September 5, 2008 – 11:08 pm
In today’s New York Times is an account of some fine experimental neuroscience, and another revealing glimpse of the “merely” physical substrate of conscious experience.
The story describes work done by an American/Israeli team of researchers into the neurological underpinnings of memory. By examining the activation patterns of individual neurons, the team found that they were able to predict what memories were about to enter a subject’s mind, a second or two before the subject consciously experienced them.
Results like this — and we are going to be seeing more and more of them as our tools and expertise improve — are going to be making things hotter and hotter for those who still cling to dualistic models of the mind, I expect.
Read the article here.
September 5, 2008 – 10:49 pm
Glaciers are melting in Europe. Alpine valleys that have been blocked by rivers of ice for as long as anyone can remember are now passable on foot. This is due to the maleficent influence of human activity, we hear: in particular, due to humans of the gas-guzzling American entrepreneurial capitalist white male sort. But there was time, long before Republicans, oil-company executives, current or prospective vice-presidents, or talk-radio personalities bestrode the beleaguered Earth, when those same high valleys were as free of ice as they may soon be again. Reader JK earns his second hat tip in as many days with this item about recent archaeological discoveries in Switzerland.
September 4, 2008 – 10:36 am
Reader JK, in a comment to our previous post, has pointed out something so amusing that it needs a post of its own, I think.
When the presumptive GOP vice-presidential nominee was first presented to the public last Friday, she made an introductory speech in which she mentioned “nucular” weapons. I was horrified, of course, and said so in a contemporaneous post.
Apparently there were those in the GOP who saw this deplorable continuation of Bush-era policy as a dangerous liability also. In the pre-released transcript of the speech Ms. Palin gave last night, the word “nuclear” is explicitly spelled out as “new-clear”, presumably because her handlers had determined that simply telling her how the word ought to be pronounced just wouldn’t get the job done.
I’ll bet that everybody thought somebody was going to clean that up before releasing the transcript to the press. Those media elites and pointy-headed liberal East Coast college types are going to have lots of fun with this one, I’ll bet.
I told you this Palin nomination would liven things up.
September 4, 2008 – 12:23 am
Along with much of America, I’ve just watched Sarah Palin’s speech to the assembled Republican delegates, poo-bahs, and panjandrums. She made a very good showing, and my earlier characterization of her as nothing more than a “back-country Pentecostalist fishwife” was perhaps a trifle harsh.
The speech was about what you would expect: a fawning introduction of her swelling tribe, folksy bromides about small-town goodness, and dewy-eyed encomiums for the selfless warrior at the top of the ticket. Ms. Palin reserved a fair measure of praise for herself as well, contrasting, as expected, her conquest of Juneau — and single-handed cleansing of its Augean stable of lobbyists and special-interest brokers — with Mr. Obama’s utter lack of, well, anything at all worth mentioning. She also managed to wedge in, if rather jarringly, a brief discussion of foreign policy, in which she demonstrated her easy familiarity with the names of several other countries.
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September 1, 2008 – 10:51 pm
There is an organization, which I expect most of you have heard of by now, called “the The Brights“. It is dedicated to the promotion of what it calls a “naturalistic worldview”, which it defines as being free of “supernatural and mystical elements”. The name, I think, is exceedingly unfortunate; it seems smug and pollyanna-ish, and has probably put off a great many people who might otherwise have been inclined to join in.
I am, to be sure, a fair approximation of what most Brights would consider one of their own: I am certainly no believer in any sort of gods or teleological cosmic arrangements, and I think it overwhelmingly likely that we humans — along with our minds, consciousness, and consciences — are exclusively the product of a natural process of selection and evolution. In particular I resent the enormous role that religion plays in public affairs here in America. But there is something about the Brights that irritates me, even though many thinkers I admire, such as Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett, have become prominent (“enthusiastic”, in typically gushy Bright locution) members.
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September 1, 2008 – 1:36 pm
In Barack Obama’s speech at the convention last week, he presented himself as the nation’s best hope for the amelioration of a dolorous litany of woes. But is this glum tableau an accurate accounting of how most voters see the nation, and their own lives? Apparently not, according to this item in today’s Wall Street Journal.
August 31, 2008 – 11:30 am
For the second year in a row, catastrophe has struck in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines have once again lost their season opener to an unranked team — in this case, Utah.
Well, we knew it was going to be a tough year; the old guard — Henne, Hart, Long, Manningham and others, even including Coach Carr — are all gone. At least this time its a school I’ve even heard of.
August 30, 2008 – 11:55 pm
“Baron Bodissey”, at Gates of Vienna, mans the ramparts against creeping socialism in a clear and forceful post. An excerpt:
A basic rule for the classical liberal is that government should perform as few functions as possible, and that taxes should be kept as low as possible, in order to eliminate the corruption and non-productive behavior that saps the national commonweal and the individual character.
Defending the borders, managing the currency, maintaining national security, and regulating interstate commerce ”” those are some of the very few necessary functions of government. There’s no earthly reason ”” other than a century of Progressive habit ”” why the government should design school curricula, tell people what they should eat, or fund ballet companies. Localities can do the first, individuals can decide the second for themselves, and people who like ballet can do the third.
Good sense to some; twaddle to others, I’m sure (you know who you are). It depends upon what you think is important, and what you think is fair. Read it here.
August 30, 2008 – 2:46 pm
Here, courtesy of the Drudge Report, is a link to a blog post and video clip in which we see the pinguid pinko propagandist Michael Moore gloating at the approach of Hurricane Gustav. Caring not a fig for the human and economic impact of the impending storm — which is sure to be considerable, and which he breezily dismisses by saying “I hope nobody gets hurt” — Moore snuffles and smirks with glee that the tempest appears due to smite poor and miserable New Orleans just as the Republicans begin their convention.
August 29, 2008 – 11:35 pm
I watched earlier today as John McCain introduced his clever choice for running mate: the former Miss Wasilla (and current governor of Alaska), Sarah Palin.
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August 28, 2008 – 12:18 pm
Here’s Peggy Noonan once again (do forgive me for generating so little original content during this vacation), commenting on the speeches made so far at the democratic convention. She offers a simple but accurate insight:
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August 26, 2008 – 11:30 am
Surrounded as I am by family and friends while on holiday, I continue to find time alone for writing to be in short supply. But here’s a gem for the “Shameless Filler” category: the “Old Perfesser” himself, the great Casey Stengel, testifying on July 8th, 1958 at the Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee Hearings. This is priceless.
Perhaps best of all: Mickey Mantle’s opening remark (last line of the transcript).
August 26, 2008 – 11:08 am
Here’s the latest in lethal technology: the wasp knife.
August 24, 2008 – 10:21 pm
It’s late in the day, and it’s been a long, full day: up early this morning to drive our son back to college, then an evening memorial service here in Wellfleet for a truly remarkable woman — Ellen Rafel, our next-door neighbor here on Hiram Hill, who lost her fight with cancer this spring. So for tonight I want to direct readers to an ongoing discussion at The Maverick Philosopher on what is perhaps the most intractable social and political dilemma of them all: abortion.
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August 23, 2008 – 5:51 pm
We’ve had a demanding schedule today: lolling and body-surfing at White Crest Beach, then the daily swim at Great Pond — and still to come this evening, our friend Larry Horowitz’s latest opening at the Cove Gallery, followed by dinner at Winslow’s Tavern. But a free moment having presented itself, I’ll take this opportunity to catch up a bit.
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August 22, 2008 – 1:41 pm
A quiet, lazy midday having presented me with an opportunity to switch on my laptop, I thought I might, at the very least, offer those readers who’ve made the effort to stop by (and I think them for doing so) a tidbit or two.
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August 18, 2008 – 12:05 pm
We are on holiday at our little seaside retreat, and the schedule is simply so demanding — sleeping, loafing on the beach, swimming in Wellfleet’s cool and limpid kettle ponds and the backshore’s bracing surf, sampling the area’s toothsome viands, strolling through town, visiting with friends, brushing up my Iron Wire out on the deck, playing music, and reading — that it’s hard to find the time for serious bloggery. There will be rainy days ahead, though, I’m sure.
Meanwhile, some amusing fluff: the periodic table of the elements, in an easy-to-use video format.
August 16, 2008 – 10:07 pm
There seems to be little doubt that the world’s oceans are in trouble. Here in Cape Cod, which was named for shoals of fish once so numerous that you could “walk across the water on their backs”, the fishing industry is all but gone, the result of near-total depletion of a fishery that once seemed limitless. It now appears, as we read here, that fertilizer runoff is leading to algal blooms that cause oxygen-deprived “dead zones”, and in this article we read about the “rise of slime”:
Areas that had featured intricate marine food webs with large animals are being converted into simplistic ecosystems dominated by microbes, toxic algal blooms, jellyfish and disease.
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August 15, 2008 – 1:41 pm
Pat Buchanan is a paleoconservative and an isolationist, albeit a thoughtful and articulate one. Here, presented without further comment (I’m too preoccupied at the moment with packing up and getting on the road), is an essay in which he describes recent events in Georgia from a perspective that is far more sympathetic to Russia than anything you are likely to read around here.
August 14, 2008 – 11:17 pm
A reader calls our attention to an item that is making the rounds today: in a startling breakthrough, researchers have found that when we drink alcohol, it can make others appear more attractive!
This astonishing result may even just be the tip of the iceberg: apparently booze can even make things just generally seem more beautiful.
Once the word gets out, of course, drinking alcohol might catch on to the point that it actually becomes a popular activity: why, I could even imagine that there might be some business opportunities here. If the idea really takes off, there might be money to be made manufacturing beverages that contain alcohol, or even selling the stuff to adventurous sorts on a per-drink basis.
As for me, I might have to stop drinking for a few hours to see if what they are saying is really true. I’ve been thinking the world was a beautiful place all along, but now I’m not so sure.
August 13, 2008 – 10:37 pm
According to today’s Physorg.com newsletter, fascinating things are afoot at the University of Reading. Researchers are growing little biological brains made of rat neurons, and training them to control robots by way of a Bluetooth connection.
The scientists have in fact created several of these wee brains, which even seem to have their own personalities.
“It’s quite funny — you get differences between the brains,” said [professor Kevin] Warwick. “This one is a bit boisterous and active, while we know another is not going to do what we want it to.”
It is still early days, and the homegrown brainlets, however boisterous, are nonetheless capable so far of only the most rudimentary mentation, roughly equivalent to a record-company executive, Biblical literalist, or member of Congress. But the project shows great promise. Learn more here.
August 12, 2008 – 10:04 pm
I watched a little of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics the other day. It was an elaborate spectacle, and quite beautiful: an enormous troupe of drummers, identically clad, playing and dancing in perfect unison. There may well have been thousands of them; there were at least many hundreds.
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August 11, 2008 – 11:01 pm
It’s quite clear now that Russia is intent on reconquering Georgia, and that their decision to do so is a brazen and flamboyant test of Western power and resolve. What is less clear is how we can respond. We have many good reasons to support Georgia, a staunchly pro-Western nation and participant in NATO’s Partnership for Peace. But we are not likely to be inclined to go to war with Russia over Georgia, and Russia, which still considers the country part of its empire, knows it. Its action calls to mind Germany’s annexation of the Rhineland in 1936.
This is a major event.
In today’s New York Times, William Kristol considers our options. Have a look here.
August 10, 2008 – 10:47 pm
Our reader Justin K., who, when he puts his ear to the ground, hears more than most, calls our attention to this item about the fighting in and about Ossetia, a conflict that is surely being savored with strategic appreciation by other interested parties in the caves and mountains to the east.
August 10, 2008 – 10:19 pm
I do hope to resume normal operations before too much longer, and to get back to the fascinating and important topics we’ve been looking at recently. A lingering ennui and lack of mental focus have hampered my attempts to get properly back in harness just yet; I look forward to the salutary effects of sea air, ample sleep, healthful exercise, absence from Midtown, and deliverance from enforced labor — all of which will commence this coming weekend, and last until after Labor Day.
Meanwhile: researcher Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, has been working on the mechanisms by which the body rids itself of accumulating protein wastes. This system of “protein clearance”, like just about everything else, works less well as we get older, and in turn the accumulation of toxins in our cells leads to many of the other indignities of advancing decrepitude.
Dr. Cuervo (with whose cousin Jose I have been all too familiar for a great many years, to the cumulative detriment of my own cellular resilience) has now succeeded in halting the decline of this system in the livers of mice, by introducing a suitable genetic modification. This is, I think, pretty big news, and I think she is starting with exactly the right organ.
Learn more here.
August 9, 2008 – 10:49 pm
Things are getting hot in the former SSR. Our sources have suggested we follow along here, where readers will find further links as well.
August 8, 2008 – 11:52 pm
An article in the New York Times a few weeks ago described the results of a Pew survey that inquired as to how the denizens of various nations felt about their governments and economies. Two authoritarian nations — China and Russia — did very well, while the Western democracies fared quite poorly.
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August 6, 2008 – 11:27 pm
I am eager to pick up our discussion of meaning and morality where it left off a week or so ago. It paused on what I thought was a promising note: a comment by Peter Lupu that aptly summarized the tasks a naturalist account must accomplish.
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August 5, 2008 – 10:55 pm
The subset of our behavior, dispositions, reactions, and so forth that happens with our conscious awareness and endorsement is trivially small, and one of the areas where we respond most automatically and unconsciously is our interaction with others. We react subliminally to an enormous variety of cues: posture, gesture, tone of voice, choice of words, pupil dilation, odor, and many more. One of our most powerful automatic responses is the “read” we make of a person’s face, and now a pair of researchers from Princeton have done some quantitative research on just what is is we look for. Learn more here.
August 4, 2008 – 10:50 pm
This is a giddy week for particle physicists: very soon now the Large Hadron Collider, the most potent instrument ever built for the investigation of nature’s most private parts, will be brought on line. (How soon? Have a look here.) [Note: the LHC countdown site now (August 18th 2008) seems to be down. -MP]
There are those who fear that the collider, which occupies a 17-mile-long tunnel straddling the border of Switzerland and France, may kill us all by creating a world-devouring black hole or strangelet. While we can all enjoy a little frisson at the thought of such a gaudy exit, it is not going to happen. Here’s why.
There is an inverse relation between the scale we can examine and the size of the instruments required; we have come a very long way indeed from the first cyclotron, which Ernest Lawrence built for a cost of about $25, and which could be held in one hand. The LHC is an enormous, and enormously complex, triumph of human ingenuity and engineering skill.
I’ve just run across a beautiful collection of photographs of the project; you can have a look at them here.
Finally, our friend Eugene Jen has sent along a YouTube clip of a rap song about the LHC, written by Kate McAlpine, a science writer covering the project. If you think you might enjoy such a thing, it’s here.
It has been alleged in some partisan quarters that the current Speaker of the House of Representatives is a fatuous ninny, a feckless, mealy-mouthed, obstructionist birdbrain. Here is a video clip that may help settle the matter. (Hat tip: BV.)
August 2, 2008 – 11:54 pm
Reader J. Kapok, knowing that I have been out of touch the past few days, and concerned that I not overdo it so soon after my recent misadventures, has kindly sent some blog fodder my way: items that he knows would have attracted my attention had I not been distracted by larger and more clamant issues of human frailty (mine). Both are from the New York Times.
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Well, it’s Friday afternoon, I’m back home, and it appears that I might not be “falling off the branch” just yet after all.
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In the comment thread in the previous post I mentioned that I felt unwell enough to visit the hospital on Tuesday. I haven’t left yet. Here’s the story.
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A couple of weeks ago I posted an essay in response to a post of Bill Vallicella’s on whether life might have an objective meaning. In his piece Bill argued that any attempt to offer a purely subjective interpretation must lead to an infinite regress, and therefore must be false. I responded, drawing on work by Daniel Dennett, that the regress argument might not block a suitable naturalistic account. This led to a long discussion in the comments thread, with over a hundred entries. Toward the end, philosopher Peter Lupu offered some extensive criticisms of my position, which I would like to begin to address here.
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There was a significant debut on the Internet today: a search engine that may well give mighty Google a run for its money. It is the brainchild of Anna Patterson, who had previously written a search application that impressed Google so much they bought it in 2004, and hired her as a technical lead, when their own product needed a lift.
This one’s not for sale.
There seems to be something going round the blogosphere lately; a number of folks seem recently to be afflicted by a debilitating malaise, an enervating ennui, that has made it hard for them to carry out their duties. Dennis Mangan is on open-ended leave; Deogolwulf has expressed his own weariness with the undertaking; Bill Vallicella recently decided to lay off for a month — and here I am, missing several days in a row.
What begins with optimistic fanfare and a sense of novelty and excitement can often begin to feel routine, and while we bloggers all know that we are under no contractual obligation to keep generating “content”, we also know that steady output is essential for maintaining a connection with one’s hard-won readership. But there seems to be a hump to get over at about the four-year mark, and it is interesting to note how many of us seem to be flagging just a bit.
But for all that, there’s nothing like writing down one’s thoughts for getting them in order, and nothing like airing them in public for finding out how sound they are. So blog we must, and blog we will (well, most of us, anyway). Bill V. explains nicely here.
After all, how are we supposed to know what we think unless we see what we say?
I’ve been very busy with work and travel, so I might have scant time for attending to my duties here for the next few days (though I will as time permits). I have also been given plenty to mull over in our ongoing meaning-of-life dust-up.
Back by Monday or so, if not sooner.
Meanwhile, the estimable Deogolwulf has weighed in on physicalism with a meaty post of his own — one that will, I think, need responding to. Have a look here.
We’ve been giving morality, and the universality of moral intuitions, a good going over lately (particularly in this discussion, which now has over 100 comments). Readers with an interest in this topic might like to have a look at Harvard University’s Moral Sense Test. Feel free to share your thoughts here.
Note: Don’t read the comments below before you take the test!!
Don’t like having your freedoms infringed? Worried about the economy? Forget the Patriot Act and the credit crisis; here comes the EPA.
Our reader JK continues to deliver: in this case a highly unsettling article about the possibility of a devastating collision with an asteroid or comet. Because such objects often strike the ocean, or detonate in the air, leaving no crater at all (as in Tunguska 1908), our estimates of their frequency may be far too low.
Learn more here.
On the opinion page of today’s New York Times is a worrisome assessment of the clouds gathering over Iran. Here.
With a hat tip to Bill Vallicella for the link, we direct you to the current issue of the American Physical Society’s newsletter Physics and Society, in which this august body announces its wish to get to the bottom of the hotly debated issue of anthropogenic climate change.
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I’ve long been puzzled by ambiguous figures, ever since I saw the famous Necker cube as a boy. What changes in the brain when the perception “flips”? (There had better be something.)
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If, against all odds, I make it to the age of 80, I might have quite a birthday. A smallish asteroid called 99942 Apophis (which will also be making a close flyby the day I turn 73, on Friday, April 13th, 2029), might be blowing out my candles for me.
Have a look here, and for far more detailed information, here.
Here’s the latest political newsletter from Robert Novak. (Feel free to comment, but no Valerie Plame, please.)
Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an editorial item about the belated and largely symbolic response to the depredations of the Sudanese government. Here.
In today’s Times, John Tierney calls our attention to the possibility that the government may soon be imposing “Title IX” requirements on university science departments, because there aren’t “enough” women going into fields like physics and engineering.
This is dangerous territory, of course; we all remember the shameful pillorying of Harvard president Lawrence Summers for merely suggesting that there might be innate reasons for the asymmetrical distribution of men and women in science. His perfectly reasonable remarks were taken as an outrageous and impermissible thought-crime, and he was hounded from his post.
Now the dispute turns on whether there might be fewer women physicists and engineers simply because women are inherently less attracted to these disciplines, or whether it is a symptom of a lingering and pernicious discrimination that must be remedied by intrusive government action.
Learn more here.
It’s too late for a serious effort here tonight: the memsahib and I spent the evening in Prospect Park, enjoying the New York Philharmonic’s annual outdoor concert.
It was a splendid event, and well worth the arduous half-block trek to the park. The weather, by some freak accident, was delightful, with balmy breezes and a spectacular sunset, and the program could hardly have been better: Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, and Sibelius’s Finlandia, with the rousing overture from Carmen as an encore, and an exuberant fireworks display to cap off the show.
The Bach in particular, played just as the sun sank below the horizon, was so very beautiful. It would be easy, in the presence of such sublime genius, such staggering artistic splendor, such incomparable musicianship, to imagine that such gifts must be a clear sign of a transcendent and loving Mind from which such blessings flow, that they simply must come to us from some higher source than the coarse material processes of the natural world.
Naaaaaaaaah.
This afternoon the lovely Nina and I, realizing that today was our last chance, took in the Takashi Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum, which is just a short stroll from our home. If you aren’t familiar with Murakami’s oeuvre, it is both lighthearted and disturbing, playful and serious, and squashes high and low art, fine art and pop culture, and the sublime and the commercial into a single genre he calls “Superflat”. Some of the works are enormous graphic panels featuring a profusion of laughing daisies and psychedelic, multi-eyed mushrooms; others are anime-styled plastic scuptures, still others are Luis Vuitton bags (for sale). In one room little children say in the floor happily sketching a gigantic, happy panel of his trademark polyocular fungi; in the next was a lifesize plastic statue of a laughing, golden-haired masturbator playfully twirling a lariat of his own making.
Murakami’s skill and creativity are enormous; no less so, apparently, is his business acumen: more adeptly than any artist since Walt Disney, he has made not just a name for himself, but also a brand.
If you’d like to see some of his work online, the simplest thing would probably just to do a Google image search under his name. In fact, don’t bother: here, I’ve done it for you.
