Clipmarks |

How do dreams of blind look like?

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:47:27 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus

The Claim: Blind People Do Not See Images in Their Dreams

A recent column pointed out that some Americans, mostly those raised in the age before color television, dream only in black and white

that observation raised another question — whether people who don’t see images during the day might see them when they shut their eyes at night

For people with normal vision, dreaming is intensely visual

vivid scenes and imagery

Auditory stimulation plays a small role, and the other senses, like taste and smell, are virtually absent.

People born without the ability to see report no visual imagery in their dreams, but they do experience a heightening of taste, touch and smell.

higher percentage of dreams that involve mishaps related to traveling or transportation

those who lose their vision after age 5 often continue to see in their dreams

though the frequency and clarity diminish over time.

people who go blind before age 5 rarely experience visual imagery in their dreams

Tags: dream, blindness

Baby birds practise new songs while they sleep

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:30:42 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Learning: Baby birds practise new songs while they sleep

Electrodes implanted in the brains of dozing chicks reveal that they rehearse songs they have heard adults sing during the day

Baby birds learn to sing by replaying songs in their heads while they sleep, scientists have found.

Recordings taken from dozing birds' brains showed they flickered with bursts of activity that corresponded to songs they had heard the day before.

The beneficial effects of sleep on memory formation are well established, but the study is thought to be the first to capture changes in the brain associated with the first moments of learning a new song.

After a good night's rest, chicks that had been taught to sing by playing them the sound of an adult bird the day before performed far better, suggesting their brains had worked on the songs as they slumbered.

Margoliash believes other animals, humans included, probably learn in a similar way.

In TV Interview, Cheney Confessed to War Crime

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:04:50 GMT

clipped by: Wisco
clipper's remarks: "What occurred in the last eight years was an assault on who we are," Turley said. "I think that President-elect Obama's going to have to decide whether he wants power without principle or whether he wants to start with a true change, to say that no matter where an investigation will take us, if there are crimes to be found they will be prosecuted."

Personally, I vote for the latter. The neocons came up with a lot of creative legal arguments to excuse torture and we ought to make them test those arguments in a criminal court. I think they'd find that their arguments were BS and that they are, quite literally, criminals.

I also think that we ought to make it 100% clear that working in the White House isn't a free pass to commit war crimes. We're a nation of laws, not men, and those who break the law should have to answer to the law -- no matter who they are.

That's what you call "justice."

Clip Source: rawstory.com

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley believes that not only did Vice President Dick Cheney "unambiguously" confess to a war crime during an ABC interview on Monday, but the US' future as a nation may depend on taking action.

Asked by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann whether Cheney had just confessed to a war crime on national television, Turley at first replied wryly, "It's an interesting question, isn't it? ... If someone commits a crime and everyone's around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime?"

"It most certainly is a crime to participate, to create, to in many ways monitor a torture program," he added. "What [Cheney] is describing is most certainly and unambiguously a war crime."

During Monday's interview, Cheney was asked, "Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohamed?" and replied, "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared."

Tags: news

43 Of The Extremely Creative Wonders Of Macro Photography

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:18:45 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver

Clip Source: www.smashingapps.com

Macro photography is close-up photography. In simple words, Extreme closeup photography is referred to as macro photography. Anytime you see a super close photo of a fly for instance, or a flower petal, the photographer probably used macro photography techniques to get that gorgeous close up photo of any thing.

Tags: photography

Evil...Thy Name Art Cheney

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 04:21:05 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.newscloud.com

Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics

Cheney's comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as waterboarding. "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News.

Tags: cheney, torture

The Next Big Sensation?

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:05:23 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "Technological advances will someday be complemented by cultural changes, and cavorting with robots just won't seem weird anymore."

Why is it important to humans that machines are beginning to touch us back?

"It was incredibly important to humans when robots started to look at you, recognize a face and make eye contact,"
"The eye contact turned out to be a significant Darwinian button. We are hard-wired for that. That's how we sense the presence of an other. Same thing with touch. That is the way we connect with an other that knows about us, that understands us. It is in our evolution. We are hard-wired to communicate with each other by touch. It's how we stroke babies, how we want to be comforted. . . .
"A heartbeat is a powerful way of signaling the presence"

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

The Next Big Sensation?

Did you know that those few places on your body where you cannot grow hair are by far the most sensitive? Like the bottoms of your feet?

Suppose you wanted to know what something thousands of miles away felt like -- as easily as you could see what it looks like by aiming a remote Internet camera. What happens if that smart probe transmits the sensation to all those dense nerve receptors along your tingly arch?

"The world is going digital, but people are analog,"

We like real things. We touch real things all day long

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Haptics," as it is called, refers to the ability of people to sense the world around us through touch.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

How do you teach a computer to tell your brain all that?

the business of figuring out exactly how humans tick

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

A Kiss Is Still a Kiss

Immersion employs people called "haptic artists" who build touch effects. "It's just like composing music or painting a picture. It's the creation of feeling,"

We can transmit a slap

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

That's how we sense the presence of an other

Tags: robotics, communication, human

Web or sex? Nearly half of women would rather go online

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:21:44 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: The web becoming a new birth control? Google that....

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Nearly one out of two women would rather give up sex for two weeks than go without the Internet, according to a survey released Monday.

Far fewer men would choose to go without sex, according to the survey of 2,119 adults carried out by the online research firm Harris Interactive and sponsored by Intel Corp., the world's biggest computer chip maker.

Forty-six percent of the women polled said they would rather go without sex for two weeks than give up access to the Internet for the same period of time, according to the survey

Only 30 percent of men said they would rather forgo intimate relations than cyber ones.

Ninety-five percent of those surveyed said it is "very important, important or somewhat important" to be able to access the Internet.

Sixty-five percent of those surveyed rated Internet access above other discretionary spending items such as cable television subscriptions (39 percent), dining out (20 percent), shopping for clothes (18 percent) or a health club membership (10 percent)

Tags: behavior, sex, web

Scientists Warn Large Earth Collider May Destroy Earth

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:43:50 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Physicists at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory, who underwrote the VLEC's construction with donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, agree that there are "some troubling variables" whenever attempting to launch Earth through the vacuum of space into a massive body of solid matter. Yet, they insist, the academic benefits of a planetary collision outweigh any risk of annihilating the Earth.

While the project remains controversial, physicists agreed in late November to reconvene and evaluate the risk factor of the project after a small-scale field test, during which the Very Large Earth Collider will be turned on at 10 percent capacity, catapulting Earth into the moon at only half the speed of light.

Clip Source: www.theonion.com

BATAVIA, IL—In October, Fermilab scientists joined a growing number of physicists around the world in warning that the Very Large Earth Collider—a $117 billion electromagnetic particle accelerator built to study astronomical phenomena by colliding Earth into various heavenly bodies—could potentially destroy Earth when it sends the planet careening headlong into Mars, Jupiter, or even the sun.

"The Large Earth Collider will surely gain us priceless scientific insight by offering a brief glimpse of the universe at the moment of its destruction," Fermilab director Gordon Josephs said. "But because the Collider achieves this by hurdling Earth into another large celestial object, there are some who feel the risks associated with annihilating our world are too high.

All I know for certain is that this rigorous debate will only end when we activate the VLEC, make the Earth collide with another planet, and obtain results through firsthand observation."

That's just good science

Tags: humor, physics

Yawning cools the brain

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 04:31:01 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Jennifer Viegas

If your head is overheated, there's a good chance you'll yawn, according to a new study that found the primary purpose of yawning is to control brain temperature.

The finding solves several mysteries about yawning, such as why it's most commonly done just before and after sleeping, why certain diseases lead to excessive yawning, and why breathing through the nose and cooling off the forehead often stop yawning.

The key yawn instigator appears to be brain temperature.

"Brains are like computers," says Andrew Gallup, a researcher in the Department of Biology at Binghamton University who led the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior.

"They operate most efficiently when cool, and physical adaptations have evolved to allow maximum cooling of the brain."

"In addition, yawning when it is extremely cold may be maladaptive, as this may send unusually cold air to the brain, which may produce a thermal shock."

Wondeful images - 2000 years of human culture

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:51:38 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: Awards competition winner -Wellcome Images is one of the world's richest and most unique collections, with themes ranging from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and biomedical science.

Clip Source: content.clipmarks.com

Two thousand years of human culture

wellcome images
2000 years of human culture

Wellcome Images is one of the world's richest and most unique collections, with themes ranging from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and biomedical science.

Illness & wellness

Life

Culture

Nature

War

Wonderful

Witchcraft

Health

World

Wellcome Image Awards competition winner

Enhancing Evolution: Do We have a Moral Duty to Improve the Human Race?

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:38:25 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: For Harris, having the ability to improve our species lot in life but refusing to do so, makes little sense. He has a difficult time understanding why some people are so insistent that we shouldn’t try to improve upon human evolution.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

John Harris, the Sir David Alliance Professor of Bioethics at Manchester University, lays out a fascinating argument in his compelling book Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People, which even his critics admit has a few good points.

Harris has a lot of liberal ideas, but one that he believes most strongly is that as parents, as citizens, as scientists, we are morally obliged to do what we can to make life better and longer for ourselves and our children. Society currently devotes so much energy and resources towards saving lives, which, in reality, is simply postponing death.

If it is right to save life, Harris says, then it should also be right to postpone death by stemming the flow of diseases that carry us to the grave. And we should make any such technology available as soon as we can, even if it means there will be some “haves” and “have-nots”

Tags: evolution, human enhacement, ethics

Net Neutrality At A Risk

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 08:13:16 GMT

clipped by: Fast T friend
clipper's remarks: The shifting positions concern some purists. "What they're talking about is selling you the right to skip ahead in the line," says Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, a Washington-based advocacy group. "It would mean the first part of your business plan would be a deal with AT&T to get into their super-tier -- that is anathema to a culture of innovation."

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

The celebrated openness of the Internet -- network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic -- is quietly losing powerful defenders.

Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

Separately, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. have withdrawn quietly from a coalition formed two years ago to protect network neutrality.

The developments could test Mr. Obama's professed commitment to network neutrality. "The Internet is perhaps the most open network in history, and we have to keep it that way," he told Google employees a year ago at the company's Mountain View, Calif., campus. "I will take a back seat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality."

Tags: net, neutrality, traffic, width, speed, preference

False Memory Syndrome

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:32:52 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: there is the danger of false memory syndrome, defined by the Royal College of Psychiatrists as the recollection of an event that did not occur, but which the individual subsequently strongly believes. Some therapists think that adults who were abused as children but cannot recall the incident can be helped to "recover" their memory. The RCP disputes this, stating that it leads to the creation of false memories: "The evidence does not support the view that memory enhancement techniques actually enhance memory… these are powerful and dangerous methods of persuasion."

Interesting reading and thought provoking. Can we trust, that which seems so true... meaning our own mind?

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

The perils of relying on memory in court

whose version of events do you believe?

Everyone recalled a slightly different sequence of events, even when it came to such basic facts as the number of bullets fired or the clothes de Menezes was wearing

Most of us, he says, are unaware of how fallible our memories actually are.

"from the colours we see to the experiences we have. The brain is editing the information we take in even before it's laid down as a memory, and further editing takes place as the memory is formed."

memory is not a record of reality, like a video: it is a rough sample of what occurred

In one series of experiments, researchers wrote to the parents of their students, asking them to provide a shortlist of events from the pupils' childhoods. Before giving the list to the students, the scientists added a false event

A third of students not only said that they remembered the incident

but later elaborated on it and integrated it with their other childhood memories

Tags: memory, law, neuroscience

Al-Zaidi Did What We Journalists Should Have Done Long Ago

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:07:01 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: NOTE: Speaking of shoes and the White House, Skip Mendler of Honesdale, PA has a great idea. He suggests that everyone who is disgusted with the outgoing Bush/Cheney administration send a shoe to the White House. Just imagine a pile up of a million smelly old running shoes in the White House mailroom! I think he's got something. Spread the word!

A million shoes? That is probably a bit of an underestimate, eh?

Clip Source: www.opednews.com

I’ll admit, listening to Bush lie his way through eight years of
press conferences, while pre-selected reporters played along and
pretended to get his attention so they could ask questions which had
been submitted and vetted in advance, I have felt like throwing my
shoes at the television set.

Al-Zaidi, who paid for his courageous act of protest by being
brutally beaten by security guards, is a hero of the profession.

He
stopped taking the president’s BS and called him what he is: a murderer
and a criminal

I’m not suggesting that journalists should routinely leave
presidential press conferences in their stocking feet.

My suggestion is that the press corps

stop treating presidents like
royalty

and start acting like boisterous newshounds of old, barking questions,
laughing cruelly at inane answers, demanding follow-ups when they are
given the run-around, and, where necessary, walking out

or perhaps
tossing the occasional shoe.

Shoe-Thrower was Reacting to US Aerial Bombings

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:17:17 GMT

clipped by: Wisco
clipper's remarks: In related news, al-Zaidi has apparently been abused by Iraqi forces while under arrest, suffering "a broken arm and ribs," along with internal bleeding.

Yeah, George. Iraq's a real goddam paradise now. You must be so proud.

Clip Source: www.juancole.com

Iraqi journalist Muntazir al-Zaidi, who threw the shoes at Bush in Baghdad, shouted "Killer of Iraqis, killer of children." while security guards piled on him.

McClatchy reports that he had covered the US bombing of Sadr City last spring, in support of PM Nuri al-Maliki's incursion into this stronghold of the Sadr Movement and its Mahdi Army, and is said to have been emotionally affected by the sight of that destruction.

The frequent US bombing of civilian Iraqi cities that are already under US military occupation has been one of the most under-reported stories of the Iraq War.

Even as Bush spoke of the situation in Iraq in glowing terms, guerrillas set off three bombs in the capital on Sunday, wounding 17 persons.

As usual, Bush had to sneak in and out of Iraq under a shroud of secrecy, giving the lie to his assertions about its good security situation.

Tags: news