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Your search for neurophilosophy returned 23 results:
Tuesday, June 26. 2018
Image via Insurrection is Here; How Long do We have Until Civil War 2.0 Starts?
Being overweight correlates with brain shrinkage
That doesn't prove it's causal, tho. Still, many problems with excess fat.
School discipline: How Federal Education Guidelines from 2014 are Destroying Kids’ Lives
Little House on the Prairie Now Shunned as Racist
By moonbats
The Southern Poverty Law Center isn't authoritative, it's garbage
New York Times bombshell on own reporter reveals Ali Watkins dated second potential source
Women using sex and charm to get ahead? That's a dog bites man story
Trump foes move toward public shaming even of low-level officials
DNC Vice Chair Keith Ellison: “Muslims Can Prepare Pork For Infidels, It Will Send Them To Hell And Make Allah Happy”…
Bacon is heaven
#WalkAway Campaign Urges Fed-Up Democrats to Leave the Party
51% See Democrats as Party of 'Identity Politics and Victimology'
Voters Don’t Regret Hillary’s Loss
DEM CHIEF OF STAFF TRIED TO EXPOSE SUSPECTED THEFT RING ON CAPITOL HILL, WAS MET WITH RESISTANCE
Why the protection of these Pakistani crooks?
Garrison: 'Trump Derangement Syndrone' Has Reached Epidemic Proportions
Where the Wall Worked - Tijuanans shrug at Donald Trump’s proposed wall—because they already have two. And, for the most part, they’ve done the city some good.
Obama admin: Of course we detained children
Two Views on the Politics of Immigration
The liberal lurch left on immigration
63% of Americans Say Arrest Illegals and/or Send Them Home – 21% (Democrats) Want Them Released
The Cost of Providing Health Care to Illegal Aliens - The total is obviously enough to pay for a border wall.
FBI Still Stonewalls Congress On Russia Investigation — More Deep State Obstruction?
Protesters 'SWARM' Tehran's Grand Bazaar, Shout 'Death To Palestine,' 'Death To Dictator'
Erdogan wins in Turkey, gets ready to assume sweeping powers
Tuesday, August 9. 2016
 Frigatebirds sleep in mid-flight
Why You Should Always Dress Up When You Go Out to Eat
For More U.S. Cities, Downtown Is a Center of Economic Strength
Two murals at University of Wisconsin-Stout to be removed: 'Psychologically devastating'
Indian history and Indian heritage are being erased in the name of correctness. Crazy.
The civilization of the Mayan Indians
A Surreal Life on the Precipice in Puerto Rico
A failed state. Give them independence from the US
The Law Of Unintended Consequences Hits Biofuels
New Twist In Global Warming Madness: Olympic Records Won't Come Easy
Crack Down on Law Schools That Don't Pass the Bar
N.C. school board: Don’t call children â€boys’ and â€girls’
Illinois College Defends Offering Course For “Blacks-Only”…
Dalrymple:
"I have spent much of my life among the poor or relatively poor. I can honestly say that it never occurred to me for a single moment that any one of them was not a true human being. Indeed, if they were not true human beings, their poverty would be nothing to worry about. I neither romanticized them as the fount of all goodness and wisdom nor saw them as mere objects."
How Do You Tell The Corrupt Politicians From The Honest Ones?
... government is inherently corrupt. There is no way around it. That's just one of the reasons (although perhaps the most important one) why we are complete fools to entrust to the government more and more power to redistribute the wealth of society, supposedly to create more fairness and justice in the world. What this process actually creates is more corruption. And does this process create more fairness? If it did, why does Manhattan -- the jurisdiction with the highest taxes and the most extensive suite of progressive welfare and redistributive government programs in the whole country -- have the highest income inequality?
Well, that last question is not entirely fair to NYC. It takes a while for all of the new immigrants to get with the program but they get more help than NY immigrants of the past. The help probably slows them down. Plus NYC has large dysfunctional, dependent "inner city" "communities" which nobody knows what to do about except to give them stuff and get their votes.
Related, from Z Man:
The American colonies were doing well economically and the taxes and levies the King wished to impose were minor. Despite this economic realty, the colonies revolted anyway. It was early proof that homo economicus has always been nonsense. Humans as not rational and narrowly self-interested agents. Humans, individually and collectively, are biological.
When the Brits went to the polls and decided to leave Europe, they did not do so with economics in mind. That was part of it, but patriotism, identity, class and other non-economic factors were at the front of their mind. The winners were not waving the Union Jack because it happen to be handy. The Brexit forces were not talking about sovereignty and self-government by accident. Libertarians are so blinkered they could not comprehend what was so blazingly obvious. They remain convinced that humans are just moist robots.
VDH on borders:
Today’s open-borders agenda has its roots not only in economic factors—the need for low-wage workers who will do the work that native-born Americans or Europeans supposedly will not—but also in several decades of intellectual ferment, in which Western academics have created a trendy field of “borders discourse.” What we might call post-borderism argues that boundaries even between distinct nations are mere artificial constructs, methods of marginalization designed by those in power, mostly to stigmatize and oppress the “other”—usually the poorer and less Western—who arbitrarily ended up on the wrong side of the divide. “Where borders are drawn, power is exercised,” as one European scholar put it. This view assumes that where borders are not drawn, power is not exercised—as if a million Middle Eastern immigrants pouring into Germany do not wield considerable power by their sheer numbers and adroit manipulation of Western notions of victimization and grievance politics. Indeed, Western leftists seek political empowerment by encouraging the arrival of millions of impoverished migrants.
iStudy Shows Raising Minimum Wage in Seattle Did Little to Help Workers
After Voter ID Defeats, Lessons From Indiana’s Law That â€Has Stood Test of Time’
A press conference for Hillary: Softball questions and journalists applaud
From 1996:
Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady -- a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation -- is a congenital liar.
She is no lady
Short-Circuit Damage to US Security: Hillary’s Lies and Amiri’s Execution - Sensational lying is nothing new for the former first lady
Peyser: I can no longer justify calling myself a Trump supporter
Democrats Touting Billionaire Support for Hillary Have a Short Memory
Why Trump is now the most dangerous man in the world
Because he is a NATO skeptic. So am I. It's a Cold War relic. Europe can take care of itself - or not.
ISIS is not America's problem
Bring back the Ottoman Empire, please.
Munich killer 'went on weapons training day to Iran' before massacre where 9 died
Saturday, December 14. 2013
Elizabeth Loftus is one of the most influential psychologists of all time, and also one of the most controversial.
She is not controversial. Terrible injustices were perpetrated back before she helped publicize the errors.
Tuesday, December 27. 2011
 From Yale Psychiatrist (and author of Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation) Charles Barber on the above topic in The Wilson Quarterly, a quote:
The new neuroscience has emerged from the last two decades of formidable progress in brain science, psychopharmacology, and brain imaging, bringing together research related to the human nervous system in fields as diverse as genetics and computer science. It has flowered into one of the hottest fields in academia, where almost anything "neuro" now generates excitement, along with neologisms, neuroeconomics, neurophilosophy, neuromarketing. The torrent of money flowing into the field can only be described in superlatives - hundreds of millions of dollars for efforts such as Princeton's Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior and MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
Psychiatrists have been in the forefront of the transformation, eagerly shrugging off the vestiges of "talk therapy" for the bold new paradigms of neuroscience. By the late 1980s, academic psychiatrists were beginning literally to reinvent parts of the discipline, hanging out new signs saying Department of Neuropsychiatry in some medical schools. A similar transformation has occurred in academic psychology.
A layperson leafing through a mainstream psychiatric journal today might easily conclude that biologists had taken over the profession. "Acute Stress and Nicotine Cues Interact to Unveil Locomotor Arousal" and "Activity-Dependent Gene Expression in the Prefrontal Cortex" are titles of typical offerings. The field has so thoroughly cast its lot with biology, and with the biology induced by psychoactive drugs, that psychiatrists can hardly hope to publish in one of the mainstream journals if their article tells the story of an individual patient, or includes any personal thoughts or feelings about the people or the work that patient was engaged with, or fails to include a large dose of statistical data. Psychiatry used to be all theories, urges, and ids. Now it's all a search for genes, receptors, and neurotransmitters.
Read Barber's whole essay here.
A few comments: He correctly describes the currents in Psychiatry today - the emphasis on the mechanistic view. Of course, this is just one view of the elephant, and you cannot eliminate the words "mind" or "soul." After all, the main role of current neuroscience is to understand "the mind." I try to take a balanced view. I am fascinated by the neurosciences, and I think our psychiatric medicines are Godsends for many. But, for many problems - let's use addictions as an easy example - I believe that a soul-change is needed, and is possible. I think it's best if we shrinks remain modest about our knowledge and our powers.
Another quote from Barber:
If there's any lesson to be gleaned from the recent history of psychiatry, it is, in the anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann's words, "how complex mental illness is, how difficult to treat, and how, in the face of this complexity, people cling to coherent explanations like poor swimmers to a raft."
We don't know much, but we should know just enough to recognize how primitive and crude our understanding of psychiatric drugs is, and how limited our understanding of the biology of mental disorder. The unfortunate fact remains that the ills of this world have a tantalizing way of eluding simple explanation. Our only hope is to be resolute and careful, not faddish, in assessing new developments as they arise, and to adopt them judiciously within a tradition of a gradually but steadily growing arsenal in the fight against genuine human suffering.
Wednesday, June 29. 2011
 Classic silent films, streamable and downloadable
Case Studies vs Quantitative Analyses
Excellent review of the topic
Spatial navigation in the congenitally blind
Just keep reading the translation
Uh oh: White House caught lying about Petraeus’s withdrawal recommendations?
Tunisia's Morning After
The Authentic Palestine Freedom Flotilla
Bookworm: Principles are so inconvenient
Morals and principles create stress!
The hateful Left
If Public Pensions Are a Sinking Ship, Charter Schools Are Smart Rats
The Unions’ Real Enemy: Themselves (h/t Larwin)
Factoid du jour, via Coyote:
Wal-Mart’s profit to shareholders is about 3.6% of sales. This means that for the majority of the country, on the items you buy at Wal-Mart, they are earning less than half of what the government takes in sales tax on the same item.
Is that serfdom?
A comment at Lucianne:
His mother hated the USA, his dad hated the USA, his step-dad hated the USA. His schools in Indonesia hated the USA. His college buddies hated the USA. His pastor of 20 years hates the USA and his associates in Chicago hate the USA.
It's Radical Chic. Loving freedom is not cool. Lenin and Che were cool.
Monday, August 31. 2009
One quote from the non-technical post at Neurophilosophy:
A comparison of the DNA sequences from the 36 sea sponge genes with the homologous sequences from humans, Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) and Nematostella vectensis (a cnidarian with a simple nervous system consisting of a loose network of nerves) revealed striking similarities between the genes in all four species. One gene, called dlg, encodes a crucial component of the post-synaptic density scaffold. The protein product of that gene contains a number of regions that form the protein-protein bonds that hold the scaffold together. The segment of the dlg gene encoding these binding regions was found to be highly conserved - the DNA sequences in the sea sponge gene were identical to the human sequences. This suggests that in the sea sponge these proteins interact in exactly the same way as they do in the human postsynaptic density.
Friday, May 15. 2009
Growing new neurons throughout life: Micro mRNA and neurogenesis. Dang brain is quite remarkable.
Current advances in neuroscience go under-reported because the press doesn't understand it any better than they understand any science or basic economics.
Journalists seem, to me, to be the ultimate "I was told there would be no math" people, who should never have been admitted to any college.
Wednesday, February 4. 2009
The incredible case of Phineas Gage. Neurophilosophy. Most famous case in neurology.
No cussing please. Trying to out-Puritan the new Puritans
Teasing, arguing and fighting are normal for kids. Is that news? Related: See the Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys
Ancient hot cocoa cups. h/t, Jungleman
What Macy's is doing to stay alive
Old Jews Telling Jokes: Health Care
An Epicurianism update
Thursday, November 6. 2008
 What's new with brain-computer interfacing?
Psychologists study the minds and brains of psychopaths. The New Yorker. It's important to be able to identify psychopaths, so you can stay away from them. Very useful new office stamp. Every desk needs one of these. Tagging Bluefin Tuna. Very cool. I did not know that they were essentially a warm-blooded fish. Ran a mile with a rabid fox clamped to her arm. Sounds like something from Carl Hiassen. Red really is the color of love. h/t, Flares. Hmmm. I think most women look best in black. China's Space industry is taking off Dr. William Gray on The Over-Hyping of Green. We view "green" as simply a fashionable marketing tool, but we are big on land and marine conservation. Women have more germs than men. A nice post on Crichton at Reference Frame Oldest Hebrew text found Thinking about how T.S. Eliot found God. I sorta wish Gaghdad would resist the temptation to spill into politics. Crusading for the Everglades, behind the scenes. Good for her, and good for Paul Tudor Jones too. Rich folks have their purposes. "Poverty and disadvantage are a better preparation for success than wealth and capitalizing on advantage.” Malcolm Gladwell. Adversity helps. But what is "success"? Markets in everything: "gold-farming" in China "A successful market-timing Man will typically have a portfolio composed of 60% High-end Hookers, 30% High-end GFs and 10% value High-end Wives when the market is bottoming. As the cycle comes around..." read the rest.
Thursday, September 25. 2008
 What's up with Beauty Studies (ie Neuroaesthetics) these days?
A quote from Beauty and the Brain (by the proprietor of Neurophilosophy) in Seed (h/t, Dr. X): ...recent work by several researchers at University College London?—?including the establishment of the first major grant-driven research program for the neurobiological investigation of aesthetics, or neuroaesthetics?—?has made the first steps toward a unified biocultural theory of art. An object's beauty may not be universal, but the neural basis for appreciating beauty probably is. The researchers' initial discoveries and the increasing formalization of the field promise to open the way for the first time to an understanding of beauty based on something other than speculation.
Can things of the soul and spirit be understood in terms of neurotransmitters and neural wiring? Count me a skeptic. Different levels of organization have different rules and patterns which do not transfer one to the other. For example, you could know everything about atoms but never predict a living cell, and you could understand everything about a cortical network without predicting Moby Dick. (And, for me, on a good day I see beauty everywhere but on a bad day I see it nowhere.) Still, they may as well give it a try. I get skeptical when they call it a bio-cultural model, however. It makes it too clear that they seek to detour around the psychology part.
Saturday, August 23. 2008
 Besides a break from daily content production (which is usually just fun to do, if a bit time-consuming), we need this vacation to re-think our purpose here at Maggie's. It was never primarily a political purpose, but we all tend to get caught up in the thing-du-jour - especially in an election year.
That was never our original intention. Many other people do that better than we do, and we do not need to be an echo chamber. We did want to represent our traditional views, but to not get caught up in the daily frenzies. But the temptation is strong because we are passionate about our beliefs about the America we love. And our original intention was never to feel any obligation for daily posts. We all have day jobs, but we - or I - got caught up in the fun of it, and we all read tons of stuff on these nets every day anyway. Futhermore, I have accepted a new job in NYC, beginning in September. Do not worry about me - I have a good 5-year contract. A big move. Can't let life stagnate, but it's not going to be like work in the countryside. I expect 14-hour days, and look forward to a fresh new challenge. Give me your best shot, Big Apple. I think I can take it, and too much comfort is not good for a young fellow. My huntin' buddy will take good care of my Springer, and put her to work more than I will be able to. She is a biddable gal, and promiscuous with her affection. I will sneak these links: The Village Idiots, notes a commenter at LGF. Yep. The physiology of perversion. This actually makes sense. The vicious cycle of Dem urban control. Duh. Via Classical: He's at least as fresh a face as Madeleine Albright.
Doctors vs. Economists. Related: Harvey Cushing photo journal. Try that, economists. Pure, delighted malice. SISU Is this video the election? Now, the new question: Are you an antisemite? The ethos of authoritarianism in the Middle East. Maybe they love it. I hate it. Excuse me, but who is supposed to be the next president? Hmmm. From Town Hall: Rob Long asks "Isn't [Biden] sort of the stupid person's idea of the smart person's candidate?" Yes, he is. But that's not fair to stupid people. Even stupid people who watched Biden embarrass himself during the Alito hearings --remember the "I hate Princeton" moment followed by the donning of the Princeton cap?-- know that Slow Joe is all tenure and no talent.
I missed this Officer Krupke moment. Did Obama just lose the election? I don't think so, but I hope he will. I will follow the rules, after that.
Monday, May 19. 2008
 Columbia's Brain and Mind Symposium has archived (on online video) a wonderful and relatively non-technical series of lectures by the world's greatest neuroscientists.
These talks were presented in 2004 as a part of Columbia University's 250th Anniversary. (h/t, Neurophilosophy)
Thursday, April 17. 2008
 Habu needs to explain flag handling to this young lady
Sustenance from Maureen Dowd? Bruce? Bloomberg explains why NYC cannot hyper-tax the hedgies Progressives hate the poor. Climate Skeptic I never thought this book was literature. 65 years of LSD The search for the Phantom Subtext Photo: The popularity of the Bardot vs. Moslem story on the internet may be, in part, due to the opportunity to post a photo. Interesting story, too, though. Where's that link? Aw, never mind. Oh, here it is.
Friday, March 21. 2008
Neurophilosophy reports: The Visible Body is a small application created by the Massachusetts-based company Argosy Publishing. The software can be downloaded for free, and includes computer graphic models of more than 1,700 anatomical structures, which can be rotated in a three-dimensional 360 degree view: The Visible Body consists of highly detailed, anatomically accurate, 3D models of all human body systems. The models were developed by an extensively trained team with decades of experience in medical illustration and biomedical visualization. All anatomical content has been reviewed for accuracy by our panel of experts, including physicians and anatomists. The beta release includes content covered in an undergraduate-level Anatomy and Physiology course. Years of modeling and enhancement make it the most sophisticated and complete 3D model of the human body available.
An amazing resource. I know our readers can locate Ethiopia on a map, but it's one o'clock - do you know where your own Pineal Gland is at?
Tuesday, December 18. 2007
Killer Whales team up to break up the ice floe before making waves to roll their fresh seal sushi dinner into the water (h/t, Neurophilosophy):
Friday, December 7. 2007
 Quackery supported by Brit NHS. Why? Because it's political, of course. Socialized medicine is all about politics, not medicine.
Eye disease and Impressionism. Neurophilosophy Before we go all hysterical like Andy Sullivan, here are the facts about those CIA tapes. A player to make people like golf who don't like golf Chavez: Our people aren't mature enough. Dr. Sanity. Not mature enough to want to be serfs to the State? What is "sloth"? Kimball When a bad kid smiles at a teacher. What gun laws do for us. The case for English as the official language. NY Sun Is this guy getting a bad deal? I have never seen a child porn site, but what if I just wanted to see what was on them? Cramer Magna Carta for sale. Dissent not allowed in Bali. h/t, Insty More on The Death of the Grown-Up: Driscoll The logical flaw in modern Darwinism. Auster. It's about the human instinct for teleology. Kangaroo farts are Green. What about Wallabees? All I have here is a whole bunch of Wallabees. G.I. Jill. Gateway Image: Thomas Nast's Santa. History of Santa here.
Monday, November 12. 2007
 How well do dogs see at night?
Bolton kicking ass, back at the UN. The fungus that causes dandruff. John Hawks The brain does benefit from physical exercise. Higher taxes are key to happiness, says Edwards. Non-poverty in the West creates dire political crisis for Left. I guess their only option now is to convince the middle class that they are oppressed by The System. (h/t, No Pasaran) Band of Bloggers: video at History Channel Bluefin Tuna and overfishing. Number of foreign students in the US increasing rapidly. The fact that Antarctic ice is increasing does not deter alarmist visiting South Pole. Meanwhile, Vaclav Klaus speaks sense to Europe. State's economies compared with world economies. Why Obama's Social Security tax increase won't work. Curvy women are smarter.
Sunday, October 21. 2007
I am back from my Adirondack hunt. Great fun, of course. I missed quite a few grouse, but I knocked down a few too. Plenty of woodcock around, but I am always ambivalent about shooting them. Glad I missed the technical problems on the blog: it comes of using rustic servers made of wood and baling wire. Saw a fine shooting star, too, and made a wish. Photo is the West Branch of the Ausable River, in Whiteface. 
Daniel Botkin: Global warming doesn't matter. Blue Crab Jindal's election. A good thing. So that is supposed to prove what, Paul? Classical Basic difference between libs and conservatives. Captain Ed Bonfire of the Moral Vanities. Dr. Sanity Clintonistas rip "cheating Rudy." Is that a wise approach? ABC spins the funny Limbaugh smear story. Confed. Yank Gun-free zones and an unarmed citizenry. Wash. Times. Bad guys love gun control. Who can understand the modern UK? Dust my Broom Sex criminals vs. fun gals. TigerHawk Dopamine and mussel glue? Neurophilosophy Has Harry Reid gone too far to be re-elected? Betsy. I think so. Does half of America hate Hillary? I don't find her very likeable, but I don't hate her. Just another arrogant, power-hungry pol, who has some wrong assumptions about life and human nature, who wants to use the fruits of my labor to build power, and who thinks she's smarter than she is. Good news for the Cod? h/t, Flares "I caused the market crash of 1987." Conspiracy The EU will not have Free Speech. Gates. The Mandarins will not tolerate it. Related: The Enemy in Brussels. Liberals are a puzzlement to me, by Bert Prelutsky. A quote: Why is it that liberals seem to believe that recycling cans is an important issue, but defeating terrorism isn’t? Why do they put so much stock in the blathering of Al Gore and Michael Moore? Why do they regard secondhand smoke as a bigger menace than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? What is wrong with these people? Why will the same folks who’d call a cop if someone set foot in their front yard be so unconcerned about 20 million illegal aliens setting up camp in their country? And why will the same saps who work themselves into a tizzy if some small town sets up a Christmas tree in the public square defend a church’s right to provide a sanctuary for foreign nationals who have no business being in our country?
Thursday, August 30. 2007
 Rocket-powered prosthetic arm. Neurophilosophy
Less than half of climate researchers now endorse global warming theory. h/t, Junk Science How to get rid of rampant bamboo. (thanks, reader. This has been a comment topic) The economics of opium production, in Afghanistan. We need this stuff. Who knew? Studying intuition. NYT. My gut tells me there's something to this intuition thing. A new translation of The Paradiso. In blank verse. The New Yorker. With many comments about allegory and poetry. Is modern cosmology a fairy tale? American Scientist. Of course it is. Our fairy tale of the moment, but still interesting. Science is never "settled." Katrina: the $127 billion boondoggle. Kudlow at RCP. More federal funds for N.O. rebuilding than Louisiana's total GDP.
Monday, August 20. 2007
Physicists ask whether existence is a virtual reality. Neurophilosophy. Of course it is. I think, therefore I am a confused SOB. But existence sure feels real when you have a sore hip, or when you are 21 and your girlfriend dumps you, or when you can't pay your bills. No need to drop a little acid before reading the links: reality is strange enough on its own.
Sunday, July 22. 2007
 10th Century Viking treasure found in Yorkshire. Nice stuff.
Partner pay in top 200 law firms. Rising fast. They make this on the backs of the child labor of their young and hungry Associates. It's a good deal. How Music Works. A great site for the real basics of what music is made of, if you know nothing about music theory. There is enough here to give oneself a little basic music course. The Supremes haven't considered the Second Amendment for 70 years. Will they take a look at Parker? More thoughts on the subject at Willisms. I hope the Court will take it on, but letting Parker stand is fine too. Looks like TNR got busted. Gateway. Fake but accurate? On the same subject, this bit from Ace is hilarious. An $18,000 hand. Cheap at any price, if you ask me. Nobody has ever said that Charlie Rangel lacked cojones. I can so easily imagining him saying to his staff "F- them if they don't like it. I'm in charge here." Does Putin want another Cold War? What for?  Sexual assaults in the military. CSM. Not good.
Bill McKibben not too smart, and a bit lacking in imagination. But he's virtuous, right? Dawkins makes enforced atheism sound like Sharia. Wizbang Purdue Pharma spanked hard. The lawyers of the addicts no doubt made out well. More BBC disasters. Does anyone trust them anymore, when it comes to politicized matters? From Martin Durkin (who produced The Great Global Warming Swindle) in a piece in The Australian following the airing of his film last week (h/t, Lubos Motl): Why are the global warmers so zealous? After a year of arguing with people about this, I am convinced that it's because global warming is first and foremost a political theory. It is an expression of a whole middle-class political world view. This view is summed up in the oft-repeated phrase "we consume too much". I have also come to the conclusion that this is code for "they consume too much". People who believe it tend also to think that exotic foreign places are being ruined because vulgar oiks can afford to go there in significant numbers, they hate plastic toys from factories and prefer wooden ones from craftsmen, and so on. All this backward-looking bigotry has found perfect expression in the idea of man-made climate disaster. It has cohered a bunch of disparate reactionary prejudices (anti-car, anti-supermarkets, anti-globalisation) into a single unquestionable truth and cause. So when you have a dig at global warming, you commit a grievous breach of social etiquette. Among the chattering classes you're a leper. But why are the supporters of global warming so defensive? After all, the middle classes are usually confident, bordering on smug. As I found when I examined the basic data, they have plenty to be defensive about. Billions of dollars of public money have been thrown at global warming, yet the hypothesis is crumbling around their ears. To the utter dismay of the global warming lobby, the world does not appear to be getting warmer. According to their own figures (from the UN-linked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the temperature has been static or slightly declining since 1998. The satellite data confirms this. This is clearly awkward. The least one should expect of global warming is that the Earth should be getting warmer.
Photos: All of these boats are for sale to prosperous capitalists. God bless 'em. Details here.
Wednesday, May 30. 2007
 Can personality change? Well, it depends on how you define "personality" and on how you define "change."
Certainly manner of behavior and attitudes can change over time as people adapt and "grow," but the deep foundations of personality are genetically hard-wired (we term that "temperament"), along with the first few layers above that (which we often think of using concepts like "character structure" or "constellations of unconscious assumptions/fantasies about people, one's self, and the world"), are highly resistant to alteration - which is where psychoanalysis comes in. That question was asked in the context of two movies at PsyBlog, who took the trouble to review the best of the psychology blogs: Part 1 and Part 2. (h/t, Neurophilosophy.) I am going to check them all out. I am not aware of any dedicated psychoanalytic blogs. There should be at least one, but analysts tend not to be compulsive talkers and, when they write, it is always too long-winded and jargon-packed for the average ADD reader. The shrinks on our blogroll are more politically-driven than focused on the art and science of the analytic therapies.
Thursday, April 5. 2007
 Lean into the screen. What do you see? Step back 10' from your screen (if you can) and you will see something entirely different.
How do the eye and brain interpret visual input? Neurophilosopher, (h/t, Dr. X, from whom we borrowed the image, and who always has interesting photos). There is a moral in this.
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