Month: May 2011

You could see this coming, even if Ailes couldn't. From a "Republican close to Ailes":

“Roger is worried about the future of the country. He thinks the election of Obama is a disaster. He thinks Palin is an idiot. He thinks she’s stupid. He helped boost her up. People like Sarah Palin haven’t elevated the conservative movement.’ ”

But I thought he said that the only criterion that mattered was ratings. Even if they have helped drive the GOP off the cliff and alienated independents in droves. Maybe he should have thought of that before he created a propaganda channel that rewards and continues the reward the extremes.

Burundanga, a drug containing the chemical scopolamine, may target the part of your brain that controls free will. The drug is used by criminals to rob and rape victims:

The key seems to be that scopolamine blocks acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter essential to memory. Scans also reveal the drug affects the amygdala, a brain area controlling aggression and anxiety. This would explain scopolamine's pacifying effect. Evidence also suggests [robbery and sexual assault] victims tend to be confused and passive rather than unable to resist commands. Yet, until scopolamine's role in the chemistry of free will is fully explored, we can only speculate that the criminal underworld has unwittingly stumbled upon one of the greatest discoveries of 21st-century neuroscience.

Using only Photoshop, artist Debbie Grossman reimagines images from the Great Depression (via the Farm Security Administration) with women in all the male roles:

The main reason for doing so was to give us the unusual experience of getting to see a contemporary idea of family (female married couples as parents, for example) as if it were historical. … I didn’t shoot other people and composite them in. Mainly, the process was incredibly painstaking and time-consuming. I’d look at an image I wanted to use, and then begin to transform the man into a woman by changing the shape of the jaw and the scale of the figure, smoothing the skin, etc.

This just about sums it up about the closest alliance in the Middle East – between Jersualem and its existential nemesis, Hamas:

The problem is that Netanyahu has no motivation to maneuver Hamas into moderation, because an extremist Hamas is really Netanyahu’s best friend. A Hamas that moderates its stance and takes the way of the IRA from a terror organization to a legitimate party in a peace process is an existential threat to Netanyahu’s political future. Without a hard-line Hamas, he would be left with no case against a Palestinian state, and he would have to face open conflict with the hard-line right-wingers in his own party and in his coalition in actual moves towards peace.

Expect Netanyahu to do everything to torpedo recognition of Palestine; expect him to try to weaken Fatah, Abu Mazen and Fayyad, and thus to strengthen Hamas’ extremist wing. As a result, Israel’s legitimacy will indeed come under ever more fire. But let’s face it: this is good for Netanyahu. No right-wing politician ever stayed in power if he didn’t succeed in frightening his electorate to death.

The Smart Ass Cripple, aka Mike Ervin, stresses the importance of knowing a sick relative's wishes:

Two years ago my aunt was hospitalized due to a sudden, unexplained but temporary wave of delirium. Within two months she was back home with her wits restored intact. But she remembered little of what went on those two months. As I pieced it all together for her- – the tests, the treatments, the surgery– I mentioned that one day when she was in the nursing home for rehab, she played bingo. She looked at me with horror. “Bingo? ME?” … To her, bingo is the national pastime of the end stage. They’re sweeping the floor around you and putting the chairs upside down on the tables. They’re turning off the lights. It’s all over but the bingo.

I should have insisted to all the medical staff working with my aunt that she be placed under a strict No Bingo Order. I should have demanded that NBO be written on the front of her chart in bold red. Then this terrible mistake would never have happened. If only she had spelled this all out in an advance directive.

El Cielo de Canarias / Canary sky – Tenerife from Daniel López on Vimeo.

One looks away.

Jonah Lehrer finds an upside to depression:

Although rumination feels terrible, it might make it easier for us to pay continuous attention to our dilemmas. According to [researchers] Andrews and Thomson, the mood disorder is part of a “coordinated system” that exists “for the specific purpose of effectively analyzing the complex life problem that triggered the depression.” If depression didn’t exist — if we didn’t react to stress and trauma with endless ruminations — then we would be less likely to solve our predicaments.

He reports on a new study that tested the hiring abilities of clinically depressed subjects against healthy participants:

The main problem with healthy subjects is that they proved lazy, unwilling to search through enough applicants. Those with depression, on the other hand, were much more willing to keep on considering alternatives, which is why they performed far better on the task. While this study comes with many caveats, it remains an interesting demonstration that depression, at least in specific situations, seems to enhance our analytical skills, making us better at focusing on social dilemmas.

Unless the darkness obliterates any ability to do anything much at all. Which is so often the case.

Dan Ariely sees the psychology of self control at work in the tale of Ulysses and the sirens:

Ulysses knew that the sirens’ enchanting song could lead him to follow them, but he didn’t want to do that.  At the same time he also did not want to deprive himself from hearing their song – so he asked his sailors to tie him to the mast and fill their ears with wax to block out the sound – and so he could hear the song of the sirens but resist their lure. … It seems that [Ulysses'…] ability to exert self-control is less connected to a natural ability to be more zen-like in the face of temptations, and more linked to the ability to reconfigure our environment (tying ourselves to the mast) and modulate the intensity by which it tempts us (filling our ears with wax).

(Image: Ulysses and the Sirens by John William Waterhouse via Wikimedia Commons)

Sam Harris gives instruction on how to mediate:

For beginners, I always recommend a technique called vipassana (Pali, “insight”), which comes from the oldest tradition of Buddhism, the Theravada. The advantage of vipassana is that it can be taught in an entirely secular way. Experts in this practice generally acquire their training in a Buddhist context, of course—and most retreat centers in the U.S. and Europe still teach its associated Buddhist philosophy. Nevertheless, this method of introspection can be brought within any secular or scientific context without embarrassment. The same cannot be said for most other forms of “spiritual” instruction.