The brain is an amazing, amazing beast

Coolest story I've heard in a long time: turns out that Scott Adams, creater of Dilbert, has been unable to speak for some 18 months (not the cool part, but who knew?). That is, he could give public speeches (e.g., perform) but not carry on a conversation (create simple meaningful and audible sentences) -- sounds weird, but my neuroscientist pals will recognize that the brain compartmentalizes different tasks in unusual and sometimes unintuitive ways.

Anyway, despite being told that nobody has ever recovered from this syndrome (i.e., see here), he kept tinkering and experimenting, and then stumbled upon a way to retrain his brain to find a route to his lips.

When I say my brain remapped, that’s the best description I have. During the worst of my voice problems, I would know in advance that I couldn’t get a word out. It was if I could feel the lack of connection between my brain and my vocal cords. But suddenly, yesterday, I felt the connection again. It wasn’t just being able to speak, it was KNOWING how. The knowing returned.

Pretty darned cool, that brain -- guess that's part of what drew me to neuroscience in the first place. How things develop, fix themselves, work. The more you know, the more you're blown away by increments in our understanding, and by the adaptive leaps the system can make every day.

(via boing boing)

Interesting things I haven't blogged

Have been reading a lot, even while I've been too groggy to post much. Two stories in particular struck me this last week, one in a hopeful way and the other of the more dread-inducing variety:

• Chris Bowers, local Philly guy, has been focusing activist energies on Democrats with big warchests and no or token oppositions, in his Use It or Lose It campaign -- telling those folks that this is the year that they should be giving back to the party in its attempt to take back Congress, and that we'll be remembering during the next election cycle whether they ponied up now or sat on their moneybags. The "deep target list" of winnable seats means lots of money can be put to good use, so he's actually been asking those with no race to pitch in 30% of their hoards. Happily, the publicity and pressure are paying off, with some big names stepping up with serious contributions to the DSCC, etc. Yay for accountability!!
  
  
  
• Meanwhile, on the grimmer side of the ledger, ABC has gone over to the Dark Fox side, giving up any pretense of balanced reporting in its scramble to make sure that conservative feathers aren't ruffled. That augers poorly for the longer haul -- I've pretty much lost any sense of humor about the tired phrase "liberal media" at this point -- so I find it almost too depressing to consider. Perhaps after the election, progressives can start becoming the kind of loud critics (beyond late-night TV comics) that make broadcast stations afraid to let conservative blowhards go unchallenged . . .

Look after your sandbox

A wombat seems like a strange source, but this little flash thing is truth, of the "everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten" variety, the stuff we seem incapable of remembering... As Bob says, heed the wombat!

(via This Modern World)

Quote of the day

We find comfort among those who agree with us, growth among those who don't.

- Frank A. Clark,
writer (1911- )

(via A.W.A.D.)

Meant to blog this before, but somehow forgot...

This is quite funny to anyone who was raised in a Christian church, and probably to many who weren't: Real Live Preacher does a taste test of communion wafers, searching for one that might make passable food (rather than, say, styrofoam). Probably most jarring is watching him cram in two or three, like snack chips...

Support the damn troops, already!

Silly Hunter! What matters is who supports the troops on their way over there, not who supports them once they come home! Don't try to inject your silly reality games into this rhetorical airspace!

Visual illusions

Check out the latest Photoshop contest entries -- things sliced to show unexpected features in their cross-sections. Pretty neat.

(via boing boing)

Thank God for TNT

It's hard to peg the worst part about being sick at home for a week (ok, it's coughing yourself awake all night), but one of them is having 10% your usual brain function and needing entertainment. The last New Yorker was *way* too intellectual for my feeblemindedness, and I couldn't have faced hour after hour of game shows and people arguing about who was the better spouse (or whatever it is that's going on on those daytime shows!), but TNT came gallantly to my rescue. In addition to such standbys as Law & Order, it offers paired installments of E.R., Judging Amy, Without a Trace, and other things that offer just enough plot to carry your feeble attention along all day long without challenging or confusing it (or causing more nausea than you already have).

The odd show out is definitely Charmed ("We know drama." Charmed??), but it's a measure of how sick I was that I grasped gladly at every episode -- "yes! these are nice girls who just want to live normal lives but never can! I too, stuck here on my death couch, long only for the pencil-pushing normalcy of my office -- I understand!!" (ahem.) Anyway, I don't think I've ever watched so much TV for so many days in a row, let alone been so grateful for the option. Even the computer was just hard...

That all by way of explanation to anybody who wondered where I've been. I even missed my Ward meeting last night. But I hope that today's bundled foray to the office will be only the first of many, and that no evil spirits arrive to challenge my pretense of everyday life everything's fine from here on out.

Nothing's the matter with us!

A number of Kansas politicians have noticed that national GOP moving ever rightward, and are switching to the Democratic party this year, giving the winger nominees a run for their money. Welcome to the sanity game, kids!

(via Medley)

Can't afford complacency

This report at dailyKos is a needed wake-up call about the effectiveness of the Republican get-out-the-vote machine. No spiffy poll rankings will help if one side gets all their supporters out on Election Day while the other side lets its supporters get wrapped up in taking the kids to soccer and forget to vote. We need feet on the street, everywhere!!!

Did I forget to mention this?

Remember the Club for Growth, those guys who thought that Arlen Specter was too liberal? Apparently Joe Lieberman is right up their alley... I don't know how the guy sleeps with himself anymore, or how his wife does, for that matter.

The trials of being a girl

Two pithy pieces from Echidne make excellent points:

1. There have been several headline-grabbing school massacres in recent weeks, and for some reason the media studiously avoids mentioning that girls were targeted. Echidne has noted this silence before (e.g., here), but it finally got mentioned in print:

   Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.
   
   There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.
   
   None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.

   Not pretty, either the events or how we accept (or ignore) their symbolism.
   
   
2. A shorter post notes the ways that right-wingers ignore the successes of feminism because they've bought their own spin that it's only about man-hating (and maybe witchcraft) rather than a more general empowerment of girls and women in all aspects of their lives. The specific story here rang a particular bell for me -- I know that my own aunt didn't pursue a veterinary career 40 years ago, despite her obsession with all things animal, because women didn't do such things at the time -- nobody would think of telling a girl today that teacher and secretary were her only choices, whether for career or Halloween costume. But apparently those systemic changes happened all by themselves... idiots!!

For those who know him

Pal Jeremy has been wandering the world, most recently a trip to Japan to play commentator for a backgammon tournament there -- we should all have such glamorous lives. Anyway, for those of my readers who know him and/or might randomly be interested, he's posting lots of photos to his nonce travel blog for the amusement of others. Great stuff -- makes me wonder why I ever tried to put together photo albums!!

Sometimes I think Orwell was too complacent

More propaganda-as-entertainment on the way. eesh.

(via Avedon at Eschaton)

My favorite story in a long time

This year's Nobel Peace Prize was awarded this weekend to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, who together pioneered the idea of "microcredit" -- tiny loans of $50 or $100 that allow people to pull themselves out of poverty, often by starting a small business raising chickens or rabbits. Many of the success stories involve women -- married, widows, single -- who have gone from begging for food to supporting their families and even employing several of their neighbors. The system uses social pressures to make sure that ideas are sound and loans are repaid, and it's been hugely successful, as a business and as a mechanism to improves lives in many impoverished regions (and it has spawned many related charities and businesses specializing in microfinance, such as this, which I support). A great concept, and an apt recognition. And wow! what a smile...

Quote of the day

Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.

- Lewis H. Lapham,
editor (1935- )

(via A.W.A.D.)

Friday niece-blogging

Around the time of the YearlyKos meeting, we stopped in to visit our charming two-year-old niece Sophie (and her parents too) -- somehow I forgot to upload this cute shot of niece and uncle "reading" some books...




Previous Sophie-cake: 2, 1

Geno-what?

This Modern World draws some uncomfortable comparisons between what's going on in Dafur and what's going on in Iraq. At least, they'd be uncomfortable if you cared about reality on the ground, the lives of brown civilians, etc. -- the Bushies are busy with alternative spin and proving that this isn't Vietnam.

Quote of the day

I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.

-Frank A. Clark,
writer (1911- )

(via A.W.A.D.)

Fools and fallacies

Three good pieces, not enough time to do them justice here:

1. A new book by a former Bushie reveals that the Administration manipulated the evangelicals as patsies for their own ends.

   The book is reported to chronicle Kuo's growing frustration and eventual realization that the Republican Party in general and the Bush White House specifically were shamelessly using Evangelical Christians to advance a secular political agenda with little or no connection to the concerns of the religious right.

   Not really a surprise to those of us who've seen the lack of integrity on every other front, but may poke further holes in the unquestioning support of the right.
   
   
2. Rice is a twit, and Bush lost North Korea on his own watch, whatever crap she may be trying to sell.

   "Failure" =1994-2002 -- Era of Clinton 'Agreed Framework': No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.
   
   "Success" = 2002-2006 -- Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.

   Truthiness is selling less and less well. Unfortunately, it's too late for factuality to make any difference.
   
   
3. A psychologist explains the "sunk-cost fallacy" being used to justify our stupid Iraq policies (and the "cut and run" accusations aimed at opponents). It's bad economics and it's bad foreign policy.

   How should we honor the sacrifices of those who have died or suffered serious injury in a U.S. military conflict? The best way to show how much we respect and value their lives is by not risking other lives unless future prospects for success fully justify putting more people in harm's way.

   But no, throw live soldiers after dead, "stay the course." The price, I suppose, of being governed by idiots.