I saw a lot of posts claiming that gadgets are worthless. Since I use Google Desktop with gadgets, I thought I would mention that gadgets I use. I mostly use Google Calendar (my agenda is very full) as well as a remember the milk gadget that is identical to the one on iGoogle. I also use a large digital clock with an alarm that flashes to alert me when I need to do certain things. The only other gadget I would like is something that combines RTM, my calendar, and permits me to "punch in" and "punch out" to activities in my RTM to do list.
I like having all of these visible to me to help me keep track of my activities and goals. I use two wide screen monitors though, so if I had a tiny screen I might not find gadgets as useful.
Some F5 neurons known as mirror neurons not only fire when you are doing a particular task in the broad sense, but also when you observe somebody else doing it. For example, some mirror neurons fire when you grasp an object and when you see somebody grasping that object.
These findings are interesting but to some extent expected if you are familiar with the findings on mirror neurons and on the evidence that tools are neurally incorporated into the body schema, both of which were findings from around 1995. I spent a couple years trying to computationally model/simulate tool use in monkeys that had been trained to use rakes to acquire food. They recorded from an area of their brains called the intraparietal sulcus (specifically PEip) and then set the monkey into a restrictive device called a monkey chair so that they could only move their arms for the most part. A rake was placed in front of the monkey and so was some food. Initially the neurons in this area fired when the monkey reached for things and seemed to encode the angles and velocity of the joints in the arm (and to some extent chest and neck) using only somatosensory (touch) information, since they were inactive when the monkey was blindfolded. However, after two weeks of daily rigorous training, the monkeys learned how to utilize the rake in order to reach food that was out of reach with just its arm and hand. When the cells were recorded from they found that the cells still fired when the monkey moved specific joints, but now they also fired when the monkey looked at its hand. When the monkey was actively using the rake (and not just playing with it) the neurons receptive fields (activity) enclosed not only the hand but the whole of the rake. The expansion of the receptive fields was interpreted as the process by which the rake was incorporated into the monkey's body schema (which is its internal representation of itself with respect to near-by space).
The group did several follow up studies, one including training monkeys to use mice to play simple computer games in which the monkey had to move around a mouse in order to move around a monkey hand on the screen. They found a similar set of context dependent neural receptive fields after they were trained for the game, except the neurons were visually active when they were looking at the hand on the screen. This is akin to not only the mouse but also the mouse cursor being incorporated into your body schema. There are also studies on humans who suffer from near-by spacial neglect. These people can't correctly interpret space near their bodies and ignore say the left half of their visual field for near-by space, but they can see things that are out of reach. However, if you give this person a stick and ask them to use it to touch something they couldn't have reached with their hand alone but could have seen before they picked up the tool, they now can't since the tool supposedly was incorporated into their body schema enhancing their reach and the range of their deficit. If you are interested in any of this, I suggest you read papers by Atsushi Iriki, Scott Frey, and Michael Arbib. There are a few earlier papers by Rizzolatti's group that show the existence of tool responding mirror neurons.
Incidentally, I didn't have much luck modeling these findings in a computer simulation. I study how objects are visually recognized now.
I agree, I just did not want to inundate people with so much information all at once.
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/index.html is a good resource, for those that want to learn more, although it has a lot of crappy information too. One just has to sort through the crap to find the gold.
Atkins is okay, but there are better systems out there. Just focusing on diet isn't going to make a person healthy. You need to exercise, and especially strength-train. I would devote about 2/3 of my workout to full-body strength training, and 1/3 to cardio if you are trying to lose weight, and only work out 5 tims a week for 45 minutes. More is not better because of muscle catabolism that starts to really kick in after 45 minutes for most people. You should take in high GI carbs right after a workout, and ingest 1.5g of protein per pound of lean body mass.
If you utilize the GI index and just take in very-low GI carbs, such as garbonzo beans, you can still have a carb rich diet instead of using Atkins. Atkins is right about these sugary foodsI eat 4 cans of tuna with brown mustard, 2 cans of garbonzo beans, several protein shakes, a turkey sandwich, and lots of milk. I get about 240g of protein a day.
I used to be a small guy at 5'10" and 135lbs, then after a couple years of college I was 180lbs without any extra muscle, now I am back at 185lbs, but with only 11% body fat. I still have work to do, I'd like to by 185lbs at 7% bodyfat. I thought I would share this information with all of you. I hope it helps somebody change their life for the better.
A lot of brilliant minds do not give good lectures or teach well. I somehow doubt listening to a lecture by Stephen Hawking would hold the masses attention very well. This channel would be targeted at those who are interested in science, but those people also surely also want to be entertained.
Discovery science, the last time I watched it a year ago or so had a good offering, although they needed fewer repeats and they could have benefited from the idea of having the occasional science lectures. I think the format of interviews with the scientist and then explanation by the narrator with diagrams and such to explain is the best way.
The main impediment to a science channel, is that all those people who don't want to learn about such things. TLC never calls itself the learning channel any more, after all, learning isn't fun, lets just show some "reality" decorating shows. Discovery has gone way down hill as well. Both of these channels used to be far better when I first discovered them many years ago.
From the article:
He said that laboratory mice had shown that gene transfer could lead to a 25 percent leap in muscle mass inside two weeks.
If this is the case, and the rats didn't exercise, it would be possible to greatly enhance your physique while coding. The extra muscle mass would burn a lot calories just existing, so your body's fat would also dwindle. This sort of gene therapy could be the savior of the obese America. Sexy/buff looking guys who did nothing to earn it!
I kind of don't like the idea, since I actually put in 4 hours of gym time a week, and have gotten pretty muscular. Sounds kind of like cheating, but if it could actually save lives by stopping all these lazy people from killing themselves, maybe it is good. Although it really wouldn't work for the women, unless they want to look like those roid women. Some of them are really scary.
I had a laptop in class, its not worth your time, effort, or money if the only reason you are using it is for in class note taking. You can upgrade a desktop much more easilly, and it works just fine. Unless you need portability for some other reason, just get a desktop. I was told having a laptop was essential for my CS courses, which was a blatant lie. All it served to do was distract students from what we were supposed to learn (a guy playing diablo 2 for example during class).
For in class note taking, just use a pen and paper if you feel you need to take notes. I think most people would be better off writing less and trying to learn instead the concept. Write only what is absolutely necessary has been my motto, and so far my 3.9 after 4 years (still one more to go) attests to it working fairly well for me.
Well, if it holds true that there is no way for your double to get to you, because it is impossible to pop a hole in space or travel faster than light, then your double simply cannot violate the rules of nature. Every possibility does not imply the rules contain infinite variation. Infinite possibility within the rules of nature, which perhaps include not travelling faster than light or popping a hole in space, so it is fairly impossible to meet your double.
This is from http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/cafff.html
Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant that interferes with a neurotransmitter in the brain called adenosine. Caffeine also acts at other places in the body to increase heart rate, constrict blood vessels, relax air passages, and affect muscles. An overdose of caffeine is lethal to the coqui frog.
Other animals, including humans, are also at risk from the dangers of caffeine. Therefore, only personnel from the Hawaii Department of Agriculture are allowed to use caffeine to control the frogs and they must monitor the effects of the drug in other species. Homeowners in Hawaii are encouraged to capture frogs by hand and contact the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.
Maybe the 110 mg of caffeine I get from pills, not including the vast amounts of tea I drink isn't as good for me as I thought.....
They have a link to the frog's mating call too. After listening to it, I can't blame them for wanting to get rid of them.
Here is a link to a movie (avi file) preview that was just released today. It is the best one I've seen, although the resolution isn't the best. Lots of gameplay and action.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw a lot of posts claiming that gadgets are worthless. Since I use Google Desktop with gadgets, I thought I would mention that gadgets I use. I mostly use Google Calendar (my agenda is very full) as well as a remember the milk gadget that is identical to the one on iGoogle. I also use a large digital clock with an alarm that flashes to alert me when I need to do certain things. The only other gadget I would like is something that combines RTM, my calendar, and permits me to "punch in" and "punch out" to activities in my RTM to do list. I like having all of these visible to me to help me keep track of my activities and goals. I use two wide screen monitors though, so if I had a tiny screen I might not find gadgets as useful.
Some F5 neurons known as mirror neurons not only fire when you are doing a particular task in the broad sense, but also when you observe somebody else doing it. For example, some mirror neurons fire when you grasp an object and when you see somebody grasping that object.
These findings are interesting but to some extent expected if you are familiar with the findings on mirror neurons and on the evidence that tools are neurally incorporated into the body schema, both of which were findings from around 1995. I spent a couple years trying to computationally model/simulate tool use in monkeys that had been trained to use rakes to acquire food. They recorded from an area of their brains called the intraparietal sulcus (specifically PEip) and then set the monkey into a restrictive device called a monkey chair so that they could only move their arms for the most part. A rake was placed in front of the monkey and so was some food. Initially the neurons in this area fired when the monkey reached for things and seemed to encode the angles and velocity of the joints in the arm (and to some extent chest and neck) using only somatosensory (touch) information, since they were inactive when the monkey was blindfolded. However, after two weeks of daily rigorous training, the monkeys learned how to utilize the rake in order to reach food that was out of reach with just its arm and hand. When the cells were recorded from they found that the cells still fired when the monkey moved specific joints, but now they also fired when the monkey looked at its hand. When the monkey was actively using the rake (and not just playing with it) the neurons receptive fields (activity) enclosed not only the hand but the whole of the rake. The expansion of the receptive fields was interpreted as the process by which the rake was incorporated into the monkey's body schema (which is its internal representation of itself with respect to near-by space). The group did several follow up studies, one including training monkeys to use mice to play simple computer games in which the monkey had to move around a mouse in order to move around a monkey hand on the screen. They found a similar set of context dependent neural receptive fields after they were trained for the game, except the neurons were visually active when they were looking at the hand on the screen. This is akin to not only the mouse but also the mouse cursor being incorporated into your body schema. There are also studies on humans who suffer from near-by spacial neglect. These people can't correctly interpret space near their bodies and ignore say the left half of their visual field for near-by space, but they can see things that are out of reach. However, if you give this person a stick and ask them to use it to touch something they couldn't have reached with their hand alone but could have seen before they picked up the tool, they now can't since the tool supposedly was incorporated into their body schema enhancing their reach and the range of their deficit. If you are interested in any of this, I suggest you read papers by Atsushi Iriki, Scott Frey, and Michael Arbib. There are a few earlier papers by Rizzolatti's group that show the existence of tool responding mirror neurons. Incidentally, I didn't have much luck modeling these findings in a computer simulation. I study how objects are visually recognized now.
I agree, I just did not want to inundate people with so much information all at once.
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/index.html is a good resource, for those that want to learn more, although it has a lot of crappy information too. One just has to sort through the crap to find the gold.
Atkins is okay, but there are better systems out there. Just focusing on diet isn't going to make a person healthy. You need to exercise, and especially strength-train. I would devote about 2/3 of my workout to full-body strength training, and 1/3 to cardio if you are trying to lose weight, and only work out 5 tims a week for 45 minutes. More is not better because of muscle catabolism that starts to really kick in after 45 minutes for most people. You should take in high GI carbs right after a workout, and ingest 1.5g of protein per pound of lean body mass. If you utilize the GI index and just take in very-low GI carbs, such as garbonzo beans, you can still have a carb rich diet instead of using Atkins. Atkins is right about these sugary foodsI eat 4 cans of tuna with brown mustard, 2 cans of garbonzo beans, several protein shakes, a turkey sandwich, and lots of milk. I get about 240g of protein a day. I used to be a small guy at 5'10" and 135lbs, then after a couple years of college I was 180lbs without any extra muscle, now I am back at 185lbs, but with only 11% body fat. I still have work to do, I'd like to by 185lbs at 7% bodyfat. I thought I would share this information with all of you. I hope it helps somebody change their life for the better.
A lot of brilliant minds do not give good lectures or teach well. I somehow doubt listening to a lecture by Stephen Hawking would hold the masses attention very well. This channel would be targeted at those who are interested in science, but those people also surely also want to be entertained. Discovery science, the last time I watched it a year ago or so had a good offering, although they needed fewer repeats and they could have benefited from the idea of having the occasional science lectures. I think the format of interviews with the scientist and then explanation by the narrator with diagrams and such to explain is the best way. The main impediment to a science channel, is that all those people who don't want to learn about such things. TLC never calls itself the learning channel any more, after all, learning isn't fun, lets just show some "reality" decorating shows. Discovery has gone way down hill as well. Both of these channels used to be far better when I first discovered them many years ago.
From the article: He said that laboratory mice had shown that gene transfer could lead to a 25 percent leap in muscle mass inside two weeks. If this is the case, and the rats didn't exercise, it would be possible to greatly enhance your physique while coding. The extra muscle mass would burn a lot calories just existing, so your body's fat would also dwindle. This sort of gene therapy could be the savior of the obese America. Sexy/buff looking guys who did nothing to earn it! I kind of don't like the idea, since I actually put in 4 hours of gym time a week, and have gotten pretty muscular. Sounds kind of like cheating, but if it could actually save lives by stopping all these lazy people from killing themselves, maybe it is good. Although it really wouldn't work for the women, unless they want to look like those roid women. Some of them are really scary.
I had a laptop in class, its not worth your time, effort, or money if the only reason you are using it is for in class note taking. You can upgrade a desktop much more easilly, and it works just fine. Unless you need portability for some other reason, just get a desktop. I was told having a laptop was essential for my CS courses, which was a blatant lie. All it served to do was distract students from what we were supposed to learn (a guy playing diablo 2 for example during class). For in class note taking, just use a pen and paper if you feel you need to take notes. I think most people would be better off writing less and trying to learn instead the concept. Write only what is absolutely necessary has been my motto, and so far my 3.9 after 4 years (still one more to go) attests to it working fairly well for me.
Well, if it holds true that there is no way for your double to get to you, because it is impossible to pop a hole in space or travel faster than light, then your double simply cannot violate the rules of nature. Every possibility does not imply the rules contain infinite variation. Infinite possibility within the rules of nature, which perhaps include not travelling faster than light or popping a hole in space, so it is fairly impossible to meet your double.
Here is a link to a movie (avi file) preview that was just released today. It is the best one I've seen, although the resolution isn't the best. Lots of gameplay and action.