Members, 2004). Deuterium fractions were determined in meltwater from 55-cm long sections of the ice core the surface down to the bottom of the core. _ORNL

The ice core graphs that Josh Storrs displays illustrate a panoramic perspective of relative temperatures over time spans from hundreds of years to hundreds of thousands of years. Once you have taken a look at the series of graphs of ice deuterium over time scales from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years, you will begin to understand the global political climate campaign a bit better.

Other types of isotopic analyses can be used for re-assessing the climate record from tree rings and sediments. Such analyses may bring climate science back from the brink of disaster to scientific respectability.

The ongoing circus that is Copenhagen is a reflection of modern human's tendency to look away from the evidence. Money-grubbing dictators of the third world are salivating at the prospects of wealth redistribution from advanced nations to undeveloped dictatorships -- one of the main pillars of the Copenhagen "agreement."

If you are like most people, you have no idea what is being contemplated for your future. Time to wake up.

Update: Here is another fantastic chart-filled look at real temperature trends -- this time in Australia over the past 130 years or so. Honestly, my friends, for truly curious, intelligent, and open-minded persons, it is becoming almost impossible to believe in the dogma of carbon catastrophe.

Unfortunately it is carbon hysteria that is being drummed into the heads of almost all schoolchildren from pre-school thru university. What should be done to the people responsible for this scandal? Nothing good.

Trusting the Government in an Idiocracy

Do you believe what you are told -- by government spokespersons, by media mouthpieces, by academics and pundits? It is easier that way. Just accept what you are told -- do not question.

Take what we were told about US employment conditions:

TrimTabs employment analysis, which uses real-time daily income tax deposits from all U.S. taxpayers to compute employment growth, estimated that the U.S. economy shed 255,000 jobs in November. This past month’s results were an improvement of only 10.2% from the 284,000 jobs lost in October.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ]BLS) reported that the U.S. economy lost an astonishingly better than expected 11,000 jobs in November. In addition, the BLS revised their September and October results down a whopping 203,000 jobs, resulting in a 45% improvement over their preliminary results.
Something is not right in Kansas! Either the BLS results are wrong, our results are in error, or the truth lies somewhere in the middle. _SeekingAlpha

Top Ten Reasons to Dismiss Last Friday's Unemployment Report

The Real State of the US Labor Market

Unemployment Duration on the Rise

Why the Friday Unemployment Report Was Total Bunk

Massive Mountain of Debt Will Kill Us

When a complex economy begins to unravel, the early responses to the crisis determine how long and deep the damage will penetrate. If a nation is under the control of green rookies -- like the Obama / Pelosi reich -- most of the decision made will be wrong. The people will suffer until the mismanagement at the top is removed, and the system is allowed to recover.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and be ready to exploit any opportunity that may open. Remember: Historically, gold has maintained its value better than other investments -- particularly during truly horrific economic crises.

Artificial Intelligence to Receive a Make-Over

The field of artificial-intelligence research (AI), founded more than 50 years ago, seems to many researchers to have spent much of that time wandering in the wilderness, swapping hugely ambitious goals for a relatively modest set of actual accomplishments. Now, some of the pioneers of the field, joined by later generations of thinkers, are gearing up for a massive “do-over” of the whole idea.

This time, they are determined to get it right — and, with the advantages of hindsight, experience, the rapid growth of new technologies and insights from the new field of computational neuroscience, they think they have a good shot at it. _MachinesLikeUs

As brilliant as many computer scientists and electrical engineers may be, they tend not to have a clue as to how the brain does what it does. Jeff Hawkins of Numenta is one of the few exceptions -- an electronics tech whiz who has taken the time to learn a lot about the brain.

Now, a multi-disciplinary team at MIT is determined to make up for the past 50 years of myopic approaches to AI. They plan to approach the problem with a new set of assumptions based upon more validated notions of brain, intelligence, consciousness, and mind.

there are three specific areas — having to do with the mind, memory, and the body — where AI research has become stuck, and each of these will be addressed in specific ways by the new project

The first of these areas, he says, is the nature of the mind: “how do you model thought?” In AI research to date, he says, “what’s been missing is an ecology of models, a system that can solve problems in many ways,” as the mind does.

Part of this difficulty comes from the very nature of the human mind, evolved over billions of years as a complex mix of different functions and systems. “The pieces are very disparate; they’re not necessarily built in a compatible way,” Gershenfeld says. “There’s a similar pattern in AI research. There are lots of pieces that work well to solve some particular problem, and people have tried to fit everything into one of these.” Instead, he says, what’s needed are ways to “make systems made up of lots of pieces” that work together like the different elements of the mind. “Instead of searching for silver bullets, we’re looking at a range of models, trying to integrate them and aggregate them,” he says.

The second area of focus is memory. Much work in AI has tried to impose an artificial consistency of systems and rules on the messy, complex nature of human thought and memory. “It’s now possible to accumulate the whole life experience of a person, and then reason using these data sets which are full of ambiguities and inconsistencies. That’s how we function — we don’t reason with precise truths,” he says. Computers need to learn “ways to reason that work with, rather than avoid, ambiguity and inconsistency.”

And the third focus of the new research has to do with what they describe as “body”: “Computer science and physical science diverged decades ago,” Gershenfeld says. Computers are programmed by writing a sequence of lines of code, but “the mind doesn’t work that way. In the mind, everything happens everywhere all the time.” A new approach to programming, called RALA (for reconfigurable asynchronous logic automata) attempts to “re-implement all of computer science on a base that looks like physics,” he says, representing computations “in a way that has physical units of time and space, so the description of the system aligns with the system it represents.” This could lead to making computers that “run with the fine-grained parallelism the brain uses,” he says.

...Harvard (and former MIT) cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker says that it’s that kind of big picture thinking that has been sorely lacking in AI research in recent years. Since the 1980s, he says “there was far more focus on getting software products to market, regardless of whether they instantiated interesting principles of intelligent systems that could also illuminate the human mind. This was a real shame, in my mind, because cognitive psychologists (my people) are largely atheoretical lab nerds, linguists are narrowly focused on their own theoretical paradigms, and philosophers of mind are largely uninterested in mechanism.

“The fading of theoretical AI has led to a paucity of theory in the sciences of mind,” Pinker says. “I hope that this new movement brings it back.”

Boyden agrees that the time is ripe for revisiting these big questions, because there have been so many advances in the various fields that contribute to artificial intelligence. “Certainly the ability to image the neurological system and to perturb the neurological system has made great advances in the last few years. And computers have advanced so much — there are supercomputers for a few thousand dollars now that can do a trillion operations per second.” _MachinesLikeUs

One of the biggest problems in AI, according to Al Fin cognitive scientists, is that the personalities of the researchers themselves tends to get in the way of clear thinking about the underlying problem.

The central problems of AI reside within a nearly unapproachable sphere of integrated to interacting chained energies. Ranging from the sub-atomic to the sociological in scale, no one individual is capable of encompassing the sphere. But it is the multi-level mapping of these energies from the electron to the neuron to the cortex / sub-cortex / entire brain / mine / and body that is currently so vague and ill defined.

What do we want from AI? We really do not need humanoid robots walking around getting in our way. The MIT teams first project sounds reasonable:

One of the projects being developed by the group is a form of assistive technology they call a brain co-processor. This system, also referred to as a cognitive assistive system, would initially be aimed at people suffering from cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. The concept is that it would monitor people’s activities and brain functions, determine when they needed help, and provide exactly the right bit of helpful information — for example, the name of a person who just entered the room, and information about when the patient last saw that person — at just the right time.

Such a device would be a useful form of brain-compatible AI, and a stepping-stone to more powerful devices capable of thinking on their own. The ability to create such an intermediate device would also serve as an assessment of progress in brain / mind compatible AI.

US Employment Looking Good? Don't Be an Idiot

Small companies historically begin hiring first in a recovery. But this time many economists expect any pickup to be belated and weak. One big reason is the credit crunch's outsize impact on entrepreneurs.

...Cuts in workers' hours are also helping shrink small-company paychecks. When demand picks up, entrepreneurs will pile more work on existing workers rather than hire. "I think you'll see a jobless recovery," says Alter.

One reason could be business owners like Daniel W. Glier, president of Glier's Meats, an 18-person, $3 million sausage maker in Covington, Ky. He's keeping headcount down by restoring some workers' hours that got cut earlier this year. He's also using temps so that if he has to let them go, his unemployment insurance premiums won't rise. "I'm not going to stick my neck out right now and hire people," he says.

The weak recovery is a concern, too. The optimism index compiled by the National Federation of Independent Business has edged up from its March nadir. But at 89.1, the index has been below 90 for six straight quarters. In the 1980-82 recession, it fell below 90 only once. _Business Week

Small businesses are not hiring new workers -- other than seasonal temporary workers. Only government seems to be hiring these days. But how much more of a burden can the sagging US dollar support in terms of a ballooning government payroll and government debt?

Overall, non-farm payroll employment went down by 11,000 in November. The 68,000 jobs that were lost in manufacturing and construction were almost compensated for by the 58,000 jobs gained in the service sector. Essentially, skilled workers who were losing jobs in the manufacturing and construction sectors were taking unskilled jobs in the service sector. _SeekingAlpha

The US remains mired in deep unemployment. Despite the "unemployment rate" dropping from 10.2% to 10.0%, fewer Americans are employed now than were employed at the beginning of November.

# The civilian labor force shrunk by 98,000 in November. The “not in the labor force” group rose by 291,000 in November. To the extent that not all of these individuals voluntarily left the labor force during the month, it is obvious that a large number of “discouraged workers” are included in this statistic. Of the total number of people not in the labor force, the BLS estimates that approximately 5.6 million want a job but are not included in the official unemployment statistic because they have not actively seeking a job.
# Broader measures of unemployment, such as U-6 continue to show very high levels of labor force under-utilization. U-6, which includes marginally attached workers as well as those employed part time due to difficulty finding full time employment, fell to a seasonally adjusted 17.2% in November from 17.5% in October. _SeekingAlpha

The real US unemployment rate is much closer to 20% than to 10%. But you will not be informed of that sad news on any of the Official Obama Zombie News Outlets (OOZNOs). With that many people out of work, the "unhappiness factor" is bound to rise -- despite any number of government job hires, giveaways, bailouts, and symbolic gestures.

The current US Congress and executive branch are truly living in a different world than the average American. Government workers are now making more money on average than private workers, they have better pension guarantees, better benefits packages, and when Obamacabre national health insurance is enacted, government workers will have much better health insurance than will be available to private citizens.

Is it any wonder Mr. Obama suddenly wants to spend some time in Copenhagen? Wanna get away?

Great Geopolitical Battle Over Energy Transit Routes

Guest article by Philip de Leon


As we all live in the present, it is very hard to fully assess the future implications of decisions supported or made by political and business leaders. An extraordinary game of geo-strategy is under way to lock in long-term agreements, notably in the energy sector. At a global level, the transit routes of future oil & gas pipelines become the object of a power struggle involving not only the suppliers and end-users but also the transit countries. Intensive courtships are under way where a ménage à trois, or more, may be the best option to prevent any country from being in a dominating position to rule a region and exercise political or economic pressure.

Let’s take a practical example and look at some of the dynamics behind the Nabucco pipeline and at the different interests involved.

Nabucco and the competing projects

Nabucco is a 3,300 km natural gas pipeline going East to West, with a capacity of 31 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year that would reduce Europe’s dependency on gas supplied by Russia. It will go from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. That project would be in direct competition with the Russian-endorsed South Stream pipeline, with a capacity of 63 bcm per year, that would start from Russia and end in Austria but with two prongs: one via Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy, and one via Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia. Nabucco’s estimated cost is about €8 billion with a completion date of 2014 while south Stream’s estimated cost is from €19 to €24 billion with a completion date of 2015. South Stream was launched in 2007 when Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev was then Chairman of the Board of Directors of Gazprom, Russia's largest company and the world's largest gas producer.


Nabucco and the supplier countries

Formidable battles have been taking place between the Nabucco and South Stream backers to sign supply agreements, not only to guarantee that the much needed gas will be made available - as underutilizing the pipelines is not a viable option - but also to secure a political and financial will for the projects. Gazprom is engaged in a battle to preempt gas supplies and to keep European countries from what it considers as a Russian natural chasse guardée such as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, though both countries have pledged to supply Nabucco as they understand their vulnerability by not having several export routes.

The courtship is ongoing and in October 2009, Alexey Miller, Chairman of Gazprom, personally went to Baku, Azerbaijan to sign a long-term natural gas purchase and sale contract with the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR). Following the signature, Miller made a statement, which gives a good insight on what is at stake: ”Russia and Azerbaijan have a common border and have already been connected by the unified infrastructure. This enabled Gazprom to propose the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic the most attractive commercial terms and conditions of gas purchase. Our partnership is logically consistent and fully meets our mutual interests. I am confident that in the coming years the volume of Azerbaijani gas supplied to Russia will increase.”

This statement and contract are interesting because the agreement provides for a supply of 500 million cubic meters starting in January 2010, with potential increases depending on Azerbaijan’s export potential. This comes at a time when Gazprom has interrupted its deliveries of gas from Turkmenistan since April 2009, arguing a lesser demand from Europe. A few days after being in Azerbaijan, Miller was meeting with the President of Turkmenistan but no decision was reached regarding resumption of gas imports from Turkmenistan.


Who is holding whom by the tail?

The dynamics around Nabucco when looked at closely highlights a web of sweet deals corresponding to a complex reality of entangled needs.

Russia has very aggressively pursued locked-in supply agreements for extensive periods of time. The initial idea is that getting a deal in first could work towards keeping other players out. That approach did not end up creating exclusive relationships as countries such Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan appear to have enough supplies to satisfy multiple parties. Pricing agreements were also locked in for specified periods of time but the tumble in world energy prices put Gazprom in a dire situation: Gazprom is reported to have been paying $375.50 per thousand cubic meters (tcm) for Turkmen gas while only paying $217/tcm for Kazakhstani gas and $210/tcm for Uzbek gas. An “unfortunate” explosion in April 2009 that the Turkmens blame on Russia hit the pipeline connecting the two countries and deliveries have stopped. Gazprom stated it had not intention to resume purchasing Turkmen gas in 2009. Turkmenistan is said to be losing $1 billion/month over this issue. With Turkmenistan, Gazprom has a 25-year sale and purchase agreement Turkmenneftegaz signed in 2003. Prices were locked below world market prices, at less than half the price Europe was paying for its gas. Subsequent price increases were negotiated but in exchange for the promise of higher delivery volumes with 60 bcm of gas in 2007, 60-70 bcm in 2008 and subsequently export up to 80 bcm annually through 2028.

Needless to say that Turkmenistan’s announcement in July 2009 of its willingness to provide gas to Nabucco does not come as a surprise in this context. Similarly the completion in October 2009 of $400 million 188-km section in Turkmenistan of a 7,000 km natural gas pipeline that will reach China is an important step towards diversification. The Turkmen government stated: “Getting gas supplies to China will mark another important milestone in the successful implementation of Turkmenistan's strategy of diversifying energy export routes to world markets.”

Turkmenistan has been assiduously courted because of it immense gas reserves. In 2008 the oil advisory firm Gaffney Cline & Associates (GCA) conducted a study on the South Yolotan-Osman field and determined that that field alone was the fifth largest in the world, with an estimated 4 trillion to 14 trillion cubic meters of gas. That good new was tampered in October 2009 when reports surfaced that GCA may have been misled (see article: “Turmen Gas – Caveat Emptor” http://www.oilprice.com/article-turkmen-gas-caveat-emptor.html In any event, the potential of Turkmenistan should not be underestimated.


Nabucco and the transit countries

Several Eastern European countries have been turning their back to Russia and have joined the European Union, espousing the EU’s energy security objectives to reduce its dependency on Russia gas. The January 2009 showdown between Russia and Ukraine, which resulted on the gas supply to be cut to most of Europe in the midst of winter, could only serve as a wake-up call for the need to diversify energy routes. Bulgaria - which has the ambition to become an international gas hub and that is a party to both the Nabucco and South Stream projects - will benefit from that situation, notably by increasing its bargaining position to negotiate better energy agreements with Russia. It could, among other things, threaten to raise transit fees. Ukraine is using this threat against Russia and in September 2009, Gazprom expected Ukraine to increase gas transit fees by up to 58% in 2010. The stakes are high as transit fees represent a bonanza. While visiting Bulgaria in 2007, Vladimir Putin estimated that Bulgaria could earn up to $2.5 billion per year in transit fees alone.


Russia: just another shrewd player but…

One may think that Russia pockets the difference from rates below market prices, but the reality is that Russia uses the discounted gas for its own domestic needs. It also has been using it to supply Ukraine under very favorable terms, and Ukraine has been very vocal in resisting Russia’s attempts to raise prices. Note must be made that Ukraine imports the bulk of its natural gas from Turkmenistan via Russia. Countries like Russia and Ukraine have been resisting passing on price increases to end-users to avoid social unrest and have been struggling to keep non-competitive industries afloat. One way of doing so is by keeping the cost of energy low. The adverse effect is that Ukraine is one of the most energy inefficient countries in Europe.

A point must be made that Russia should not just be perceived as a natural bully but more as a wounded bear. Russia, like any country, is looking after its own interests and is not always subtle about it, even more so as it feels that everyone is ganging against her, rightfully or not. Russia is also confronted with its own economic reality, most notably the over reliance of its economy and state budget on oil & gas revenues. Efforts to diversify the economy have failed to generate visible results. It is therefore essential for Russia to secure a guaranteed income flow from the sale of it oil and gas, and from the oil and gas of its neighbors, that it buys to resale at a profit or that it routes through its extensive pipeline network for a fee. But things change: sourcing oil and gas from or routing it via Russia is no longer the only option.

… a new transportation mode is emerging

As the gas pipeline battles are under way, a new trend is emerging which is the transition towards Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). That transportation mode of natural gas through seaborne tankers will open new markets, alleviate the dependency of some countries on existing pipeline routes, and reduce the number of players able to impact proper delivery and pricing.


This article was written by Philip H. de Leon for OilPrice.com - Who offer free information and analysis on Energy and Commodities. The site has sections devoted to Fossil Fuels, Alternative Energy, Metals, Oil prices and Geopolitics. To find out more visit their website at: http://www.oilprice.com

Putting the I Back Into Imagination and Imaging

Curiosity and imagination are inextricably tied to each other. When our curiosity is aroused, we begin to imagine how things might be -- and how they might be different than they are. Cascading emotions triggered by our imaginings raise our curiosity even higher -- or sometimes shut our curiosity down in fear and anxiety.

Imagination calls upon "mental images", which may be visual, auditory, otherwise sensory, or emotional in nature. Mental images call upon much of the same brain real estate that is utilised when we perceive sights, sounds, tastes . . . or emotionally-tinged situations.

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess the maximal degree of shared neural processing in visual mental imagery and visual perception. Participants either visualized or saw faint drawings of simple objects, and then judged specific aspects of the drawings (which could only be evaluated properly if they used the correct stimulus). The results document that visual imagery and visual perception draw on most of the same neural machinery. _Ganis, Thompson, Kosslyn 2004 CognitiveBrainResearch

Mental images "connect up" with a wide array of sensory, motor, cognitive, and emotional centers of the brain. Understanding the broad nature of connectiveness of mental imagery should give a hint to the power of image and imagination.

Brain studies now reveal that thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. Mental imagery impacts many cognitive processes in the brain: motor control, attention, perception, planning, and memory. So the brain is getting trained for actual performance during visualization. _SeeingIsBelieving

Mental imagery has been used by world class athletes for over 50 years. Even golf champion Tiger Woods has used mental imagery for decades (although he probably didn't that 9 iron coming). Imagery is also useful in rehabilitation from stroke and brain surgery.

Recent research in Lausanne, Switzerland suggests that mental imagery can improve our perceptual skills. In other words, if train ourselves to "see" ambivalent visual phenomenon more precisely -- using our imagination with a bit of (non-visual) feedback -- we can actually learn to perceive such phenomena more precisely. A tricky concept to put into practise, no doubt. But highly suggestive nonetheless.

So -- how would we go about putting the I back into imagination and imaging? What I mean by that is how do we compensate for generations of neglect by governmental institutions of education, to train individuals in constructive, creative, and productive imagination and imagery? We have spawned generations of low-curiosity graduates, who instinctively appeal to authority rather than puzzling a situation out for themselves. Their imaginative facilities are atrophied -- except in regard to popular topics within a very superficial zeitgeist. The events occurring underneath the very foundations of their existences go undetected, in their dull-witted and incurious ignorance. All of this obliviousness occurs within minds of high and low IQ alike.

Why?

Education is currently dominated by highly verbal indoctrinists, professors in university schools of education caught in the ambiguous verbal slipstream of meaning. Modern philosophies of pedagogy are prone to fad and fashion, lacking basic grounding in any meaningful or sustainable reality. A society built upon graduates of such educational theories will be prone to the type of failure that leads to authoritarianism and totalitarianism. This is precisely what has been happening throughout the western world.

Visual images tend to be more permanent and lasting than verbal "imagery." Visual images often contain their own "falsifiability" criteria. Consider the ice age cave paintings found in southwestern Europe. One can easily identify the objects represented, and can judge the level of accuracy in representation, tens of thousands of years later. Those paintings predate any evidence of written language by tens of millenia.

Just as painted imagery predates printed language, so did mental imagery precede verbal thought. That is true evolutionarily and it is true in individual human development. Our brains may have evolutionary advantages that allow us to use language, but images and non-verbal imagination came first.

It is important to understand how human minds are built -- more sophisticated and artifactual tools are built upon the simpler and more natural structures of "thought." Language is built upon image, in a sense. Even verbal thought is based upon imagery -- often emotion-loaded imagery. (of course, skillful language conjures emotional images just as emotional images can trigger involuntary verbal utterances) Basic language metaphors are built of images of various types. More complex language constructs are built of basic language metaphors.

What is imagery built upon? Emotions? Well, they certainly work together. Curiosity is an emotion, after all. And curiosity uses imagery and is also triggered and stimulated by imagery. If a child is deprived of both curiosity and imagination, he is doubly damned by the frivolous gods of pedagogy and neglectful sprites of parenting.

Imagery is built upon pre-verbal, pre-image metaphor. More on that later.

It is enough to understand that our kludgy consciousness is built from lower level spare parts, all the way down to the turtles. (from there, it's turtles all the way down...) Some levels are accessible and trainable, and some are not. We are neglecting much of what is trainable.

The point is, that the "play pedagogy" that permeates Montessori education and also is used in executive function training programs for young children, is a form of training of imagination and imaging. It is an approach that boys are desperate for, and that could also benefit girls immensely.

Uh-oh! By stating that boys might benefit more from training in visual imagination, I have alienated leftist and feminist curriculum designers. There is, after all, an undeclared "war on boys" happening. No matter how desperate the condition of boys in education becomes, they must not be favoured in any way -- not even a little!

That, too, is beside the point. There are other types of images than visual images. Training in many of those forms of images would benefit girls more than boys, on average. But curriculum designers themselves lack imagination. They never learned to use imagery themselves, so of course they would never think to design a curriculum to help children learn these vital skills.

It is a blindspot for leftists, largely due to the focus on the "I" in imagination and imagery. Think about it, and you may see what I mean. But the rest of us can act without their permission, can't we?

Addendum: Imagination, Mental Imagery, Consciousness and Cognition, is the best one-stop information source on this general topic, according to Al Fin cognitive scientists. The author is Nigel J.T. Thomas, PhD.

He's Baaaack! Dennis Mangan Returns!

Dennis Mangan has a new post up on his resurrected blog. He still doesn't know why his blog was deleted for this past week. No explanations have been forthcoming from Google.

This episode should be a warning to all bloggers: you can be shut down, one way or another. Always back up your blog regularly, and be ready to move to a new host if your present host proves unreliable or disagreeable.

Blogging is literally a world-changing phenomenon. It is one of the main ways a lot of people keep up with the hundreds of relevant and rapidly changing parameters of their lives.

Even when we're only joking, it is serious business.

Curiosity Is a Matter of Life and Death

Curious minds are alive, constantly probing and questioning. We see curiosity most often in the young -- and in the genius. The absence of curiosity implies a dead mind, a zombie mind. We see this in dementia, depression, and in totalitarian environments -- where being too curious can get you killed, fired, or denied opportunity.

But why is curiosity so important? Here are four reasons:

It makes your mind active instead of passive
Curious people always ask questions and search for answers in their minds. Their minds are always active. Since the mind is like a muscle which becomes stronger through continual exercise, the mental exercise caused by curiosity makes your mind stronger and stronger.
It makes your mind observant of new ideas
When you are curious about something, your mind expects and anticipates new ideas related to it. When the ideas come they will soon be recognized. Without curiosity, the ideas may pass right in front of you and yet you miss them because your mind is not prepared to recognize them. Just think, how many great ideas may have lost due to lack of curiosity?
It opens up new worlds and possibilities
By being curious you will be able to see new worlds and possibilities which are normally not visible. They are hidden behind the surface of normal life, and it takes a curious mind to look beneath the surface and discover these new worlds and possibilities.
It brings excitement into your life
The life of curious people is far from boring. It’s neither dull nor routine. There are always new things that attract their attention, there are always new ‘toys’ to play with. Instead of being bored, curious people have an adventurous life. _Lifehack

Do you think you are living in a culture that encourages curiosity? I am not talking about frivolous curiosity aimed at celebrities such as Tiger Woods. Does your society encourage a deep probing curiosity aimed at all aspects of life -- particularly those that are most profoundly relevant to a quality existence?

Take the "cause of the century" climate change. The news and science media is always full of catastrophic predictions concerning melting icecaps, rising sea levels, unprecedented storms and droughts. But where are the probing, questioning news stories that look behind the carbon hysteria to try to find the rational truth? Why are the news and science media virtually silent on such profoundly important questions?

Curiosity. How does one come by it?

1. Keep an open mind

This is essential if you are to have a curious mind. Be open to learn, unlearn, and relearn. Some things you know and believe might be wrong, and you should be prepared to accept this possibility and change your mind.

2. Don’t take things as granted

If you just accept the world as it is without trying to dig deeper, you will certainly lose the ‘holy curiosity’. Never take things as granted. Try to dig deeper beneath the surface of what is around you.

3. Ask questions relentlessly

A sure way to dig deeper beneath the surface is asking questions: What is that? Why is it made that way? When was it made? Who invented it? Where does it come from? How does it work? What, why, when, who, where, and how are the best friends of curious people.

4. Don’t label something as boring

Whenever you label something as boring, you close one more door of possibilities. Curious people are unlikely to call something as boring. Instead, they always see it as a door to an exciting new world. Even if they don’t yet have time to explore it, they will leave the door open to be visited another time.

5. See learning as something fun

If you see learning as a burden, there’s no way you will want to dig deeper into anything. That will just make the burden heavier. But if you think of learning as something fun, you will naturally want to dig deeper. So look at life through the glasses of fun and excitement and enjoy the learning process..

6. Read diverse kinds of reading

Don’t spend too much time on just one world; take a look at another worlds. It will introduce you to the possibilities and excitement of the other worlds which may spark your interest to explore them further. One easy way to do this is through reading diverse kinds of reading. Try to pick a book or magazine on a new subject and let it feed your mind with the excitement of a new world. _Lifehack

Children are naturally curious, but too often something happens to change this.

For too many children, curiosity fades. Curiosity dimmed is a future denied. Our potential — emotional, social, and cognitive — is expressed through the quantity and quality of our experiences. And the less-curious child will make fewer new friends, join fewer social groups, read fewer books, and take fewer hikes. The less-curious child is harder to teach because he is harder to inspire, enthuse, and motivate.

There are three common ways adults constrain or even crush the enthusiastic exploration of the curious child: 1) fear, 2) disapproval and 3) absence.

Fear: Fear kills curiosity. When the child's world is chaotic or when he is afraid, he will not like novelty. He will seek the familiar, staying in his comfort zone, unwilling to leave and explore new things. Children impacted by war, natural disasters, family distress, or violence all have their curiosity crushed.

Disapproval: "Don’t touch. Don’t climb. Don’t yell. Don’t take that apart. Don’t get dirty. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t." Children sense and respond to our fears, biases, and attitudes. If we convey a sense of disgust at the mud on their shoes and the slime on their hands, their discovery of tadpoles will be diminished.

Absence: The presence of a caring, invested adult provides two things essential for optimal exploration: 1) a sense of safety from which to set out to discover new things and 2) the capacity to share the discovery and, thereby, get the pleasure and reinforcement from that discovery. _teacher.scholastic

The crushing of curiosity occurs fairly early and easily for most children. Some children seem to survive a mountain of discouragements and keep their curiosity. But those are exceptions.

We need more curious young, middle-aged, and old people. We need people unafraid to question authority, to laugh at pompous overreach of authority.

Without that element, a society sinks into authoritarianism, like North Korea or Cuba. Those two countries used the "cult of personality" to destroy curiosity, and purge the curious from their numbers. It could happen to you.

ClimateGate Ascendant! New Media 1 Old Media 0

Despite the best efforts of old mainstream media to suppress the ClimateGate story of collusion, obfuscation, intimidation, and censorship at the East Anglia CRU, new media has succeeded in building on the story until it has finally broken through into the daylight.

IBD: What the media doesn't want you to know

WSJ: The Web Discloses (despite media smokescreening)

MIT (The Tech): Corrupt Climate Research Unit revealed

WSJ: Follow the Money The money flowing to the carbon hysteria orthodoxy from governments amounts to thousands of times the money granted to research by "big oil". Read the truth you will never find in BBC, CBC, CNN, NYT, or The Guardian.

Plus: Don't miss climate statistician Matt Briggs' "A Citizen's Guide to Global Warming Evidence" Matt briefly outlines what is known and what is not known about global warming, in a succinct and clear manner.

Bonus: Richard Lindzen's "The Climate Science Isn't Settled"


If you want to keep up on Climate Gate news in all its explosive glory, follow these websites:

Wattsupwiththat?

Tom Nelson

Climate Depot

Icecap

Greenie Watch

... and many other websites linked by those above, and on the Al Fin sidebar under the "climate" category.

Concealed Love Affair Between Sea Life and CO2

We recently learned that atmospheric CO2 nourishes coral reefs using the lowly sea sponge. Now we are learning that sea creatures can ramp up shell production when exposed to higher levels of dissolved CO2 in sea water.

Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists report that some shell-building creatures -- such as crabs, shrimp and lobsters -- unexpectedly build more shell when exposed to ocean acidification caused by elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).

Because excess CO2 dissolves in the ocean -- causing it to "acidify" -- researchers have been concerned about the ability of certain organisms to maintain the strength of their shells. Carbon dioxide is known to trigger a process that reduces the abundance of carbonate ions in seawater -- one of the primary materials that marine organisms use to build their calcium carbonate shells and skeletons....

....But in a study published in the Dec. 1 issue of Geology, a team led by former WHOI postdoctoral researcher Justin B. Ries found that seven of the 18 shelled species they observed actually built more shell when exposed to varying levels of increased acidification. This may be because the total amount of dissolved inorganic carbon available to them is actually increased when the ocean becomes more acidic, even though the concentration of carbonate ions is decreased. _SD

Oceans have been exposed to much higher levels of CO2 in the past than humans could possibly produce from fossil fuels. Ocean life loves CO2. Photosynthetic algae blossoms in the presence of higher CO2, providing fodder for the rest of the ocean's food chain. As mentioned above, sea sponges convert half their weight in CO2 per day to nutrient-rich excretia -- feeding much of the rest of the coral reef in the process. And now that scientists are finally admitting that higher dissolved levels of CO2 actually drive formation of sea shell in many sea creatures, the public no longer has an excuse for its absurd "ocean acidification mania and panic!".

The oceans are not being acidified. They are embracing the CO2 -- begging for as much as they can get! -- and turning it into sea life.

See WattsUpWithThat!!?? for more.

More detail on ocean carbon chemistry (via comments in WUWT)

Abstracting the Brain: A Simpler Emulation?

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have taken a three-neuron feedback microcircuit model and abstracted the microcircuit to a single "neuron" that behaved in an identical way to the more complex microcircuit. In other words, without losing any complexity of behaviour, they have simplified their model. This is an important concept for cognitive scientists who wish to simulate brain behaviour with hardware. Being able to conceptualise simplified models exhibiting an equal behavioural richness, will allow scientists to design elegant new hardware that should be both faster and use far less energy to operate.

Looking for a way to explain to the students in his Physics of the Brain class how delayed feedback produces complexity in a circuit, Ralf Wessel, Ph.D., associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, came up with a toy neural circuit simple enough to be stepped through time iterations at the blackboard. He used it to show his students that if there was feedback among the neurons, simple constant inputs could produce a long-period oscillation in their outputs.

Wessel then asked Matthew S. Caudill, Ph.D., graduate research assistant in physics, to create a computer model of the circuit so that it could be explored more thoroughly. As they worked with three-neuron microcircuit they realized it was very like one students in Wessel's neurophysiology lab were studying.

That circuit, which consists of three neurons and their feedback projections, has a simple task: to detect motion in the chicken's field of view. One neuron in the area called the optic tectum because it sits on the "roof" of the brain, sends axons to others in a knob of tissue called the nucleus isthmi. The neurons in the isthmi send projections back to the optic tectum, either directly to the neuron from which they got their input or back to the rest of the tectum (the crucial feedback loops).

There are similar microcircuits in the optical processing areas of reptilian and mammalian brains.

The microcircuit's behavior could be captured mathematically by three equations, each of which describes one neuron's output in terms of its inputs and parameters called synaptic weights, the standard way of expressing the strength of the connection between two neurons. Looking at the equations, Wessel and Caudill recognized that they could be reduced by algebraic substitution to one equation with two parameters (derived from the original five synaptic weights).

"It is as if," says Caudill, "the system of three neurons was reduced to one abstract neuron that does the same thing, follows the same rule, as the more complicated circuit. " _Physorg

This is a long way from a cortical lobe -- or even a cortical column -- but it is a conceptual foundation that may allow for further abstraction.

Most people who understand both the brain and computers, will understand that new hardware and software is absolutely necessary to better approach the brain's level of complex (but remarkably stable) behaviours. But understanding how to build the architecture for the new hardware has been slow in coming.

It is the opinion of Al Fin cognitive scientists that much of the brain's complexity is a red herring, a distraction from what the brain is actually doing. We will have to approach this "essence of braininess" from both the top-down, and the bottom-up.

Henry Markram's "Blue Brain" approach includes all the complexity of neuronal processes and ion channels because it is meant to simulate brain function well enough to demonstrate actual brain pathology -- such as Parkisonism or Alzheimer's. Most cognitive scientists just want to design a machine that can intentionally initiate learning, thinking, and acting much like a human does.

Dennis Mangan's Blog is "Disappeared" by Google

Well-respected blogger Dennis Mangan woke up one day last week to discover his blog missing. What happened? The great and powerful Google deleted Dennis' blog. Why? No one knows -- and Google isn't saying. More from Steve Sailer.

Anyone who maintains a Google blog (including blogspot and blogger), needs to understand how vague and inappropriate Google's terms of service are, regarding how, why, when, and where it may choose to delete a blogger's intellectual property.

Here are some ways for backing up a blogspot blog, suggested by Steve Sailer's commenters:

OneStdv:

Here's a very easy to back up your blog:

Copy this (change blogname):

http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=1000

I think it can go over 1000, so try it. Then just Select All and copy into a Word document (it will then contain all links and pics).

That's what I just did.

Ferdinand Bardamu:

Blogger has an option to export your blog as an XML file for safekeeping:

http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/2008/06/new-feature-import-and-export.html

Anonymous:

I just downloaded steve's blog as 4700+ html pages:

0. Use firefox with free DownThemAll extension installed.
1. Go to page http://isteve.blogspot.com/search?max-results=10000
(this might take a while to render, depending on how much RAM you have)
2. Choose "DownThemAll..." from the tools menu in firefox.
3. A window should come up with a list of links in it (make sure to choose "Links" in the top left, instead of "Pictures and Embedded" in the top middle).
4. Create a directory to save your files in.
5. Uncheck all the checkboxes.
6. Type the following in the fast filtering area:
*isteve.blogspot.com/20*
7. Click Start.
8. After a while you'll get an error message about duplicate files -- choose to ignore/skip all such for "this session".

End result:
4720 File(s)
1,164,915,036 bytes

There were about thirty 404'ed links; possibly typoes by steve, or renamed/deleted pages.

A link to a zip file containing Dennis Mangan's blog was posted to HalfSigma's comments:
http://98.192.200.202/mangans.zip

Any other information on preventing blog deletions or retrieving deleted blogs would be appreciated.

More: In Mala Fide has more information

This is not something that Google should be allowed to do without paying a significant price.

Liberated ClimateGate Emails Change Minds

An opinion columnist at The Atlantic, Clive Crook, first dismissed the ClimateGate controversy as irrelevant. Then, he read the emails. An honest, thoughtful reading of the files made all the difference between a climate zombie, and a person with an open mind.

In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.

The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu [subscription required]. It goes to the core of that process.

One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. This is something that Henderson's study raised, and it was also emphasised in the Wegman report on the Hockey Stick, and in other independent studies of the Hockey Stick controversy. Of course it is also an ongoing issue in Steve McIntyre's campaign to get hold of data and methods. Nonetheless I had given it insufficient weight. Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.

I'm also surprised by the IPCC's response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that the emails confirm all is as it should be is stunning. Science at its best. Science as it should be. Good lord. This is pure George Orwell. And these guys call the other side "deniers".

While I'm listing surprises, let me note how disappointed I was by The Economist's coverage of all this. "Leaked emails do not show climate scientists at their best," it observes. No indeed. I should say I worked at the magazine for years, admire it as much as ever, and rely on the science coverage especially. But I was baffled by its reaction to the scandal. "Little wonder that the scientists are looking tribal and jumpy, and that sceptics have leapt so eagerly on such tiny scraps as proof of a conspiracy," its report concludes. Tiny scraps? I detest anti-scientific thinking as much as The Economist does. I admire expertise, and scientific expertise especially; like any intelligent citizen I am willing to defer to it. But that puts a great obligation on science. The people whose instinct is to respect and admire science should be the ones most disturbed by these revelations. The scientists have let them down, and made the anti-science crowd look wise. That is outrageous.

Megan McArdle adopts a world-weary tone similar to The Economist's: this is how science is done in the real world. If I were a scientist, I would resent that. _CliveCrook

In order for a person to change his mind, he must first have a mind to change. Clive Crook still has a mind capable of changing. But that may not be true for all the climate zombies and Obama zombies of the world. If you know a zombie, please do not try to change his mind. Instead, treat him kindly -- like any demented person who is not an immediate danger to himself or others -- and find ways of negating the zombie's deleterious influence on your world.

Of course, if the zombie is an immediate danger to you, it must be put down hard. Always aim for the head.

H/T Tom Nelson

Male and Female Brains, and Other Brain Stuff

In the face of danger, male brains focus on the need for action, whereas female brains focus on their own emotional response to danger, say Polish researchers.

For the study, Dr. Urbanik and colleagues recruited 40 right-handed volunteers, 21 men and 19 women, between the ages of 18 and 36. The volunteers underwent fMRI while viewing pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), a widely used, standardized testing system comprised of several thousand slides of various objects and images from ordinary life designed to evoke defined emotional states. The images were displayed in two runs. For the first run, only negative pictures were shown. For the second run, only positive pictures were shown.

While viewing the negative images, women showed decidedly stronger and more extensive activation in the left thalamus, which relays sensory information to and from the cerebral cortex, including the pain and pleasure centers. Men exhibited more activation in the left insula, which gauges the physiological state of the entire body and then generates subjective feelings that can bring about actions. Information from the insula is relayed to other brain structures involved in decision making.

"The brain activation seen in the women might indicate stronger involvement of the neural circuit, which is associated with identification of emotional stimuli," Dr. Urbanik said. "The more pronounced activation of the insular cortex in the men might be related to the autonomic components, such as elevated heart rate or increased sweating, that accompany watching emotional material."

The autonomic nervous system controls involuntary functions, including respiration, heart rate and digestion, and helps to adjust certain functions in response to stress or other environmental stimuli. It is responsible for the body's "fight or flight" response to threatening situations.

"In men, the negative images on the slides were more potent in driving their autonomic system," Dr. Urbanik said. "This might signal that when confronted with dangerous situations, men are more likely than women to take action." _SD

Once you learn to ride a bike, you are not likely to forget how. Motor learning is profound and lasting -- and fast. It has been found by UC Santa Cruz researchers that new synapse formation begins to occur within 1 hour of initiation of training for motor skills.

"We found very quick and robust synapse formation almost immediately, within one hour of the start of training," said Yi Zuo, assistant professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology at UCSC.

Zuo's team observed the formation of structures called "dendritic spines" that grow on pyramidal neurons in the motor cortex. The dendritic spines form synapses with other nerve cells. At those synapses, the pyramidal neurons receive input from other brain regions involved in motor memories and muscle movements. The researchers found that growth of new dendritic spines was followed by selective elimination of pre-existing spines, so that the overall density of spines returned to the original level. _SD

Want to grow new brain cells? You need to eat the right foods, among other necessary changes. Barcelona researchers have found that an "LMN" diet prompts mouse brains to grow new stem cells leading to the production of new neurons of various types.

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) researchers have confirmed that a diet rich in polyphenols and polyunsaturated fatty acids, patented as an LMN diet, helps boost the production of the brain's stem cells -neurogenesis- and strengthens their differentiation in different types of neuron cells.


The research revealed that mice fed an LMN diet, when compared to those fed a control diet, have more cell proliferation in the two areas of the brain where neurogenesis is produced, the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus, both of which are greatly damaged in patients with Alzheimer's disease. These results give support to the hypothesis that a diet made up of foods rich in these antioxidant substances could delay the onset of this disease or even slow down its evolution. _SD

Early intervention in autism may increase the child's IQ and social skills. University of Washington researchers claim that their intervention in 18 to 30 month old toddlers improved the IQ of children an average of 18 points.

The children were separated into two groups, one that received 20 hours a week of the intervention – two two-hour sessions five days a week – from UW specialists. They also received five hours a week of parent-delivered therapy. Children in the second group were referred to community-based programs for therapy. Both groups' progress was monitored by UW researchers. At the beginning of the study there was no substantial difference in functioning between the two groups.

At the conclusion of the study, the IQs of the children in the intervention group had improved by an average of approximately 18 points, compared to a little more than four points in the comparison group. The intervention group also had a nearly 18-point improvement in receptive language (listening and understanding) compared to approximately 10 points in the comparison group. Seven of the children in the intervention group had enough improvement in overall skills to warrant a change in diagnosis from autism to the milder condition known as 'pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified,' or PDD-NOS. Only one child in the community-based intervention group had an improved diagnosis.

"We believe that the ESDM group made much more progress because it involved carefully structured teaching and a relationship-based approach to learning with many, many learning opportunities embedded in the play," Rogers said. _Eurekalert

Sucess for such interventions much past 30 months of age is not likely to occur. Developmental windows for brain centers occurs from posterior to anterior, from near birth for visual development to final myelinisation of the pre-frontal pathways around the age of 25 years.

This UW autism research suggests that interventions targeted to particular levels of brain development -- occurring at the proper times -- can partially compensate for genetic tendencies toward developmental failure (and may possibly compensate partially for early damaging environmental exposures).

UK hospital offers high quality 3-D MRI brain scans of babies inside the uterus. The hospital claims to be the first in the world to offer a new "high speed" MRI scan that compensates for fetal movement in the womb.

Update 4 Dec 09: Here is a story about earlier research from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, looking at male and female responses to stress. The findings of this team were very similar to the results of the Polish study linked above.

Put simply: In general, women deal with stress by looking for allies and "rescuers". Men deal with stress by either flight or direct struggle. The study models used by both the Pennsylvania researchers and the Polish researchers were highly artificial, of course, taking place in brain scanning devices.

Can you design an "ethical" study placed in a more realistic setting?

Brain Reverse Engineering

... to fully realize the brain’s potential to teach us how to make machines learn and think, further advances are needed in the technology for understanding the brain in the first place. Modern noninvasive methods for simultaneously measuring the activity of many brain cells have provided a major boost in that direction, but details of the brain’s secret communication code remain to be deciphered. Nerve cells communicate by firing electrical pulses that release small molecules called neurotransmitters, chemical messengers that hop from one nerve cell to a neighbor, inducing the neighbor to fire a signal of its own (or, in some cases, inhibiting the neighbor from sending signals). Because each nerve cell receives messages from tens of thousands of others, and circuits of nerve cells link up in complex networks, it is extremely difficult to completely trace the signaling pathways.

Furthermore, the code itself is complex — nerve cells fire at different rates, depending on the sum of incoming messages. Sometimes the signaling is generated in rapid-fire bursts; sometimes it is more leisurely. And much of mental function seems based on the firing of multiple nerve cells around the brain in synchrony. _GrandEngineeringChallenge

Henry MarkramRespected Neuroscientist Henry Markram recently objected to claims for cat-scale "brain simulation" by an IBM team led by Dharmendra Modha. Markram stated that the IBM team's claims were a "hoax."

Modha's team nevertheless won the Gordon Bell prize for its efforts, and in computer science circles Modha's achievement was considered a respectable one.

The National Academy of Engineering considers the Reverse Engineering of the Brain to be a worthy project, as does DARPA -- which is helping to fund Modha's team.

It is important to understand the differences between Markram's and Modha's approaches to brain simulation, in order to make sense of the public disagreements. Markram -- an accomplished neuroscientist -- is attempting to simulate the brain down to the level of synapses and ion channels on individual neuronal processes (see video above). Modha is merely simulating "neurons" as points or nodes in an extensive network of nodes. Modha is a computer scientist and his simulation is just what you would expect from a computer scientist.

The two types of simulations are meant to serve completely different purposes. Markram intends for his simulation to teach neuroscientists how the brain works on a dynamic level never before approached by neuroscience. Modha wants to build a simulation that can bring human-level massively parallel computing to complex machine systems. Modha eventually wants to build thinking machines. Markram wants to open a window on real time brain function that will help neuroscientists solve the difficult problems of brain function and pathology.

What Modha is building has very little to do with a rat brain, a cat brain, a human brain, or even an insect brain. But if he and his team want to call their work a "brain simulation", no one but Markram has objected so far. Well, Markram and Al Fin. ;-)

There is room for dozens of approaches to reverse engineering the brain, or more. The only condition should be that researchers not mis-represent the nature of what they are doing.

Micro-Nubbin Neuron-Chip Interface

This "micro-nubbin" nerve interface-chip from IMEC provides convenient "docking stations" for nerve processes to interface. The chip is meant to serve as an experimental "eavesdropper" -- to listen in on communication between neurons. Initially, it will provide a surface for nerves to grow and interface. Scientists hope to learn something from recording how networks of neurons communicate among themselves.

IMEC presents a unique microchip with microscopic nail structures that enable close communication between the electronics and biological cells. The new chip is a mass-producible, easy-to-use tool in electrophysiology research, for example for fundamental research on the functioning and dysfunctioning of the brain. Each micronail structure serves as a close contact-point for one cell, and contains an electrode that can very accurately record and trigger in real-time the electrical activity of an individual electrogenic cell in a network.


...IMEC's new micronail chip is the ideal instrument to study the communication mechanisms between cells. The electrodes in IMEC's micronail chip are downsized to the size of cells and even smaller. They consist of tiny nail structures made of a metal stem covered with an oxide layer, and a conductive (e.g. gold or titaniumnitride) tip. When cells are applied on the chip surface, their cell membrane strongly engulfs the nail structures, thereby realizing an intimate contact with the electrode. This very close contact improves the signal-to-interference ratio enabling precise recording of electrical signals and electrical stimulation of single cells. _SD

This research is fairly mundane, as described. But Al Fin neuroscientists understand where the science is heading, and are quite excited.

The micro-nubbin chips will need further miniaturisation, and will have to be made biocompatible. In the lab, neuronal and glial proto-cells will be cultured, in contact with the micro-nubbins. The chip + precursor cells + selected growth factors will be implanted intra-cranially, and anchored to the underside of the skull. The cultured and anchored cells will send processes into the white matter of the brain via an intricate system of artificial portals -- in essence engineered artificial white matter paths from the interface to merge with established white matter pathways.   These soft tissue penetrations of the cortex would be composed of the individual's own cells, and firmly immersed within soft tissue so as not to cause damage to other structures.

Al Fin neuroscientists envision roughly a dozen of these micro-nubbin brain/machine interfaces at specific areas of the skull -- depending upon the brain systems to be interfaced. Each nubbin-hub interface will allow for roughly a thousand or more neuron-chip interface points. Visual, auditory, olfactory, motor, and memory systems will be targeted -- among others.

Clearly the initial applications will be military. First, to provide prosthetic control of artificial limbs, and to provide optic and auditory input to soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who have suffered brain damage. As the operational ability of the chips improves, they will be used to compensate for subtler forms of brain damage and functional impairment in military injuries.

As the chips are perfected they will be used to create nerve-machine interfacing with advanced weapons systems and remote reconnaissance systems. Then the chips will be implanted into elite combat infantry operatives.

Imagine being able to see well beyond the electromagnetic spectrum of visible light. Or to be able to hear well beyond the auditory spectrum of 20 Hz to 20 KHz. Having the ability to distinguish subtle smells better than a bloodhound. Those would be simple beginnings with much more complex capabilities downloaded later -- as improved versions are developed.

Brain-machine interfacing will allow for a wide variety of expanded human senses and function, as well as rich virtual reality and augmented reality settings. Auxiliary memory and calculation systems as well as other advantages of complex interfacing with highly advanced information systems, would also be available.

Before all these things can be done, such micro-nubbin chips will have to become "smart enough" to understand neuronal code.  That is the purpose of the initial lab studies with cultured neuronal nets.

Climate Catastrophe: Never Anything But a Fraud

Nothing about the [liberated CRU emails and files] revelations surprises me. I have maintained email correspondence with most of these scientists for many years, and I know several personally. I long ago realized that they were faking the whole exercise.

When you enter into a debate with any of them, they always stop cold when you ask an awkward question. This applies even when you write to a government department or a member of Parliament. I and many of my friends have grown accustomed to our failure to publish and to lecture, and to the rejection of our comments submitted prior to every IPCC report. _VincentGray

Problems with New Zealand Government climate data continue

More scandal: French researcher's interesting climate data censored by CRU and IPCC

It is time to admit that the CRU emails and files only make explicit the scandal of climate fraud that should have been obvious all along. Phil Jones and Michael Mann have been intimidating, stonewalling, censoring, and blackballing "inconvenient points of view" for over a decade.

Before the governments of the western world commit their constituents and their descendants to lifetimes of enforced energy poverty and re-distributive slavery, they need to admit to their citizens that science has nothing to do with this massive change in their circumstances.

The news media should have picked up on this story long ago, this obvious and long-standing fraud of the pseudo-scientists of climate. The failure of the media to inform on this vital topic, will come back to haunt everyone involved.

ClimateGate: Pity the Fool Who Closes His Eyes.....

NYTimes ClimateGate: The Very Ugly Side of Climate Science

WSJ Global Warming with the Lid Off What the puppet masters of climate catastrophe never wanted you to know.

MSN Money: Big Money interests like Goldman Sachs are involved in the global warming scam up to their eyeballs.

Icecap: ClimateGate News and Links

ClimateGate: Copenhagen Plans at Risk International cutpurses wanted to pick your pockets in Copenhagen this year. Al Gore and Goldman Sachs are among them. Barak Obama was riding in the same bandwagon. Too bad.

Do these "scientists" who have been leading the carbon hysteria charge deserve to be in jail?

Here are the files. Read them for yourselves. Search function is included. Anyone who tells you this is not important, not to bother yourself reading them for yourself: such people are not your friends.

ClimateGate Controversy Spreads

Two interesting US developments from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) server's incontinence:

1. The US Government's National Aeronautics and Space Administration is being sued by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, for multiple, blatant, violations of the Freedom of Information Act. The leaked files from the CRU's server provided evidence of intentional violation of the FOIA by NASA GISS and associated organisations.

2. Members of the US Congress are considering holding hearings concerning the leaked CRU files and their bearing on US Government climate policies.

ScienceMag.org published an article noting that deleting e-mail messages to hide them from a FOI request is a crime in the United Kingdom. George Monbiot, a U.K. activist and journalist who previously called for dramatic action to deal with global warming, wrote: "It's no use pretending that this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging." _Much more of interest at CBSBlogTakingLiberties

Al Fin hackers suspect that other climate research center servers will be targeted for similarly incriminating material in the weeks to come.

When famous and generously funded researchers misbehave at the levels displayed by Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, etc., they give all of science a black eye.

Al Fin information scientists urge all readers to get to the bottom of this issue. Read the emails and commented files yourself. If anyone tells you that you should ignore the controversy and just "believe the science", ask them to be specific about what science should be believed. Good science or bad science? It is likely that they cannot tell the difference.

Change Zombies: A Generation Without Minds

Unless you are an exceptional parent, you will turn your children over to an educational establishment for a significant -- perhaps the most significant -- part of his upbringing. No matter what the child represents to you, to this establishment, your child is an experiment in educational curriculum design.   An experiment in the creation of change zombies.

Unfortunately, the title "Change Zombies" is not an exaggeration. You may begin to understand, if you read this spiked-online article. The "idea of change" can work its way into the minds of today's curriculum designers, overwhelming their basic equilibrium and sense of mental balance.

In the worldview of the educational establishment change has acquired a sacred character that determines what is taught. It creates new requirements and introduces new ideas about learning. And it encourages the mass production of a disposable pedagogy.

...Often change and social transformation are represented as if they are unique to our time....Knowledge itself is called into question because in a world of constant flux it must be continually overtaken by events. Policy has become so focused on keeping up with change that it has become distracted from the task of giving meaning to education.

The fetishisation of change is symptomatic of a mood of intellectual malaise, where notions of truth, knowledge and meaning have acquired a provisional character. Perversely, the transformation of change into a metaphysical force haunting humanity actually desensitises society from distinguishing between a passing novelty and qualitative change.

...Curriculum engineers often display indifference, if not contempt, for abstract thought and the knowledge developed in the past. Both are criticised for being irrelevant or outdated; only new information that can be applied and acted on is seen as suitable for the training – and it is training and not teaching – of digital natives.

...The instability that afflicts the education system is turned into the normal state of an institution that needs to be responsive to the uncertain flow of events. Although fads come and go, the constant feature of today’s throwaway pedagogy is a deep-seated hostility to teaching academic subjects to young people, especially to those who come from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups. So-called modernisers regard the subject-based curriculum as far too rigid for a school system that must adapt to a constantly changing world.

...Sadly, the ceaseless repetition of the idea that the past is irrelevant desensitises people from understanding the influence of the legacy of human development on their lives. The constant talk of ceaseless change tends to naturalise it and turn it into an omnipotent autonomous force that subjects human beings to its will. _spiked-online

If the parents are able to spend enough time with the child in the early years before school, and if they are able to supplement the child's official schooling with an authentic education provided at home and under the direct supervision of the family, the child will likely turn out fine. But most parents are too busy working for the tax collector and the bill collector to provide a child with a quality, meaningful contact education. And so the child is thrown to the experimenters.

Change is, undeniably, an everpresent condition of life -- particularly young life. But for the health of the child's mind it should be a background condition, not a foreground condition. If perverse educators and curriculum planners push the idea of "change" to the forefront, it too easily becomes a euphemism for meaningless emptiness and void substituted in the place of the deep and vital truths that all children must learn to create their own meaning within themselves.

Modern pedagogy assumes that this will happen on its own -- or they assume that if teachers of the proper ideology control education from top to bottom, the child can be set on the (politically) correct path by means of proper indoctrination.

But indoctrination is not education, and it has nothing to do with the deep morality that every child must learn -- regardless of the presence or absence of any religion in his life. The overriding emphasis upon political and ideological indoctrination combined with the fetish of "change" leaves an empty mind, a change zombie.

It is happening at all levels of education. It is reflected in our culture, in rampant political corruption. The widespread abandonment of books and solitude. The irritated dismissal of deep meanings that require more than a minute or two to absorb. The susceptibility to emotional pitches from well-cadenced politicians with speechwriters who understand the necessity of a short-attention-span appeal.

There is change, and there is meaningful change. The difference is lost to modern professors and graduates of university schools of education, but it is a critical difference. Most of the change that the young experience is meaningless, because they are moving from nowhere to nowhere. Meaningful change is moving from a significant somewhere to another significant somewhere.

But children are never given the opportunity to get anywhere -- they are pushed, twitter-like, from one distraction to the next without significant meaning ever setting in. Curriculum designers and educators are themselves lost in distraction, drifting in turbulent currents, having burned all their navigational charts as a demonstration of their independence of thought.

It is an ongoing tragedy of the wide-scale destruction of mind potential. It is simply how things are done in the age of change. Throw in a dash of hope for good measure. Better than nothing....

Who Is Honest and Brave Enough to Come Clean?

The controversy over the leaked documents from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit has just begun. We are now learning that besides the incriminating emails, the liberated documents contain a great deal of commented computer code. That is where the real paydirt is likely to be found. Watch and learn.

One of the most troubling aspects of the global climate debate is the blatant dishonesty and / or cowardice of many bloggers who have committed to carbon hysteria as a way of life -- and who are now unwilling to even acknowledge the huge, obvious faultlines that are spreading across the climate science landscape.

True believers are found in every walk of life, but future-oriented bloggers are supposed to be more immune to "future shock" and "cognitive dissonance" than the mainstream of information purveyors. Sadly, that is not the case. Some of the best known and most highly regarded future-oriented bloggers are hiding from their own contradictions -- which are right in front of their noses!

Some refreshing exceptions to this troubling trend are the excellent future blogger Brian Wang, "mega-project" blogger Neil Craig, HBD blogger Half Sigma, HBD blogger Dennis Mangan, and futurist Thomas Frey. Brian Wang's and Thomas Frey's websites are very highly visited, and both Brian and Thomas have posted a lot of material favourable to the IPCC "consensus". But when recent material came to light that exposed the collusion, manipulation, and intimidation used by the foremost IPCC lead reviewers, both Brian and Thomas reported on the controversy in an open and objective manner.

It is too early to chastise the numerous well-regarded future bloggers who have chosen to keep quiet on this topic, by name. But true believers reveal themselves as often by their omissions as by their bandwagon causes. Al Fin climatologists hope that these quasi-religious believers in global warming catastrophe who happen to post on the future occasionally, will wake up and make a conscious choice to face the reality of today.

Obama Won't Pay the Debt -- He Will Default

There must be a default at some point. The question is: "Which kind?" If the central bank ceases to inflate, a recession begins. If the government or the central bank refuses to intervene, many banks go under. This shrinks the money supply. The recession becomes a depression. Bankruptcies and unemployment increase.

Tax revenues fall. The government cannot pay its debt and also meet all of its promises. It must choose:

1. Default on all of the debt
2. Default on part of the debt
3. Tell the central bank to inflate
4. Raise taxes and cut expenditures

Choice #3 starts the process over. The ultimate result: the destruction of the currency. This is default through inflation. It is nonetheless a default. _MarketOracle

Read the rest of the educational article above. Although the world has never seen a debt of this size before, several political entities have been in similar situations. They only have so many choices. Americans are finally learning enough about President Obama to understand that he is likely to choose the least responsible and most corrupt choice available.

Worst Deflation in US History

Unemployment Rates Rising Across US

Spend and Borrow Economics Worst Possible Approach to Problem

Detroit Cannot Bury Its Dead: Future of Obamanation?

Foreclosure Monster Closing In on US Again?

US Unraveling, Breakdown of Society

Multicultural societies tend to be low-trust societies. The larger they grow -- particularly when IQ and character gaps lead to performance and income gaps -- the harder they are to hold together. When times are tough, such schizoid societies tend to fragment -- sometimes violently.

The US has the misfortune to have allowed its political institutions to fall under the influence of members of the criminal class. Corrupt, criminally connected persons of low character are always in search of positions of power over others. Such leaders will continue to siphon hard-won wealth away from middle classes and productive classes, toward politically favoured groups. Just as in a third world banana republic -- which is what the US is beginning to resemble.

Hell to Pay In the Morning: Commercial Real Estate

The collapse of the residential market was led by massive defaults in ill-conceived “sub-prime loans”. Millions of American homes are now in default and in the process of loan modification, abandonment or foreclosure. There is no end in sight as Prime, Alt-A, and Option ARM loan resets come due beginning in 2010.

Lurking around the corner, literally unnoticed by the average American worried about keeping his home, is a similar crisis in commercial real estate. For over a year commercial property values have been plummeting and have not begun to recover. A drive through both major cities and suburbia tells the story. Vacant stores, empty shopping malls, cancelled mixed use developments and eerily empty car lots presage bad things to come. _NewGeography

The collapse of the 1990s - 2000s housing bubble occurred while US unemployment was still relatively low. But now that US unemployment is well above 10% -- and approaching 20% by some meaningful measures -- the nation lacks the "consumer power" it needs to pull itself back up by its bootstraps. The private sector is being sucked dry by the government sector, and everything the government has done for the past year to halt the decline, has had unfortunate and largely unintended consequences.

Depository institutions hold about half of the $3.2 trillion of debt on US commercial property. The default rate in the first quarter of 2009 was just 2.25%. Sounds OK until you do the math and realize that $36 billion was in default and it is just beginning. The FDIC puts troubled banks on “the problem list”. In early 2008, there was one bank on the list. At the end of June 2009 there were 416, up from 305 at the end of the first quarter when the default rate was just 2.25%. Total assets at these problem institutions total $299 billion. The problem is that the total reserves of the FDIC are just $42 billion. The FDIC has closed over 100 banks and one good estimate is that they will close around 10% of US banks, 500 to 1,000, before the crisis runs its course. The losses will dwarf the $394 billion of the RTC and may surpass a trillion dollars. _NewGeography

The collapse of October 2008 was just the opening bell on an extended economic recession in the US and much of the rest of the world. Misbegotten government economic policies have reached around and stung the American economy in the asp. Indeed, damaging government policies are just getting started under the Obama / Pelosi reich.

Old, tired, and mostly vacant Class C office buildings line the crumbling freeways of Detroit, Cleveland, Youngstown, and countless smaller rust belt cities where excess capacity has eliminated the need for new development.

A year from now, the landscape of America will be forever changed. The office and retail markets will be vastly different than they look today. Not much of it will be good. Five years from now, will empty shopping centers and auto dealerships remain shuttered or will they be rebuilt or torn down and their use converted to something more productive? Will our politicians cease their meddling in the market and allow the market to heal itself? These are questions that will haunt our economy for the next decade. _NewGeography