Glial cells are pretty important -- the only difference found in Einstein's brain over "normal" humans so far is that he had many more glia (compared to neurons) in the area that processes information from many other information sources. source: Wikipedia
Also, rats in more highly enriched envionronments have higher glial counts than rats in more impoverished environments, and the ratios of glia to neurons progresses as you go up the evolutions (9 to 1) than any other animal -- it would be nice if the article discussed what the ratio of glia to neurons was in the dolphin so we could know if that still held true.
So far, glia are a sign of a highly active brain -- they provide metabolic support and many other functions:
1. They play an active role in establishing and maintaining the fundamental patterns of neuron circuits.
2. They produce growth and trophic factors, playing a key role in regeneration and plasticity.
3. Some play an active role in the formation of myelin which speeds impulse conduction. Myelinated fibers conduct more rapidly than unmyelinated fibers.
4. Some glial cells respond to rapid repair of myelin in demyelinating diseases such as MS and ALS.
5. Glial cells play a crucial role in immunological responses to various infections and toxic agents.
6. Glial cells increase in number when nerve cells grow with enrichment.
Finally, if the glia in the dolphins are just a function of cold water, it would make much more sense to have the brain surrounded by a large layer of fat than the relatively more expensive (metabolically speaking) brain cells. Dolphins may not be so intelligent, but that would be beter proved through behavioral studies -- if the argument that they are dumber is that their brains are more like Einstein's in that they have a high glial cell count, that idea just doesn't seem to "hold water".
Time off is a great idea, but something that also really needs to be explored is the underlying causes of the RSI.
I was a yoga teacher for 3 years, which made me very aware of how people used their bodies (posture, alignment, etc) -- and I noticed that all the people who complained of RSI had these shoulders that were very tight and lifted much closer to their ears than usual. It was obvious that their bodies were under a great deal of strain even when they were not doing tasks with their hands.
Stress and tension tends to make people tighten up their shoulders, and that tension is then transferred to the wrists and hands, since everything is connected. I remember when my girlfriend was traveling every week for business (as an IBM consultant) -- the stress from the constant traveling made her right shoulder amazingly rock-hard and tight, and her right hand and wrist developed RSI. Aggressive treatment with massage and chiropractic care worked wonders, and she is now pain-free.
Musicians are generally so relaxed when they play, that they rarely get RSI, even over long careers with many hours of practicing. If repetitive movement was really the cause, then every musician would eventually get it, as soon as they practiced the right number of hours to get it.
The cause is really related more to excessive stress and bad posture combined with overuse. The key is to be aggressive about the treatment and work on the RSI before it really becomes a problem, and not "work through it" until it becomes really serious. Yoga, massage, meditation, posture improvement, exercise in general, and chiropractic care are all really good places to start.
You cut off half of his quote just so you could say that you are cooler -- here's the half-quote with your response under it:
He said that a jet-boosted run will "pin the speedometer and that's at 140." He thinks that when it hits 160 mph -- he hasn't seen that... yet -
140? My 300-horsepower Mustang GT is perfectly capable of hitting 140, and would probably do 160 if a governor doesn't kick in. 1500-horsepower is the power of the gas turbine in an M-1 tank; if he had this thing hooked into the drive wheels, he'd go like a bat out of hell. But as it is, all he's doing is making a lot of noise.
Way to skip the second half of the quote to make an artificial point -- the full quote is:
He said that a jet-boosted run will "pin the speedometer and that's at 140." He thinks that when it hits 160 mph -- he hasn't seen that... yet -- the car will start lifting off the ground, but "the fun is not necessarily how fast you want to go. The fun is the sound of the thing. Just starting it up, it's like a (Boeing) 747 landing in your front yard."
So his whole project is about doing something really cool and making a lot of noise. What's your point??
The guy even says that he does not want to go any faster, says that it's not safe, says the fun is in the noise, and you have a post about how he should have done something different?
I think your whole post is about "My Mustang is cooler, and I know more about jet engines and going fast than a Stanford Phd". If he had actually made a car that goes really fast, he would have had to modify the car a whole lot more (drivetrain, etc) to go to a speed that is aerodynamically unsafe when he doesn't want to go any faster. I had a BMW that went 120, and that was plenty fast for me. The car took off like a rocket at 105 when you punched, but 120 in a small sports car feels very very fast, and I had no desire to go any faster. This guy is going fast enough to have a lot of fun, puts out alot of fire and a lot of noise -- I think that's really cool.
You're also ignoring the fact that this guy is an expert on cars:
Patrick has had a lot of cars and he said that about five or six years ago he was getting pretty bored with the state of the hot-rodding car hobby in America.
"I'd been building cars for a long time," he said. "Drag cars, American muscle cars. The last one was a big hemi engine in a 1965 Dodge Coronet. I wanted something of the extreme of the extreme of the extreme. I was looking to buy a (ex-Soviet) MiG 15 or MiG 17 jet engine. I finally decided on the T58.
He probably decided on the T58 because he got all the noise and flames without getting a lot of unnecessary thrust and Darwinizing himself.
Now, a lot of people think that heroin is poisonous to your body, or that most heroin users inevitably OD and die. That's not true. Heroin, like morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone(vicodin, percocet, etc.), codeine, etc. are actually rarely ever physically harmful unless combined with alcohol or other respiratory depressants. Even at high doses, they don't really exhibit any toxic effects on your body. They actually lower your heart-rate and blood pressure, and are arguably healthier for you in the physical sense than alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine even.... I'm unlikely to suffer any physical consequences from my heroin habit other than perhaps I'll age a little slower than other people (a side effect of chronic heroin use).
I can see why you would believe that, but you are missing the fact that your brain and its subcomponents of will, thinking, reward (dopamine,etc), motivation are also physical systems in your body -- they are just neurons linked together in a certain way, functioning in a certain way. The fact that science has not yet begun to really understand how they work does not make them any less real. Damage them, and they will misfunction. Destroy them in any way, and you will end up with all kinds of problems -- (Oliver Sacks ( MD neurologist) has some great books demonstrating the various disabilities that can happen with brain systems that we all take for granted, including very specific language and cognition skills -- one example is "The man who mistook his wife for a hat")
It seems like the two myths of the addict are "I can quit at any time that I want, really I can, I just don't want to" and "I know that I am addicted, but this stuff is not really so bad" ( you even follow this up with "hey, it's kinda good for me -- I'll age slower!")
You end up proving the above paragraph wrong with the following paragraph:
But the reason why this is an addiction, and not just a habit, is because it has consumed my life. It takes up all of my energy (constantly trying to acquire drugs, support my habit, get new needles, avoiding withdrawal), and when I'm not on heroin, I'm thinking about it.
This shows that your brain systems are seriously detiorating from the drug use, whether you are ready to recognize this fact or not. If you can't choose to think about anything else other than heroin if you are not on it, then your thinking system is damaged, end of story. A good analogy might be a car -- a properly functioning car can go north, south, east, west, backwards, forwards, in circles, instantly and upon command. If it does not do those things, it is somehow damaged, like my friend's car that had no reverse. Your thinking system, by only going in one direction "heroin! more heroin!" is much more deranged than a car that has no reverse. It's like a car going downhill without brakes.
If you damage the braking system of a car, you can examine the rest of the systems of the car, and it looks like the car is in perfect shape, as long as you don't look at the braking system. However, if you are going down the hill without being able to stop, you recognize that something is wrong. If you have never had the experience of going over a cliff or crashing at the bottom, then you might even think going quickly down that hill is not really that much of a problem.
This brings us to the next point -- that you if keep going in a certain direction, you will be sure to end there. If you drive every day toward Floriday, New York, California, or Idaho, you will end up in those destinations. It is pure cause and effect. You cannot keep driving toward a destination without endiing up there. You imagine that you will not end up in the typical "junkieville" destination that you see others in, but your imagination is only limited by the fact that you have never yet been there yourself. You probably never thought you would end up as an addict when you were "
The problem is that I don't have the time to put out the energy (of all kinds) that weight loss requires. I work two jobs (one for God, and one for currency) and at the end of the day I'm/tired/, and I simply don't have the energy to ask myself how many calories my dinner has. I just want to eat something and collapse on the account.
It seems to me that it is an error of thinking to say that the job for God takes precedence over maintaining your body, which many consider a physical temple of the divine. It is a very well-established fact that obesity is a primary cause of ill-health, depression, loss of energy, and an early death. Given that fact, you would probably be much more useful to both yourself and to God if you cut down on the second job and started exercising and eating correctly.
Life is no fun when you are sick or otherwise incapacitated, and it is looking like you are heading down the road to misery. Imagining that you are sacrificing your body for a nobler cause may also just be a mask for feelings of depression, which is also contributed to by the overweight condition. Being overweight is not exactly a recipe for happiness and social acceptance in itself. Take the time and energy to go for whatever mental and physical counseling you need before it is too late, and stop making excuses for yourself.
Feeling good and being healthy are not always easy to achieve, but it is worth taking the time and energy to do it. You and everyone around you will be glad you did it.
Calling for regulation would likely lead to California energy crisis-type situations: PG&E and Con Ed were both required to retail (at a fixed price) stuff they had to buy wholesale (on the open market) and when the wholesale price went above retail, bankruptcy. (Don't get into market manipulation, that's a peripheral issue). The Internet has been remarkably successful precisely because any yahoo with a router and a cable crimper could build out more of it, without a license, approvals or anything else.
That's a really bad example -- The industry itself wrote the regulations! . Not only that, they wrote the regulations so that they could manipulate the market! In most regulatory situations, where the process hasn't become corrupted, the government allows the utility to always make a guaranteed profit percentage, so that it is one of the sweetest deals you can find. No other business form allows companies to make guaranteed profits, and zero competition. Greedy businesses, on the other hand, usually create all kinds of problems for themselves and everybody else, not to mention Fraud , which was the direct cause of the blackouts you mention. The only reason a bankrupty occurred was because a subsidiary was allowed to transfer the customer overcharges to the parent corporation!
The intetnet is successful precisely because it was a government-supported and funded project. (And yes, Al Gore did help a lot here, right-wingers!) -- A router and a cat-5 cable are absolutely useless without other routers and computers to connect to. As another example, you are perfectly free to build your own road, but it is useless unless it is connected to other roads. If roads were built under free market conditions, every road would be a toll road, with wildly varying conditions on each one.
If roads were like the Internet, this would be like having traffic stopped between two states because they couldn't figure out the proper toll road agreement. The fact that they had to have guns to their heads to get back to the discussion table is not evidence that the system works, it is evidence that corporate greed is not a factor that works toward consumer well-being!
Acutally, there is a lot of evidence that IBS is caused by parasites
Despite "overwhelming circumstantial evidence incriminating (Dientamoeba fragilis) as a pathogen" (JJ Windsor & EH Johnson, Br.J.Biomed Sci 1999), as well as decades of published research showing Blastocystis hominis can also cause symptoms, many health professionals continue to question the validity of this research.Despite "overwhelming circumstantial evidence incriminating (Dientamoeba fragilis) as a pathogen" (JJ Windsor & EH Johnson, Br.J.Biomed Sci 1999), as well as decades of published research showing Blastocystis hominis can also cause symptoms, many health professionals continue to question the validity of this research."
So this link is questioned, but so was the link between ulcer and the bacteria. It would probably be a good avenue to pursue. I remember seeing that IBS or a similar ailment was cured by having a person drink the eggs of some parasite that could not infect humans. The idea was that this would train an overactive immune system to not target the bowel, but it could also alert the immune system to the presence of parasite and maybe coordinate a more effective attack on them. All I remember is that it took care of the symptoms. This is for Crohn's disease, I don't know how similar that is to IBS. But here is the link:
Palm lost on the Quality of their later products
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Palm's Mistakes
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· Score: 1
While Palm owned the early market for PDA's -- I bought my palm V for $330 and showed it off to everyone I met, they killed off their own upgrade path by putting out crappy products. My Palm V and 505 are rock-solid, but the user reviews on everything newer says that the reliability is horrible.
Palm's devices were perfect for what they were, and they would probably have survived for years as a niche player with a fanatical following. Their downfall was they tried to offer people super-fancy machines with no reliablility. I loved the Palm V, and even the 505, but whenever I would research a newer device, all the reviews complained that basically the things would die at about the 3-month warranty expiration mark. There is even a class action lawsuit that the Treo is so shoddy that it should never have been put out. That reputation killed them for me -- I won't even consider buying any of their newer products, but I will probably buy about 5 of their older products to stock up on because I can't ever see myself stopping using them.
Notice how the CEO / Executive crowd are all getting their taxcuts NOW to "stimulate the economy" while you have to give up your job and retrain for a new career for some imaginary profit later (5-10 years later? It won't be tomorrow!) Note that this is through your own sweat and worry and hard work.
Greenspan and the others pushing this outsourcing believes that the country has to go trillions into debt to finance the taxcuts *now* rather than rely on the same "innovation" that is supposed to finance YOUR pocketbook.
That's why Samuelson's "toothfairy" reference is such a good one. Only in this case it's the "innovation" toothfairy that's supposed to bring the profit. If anyone believes in innovation so much, I'm sure that they won't mind giving me their car so they can "innovate" another one later?
Your brain already HAS a natural pacemaker, it's called the alpha rhythm, which cycles at about 8-10 seconds per second. All of the other brainwaves seem run to in sync with this rhythm, being in one way or another multiples of it.
You can use biofeedback (or more specifically neurofeedback) to "train up" this natural pacemaker activity, teaching the brain to relieve it's own Parkinson's symptoms. This would have the advantage of having a lot fewer side effects than opening up the skill and jamming electrified wires in your brain.
A good resource for people interested in non-surgical ways of changing their brain is Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz's book "The Mind and the Brain: neuroplasticity and the power of mental force" -- he demonstrates how people can cause profound changes in their brain wiring merely through thought.
Insight meditation, for example has been proven helpful in teaching OCD patients how to gain control over their own obsessive thoughts.
It certainly sounds sexy to have something like electric implants but there are other ways to get the benefits without the side effects of brain surgery. It's kind of like a back patient has the choice of having their vertebrae fused or going to a chiropractor or physical therapist.
When it comes to animal thought, feeling, and culture many scientists seem turn into strict Creationists.
How? Because they seem to believe that thought, feeling and culture somehow spontaneously arose in humans instead of evolving slowly over aeons in many different species of animals.
If we have it, why would scientists be surprised that other animals have it too unless the scientists believed in some type of creationism?
Thankfully science is beginning to evolve past that point but if you talk to any scientist that doesn't acdept higher mental acitivity in animals just call him a creationist.
The idea of employment agreements also extends beyond salary/nda negotiations. I knew a guy who wrote his own contract for some side job for a husband and wife small business situation. He included that if he were fired, he needed two weeks notice or the payment for two weeks worth of work.
He made the deal with the husband, who was really impressed that he had everything together to create an actual contract. When the wife went crazy later on and fired him, she was very surprised to learn about the two weeks severance pay in the contract, and they paid up. I was quite impressed.
I thought I had seen it all until I got the CommonName parasite. I got it from installing a game, then noticed I had strange programs tring to access the internet.
When I went to the add/remove programs section in Windows 2000, I was sent to a web page insisting that CommonName was NOT spyware and asking that I validate myself as a human so that scripts could not automatically remove the software. After that, the program removed itself from the add/remove panel but left itself in place, until I killed it with spybot. (A great program!!)
It was very irritating to have a program essentially thumbing it's nose at me and taking over my system like that.
Just because someone posts a viewpoint far from the ordinary doesn't mean he's trolling or flaming.
I loved the part about the batteries -- "chaotic transcendence" and "brain exploding" -- that was pretty funny, and well put.
the rest of the post is pretty funny as well.
I would mod it up as funny, but those without a sense of humor would probably get scared by it and mod it back down. This has generated over 20 replies so far -- trolls just don't get that kind of play. If he is trolling, he did a darn good job. Mod posts down for being stupid or offensive, not for just thinking differently.
This post is interesting because it generates thought, and interest. There is no -1 (fundamentalist) option.
Three people have already found GPS devices secretly planted on their cars. Two of them were animal rights activists, the third was a girlfriend. One of the activists was installing a trailer hitch and found the device, then two more were quickly found on the other vehicles.
This will probably be getting alot more common as these things get smaller and cheaper.
More info here: boulderweekly.com/archive/071703/coverstory .html
The most secure way to prevent fraud is to have one touchscreen machine that *punches* the votes that the voter chooses onto a preprinted paper ballot, and a separate machine that then reads the votes, displays them on the screen, and stores them on voter acceptance.
This way the operation of the machines can be easily checked right before voting. If the votes are also cross-referenced on the electronic and paper records (by having the vote-reader (machine 2) punch the card with a time stamp and the machine number)) then any tampering would be easily traceable by comparing the paper and electronic records.
The voter is also part of the checking system, since they would be able to visually inspect the ballot and see what the reader displays. Any anomalies would be easily caught either before or after votes and would eliminate either electronic records disappearing or printer ink/jamming problems.
An even greater level of security would be to have the second machine create a hash value using all previous votes and insert that into the paper and electronic records as well , so that any tampering of the votes would clearly show up as being out-of-order.
I think this system of separating the elements of voting would solve most code/version/security problems by being so redundantly checkable. Any hacking should be pretty obvious.
This kind of thing is inevitable with the current focus on terrorism and the ease of data collection and transfer.
The DoD is currently offloading sensitive military actions to private companies -- why not just pay a private company to do it?
I am sure that any company (Double-click, etc.) will be happy to provide the same intelligence services to the government that it happily provides to other companies. Customer enhancement is only one step away from terrorism surveillance -- same data, different purpose.
So what we really need are some stronger checks and balances on both the government and companies -- for example,
* No sharing of data between entities without permission of the "data owner" -- (the person the data refers to)
* Quarterly reports to data owners of how their data is being used or transferred.
Otherwise you better believe the government (as well as corporations) are going to be looking at your phone records, bank statements, credit card records, Safeway cards.
Right now, your bank is permitted to sell your bank records unless you send them a letter asking them to stop. How many of you Slashdot readers have sent this letter?
It is important we put this into place because it wont be TIA but Halliburton (the company Dick Cheney used to be the CEO of) or Bechtel looking into your records. Are you feeling any safer?
I wouldn't say that GPS units are worthless -- I just drove a system equipped with one a couple of weeks back and it was basically a wet dream.
The input system was kinda clumsy, maneuvering a cursor around an alphabet to choose letters and numbers, but besides that I was in love with it. My parents were visiting San Francisco, and I live 30 min away in Belmont, so I had to take them around town and I am not too familiar with the city yet -- this thing made it a breeze.
Basically it is Mapquest in your car. You input a destination and it tells you how to get there in the quickest way possible, then shows you on the map wherever you are at any point in the trip.
When a turn is coming up, a pleasant female voice lets you know and then tones tell you exactly when to turn. If you get too far off the route that it planned for you earlier, it will plan a new route for you.
This thing could have saved me sooooo much time in my life and it was really helpful. When I didn't need the voice I just turned it down and could check the display every now and then to prove that I was on the right course.
If I had 2 grand to drop on it I would buy one tomorrow. If you're at all interested in GPS units for cars you can check it out at Hertz for a few more dollars a day.
A cheaper solution is to hook up a handheld unit to a laptop. I know somebody who did that and got great results, a lot cheaper than 2 gs.
More info on the web: http://www.autonav2000.com/Products/750NavPlus.htm
my 2 cents worth
Overwork killed a coworker of mine
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Working Hard?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
At one company I worked at, with the typical "go-go-go" mentality (that expected a "50 hour professional work week" and most of us put in much more and were for some reason proud of it), there was a guy who had an amazing work output. Nearly every day we would get emails on stuff from him written at 3am or some other ungodly hour. We would talk about it because it was pretty impressive/sick.
He was a real nice guy, young (early 40's?) with a 12-year old kid. I saw him keep up that schedule for about 3 years when a coworker told me that Ron had died of a heart attack.
Sure there were other factors, (like his extra 40 pounds) but he was active and into white-water rafting, kayaking, camping with his kid, etc., so I know he was no couch potato either. But he's the only one I ever knew that worked so hard for so long, and the only person I've known that died of a heart attack so young.
Just remember -- you may work-work-work for the glory of your company and maybe a bigger paycheck too, but is NOT A LIFE and might even take yours.
Meditation worked for me, biofeedback works too
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Working with ADHD?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I had ADHD, and I cured it with an hour a day of meditation -- it seriously boosted my powers of concentration. I was totally *useless* at studying, had no clue why. I just could not pay attention to anything that I was not interested, so my grades did a slow slide from a 3.3 my first semester. After 1 semester of meditating (fall of senior year), I got a 3.6 my last semester because I could finally concentrate. There were many other bonuses too. If anyone is interested, www.srf-yogananda.org is a place to start among many others.
For a quicker way, you could try biofeedback (actually neurofeedback, because you deal directly with the brain). I took a seminar in it, and it is really powerful, and many people specialize in it. Basically it teaches your brain to alter its own chemistry on demand. It is now recognized by doctors to lower the need for medication in many diseases.
There is a lot of science behind it and I was really impressed with what I found out. They have identified 5 subtypes, 2 of which are that the brainstem lets in too much/too little information to the brain. (in the first type your own thoughts distract you because there is not enough input to your brain from the senses, in the second type there is too much input from the senses, distracting you. The type I had is where the left brain is overactivated, then poops out leaving you unable to focus without massive caffeine or adrenaline. It might be worth it to check out the non-drug options, especially for the long term.
You missed the point -- it's not about income redistribution, it's about the Orwellian police / propaganda state that's being created around you. If the government has it's way, you won't be able to make a purchase or a telephone call without them knowing about it.
The state has full control of the news media, too. It doesn't matter if you're poor or middle class, you only get to hear what the government wants you to hear. For an example, check out the New York Times article (on Yahoo) about the supposed Iraqi scientist spilling all about the supposed WMD's. (And keep in mind the government's fake nuclear WMD evidence) -- The whole article is just reprinted government propaganda.
"A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said.... An American military team hunting for unconventional weapons in Iraq, the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, or MET Alpha, which found the scientist, declined to identify him, saying they feared he might be subject to reprisals. But they said that they considered him credible and that the material unearthed over the last three days at sites to which he led them had proved to be precursors for a toxic agent that is banned by chemical weapons treaties."
Here is the part where she is nice enough to tell you that her article had to be approved by the military, after she wrote what the military told her to write:
"Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials."
Meanwhile Bush is working on his OWN $768 billion income redistribution plan ("Tax Cut"). Do you really think it is going to you or any people poorer than you? No, it is going to the rich, and everyone knows it.
As long as you keep thinking you're not sheep, then the whole plan is working. You'll keep getting sheared of your tax dollars, and believing that Iraq is somehow threatening the US, or that we invaded them to "Free" them, or whatever the lie of the day is.
here's the URL for the story: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor y2&cid=6 8&ncid=68&e=3&u=/nyt/20030421/ts_nyt/illicit_arms_ kept_till_eve_of_war__an_iraqi_scientist_is_said_t o_assert
The examples of violence you mention are extreme examples. Violence happens all the time, just in more subtle ways, and not so subtle ways, the desensitization means *you just don't notice it*
-- when people get shot in movies, you aren't horrified, you enjoy it and pay to go see it again, that was entertainment, not violence! when you say a mean comment to someone, you don't realize the harm you caused, when you hear that the air force bombed a wedding party in Afghanistan or an innocent village, you don't care.
When WH Bush wants to go to war with Iraq to distract you from the state of the economy, you agree that we should "stop the terrorists", you don't worry about the American soldiers dying or the consequences to their families or the innocent Iraqis -- you just agree that we should "support the President".
When you hear about Enron cheating their employees out of their life savings, you have compassion, but you don't care enough to get active and make changes.
When you see a mentally ill homeless person on the street, you don't care. Bottom line -- violence is all around you, and you don't care -- you're like a fish in water -- you just don't notice it, or care enough to really do anything about it. If you were not desensitized to violence, you would be horrifed every time you saw someone hurt or killed in a movie or game, even though you knew it wasn't real. You would not consider it entertainment, just as the people watching gladiators fight in Rome considered it entertainment. It didn't bother them either -- they paid to see it too. You, my friend, are just one step away.
Slashdot Mirror
Glial cells are pretty important -- the only difference found in Einstein's brain over "normal" humans so far is that he had many more glia (compared to neurons) in the area that processes information from many other information sources. source: Wikipedia
. htm)
Also, rats in more highly enriched envionronments have higher glial counts than rats in more impoverished environments, and the ratios of glia to neurons progresses as you go up the evolutions (9 to 1) than any other animal -- it would be nice if the article discussed what the ratio of glia to neurons was in the dolphin so we could know if that still held true.
So far, glia are a sign of a highly active brain -- they provide metabolic support and many other functions:
1. They play an active role in establishing and maintaining the fundamental patterns of neuron circuits.
2. They produce growth and trophic factors, playing a key role in regeneration and plasticity.
3. Some play an active role in the formation of myelin which speeds impulse conduction. Myelinated fibers conduct more rapidly than unmyelinated fibers.
4. Some glial cells respond to rapid repair of myelin in demyelinating diseases such as MS and ALS.
5. Glial cells play a crucial role in immunological responses to various infections and toxic agents.
6. Glial cells increase in number when nerve cells grow with enrichment.
(from http://www.newhorizons.org/neuro/diamond_einstein
Finally, if the glia in the dolphins are just a function of cold water, it would make much more sense to have the brain surrounded by a large layer of fat than the relatively more expensive (metabolically speaking) brain cells. Dolphins may not be so intelligent, but that would be beter proved through behavioral studies -- if the argument that they are dumber is that their brains are more like Einstein's in that they have a high glial cell count, that idea just doesn't seem to "hold water".
Time off is a great idea, but something that also really needs to be explored is the underlying causes of the RSI.
I was a yoga teacher for 3 years, which made me very aware of how people used their bodies (posture, alignment, etc) -- and I noticed that all the people who complained of RSI had these shoulders that were very tight and lifted much closer to their ears than usual. It was obvious that their bodies were under a great deal of strain even when they were not doing tasks with their hands.
Stress and tension tends to make people tighten up their shoulders, and that tension is then transferred to the wrists and hands, since everything is connected. I remember when my girlfriend was traveling every week for business (as an IBM consultant) -- the stress from the constant traveling made her right shoulder amazingly rock-hard and tight, and her right hand and wrist developed RSI. Aggressive treatment with massage and chiropractic care worked wonders, and she is now pain-free.
Musicians are generally so relaxed when they play, that they rarely get RSI, even over long careers with many hours of practicing. If repetitive movement was really the cause, then every musician would eventually get it, as soon as they practiced the right number of hours to get it.
The cause is really related more to excessive stress and bad posture combined with overuse. The key is to be aggressive about the treatment and work on the RSI before it really becomes a problem, and not "work through it" until it becomes really serious. Yoga, massage, meditation, posture improvement, exercise in general, and chiropractic care are all really good places to start.
He said that a jet-boosted run will "pin the speedometer and that's at 140." He thinks that when it hits 160 mph -- he hasn't seen that
Way to skip the second half of the quote to make an artificial point -- the full quote is:
He said that a jet-boosted run will "pin the speedometer and that's at 140." He thinks that when it hits 160 mph -- he hasn't seen that
So his whole project is about doing something really cool and making a lot of noise. What's your point??
The guy even says that he does not want to go any faster, says that it's not safe, says the fun is in the noise, and you have a post about how he should have done something different?
I think your whole post is about "My Mustang is cooler, and I know more about jet engines and going fast than a Stanford Phd". If he had actually made a car that goes really fast, he would have had to modify the car a whole lot more (drivetrain, etc) to go to a speed that is aerodynamically unsafe when he doesn't want to go any faster. I had a BMW that went 120, and that was plenty fast for me. The car took off like a rocket at 105 when you punched, but 120 in a small sports car feels very very fast, and I had no desire to go any faster. This guy is going fast enough to have a lot of fun, puts out alot of fire and a lot of noise -- I think that's really cool.
You're also ignoring the fact that this guy is an expert on cars:
He probably decided on the T58 because he got all the noise and flames without getting a lot of unnecessary thrust and Darwinizing himself.
I can see why you would believe that, but you are missing the fact that your brain and its subcomponents of will, thinking, reward (dopamine,etc), motivation are also physical systems in your body -- they are just neurons linked together in a certain way, functioning in a certain way. The fact that science has not yet begun to really understand how they work does not make them any less real. Damage them, and they will misfunction. Destroy them in any way, and you will end up with all kinds of problems -- (Oliver Sacks ( MD neurologist) has some great books demonstrating the various disabilities that can happen with brain systems that we all take for granted, including very specific language and cognition skills -- one example is "The man who mistook his wife for a hat")
It seems like the two myths of the addict are "I can quit at any time that I want, really I can, I just don't want to" and "I know that I am addicted, but this stuff is not really so bad" ( you even follow this up with "hey, it's kinda good for me -- I'll age slower!")
You end up proving the above paragraph wrong with the following paragraph:
This shows that your brain systems are seriously detiorating from the drug use, whether you are ready to recognize this fact or not. If you can't choose to think about anything else other than heroin if you are not on it, then your thinking system is damaged, end of story. A good analogy might be a car -- a properly functioning car can go north, south, east, west, backwards, forwards, in circles, instantly and upon command. If it does not do those things, it is somehow damaged, like my friend's car that had no reverse. Your thinking system, by only going in one direction "heroin! more heroin!" is much more deranged than a car that has no reverse. It's like a car going downhill without brakes.
If you damage the braking system of a car, you can examine the rest of the systems of the car, and it looks like the car is in perfect shape, as long as you don't look at the braking system. However, if you are going down the hill without being able to stop, you recognize that something is wrong. If you have never had the experience of going over a cliff or crashing at the bottom, then you might even think going quickly down that hill is not really that much of a problem.
This brings us to the next point -- that you if keep going in a certain direction, you will be sure to end there. If you drive every day toward Floriday, New York, California, or Idaho, you will end up in those destinations. It is pure cause and effect. You cannot keep driving toward a destination without endiing up there. You imagine that you will not end up in the typical "junkieville" destination that you see others in, but your imagination is only limited by the fact that you have never yet been there yourself. You probably never thought you would end up as an addict when you were "
It seems to me that it is an error of thinking to say that the job for God takes precedence over maintaining your body, which many consider a physical temple of the divine. It is a very well-established fact that obesity is a primary cause of ill-health, depression, loss of energy, and an early death. Given that fact, you would probably be much more useful to both yourself and to God if you cut down on the second job and started exercising and eating correctly.
Life is no fun when you are sick or otherwise incapacitated, and it is looking like you are heading down the road to misery. Imagining that you are sacrificing your body for a nobler cause may also just be a mask for feelings of depression, which is also contributed to by the overweight condition. Being overweight is not exactly a recipe for happiness and social acceptance in itself. Take the time and energy to go for whatever mental and physical counseling you need before it is too late, and stop making excuses for yourself.
Feeling good and being healthy are not always easy to achieve, but it is worth taking the time and energy to do it. You and everyone around you will be glad you did it.
That's a really bad example -- The industry itself wrote the regulations! . Not only that, they wrote the regulations so that they could manipulate the market! In most regulatory situations, where the process hasn't become corrupted, the government allows the utility to always make a guaranteed profit percentage, so that it is one of the sweetest deals you can find. No other business form allows companies to make guaranteed profits, and zero competition. Greedy businesses, on the other hand, usually create all kinds of problems for themselves and everybody else, not to mention Fraud , which was the direct cause of the blackouts you mention. The only reason a bankrupty occurred was because a subsidiary was allowed to transfer the customer overcharges to the parent corporation!
The intetnet is successful precisely because it was a government-supported and funded project. (And yes, Al Gore did help a lot here, right-wingers!) -- A router and a cat-5 cable are absolutely useless without other routers and computers to connect to. As another example, you are perfectly free to build your own road, but it is useless unless it is connected to other roads. If roads were built under free market conditions, every road would be a toll road, with wildly varying conditions on each one.
If roads were like the Internet, this would be like having traffic stopped between two states because they couldn't figure out the proper toll road agreement. The fact that they had to have guns to their heads to get back to the discussion table is not evidence that the system works, it is evidence that corporate greed is not a factor that works toward consumer well-being!
Acutally, there is a lot of evidence that IBS is caused by parasites
y /reuters/2004/12/20041214elin004.html
Despite "overwhelming circumstantial evidence incriminating (Dientamoeba fragilis) as a pathogen" (JJ Windsor & EH Johnson, Br.J.Biomed Sci 1999), as well as decades of published research showing Blastocystis hominis can also cause symptoms, many health professionals continue to question the validity of this research.Despite "overwhelming circumstantial evidence incriminating (Dientamoeba fragilis) as a pathogen" (JJ Windsor & EH Johnson, Br.J.Biomed Sci 1999), as well as decades of published research showing Blastocystis hominis can also cause symptoms, many health professionals continue to question the validity of this research."
So this link is questioned, but so was the link between ulcer and the bacteria. It would probably be a good avenue to pursue. I remember seeing that IBS or a similar ailment was cured by having a person drink the eggs of some parasite that could not infect humans. The idea was that this would train an overactive immune system to not target the bowel, but it could also alert the immune system to the presence of parasite and maybe coordinate a more effective attack on them. All I remember is that it took care of the symptoms. This is for Crohn's disease, I don't know how similar that is to IBS. But here is the link:
http://www.ucsfhealth.org/childrens/health_librar
While Palm owned the early market for PDA's -- I bought my palm V for $330 and showed it off to everyone I met, they killed off their own upgrade path by putting out crappy products. My Palm V and 505 are rock-solid, but the user reviews on everything newer says that the reliability is horrible.
Palm's devices were perfect for what they were, and they would probably have survived for years as a niche player with a fanatical following. Their downfall was they tried to offer people super-fancy machines with no reliablility. I loved the Palm V, and even the 505, but whenever I would research a newer device, all the reviews complained that basically the things would die at about the 3-month warranty expiration mark. There is even a class action lawsuit that the Treo is so shoddy that it should never have been put out. That reputation killed them for me -- I won't even consider buying any of their newer products, but I will probably buy about 5 of their older products to stock up on because I can't ever see myself stopping using them.
If anyone really believes in outsourcing, check out this logic:
1) Forced removal of job
2) ?
3) ?
4) Profit!!!!!!
Notice how the CEO / Executive crowd are all getting their taxcuts NOW to "stimulate the economy" while you have to give up your job and retrain for a new career for some imaginary profit later (5-10 years later? It won't be tomorrow!) Note that this is through your own sweat and worry and hard work.
Greenspan and the others pushing this outsourcing believes that the country has to go trillions into debt to finance the taxcuts *now* rather than rely on the same "innovation" that is supposed to finance YOUR pocketbook.
That's why Samuelson's "toothfairy" reference is such a good one. Only in this case it's the "innovation" toothfairy that's supposed to bring the profit. If anyone believes in innovation so much, I'm sure that they won't mind giving me their car so they can "innovate" another one later?
Your brain already HAS a natural pacemaker, it's called the alpha rhythm, which cycles at about 8-10 seconds per second. All of the other brainwaves seem run to in sync with this rhythm, being in one way or another multiples of it.
You can use biofeedback (or more specifically neurofeedback) to "train up" this natural pacemaker activity, teaching the brain to relieve it's own Parkinson's symptoms. This would have the advantage of having a lot fewer side effects than opening up the skill and jamming electrified wires in your brain.
A good resource for people interested in non-surgical ways of changing their brain is Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz's book "The Mind and the Brain: neuroplasticity and the power of mental force" -- he demonstrates how people can cause profound changes in their brain wiring merely through thought.
Insight meditation, for example has been proven helpful in teaching OCD patients how to gain control over their own obsessive thoughts.
It certainly sounds sexy to have something like electric implants but there are other ways to get the benefits without the side effects of brain surgery. It's kind of like a back patient has the choice of having their vertebrae fused or going to a chiropractor or physical therapist.
When it comes to animal thought, feeling, and culture many scientists seem turn into strict Creationists.
How? Because they seem to believe that thought, feeling and culture somehow spontaneously arose in humans instead of evolving slowly over aeons in many different species of animals.
If we have it, why would scientists be surprised that other animals have it too unless the scientists believed in some type of creationism?
Thankfully science is beginning to evolve past that point but if you talk to any scientist that doesn't acdept higher mental acitivity in animals just call him a creationist.
The idea of employment agreements also extends beyond salary/nda negotiations. I knew a guy who wrote his own contract for some side job for a husband and wife small business situation. He included that if he were fired, he needed two weeks notice or the payment for two weeks worth of work.
He made the deal with the husband, who was really impressed that he had everything together to create an actual contract. When the wife went crazy later on and fired him, she was very surprised to learn about the two weeks severance pay in the contract, and they paid up. I was quite impressed.
I thought I had seen it all until I got the CommonName parasite. I got it from installing a game, then noticed I had strange programs tring to access the internet.
When I went to the add/remove programs section in Windows 2000, I was sent to a web page insisting that CommonName was NOT spyware and asking that I validate myself as a human so that scripts could not automatically remove the software. After that, the program removed itself from the add/remove panel but left itself in place, until I killed it with spybot. (A great program!!)
It was very irritating to have a program essentially thumbing it's nose at me and taking over my system like that.
Just because someone posts a viewpoint far from the ordinary doesn't mean he's trolling or flaming.
I loved the part about the batteries -- "chaotic transcendence" and "brain exploding" -- that was pretty funny, and well put.
the rest of the post is pretty funny as well.
I would mod it up as funny, but those without a sense of humor would probably get scared by it and mod it back down. This has generated over 20 replies so far -- trolls just don't get that kind of play. If he is trolling, he did a darn good job. Mod posts down for being stupid or offensive, not for just thinking differently.
This post is interesting because it generates thought, and interest. There is no -1 (fundamentalist) option.
Three people have already found GPS devices secretly planted on their cars. Two of them were animal rights activists, the third was a girlfriend. One of the activists was installing a trailer hitch and found the device, then two more were quickly found on the other vehicles.
y .html
This will probably be getting alot more common as these things get smaller and cheaper.
More info here:
boulderweekly.com/archive/071703/coverstor
The most secure way to prevent fraud is to have one touchscreen machine that *punches* the votes that the voter chooses onto a preprinted paper ballot, and a separate machine that then reads the votes, displays them on the screen, and stores them on voter acceptance.
This way the operation of the machines can be easily checked right before voting. If the votes are also cross-referenced on the electronic and paper records (by having the vote-reader (machine 2) punch the card with a time stamp and the machine number)) then any tampering would be easily traceable by comparing the paper and electronic records.
The voter is also part of the checking system, since they would be able to visually inspect the ballot and see what the reader displays. Any anomalies would be easily caught either before or after votes and would eliminate either electronic records disappearing or printer ink/jamming problems.
An even greater level of security would be to have the second machine create a hash value using all previous votes and insert that into the paper and electronic records as well , so that any tampering of the votes would clearly show up as being out-of-order.
I think this system of separating the elements of voting would solve most code/version/security problems by being so redundantly checkable. Any hacking should be pretty obvious.
Can anyone find any flaws in this system?
... are needed to protect the citizens.
This kind of thing is inevitable with the current focus on terrorism and the ease of data collection and transfer.
The DoD is currently offloading sensitive military actions to private companies -- why not just pay a private company to do it?
I am sure that any company (Double-click, etc.) will be happy to provide the same intelligence services to the government that it happily provides to other companies. Customer enhancement is only one step away from terrorism surveillance -- same data, different purpose.
So what we really need are some stronger checks and balances on both the government and companies -- for example,
* No sharing of data between entities without permission of the "data owner" -- (the person the data refers to)
* Quarterly reports to data owners of how their data is being used or transferred.
Otherwise you better believe the government (as well as corporations) are going to be looking at your phone records, bank statements, credit card records, Safeway cards.
Right now, your bank is permitted to sell your bank records unless you send them a letter asking them to stop. How many of you Slashdot readers have sent this letter?
It is important we put this into place because it wont be TIA but Halliburton (the company Dick Cheney used to be the CEO of) or Bechtel looking into your records. Are you feeling any safer?
I wouldn't say that GPS units are worthless -- I just drove a system equipped with one a couple of weeks back and it was basically a wet dream.
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The input system was kinda clumsy, maneuvering a cursor around an alphabet to choose letters and numbers, but besides that I was in love with it. My parents were visiting San Francisco, and I live 30 min away in Belmont, so I had to take them around town and I am not too familiar with the city yet -- this thing made it a breeze.
Basically it is Mapquest in your car. You input a destination and it tells you how to get there in the quickest way possible, then shows you on the map wherever you are at any point in the trip.
When a turn is coming up, a pleasant female voice lets you know and then tones tell you exactly when to turn. If you get too far off the route that it planned for you earlier, it will plan a new route for you.
This thing could have saved me sooooo much time in my life and it was really helpful. When I didn't need the voice I just turned it down and could check the display every now and then to prove that I was on the right course.
If I had 2 grand to drop on it I would buy one tomorrow. If you're at all interested in GPS units for cars you can check it out at Hertz for a few more dollars a day.
A cheaper solution is to hook up a handheld unit to a laptop. I know somebody who did that and got great results, a lot cheaper than 2 gs.
More info on the web: http://www.autonav2000.com/Products/750NavPlus.ht
my 2 cents worth
At one company I worked at, with the typical "go-go-go" mentality (that expected a "50 hour professional work week" and most of us put in much more and were for some reason proud of it), there was a guy who had an amazing work output. Nearly every day we would get emails on stuff from him written at 3am or some other ungodly hour. We would talk about it because it was pretty impressive/sick.
He was a real nice guy, young (early 40's?) with a 12-year old kid. I saw him keep up that schedule for about 3 years when a coworker told me that Ron had died of a heart attack.
Sure there were other factors, (like his extra 40 pounds) but he was active and into white-water rafting, kayaking, camping with his kid, etc., so I know he was no couch potato either. But he's the only one I ever knew that worked so hard for so long, and the only person I've known that died of a heart attack so young.
Just remember -- you may work-work-work for the glory of your company and maybe a bigger paycheck too, but is NOT A LIFE and might even take yours.
I had ADHD, and I cured it with an hour a day of meditation -- it seriously boosted my powers of concentration. I was totally *useless* at studying, had no clue why. I just could not pay attention to anything that I was not interested, so my grades did a slow slide from a 3.3 my first semester. After 1 semester of meditating (fall of senior year), I got a 3.6 my last semester because I could finally concentrate. There were many other bonuses too. If anyone is interested, www.srf-yogananda.org is a place to start among many others.
For a quicker way, you could try biofeedback (actually neurofeedback, because you deal directly with the brain). I took a seminar in it, and it is really powerful, and many people specialize in it. Basically it teaches your brain to alter its own chemistry on demand. It is now recognized by doctors to lower the need for medication in many diseases.
There is a lot of science behind it and I was really impressed with what I found out. They have identified 5 subtypes, 2 of which are that the brainstem lets in too much/too little information to the brain. (in the first type your own thoughts distract you because there is not enough input to your brain from the senses, in the second type there is too much input from the senses, distracting you. The type I had is where the left brain is overactivated, then poops out leaving you unable to focus without massive caffeine or adrenaline. It might be worth it to check out the non-drug options, especially for the long term.
You missed the point -- it's not about income redistribution, it's about the Orwellian police / propaganda state that's being created around you. If the government has it's way, you won't be able to make a purchase or a telephone call without them knowing about it.
... An American military team hunting for unconventional weapons in Iraq, the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, or MET Alpha, which found the scientist, declined to identify him, saying they feared he might be subject to reprisals. But they said that they considered him credible and that the material unearthed over the last three days at sites to which he led them had proved to be precursors for a toxic agent that is banned by chemical weapons treaties."
r y2&cid=6 8&ncid=68&e=3&u=/nyt/20030421/ts_nyt/illicit_arms_ kept_till_eve_of_war__an_iraqi_scientist_is_said_t o_assert
The state has full control of the news media, too. It doesn't matter if you're poor or middle class, you only get to hear what the government wants you to hear. For an example, check out the New York Times article (on Yahoo) about the supposed Iraqi scientist spilling all about the supposed WMD's. (And keep in mind the government's fake nuclear WMD evidence) -- The whole article is just reprinted government propaganda.
"A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said.
Here is the part where she is nice enough to tell you that her article had to be approved by the military, after she wrote what the military told her to write:
"Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials."
Meanwhile Bush is working on his OWN $768 billion income redistribution plan ("Tax Cut"). Do you really think it is going to you or any people poorer than you? No, it is going to the rich, and everyone knows it.
As long as you keep thinking you're not sheep, then the whole plan is working. You'll keep getting sheared of your tax dollars, and believing that Iraq is somehow threatening the US, or that we invaded them to "Free" them, or whatever the lie of the day is.
here's the URL for the story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto
The examples of violence you mention are extreme examples. Violence happens all the time, just in more subtle ways, and not so subtle ways, the desensitization means *you just don't notice it*
-- when people get shot in movies, you aren't horrified, you enjoy it and pay to go see it again, that was entertainment, not violence! when you say a mean comment to someone, you don't realize the harm you caused, when you hear that the air force bombed a wedding party in Afghanistan or an innocent village, you don't care.
When WH Bush wants to go to war with Iraq to distract you from the state of the economy, you agree that we should "stop the terrorists", you don't worry about the American soldiers dying or the consequences to their families or the innocent Iraqis -- you just agree that we should "support the President".
When you hear about Enron cheating their employees out of their life savings, you have compassion, but you don't care enough to get active and make changes.
When you see a mentally ill homeless person on the street, you don't care. Bottom line -- violence is all around you, and you don't care -- you're like a fish in water -- you just don't notice it, or care enough to really do anything about it. If you were not desensitized to violence, you would be horrifed every time you saw someone hurt or killed in a movie or game, even though you knew it wasn't real. You would not consider it entertainment, just as the people watching gladiators fight in Rome considered it entertainment. It didn't bother them either -- they paid to see it too. You, my friend, are just one step away.