Archive for July, 2011
How Easy Is It to Falsify Memory? How Social Pressure Affects What We Remember
From ScienceDaily:
New research at the Weizmann Institute shows that a bit of social pressure may be all that is needed. The study, which appears in the journal Science, reveals a unique pattern of brain activity when false memories are formed — one that hints at a surprising connection between our social selves and memory.
The experiment, conducted by Prof. Yadin Dudai and research student Micah Edelson of the Institute’s Neurobiology Department with Prof. Raymond Dolan and Dr. Tali Sharot of University College London, took place in four stages. In the first, volunteers watched a documentary film in small groups. Three days later, they returned to the lab individually to take a memory test, answering questions about the film. They were also asked how confident they were in their answers.
They were later invited back to the lab to retake the test while being scanned in a functional MRI (fMRI) that revealed their…
What Does Your Blood Type Say About You?
A Japanese minister has resigned, saying that his blood type accounted for his failings. According to Japanese belief, what might yours mean? John Crace asks in the Guardian:
It came away in my hands. The dog ate it. Honest. When Ryu Matsumoto, Japan’s minister for reconstruction, resigned after just a week in the job, one of the excuses he offered was almost as lame. He said he had the wrong blood type — B — which made him a more abrasive personality and accounted for his less-than-tactful remarks about some areas of Japan badly affected by the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.
Most people in the UK haven’t a clue what blood type and aren’t much bothered either way. But in Japan there is a widely held belief that blood groups can predict personality, temperament and compatibility with other people; so much so that many newspapers, magazines and TV shows carry daily blood…
Wyoming: The New Cayman Islands
Kelly Carr and Brian Grow recently reported in Yahoo Finance:
The secretive business havens of Cyprus and the Cayman Islands face a potent rival: Cheyenne, Wyoming.
At a single address in this sleepy city of 60,000 people, more than 2,000 companies are registered. The building, 2710 Thomes Avenue, isn’t a shimmering skyscraper filled with A-list corporations. It’s a 1,700-square-foot brick house with a manicured lawn, a few blocks from the State Capitol.
Neighbors say they see little activity there besides regular mail deliveries and a woman who steps outside for smoke breaks. Inside, however, the walls of the main room are covered floor to ceiling with numbered mailboxes labeled as corporate “suites.” A bulky copy machine sits in the kitchen. In the living room, a woman in a headset answers calls and sorts bushels of mail.
A Reuters investigation has found the house at 2710 Thomes Avenue serves as a little Cayman Island on…
Should Flogging Be an Alternative to Prison?
Adam Cohen asks in TIME:
Flogging someone with a cane causes intense pain and permanent bodily damage. An Australian who was flogged for drug trafficking in Malaysia in the 1970s recalled that the cane “chewed hungrily through layers of” his “skin and soft tissue” and “left furrows” on him that were “bloody pulp.”
It’s tough stuff and generally considered a barbaric punishment that the 21st century Western world would and should never consider. That makes it a bit startling to find a new book by a serious U.S. academic arguing that the U.S. should start flogging criminals. Peter Moskos’ In Defense of Flogging might seem like a satire — akin to Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” an essay advocating the eating of children — but it is as serious as a wooden stick lashing into a blood-splattered back.
Despite what you may think, Moskos is not pushing flogging as part of a “get tougher…
Ernest Hemingway’s Final Days and the FBI
Hemingway biographer A. E. Hotchner’s article in the New York Times details the rapid decline of Ernest Hemingway during his final years. Institutionalization, self-doubt and paranoia came to a head on July 1, 1961 when the author took his own life.
Hemingway’s depression and instability has been well-documented, but what is interesting is that the FBI’s monitoring of his phones, correspondence and activities contributed to his sense of fear and paranoia.
This could be the rare case of someone who’s paranoia about “being watched” is actually due to the fact that he/she is actually being monitored. A. E. Hotchner writes:
EARLY one morning, [on July 1st], while his wife, Mary, slept upstairs, Ernest Hemingway went into the vestibule of his Ketchum, Idaho, house, selected his favorite shotgun from the rack, inserted shells into its chambers and ended his life.
There were many differing explanations at the time: that he had terminal cancer or money problems, that…
Major Corporations To Hide Income Disparity
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
A group of 81 major corporations believe that public knowledge of what their CEOs make in respect to the average worker is “useless” information. The Washington Post reports that more than a year ago (H/T Alternet), some of America’s biggest corporate movers and shakers began lobbying Congress to force changes to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, so companies needn’t bother disclose the wage gulf between executives and workers. A House committee approved the bill 33–21.
Rep. Nan A.S. Hayworth (R-NY), who sponsored The Burdensome Data Collection Relief Act (HR1062), said comparing a CEO’s wage to the average worker could “mislead or confuse investors” and that such a comparison “creates heat but sheds no light.” Tim Bartl, senior vice president and general counsel for the Center on Executive Compensation asked “You can already tell where a CEO falls relative to his peers, you can…
Millions for Defense; Not One Cent for Tribute
Oh how the times have been a changin’ since Robert Goodloe Harper coined that gem in 1798. In the 21st century, apparently, patriotism means stealing hundreds of billions from the U.S. Treasury to bailout incompetent bankers, as “minute man” [1] Paul Ryan begged the House to do on September 29, 2008.
Okay, so as a nation we’re totally cool with recasting tribute to greasy financial fat cats as “investment” — even if it doesn’t exactly pay a huge return. [2]
But since “far left socialist” Barack Obama proposed cutting Social Security benefits during recent talks to increase the nation’s debt ceiling (to much Republican enthusiasm), making sure Granny gets her catfood money has also been redefined as “wanton profligacy”. Ah, sure, the ol’ gal only had another ten years left in her TOPS anyways, right?
America, you are a pack of perverts. [3]
Cloud-Based Data Outside the U.S. Not Exempt From PATRIOT Act Spying
Stephen C. Webster writes on The Raw Story:
In the brave new world of cloud computing, where data is stored off-site in massive server farms instead of on a user’s local hard drive, privacy and security are paramount in the consumer’s mind.
Unfortunately for privacy advocates, their concerns are essentially moot thanks to the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which a key Microsoft official said recently permits the U.S. to spy on data stored within cloud servers across the European Union.
The revelation of transcontinental spying, which has long been suspected, came from Gordon Frazer, Microsoft U.K.’s managing director, speaking at an announcement event for the company’s new suite of office software.
Frazer’s admission was caught by ZDNet reporter Zack Whittaker, who’s long covered data security issues as they relate to the Patriot Act.
Why Corporate Organic Food Brands Do Not Want to Label Genetically Modified Food (Video)
This video provides financial evidence that the president of the board of directors at the Organic Trade Association, Julia Sabin, individually profits off of genetically-engineered foods as a VP and General Manager at Smuckers:
Is The U.S. Really About To Defeat Al Qaeda?
Leon Panetta
No doubt there will be naysayers who claim that Al Qaeda was a convenient fiction for the U.S. Government in the first place, but in any event it is certainly a change of tune to hear the U.S. Defense Secretary talk about victory over the bad guys. No doubt it means a change of strategy – but what? Mary Walsh reports for CBS News:
The United States is “within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda,” Leon Panetta declared, as he traveled to Afghanistan for his first visit there as Secretary of Defense.
Speaking to reporters aboard a government flight to Kabul, Panetta said intelligence gathered during the raid at Osama bin Laden’s compound has lead the United States to target 10-20 key al Qaeda leaders.
“If we can go after them, I think we really can strategically defeat al Qaeda,” Panetta said.
The success of the May raid on the compound in Abbottabad,…
Easter Island May Hold Anti-Aging Miracle Drug
The secret to slowing down aging is in the soil? Easter Island continues to grow spookier and spookier. The Independent reports:
A drug originating on Easter Island, the mysterious South Pacific home of a lost statue-building people, may become the first substance to slow down human aging, new research indicates.
Rapamycin, a pharmacological product used to prevent rejection in organ transplants, has been found to extend the lifespan of mice by up to 38 per cent, raising the possibility that it may delay ageing in people.
Rapamycin is a bacterial product originally found in a soil sample from Easter Island. Originally developed as an anti-fungal agent, rapamycin was soon found to have powerful immuno-suppressant properties and thus be valuable for preventing rejection of transplanted organs. Now, however, it has been shown to affect the ageing of mice – the first time that this has ever been shown with a mammal.
…
Americanization Training At An Indian Call Center
The most marketable skill in India today is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else’s.
An American spends his summer at an Indian call center, including a boot camp in which new employees try to change their nationality in three weeks by shedding their accents, gazing at photos of Walmart, watching Seinfeld, and eating pepperoni. Via Mother Jones:
I am waiting for a company cab, now an hour and a half late, to drive me across town to a call center, where an Indian “culture trainer” will teach me how to act Australian. For three weeks, a culture trainer will teach us conversational skills, Australian pop culture, and the terms of the mobile-phone contracts we’ll be peddling.
Bright recent college grads pore over flashcards and accent tapes, intoning the shibboleths of English pronunciation—”wherever” and “pleasure” and “socialization”—that recruiters use to distinguish the employable candidates from those still suffering from…
Joint Stockings Are Eerie
As androids/dolls/CG figures become more lifelike, flesh-and-blood humans may desire to head in the other direction. Girls (and boys) can now pick up chic joint stockings to give themselves the look of a robot/figurine attempting to mimic a human being. Asiajin provides some explanation and unsettling photos:
Kyutai Kansetsu Sutokkingu (Spherical Joint Stocking) is a coterie stocking sold at Bungaku Furima (literature flea-market), a dojinshi sale dedicated for literature-related things only, by circle Ojosama Gakkou Shojo Bu (preppie school girls section). The stocking has globe joint painted on knees, to make your leg like real figure.
The stockings, 2,000 yen(US$25) seems sold out on their online shop, currently on order.
But why? I guess some people might love figures too much so that now they want to become like that. It is interesting because those joints originally showed their incompleteness of mimicking human beings.
Julian Assange And Slavoj Zizek In Conversation
What good is freedom of speech if you’re on the moon?
Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman moderates an entertaining two-hour conversation in London between Julian Assange and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, discussing the broader meaning of Wikileaks, the media, and “the attack on the public use of reason”. Thanks to Zizek, the discussion also veers between everything from dirty jokes to Stalinist propaganda to Psycho to the rumors linking him romantically to Lady Gaga. Things get going about ten minutes in.
America Just Keeps Getting Fatter
Melissa Healy reports on a comprehensive state-by-state report titled ‘F as in Fat,’ for the Los Angeles Times:
America continues to get fatter, according to a comprehensive new report on the nation’s weight crisis. Statistics for 2008-2010 show that 16 states are experiencing steep increases in adult obesity, and none has seen a notable downturn in the last four years.
Meanwhile, cases of Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure that health experts have long warned would result from the nation’s broadening girth and sedentary ways are becoming increasingly widespread, according to the report, titled “F as in Fat,” released Thursday.
Even Coloradans, long the nation’s slimmest citizens, are gaining excess pounds. With an obese population of 19.8% — it is the only state with an adult obesity rate below 20% — Colorado remains the caboose on the nation’s huffing, puffing train to fat land.
But in just the last four years, the ranks…
First Synthetic Organ Transplant
Could the success of synthetic organ transplants lead to the donor’s list becoming obsolete? While it’s still too early to tell, the first trial of a synthetic trachea transplant leaves surgeons hopeful. Via BBC News:
I’ve held a few strange body parts in my hands over the years – all I should stress, in the line of work. They have ranged from mechanical heart pumps to hi-etch prosthetic limbs.
But none more life-like than the synthetic trachea manufactured by scientists from University College London. The team, lead by Professor Alex Seifalian, have patented a nanocomposite material which was used to create the first completely synthetic windpipe.
It was transplanted into a patient whose own windpipe was damaged by cancer. The operation was done in Sweden at the Karolinska University Hospital in conjunction with the Karolinska Institute. You can read the background to the story by my colleague Michelle Roberts, who interviewed the patient and the…
An Environmental Advocate Faces Jail Time For Peacefully Derailing The Government’s Auction Of Utah Land
Photo: Nodar Kherkheulidze
Environmental hero or another illegal tactic of a peaceful activist? Jurors are often told that they must come to a verdict based on the law and not their moral conscious. Should DeChristopher get a 4 1/2 year prison sentence, or should his trial lead to a reconsideration of the law? AlterNet reports:
Tim DeChristopher is scheduled to be sentenced in a Salt Lake City courtroom by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson on July 26. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine for fraudulently bidding in December 2008 on parcels of land, including areas around eastern Utah’s national parks, which were being sold off by the Bush administration to the oil and natural gas industry. As Bidder No. 70, he drove up the prices of some of the bids and won more than a dozen other parcels for $1.8 million. The government is asking Judge Benson…
The Pentagon’s Invisible Third-World Army
When enlistment is down, what’s the military to do? Outsource. Seventy thousand of the people in the Pentagon’s war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan are not U.S. soldiers, but “third-country nationals” — Filipinos launder our soldiers’ uniforms, Bosnians repair electrical grids, Indians serve up iced lattes. Many say they are being held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by subcontractors who operate outside the law, the New Yorker reports:
In the morning of October 10, 2007, the beauticians boarded their flight to the Emirates. They carried duffelbags full of cosmetics, family photographs, Bibles, floral sarongs. More than half of the women left husbands and children behind. In the rush to depart, none of them examined the fine print on their travel documents: their visas to the Emirates weren’t employment permits but thirty-day travel passes that forbade all work, “paid or unpaid”. And Dubai was just a stopping-off point. They were bound for U.S.…
