Archive for March, 2011
Why Our Soldiers Are Falling Apart
New York Magazine delves into the tidal wave of returning soldiers tormented by severe psychological problems and outfitted with cocktail-like regimens of drugs for sleeping, stress, psychosis, and muscle relaxation. Contributing factors include everything from the nature of insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan to Facebook to the failings of modern medicine:
The nature of this conflict is also quite unusual. As in Vietnam, the enemy blends in with civilians, rendering everyone a potential threat; but unlike in Vietnam, this war is fought in cities as much as in the hinterlands, which means soldiers are never allowed to mentally decompress.
There’s no front in this war, and no rear either, which means there’s no place to go where the mortar rounds aren’t. “I was up at Walter Reed the other day,” Chiarelli tells me on the airplane, “and I ran into a young kid who lost both his legs, wayyyyyy up. I asked him, ‘How…
Youth And Video Games: Life Is Just A Stage And We Are Merely Digital Actors
Terror-mongering about new technologies is nothing new. When the car was invented, I’m sure people were worried about the thing ripping our faces off. “Humans aren’t meant to operate at that speed!,” and so on. On the other hand, it is inarguable that technology very quickly becomes a part of our lives, of our culture. And there’s no time to do long term testing. Some of us get to be canaries in the mine shaft. And if people start dropping or getting depressed at unprecedented rates, it’ll take decades to come to a conclusion about why this is happening.
Tell me if this narrative about a kid, beleaguered and possibly brain-damaged by dangerous video games, sounds familiar:
He stumbles upstairs with a glazed look in his eyes. “Why did you make me stop playing Xbox with my friends! That’s not fair!” he accuses me. I shake my head feeling guilty that before I knew it,…
Trial Of New Age Guru Reveals Bizarre Practices
In October 2009 reports of mutliple deaths at an Arizona sweat lodge retreat led by New Age guru James Arthur Ray (one of the “teachers” in the hit movie and book The Secret) rocked the self help world. Now that he’s on trial, details of his bizarre practices are emerging. Mark Duncan reports for the Daily Courier:
Echoes of a lost life hung thickly over Judge Warren Darrow’s courtroom Tuesday after a jury heard the recorded voice of Kirby Brown, one of three people who died after a sweat lodge ceremony near Sedona in 2009.
The deaths led to charges of manslaughter against noted motivational speaker and author James Arthur Ray, who has pleaded not guilty.
“When we started the (Samurai) game, I was like you,” Brown said on the recording, which was made just before she and the other attendees entered the sweat lodge. It is a segment from recordings made during four…
The Happiest Person in America
Alvin Wong is happier than you — statistically speaking (which brings to mind the old saying, “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics,” but I digress). As ABC News reports, Mr. Wong is the exact statistical composite of the happiest person:
Alvin Wong always considered himself a happy guy.
“I get up in the morning and say, ‘I’m very fortunate. I’m living in Hawaii, doing what I want to do,’” Wong said. But when Wong, 69, learned he is the exact statistical composite of the happiest person in America, he wasn’t sure what to think.
“When The New York Times called and read off all the information about who this person is, I asked if it was a practical joke.”
According to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, the happiest person in America is…
Ever Want to Yell at 300 Billionaires Who Helped Wreck the Economy? (Video)
At Bank of America’s first Investor Conference in three years (3/8/11), organizers from US Uncut crashed the event to protest corporate tax dodgers and public service cuts. The room was packed with 300 hedge fund managers, institutional investors, & asset managers.
What US Uncut said:
When corporations like Bank of America don’t pay their fair share of taxes, we have to ‘cut’ teachers, firefighters, and public servants. Do you pay your taxes? So do we. Why don’t corporations pay their fair share, just like everyone else? Bank of America is Bad for America. Bank of America pockets Billions in profits and bailouts, but $0 in American taxes — that’s immoral and un-American.
Scientists Develop Better Methods To Match Police Sketches To Mug Shots
Reports Michigan State University:
EAST LANSING, Mich. — The long-time practice of using police facial sketches to nab criminals has been, at best, an inexact art. But the process may soon be a little more exact thanks to the work of some Michigan State University researchers.
A team led by MSU University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Anil Jain and doctoral student Brendan Klare has developed a set of algorithms and created software that will automatically match hand-drawn facial sketches to mug shots that are stored in law enforcement databases.
Once in use, Klare said, the implications are huge.
“We’re dealing with the worst of the worst here,” he said. “Police sketch artists aren’t called in because someone stole a pack of gum. A lot of time is spent generating these facial sketches so it only makes sense that they are matched with the available technology to catch these criminals.”
Have TSA Body Scanners Been Used On Trains and Even Sidewalks?
The TSA is, off course, denying this story. Andy Greenberg writes on Forbes’ FIREWALL:
Giving Transportation Security Administration agents a peek under your clothes may soon be a practice that goes well beyond airport checkpoints. Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.
The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Wednesday published documents it obtained from the Department of Homeland Security showing that from 2006 to 2008 the agency planned a study of of new anti-terrorism technologies that EPIC believes raise serious privacy concerns. The projects range from what the DHS describes as “a walk through x-ray screening system that could be deployed at entrances to special events or other points…
Mark Frauenfelder: ‘Passport Ownership Prevents Diabetes’
Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing writes, “It’s conclusive: owning a passport will prevent you from becoming diabetic.”
Endangered Sea Turtles To Be Killed After Experiment
Green sea turtle. Photo: Wilfried Wittkowsky (CC)
Controversial news that’s causing an uproar. The Vancouver Sun reports:
Endangered green sea turtles that have been part of a University of B.C. research project for more than 10 years will be killed sometime this spring.
Bill Milsom, head of UBC’s zoology department, said seven turtles will be killed in order to complete a study into turtle diving depths. The turtles are at least 10 years old and can live to be 30.
The study was designed to measure the impacts of climate change on the animals and to help countries develop policies around fishing.
More than 85,000 green sea turtles died as “bycatch in the fishing industry” between 1990 and 2008, Milsom said. By studying diving depths, researchers could recommend how deep fish nets should be placed to avoid catching the turtles.
Asked why kill an endangered species, Milsom said “they were brought in for these experiments [at UBC]…
Cleansing The Soul By Hurting the Flesh: The Guilt-Reducing Effect of Pain
"Lent personified at a Carnival celebration" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1559)
From ScienceDaily:
Lent in the Christian tradition is a time of sacrifice and penance. It also is a period of purification and enlightenment. Pain purifies. It atones for sin and cleanses the soul. Or at least that’s the idea. Theological questions aside, can self-inflicted pain really alleviate the guilt associated with immoral acts?
A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, explores the psychological consequences of experiencing bodily pain.
Psychological scientist Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland, Australia and his colleagues recruited a group of young men and women under the guise they were part of a study of mental and physical acuity. Under this pretense, they asked them to write short essays about a time in their lives when they had ostracized someone; this memory of being unkind was intended to prime their…
Facebook To Add Suicide-Risk Alert System
BBC News reports:
Facebook is launching a system that allows users to report friends who they think may be contemplating suicide.
The feature is being run in conjunction with Samaritans, which said several people had used it during a test phase.
Anyone worried about a friend can fill out a form, detailing their concerns, which is passed to the social networking site’s moderators.
It follows reports of several cases where Facebook users announced their intention to commit suicide online.
The reporting page asks for the address (URL) of the Facebook page where the messages are posted, the full name of the user and details of any networks they are members of.
Suicide-related alerts will be escalated to the highest level, for attention by Facebook’s user operations team.
How Anything May Signify Anything: William Friedman And The Biliteral Cipher
Cabinet Magazine has a fascinating and mysterious article on William F. Friedman, perhaps the greatest code-breaker in modern history. Friedman became a hero of World War II by breaking Japan’s PURPLE code and inventing the Army’s best cipher machine. He did it all using the ‘biliteral cipher’, a simple but powerful encoding technique invented in the sixteenth century, which allows for hidden messages to be conveyed by anything from flower petals to musical notes to faces in a photograph:
It is unlikely that Bacon’s cipher system was ever used for the transmission of military secrets, in the seventeenth century or in the twentieth. But for roughly a century from 1850, it set the world of literature on fire.
A passion for puzzles, codes, and conspiracies fueled a widespread suspicion that Shakespeare was not the author of his plays, and professional and amateur scholars of all sorts spent extraordinary amounts of time, energy, and money combing Renaissance texts in search of signatures and other messages that would reveal the true identity of their author. Even after the recent publication of James Shapiro’s comprehensive history of the authorship controversy, Contested Will, it is difficult for us to appreciate the depth of conviction — among writers as diverse and as distinguished as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Henry Miller, and even Helen Keller — that Shakespeare’s texts contained the secret solution to what was widely considered to be “the Greatest of Literary Problems.”…
Utah Approves Gold & Silver Coins As Currency
Via Talking Points:
The Utah House of Representatives has approved a bill that allowing gold and silver coins to be used as currency, though unlike similar bills in other states, it doesn’t force anyone to accept gold or silver as legal tender.
House Bill 317 was introduced by state Rep. Brad Galvez (R) last week, and passed the House by a vote of 47-26. It will now head to the state Senate for a vote.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Galvez explained: “This is a step in preparedness, a step in security that allows us to be able to help hold up our economy as the dollar continues to shrink.”
As TPM has been documenting, there’s been a recent push for gold and silver coins to be used as currency. Georgia state Rep. Bobby Franklin (R) recently reintroduced legislation to force his state to conduct all monetary transactions with U.S. gold or silver coins —…
Pirate Party Approved In Massachusetts
The United States Pirate Party was formed in 2006, but Massachusetts has become the first state to officially recognize Pirate Party members in voter registry. The Raw Story reports:
The Massachusetts Election Division has approved the Massachusetts Pirate Party as a political designation, allowing voters in the state to register as a “Pirate.”
The party strives to increase government transparency, promote personal privacy, reinforce the spread of knowledge through copyright reform, and abolish patents.
“We live in a country founded on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Massachusetts Pirate Party said in a statement. “For many people, those ideals are not real. The Supreme Court and Congress have expanded the power of corporations and made them more powerful than people. Increasingly government officials ignore open meeting laws, make deals favorable to corporations behind closed doors and sell off our public information to private interests.”
Racial Identity Tied to Happiness, Study Finds
Photo: vargas2040 (CC)
ScienceDaily reports:
African American people who identify more strongly with their racial identity are generally happier, according to a study led by psychology researchers at Michigan State University.The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, appears in the current issue of Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, a research journal published by the American Psychological Association.
“This is the first empirical study we know of that shows a relationship between racial identity and happiness,” said Stevie C.Y. Yap, doctoral candidate in psychology at MSU and lead researcher on the project.
Previous research has found a relationship between racial identity and favorable outcomes such as self-esteem, Yap said, but none has made the link with happiness.
For the study, the researchers surveyed black adults in Michigan. The results suggest the more the participants identified with being black — or the more being black was an important part of who they are —…
Meet The Germinoid DK, A Frighteningly-Human Android
Built in (obviously) Japan by Hiroshi Ishiguro, the Geminoid DK is an ultra-realistic automaton designed to perfectly resemble a Danish university professor named Henrik Scharfe. Chillingly, the Geminoid is outfitted with a goatee, allowing it to blend unnoticed into the general male population should it escape from its handlers. Even more chillingly, with the fake flesh removed it’s a dead ringer for the T-800 from the Terminator movies.
Subway Passes McDonald’s As Dominant Global Fast Food Empire
In the grim future years to come, we will be mandated daily to eat not a McDonald’s burger, but a Subway sandwich. Some credit for Subway’s ascension goes to the chain’s willingness to expand fast food franchising to nontraditional locations such as schools, churches, and bodies of water. CNNMoney introduces our new corporate overlords:
Subway has surpassed McDonald’s to become the world’s largest restaurant chain in terms of units, the sandwich company confirmed Monday.
Subway had 33,749 restaurants around the globe at the end of 2010, said company spokesman Les Winograd. McDonald’s had 32,737 at year end, according to a February regulatory filing from the burger giant.
“Last year was actually pretty average for us, growth-wise,” Winograd said. “We aim to open between 1,000 and 2,000 locations globally each year.”
About half of the company’s unit growth is overseas, Winograd said. Subway now has more than 1,000 locations in Asia, and it just opened its…
Still Waters Run Deep: Phase 2 Of The Madison Uprising
The differences between Madison, Wisconsin and Tripoli, Libya should be obvious. The fact that Madison hasn’t floated away on a crimson tide of gore should be encouraging—horrors on that atavistic scale happen only where there exists not even the nominal right to redress majoritarian excesses through protest.
The contrast to America’s experience of 1968 is positive as well; I remind you that movement flamed out prematurely due to inexperience and lack of discipline. The image created in my mind by this phase of the Madison Uprising is more like that evoked by Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”—the silent edge of a rising shout.
The crowds in Madison seem to have leveled out at a steady 30,000-40,000 per day, according to most reports. That is still a pretty freakin’ huge # when put into context of the relatively sparse population of this section of Wisconsin and personal commitments being made by protesters in order to attend,…
From The Origin Of Life To 2012: Pseudoscience On The Loose
Have alien bacteria fossils been discovered in a meteorite by a NASA scientist?
On Friday night the “Journal of Cosmology” published an article entitled “Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites: Implications to Life on Comets, Europa, and Enceladus,” attributed to one Richard B. Hoover of the NASA/Marshall SFC [1], claiming such a discovery.
Extraordinary claims, however, require extraordinary evidence, which is nowhere to be found in the paper. While I am trained in and have worked in scientific fields, I am admittedly not a scientist, so I refer you to the blogs of PZ Myers [2], David Dobbs [3], and Rosie Redfield [4] for detailed analysis/straight-up debunking. In sum, per Redfield: “Executive Summary: Move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.”
There’s nothing wrong with alternative theories – and certainly nothing wrong with leveling a critique at the scientific establishment – provided that they are supported by data and arguments that meet the…
