Mental Superhighway to a Dead End...

by: pootie

Thu May 07, 2009 at 15:48:49 PM EDT

Most people inherit a version of a gene that optimizes their brain's thinking circuitry, yet also appears to increase risk for schizophrenia, a severe mental illness marked by impaired thinking, scientists at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have discovered. The seeming paradox emerged from the first study to explore the effects of variation in the human gene for a brain master switch, DARPP-32.

Questions:

Are we normals at the optimum point for this culture?

Which non-normals are better ones, in respect to expression of this gene?

Is this world culture at the optimum point for human neurology?

Where should we go from here?

Who, me?

by: pootie

Tue May 05, 2009 at 19:12:38 PM EDT

DKos, pff, FSZ, and here.

In line with their common ancestry, humans are remarkably similar to other apes. Like their larger brained, bipedal "cousins", Great Apes also use tools and exhibit rudimentary understanding of causality and Theory of Mind. However, unique among apes, humans possess much greater mutual understanding.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is convinced these "emotionally modern" humans emerged early in the course of hominin evolution as a byproduct of shared parental and alloparental care and provisioning of young known as "cooperative breeding".

According to widely accepted chronology, large-brained, anatomically modern humans evolved around 150,000 years ago, and behaviorally modern humans, capable of symbolic thought and language, more recently still, between 50-80,000 years ago.

Hrdy argues that emotionally modern humans, newly interested in the mental and subjective states of others and characterized by prosocial impulses to give and share, emerged in the genus Homo far earlier, perhaps by the beginning of the Pleistocene, 1.8 million years ago.

It's cute to laugh at social impulses, but basically stupid. We ARE social creatures.

Have a cracker...

"Darwin and the Ascent of Emotionally Modern Man"
Dr. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
University of California, Davis
Tuesday, May 19, 2009, 7 pm
California Academy of Sciences
San Francisco, CA

Justice is just another "value."

by: pootie

Tue May 05, 2009 at 17:04:31 PM EDT

The government must hold accountable any individuals who acted illegally in this financial meltdown, while preserving the viability of the companies that received bailout funds or stimulus money.

Certainly, we should demand justice. But we must all remember that justice is a value, the adherence to which includes seeking the best outcome for the American people. In some cases it will be the punishing of bad actors. In other cases it may involve heavy corporate fines or operating under a carefully tailored agreement.

An interesting insight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05...

"Ikey and the White Squall"

by: pootie

Sun May 03, 2009 at 22:09:34 PM EDT

Fidel Castro has opened the Port of Mariel for anyone who wants to leave the island nation, and hundreds of Cubans have invaded Key West, waving stacks of hundred-dollar bills, desperate for a boat to retrieve their relatives before the Maximum Leader changes his mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

I'm living with my eleven year old on a houseboat in the Harbor, working two jobs, getting established after falling under the spell of the Conch Republic in 1978 while visiting my classmates from Key West High's 20th reunion.

I'm tangled pretty deep in the briar patch of locals, fixing cars, refrigeration units, stereos, setting up TVs to catch Miami, 120 miles away, repairing boats in the scorpion-infested boatyards, putting around on a junk moped, clad in flipflops, sunburned feet, a raggedy lime-green t-shirt sporting a Green Parrot logo and faded red shorts with dangling white piping, more clean than not.  

Not Right, but Constitutional...

by: pootie

Sun May 03, 2009 at 14:22:27 PM EDT

During a This Week discussion of Earl Warren, famous turncoat liberal in conservative clothing, George Will was trying to explain what was wrong with the concept that a law can be wrong, but must be reworked until it is constitutional.

My deepest feelings of being naturally right in politics are gaffes like these, when the enemy defines themselves perfectly.

John McLaughlin, of the McLaughlin Group, gleefully names it as "lurching uncontrollably into the truth."

It happens here, too.

Is JSR deleting diaries and/or comments?

by: pootie

Sat May 02, 2009 at 12:26:55 PM EDT

When do we get Wolfram Alpha?

by: pootie

Tue Apr 28, 2009 at 02:42:56 AM EDT

So solly.

by: pootie

Mon Apr 27, 2009 at 15:20:05 PM EDT

Realism means recognizing that international relations are ruled by a sadder, more limited reality than the one governing domestic affairs. It means valuing order above freedom, for the latter becomes important only after the former has been established. It means focusing on what divides humanity rather than on what unites it, as the high priests of globalization would have it. In short, realism is about recognizing and embracing those forces beyond our control that constrain human action-culture, tradition, history, the bleaker tides of passion that lie just beneath the veneer of civilization.

This poses what, for realists, is the central question in foreign affairs: Who can do what to whom?

And of all the unsavory truths in which realism is rooted, the bluntest, most uncomfortable, and most deterministic of all is geography.

Is he wrong, in this age of drones with globe-spanning range? http://www.airforce-technology...

(A ten pound model airplane flew across the Atlantic on autopilot in 2003, on less than a liter of fuel. 1,615,546 meters/litre or about 4000 miles per gallon.)

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/s...

Capitalism is the AIDS of the psyche.

by: pootie

Mon Apr 27, 2009 at 14:12:31 PM EDT

In which we find a blistering critique of capitalism that peels the paint of the Golden Calf.

IF you read it carefully, you'll understand what's wrong and what needs to be done to set it right:

Unite. Don't fight.

MindWar

by: pootie

Sat Apr 25, 2009 at 17:37:22 PM EDT

http://www.salon.com/opinion/g...

New York times reporter wins Pulitzer for outing fake military experts being run as puppets by Pentagon. Story is totally suppressed by ALL news networks, including PBS. The NewsHour did mention the investigative award briefly on Monday evening as an introduction to a longer segment on what was happening to investigative reporting in the midst of the crisis in the newspaper business.

New York Times brags about all its Pulitzers, but doesn't link to that one. Digging reveals this long article, the original story, which the Times doesn't link to in its brag story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04...

Everything will be OK. The MSM will protect us.

Health Care.

by: pootie

Fri Apr 24, 2009 at 17:05:29 PM EDT

But Mr. Obama said that he backed the reconciliation approach to move ahead on health care, one of his legislative priorities, and did not want it to fail if 59 senators were on board rather than the 60 needed to break filibusters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04...

New Population Reduction Technique. Nature Bats Last.

by: pootie

Fri Apr 24, 2009 at 17:01:11 PM EDT

Epidemiologists are particularly concerned because the only people killed so far were normally less-vulnerable young people and adults. It's possible that more vulnerable populations - infants and the aged - had been vaccinated against other strains, and that those vaccines may be providing some protection.

CDC officials described the virus as having a unique combination of gene segments not seen in people or pigs before. The bug contains human virus, avian virus from North America and pig viruses from North America, Europe and Asia.

Health officials have seen mixes of bird, pig and human virus before, but never such an intercontinental combination with more than one pig virus in the mix.

Scientists keep a close eye on flu viruses that emerge from pigs. The animals are considered particularly susceptible to both avian and human viruses and a likely place where the kind of genetic reassortment can take place that might lead to a new form of pandemic flu, said Dr. John Treanor, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

http://www.google.com/hostedne...

Who killed the bad boy banker?

by: pootie

Thu Apr 23, 2009 at 00:53:42 AM EDT