Memory is like a “blender left running with the lid off.”
August 10, 2009
Most people believe that the brain is a lot like a recording device—that learning is something akin to pushing the “record” button (and remembering is simply pushing “playback”). Wrong. In the real world of the brain. . .nothing could be further from the truth. The moment of learning, of encoding, is so mysterious and complex that we have no metaphor to describe what happens to our brains in those first fleeting seconds.
The little we do know suggests it is like a blender left running with the lid off. The information is literally sliced into discrete pieces as it enters the brain and is splattered all over the insides of our mind. Stated formally, signals from different sensory sources are registered in separate brain areas. The information is fragmented and redistributed the instant the information is encountered. If you look at a complex picture, for example, your brain immediately extracts the diagonal lines from the vertical lines and stores them in separate areas. Same with color. If the picture is moving, the fact of its motion will be extracted and stored in a place separate than if the picture were static.
—Brain Rules, 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina
“Intellect is Dangerous.”
July 26, 2009
“Intellect is dangerous. . .there is no way of guaranteeing that an intellectual class will be discrete and restrained in the use of its influence; the only assurance that can be given to any community is that it will be far worse off if it denies the free uses of the power of intellect than if it permits them.
“To be sure, intellectuals, contrary to the fantasies of cultural vigilantes, are hardly ever subversive of a society as a whole. But intellect is always on the move against something: some oppression, fraud, illusion, dogma, or interest is constantly falling under the scrutiny of the intellectual class and becoming the object of exposure, indignation, or ridicule.”
— Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Winner of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in Non-Fiction
Electric Spot Reducer Weight Loss ad from 1953 comic book – Don’t Stay Fat, Used by Experts, Order it Today!
July 23, 2009
Click on image for larger size.
“Zombieland” with Woody Harrelson opens October 9, 2009
July 23, 2009
“My mother always told me, ‘Someday, you’ll be good at something.’ I mean, I don’t think that she coulda guessed that something would be zombie killing.”
Another entry in Hollywood’s current love affair with our favorite Walking Dead creatures. . .based on the trailer, I’m looking forward to this one. Click on image for larger size.
2002 Mac switch Ad – Ellen Feis “The PC devoured my paper. It’s kind of . . . a bummer.”
June 16, 2009
OK, this is just silly but it (below) came up on TWIT this week and I figured it was a good a spot as any to recommend the TWIT (This Week in Technology) podcast hosted by Leo LaPorte. Y’know, man, I had like totally forgotten about this little-aired TV spot, part of Apple’s Switch campaign.
TWIT comes out like clockwork every Monday and gives you an hour plus of diverting, informative and opinionated commentary on the tech news and trends that wash through our culture with each news cycle.
Leo is your affable host, regular guests include the real John C. Dvorak and Jason Calacanis (but never on the same show), Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, David Prager, Andy Ihnatko, Roger Chang, Alex Lindsay, Wil Harris, Molly Wood, Tom Merritt, and Veronica Belmont.
Famous guests on TWIT include Steve Wozniak, Kevin Mitnick, beloved American humorist John Hodgman, Lawrence Lessig, Roger McGuinn, LeVar Burton and Wil Wheaton.
If following tech is important to you, you should be listening to this podcast. Dvorak also gives tips sometimes on great wine buys at Costco as a bonus!
10 Years and $2.5 Billion Dollars Later: Complimentary and Alternative Medicine’s Epic FAIL
June 10, 2009
“No statistically significant benefit.”
That’s what a decade of taxpayer-funded research into Complimentary and Alternative Medicines has produced. And all it cost you was $2.5 billion dollars to prove that echinacea won’t cure the common cold and glucosamine and chondroitin are useless to treat arthritis.
Meanwhile, real medical science has made tremendous advances over the last decade in the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. But that’s not news. Hard core science, along with advances in sanitation, nutrition and preventive care like vaccines, is the reason the average life span in Western nations has almost doubled since the Industrial Revolution.
“It’s become politically correct to investigate nonsense,” R. Barker Bausell, author of Snake Oil Science and a research methods expert at the University of Maryland.
“This is not science, it’s ideology on the part of the advocates,” Dr. Joseph Jacobs, head of the Office of Alternative Medicine, the smaller federal agency that preceded the creation of the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine.
For the complete story by Marilynn Marchione, Associated Press Medical Writer, go here.
For another excellent investigative story by Marchione, this one on the dangers of unregulated supplements, go here.
For an explanation of why you shouldn’t take medical advice from Oprah Winfrey and the people she promotes (like Jenny McCarthy and Suzanne Sommers), read Newsweek’s recent cover story, ‘Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures & You.’
To measure the true impact of McCarthy’s anti-vaccine campaign, go to the Jenny McCarthy Body Count site. Real science trumps McCarthy’s “mommy instinct” every time.
To understand how crazy McCarthy’s position is, read Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure by Dr. Paul A. Offit, MD.
“A definitive analysis of a dangerous and unnecessary controversy that has put the lives of children at risk.” — Peter C. Doherty, Ph.D., St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and Nobel Laureate in Medicine for fundamental contributions in Immunology
3D Dog Photography
June 8, 2009
This is Huxley, our chocolate Labrador, 7 years old, and Luna, a Lab-mix rescue, approx. 3 years old. Click on images for larger size.
Note: These are anaglyphic 3D pictures. You’ll need a pair of red-blue, or red-cyan glasses to experience the 3D. If you don’t have access to any, I’ll send you a pair free. Just shoot an email with a mailing address to cynodictis@gmail.com
NYC Zombie Crawl 3D Group Photo – Williamsburg, Brooklyn 2009
June 2, 2009
Click for full size 3D anaglyph image.
Zombie Crawl Photo Gallery
June 1, 2009
The NYC Zombie Crawl from Bedford Avenue to McCarren Park, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Sunday, May 31, 2009. Photos by Premium Blend.
Click on images for larger size.
For 3D photos, go here and here.
For more Zombie Crawl 2009 coverage, please go to nyczombiecrawl.com
Zombie Crawl 2009 3D Pictures
June 1, 2009
Note: These are anaglyphic 3D pictures. You’ll need a pair of red-blue, or red-cyan glasses to experience the 3D. If you don’t have access to any, I’ll send you a pair free. Just shoot an email with a mailing address to cynodictis@gmail.com
Click on images for larger size. If you increase the viewing distance from your monitor, you can increase the 3D effect (up to 3 feet or so).
For over 60 more pictures (2D) go here. For a 3D group shot, go here.
For more Zombie Crawl 2009 coverage, please go to nyczombiecrawl.com
A gathering of the reanimated recently deceased swarming on Bedford Ave and taking over a local park?
Zombies? On the march in Brooklyn? 3D documentary coverage? Could it all be true?
Despite a complete blackout of main stream media and cable news coverage, facts about the Incident in Williamsburg are rapidly emerging on tweets, blogs, IM and other channels of digital chatter.
The picture painted by even this fragmentary information is unsettling, to say the least. Some local residents are calling it the Massacre at McCarren Park.
If you are by nature sensitive to brutal images of undead depravity, we ask that you stop viewing this site immediately! Please select another channel on the Interwebs.
But until “they” shut us down— with their black helicopters and their radioactive posion darts — we’ll be giving you actual eyewitness 3D photography. Proof and everything! Dare to believe your own startled eyes!