a few pictures from from ohio's ice storm, for those interested.

Labels: personal

pfizer will donate $35 million in cash, medicine, and other supplies. amazon.com will give $3.5 million. aol is donating and matching employee contributions up to $50,000. starbucks will donate $2 for every pound of sumatra coffee it sells. the list goes on.

tonight i learned (on cnn) that u.s. corporations have pledged more than double the aide, in money and supplies, that the us government has already to asian victims of the tsunami. it’s difficult to say yet whether uncle sam or corporate entities will give more in the end, but these early numbers are encouraging for private enterprise.

corporations are probably given generous tax breaks for donations, but this significant level of generosity cannot be due to the desire to lower tax bills alone. other significant encouragement mechanisms exist in the free market. tonight cnn listed the largest corporate donors and the amounts they had given, and that’s a powerful commercial. knowing cnn, that will be looped for quite a while. corporations can use their charity as a selling point in their ads and to their stockholders as well – some could use some good pr these days. i know i’m now a happier pfizer stockholder and will probably hold onto it longer than i should if it takes a dip.

you’ve already donated to the rescue and clean-up efforts through your taxes and business transactions with the above corporations. to donate more, visit red cross or another aid website. also check out the tsunami blog for more ways to help. they can use all you can give!

update: a great list of corporate donations at cnn.

Labels: social

several people have emailed me asking why i do not use capitalization on my blog. in general, i feel that capitalization is usually a superfluous formality demarking the kind of respect and deference that is rarely deserved and in other situations (such as at the beginning of a sentence) is just plain unnecessary.

there are circumstances in which i’ll use caps here. certain terms dealing with Christianity will be capitalized, as a symbol of obeisance to my religion. when quoting i respect the author’s wishes, so when you see direct quotes here they will have capitalization as well.

i use capitalization during the day for my job, but this blog is all mine and i can do with it what i please! and i please not to use caps. just call me the george bernard shaw of the capital letter. but not a man. or famous.

birth control is less effective for overweight people according to a new study. perhaps it's linked to the higher birth rates among those in poverty (who also are more obese)?

at first i wondered if the increase in teenage pregnancy in recent years is connected to american youth's growing girth. but i am out of date. a quick google search revealed that teen pregnancy is actually on a major downswing (PDF). abstinence and condom use are cited for the trend, as most parents are probably unwilling to put their teenage daughters on the pill.

prompted by will’s post (ages ago, in blogtime- but hey, i've been in the dark for a while!) and those requisite Christmastime political arguments, i must agree that libertarians tend to be a happier. indeed, research may bear this out in some ways. keeping in mind that life is unfair, and unequal – if not inherently, at least we can agree it is at present so:

MacCulloch (2000) reported that … in the United States only liberals are made less happy by inequality. Thus, the effects of societal characteristics depend to some extent on the ideological views of respondents.
(Deiner, E. and Seligman, M. “Beyond Money: Towards an Economy of Well-Being” Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2004)

the belief that trade is positive sum, which libertarians tend to have, alleviates a great deal of guilt (as some of will's commenters noted), while participation in free trade creates unhappiness and dissonance among liberals. and then there's the whole belief that consumerism is the great evil consuming our souls.

the liberal (and indeed, the conservative) point of view on human nature states that if left to our own devices, society would devolve into a dirty, violent, chaos devoid of good will or prosperity. we’d all lop off each other’s heads, force our youngins to sew wallets 17 hours a day, and worse still – we’d all smoke crack. and we certainly would not send our children to school (they're too busy with the wallets). what an awful thing to think about your species. it would make me cranky too.

i can go all day without encountering aggravating things - having to pay taxes or read about politics, for example. these are activities i go out of my way for. the things that make liberals unhappy are all around - rampant consumerism, inequality, trade, etc. etc...

let's forget about all these anti-povery policies. if we’re all truly concerned with well-being as the ultimate goal (which, granted, not everyone is), if we see gross national happiness as a greater meter than gross national product, we should all be libertarians. now, who’s gonna tell king wangchuck?

Labels: ideology, well being

ecstasy may be the new medical marijuana, helping patients cope with their last days. it does not create the cloudy, sedated feeling that most painkillers do, and can calm fears, lessen suicidal thoughts, and aid communication with loved ones. but i'm afraid "medical methylenedioxymethamphetamine" just doesn't have the same ring.

the study is funded by the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies, whose mission is:

to sponsor scientific research designed to develop psychedelics and marijuana into FDA-approved prescription medicines, and to educate the public honestly about the risks and benefits of these drugs.

browse their website - who knew so many fun drugs could actually have utility (besides increased enjoyment)!

Labels: drugs

this ebay thing is great! some sucker just paid $455 for the original contents of elvis's styrofoam cup. perhaps the buyer is hoping to extract some dna from the water to clone the singer á la jurassic park?

why so silent, you ask? was it the bustle of the season? was i busy shopping or visiting relatives? or was i taken back in time to before running water, electricity, or phones? . living without such conveniences and using only a kerosene heater to stay warm has not only given me a greater appreciation of modern conveniences – ah, flushing toilets! light bulbs! – but has also given me some much-needed vacation from electronics. psychologists claim that such a break in internet and computer life can beneficial, and although the respite they’re speaking of is of the planned, willing, nature, i can see their point. occasionally i would get the email twitch, but it usually faded quickly - and quicker as time passed. (tips for those unfortunate folks who need a break but didn’t have one forced upon them)

things i’ve observed during the hiatus re: the snowstorm:

1. “power out indefinitely” is not the best newspaper headline to read, and does not restore one’s faith in public utilities.
2. i can still record thoughts relatively efficiently on paper, using a strange wooden object that, when rubbed against paper, creates a mark. imagine the possibilities when the masses discover this amazing tool!
3. never underestimate the advantages of living with an engineer. by the mid-morning on the first day we had a heating system for the whole house using a kerosene heater, tin foil, duct tape, and no electricity (i must admit that having a generator would top that, and would help even the mechanically maladroit stay warm).
4. a little price gouging would be a good thing.
5. trees suck.
6. private enterprise wins again. when i left on sunday, we still had no power (a public cooperative), no telephone (a monopoly), and hadn’t gotten mail (government monopoly) since the first flake fell. however, even during the worst of the storm, our newspaper arrived without fail. we could count on the newark advocate to deliver valuable, and often necessary, information (even if the news said “power out indefinitely” – truth hurts!).

for all this kvetching, i must say i am very grateful to those private individuals and public employees working hard to clear roads and power lines from felled trees. these folks are working as hard as they can. thanks!

trees were the main power-outage culprit during central ohio’s storm. branches snapped off due to the weight of the ice and landed on power (and telephone, cable, etc.) lines. we took the truck and followed our power lines down to the sub station, and i lost count of the trees resting on the line. this of course increase the work that power crews must do to restore electricity, so much so in fact that my road still has no power, five days later.

in the past, the electric companies would go along and cut down limbs in their way, which was not only expensive but also infringed on the property rights of the land owner. the power company cut back on doing this in my area, perhaps for both reasons. it’s likely that it was far to expensive to trim trees around miles and miles of line in rural areas.

i can’t figure out why this burden always falls with the utility and not the other way around. it seems a more sensible solution would be to hold land owners accountable for damage caused when their tree strikes a power line. land owners are already held liable for damage their trees do to other private citizens’ property, and i’m not sure why this can’t be extended to include damage to a utility company’s property. safety arguments don’t hold water when you realize the same is done for telephone and cable lines as well, which – i believe – don’t pose the same safety risk.

price gouging is a good thing. i always suspected this, and more skillful hands have penned many words on the subject. now that i’ve witnessed behavior during crisis for myself, i must vociferously concur. price gouging may not only be the most fair way to allocate goods, but it might also encourage smarter, kinder behavior by all involved, including myself.

pizza prompted my reflections on food rationing during crisis. on the first day of the storm about 150,000 people in the area were without power, and many – those with mettle and four-wheel drive – migrated to the few electrified locales to forage for food. we drove around trying to find a restaurant with power, and arrived at louie’s pizza. louie had just enough left to make us food, and after taking our order he began to turn customers away. after talking with the man in front of us in line, we learned that his home had full power, but that he just wanted some pizza. the more hungry, desperate people louie turned away, the angrier i got at this unrepentant customer and others like him. in this situation, food was distributed by order of arrival. this first come, first serve method is rather arbitrary and certainly not according to need. although we were fortunate enough to get louie’s last subs, the many who came after us were out of luck. had the pizza shop raised its prices, he probably would have eaten at home instead because he didn’t crave louie's excellent pizza enough to pay 50% more than what he normally would. and if louie had raised his prices even higher, and other businesses did as well, we would have probably just went back home and eaten pb&j, freeing up our food for others. when prices are inflated, only those who are in sincere need of goods and services would make the trek in town, reducing the number of people on the road as well as freeing up scarce resources for those in most need of them. price inflation seems the best way to allocate resources and encourage neighborly behavior, at least in this case.

dave barry.

Christmas has lost much of its spiritual meaning in the public sphere, and that’s fine with me. but wait, let me explain. charles krauthammer’s article in the washington post made me think about the significance of the words "merry Christmas" - or rather, the significance of their absence, and my conclusion surprised even me.

it’s common knowledge that the politically correct climate has vilified the word Christmas. i know i’m uncomfortable using the word in greeting unless i’m fairly sure the recipient is Christian. although it would be as strange for me to wish a buddhist merry Christmas as it would for my jewish friends to wish me a happy rosh hashanah, this practice has gone from innocent case of mistaken identity or naive assumption to a serious crime of persecution and attempted assimilation. okay, maybe not that bad. but still, you see my point.

...more than 80 percent [it’s 77% as of 2001] of Americans are Christian, and probably 95 [96] percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. Christmas Day is an official federal holiday, the only day of the entire year when, for example, the Smithsonian museums are closed. Are we to pretend that Christmas is nothing but an orgy of commerce in celebration of... what? The winter solstice?

so four percent of the population may feel left out at this time of year, and many Christians may feel guilty about this. but you don’t hear everyone complaining:

I'm struck by the fact that you almost never find Orthodox Jews complaining about a Christmas creche in the public square. That is because their children, steeped in the richness of their own religious tradition, know who they are and are not threatened by Christians celebrating their religion in public. They are enlarged by it.

It is the more deracinated members of religious minorities, brought up largely ignorant of their own traditions, whose religious identity is so tenuous that they feel the need to be constantly on guard against displays of other religions -- and who think the solution to their predicament is to prevent the other guy from displaying his religion, rather than learning a bit about their own.

krauthammer gets it both wrong and right here. i’m not sure it’s the open display of the Christian religion that bothers everyone, but rather the government’s display of religion. Christians sometimes see their right to practice religion as their right to have the state sponsor their religion, as in the case of public school caroling and courthouse nativity scenes.

although krauthammer’s probably right that it doesn’t hurt non-Christians, i’d still rather do without. members of other religions should be glad that their most sacred holidays have not been diluted, usurped by the state, and merged with pagan holidays. the state’s - or wal-mart’s for that matter - involvement in the celebration of my deeply-held religious beliefs is something i do not need or desire. i’d rather keep uncle sam, and my neighbor’s tax dollars, as far way from my spiritual well-being as possible. there is plenty of room in civil society for religious celebration, i don’t need it subsidized. i won’t go so far as to say we should ban public celebration of the holiday as the puritans did, but i don’t need strangers to wish me merry Christmas. i don’t need my future children to learn about their religion from the government. let me practice in peace, and in private - without uncle sam, or you. the title of krauthammer’s article rings true for me too, but in a different way: leave Christmas alone.

nonChristians who celebrate Christmas make up about twenty percent of the population, then, according to the statistics cited above. these “cultural Christians” are a peculiar breed who celebrate Christian holidays because they are part of their cultural framework and family tradition. besides, it’s a good reason to spend large sacks of money making one’s house look like the runway at laguardia. of course, Christmas has both cultural and religious aspects, mostly the former. a clear distinction between the secular, winter holiday and the holy day, divorcing the pagan traditions of gift-giving and partying and deference for the birth of Christ, would resolve some of this tension. we could – oh yes, we could! – even have two greetings: happy holidays and merry Christmas (cultural Christians might want to think of something more creative than happy holidays)! we could then keep cultural Christmas alive in public schools, and keep all the cultural celebration. let them have their candy canes, their snow men, their reindeer, their elves. let them walk in a winter wonderland. these things have nothing to do with my spirituality, but rather the secular concomitant, not necessity, of my religion.

so merry Christmas, and happy holidays! i’ll celebrate both this year.

krauthammer article via a & l daily.

Labels: social

over at world of psychology i posted about a study revealing the possible genetic link to alcoholism and enjoyment of alcohol.

alcohol promotes release of endogenous opioids, which activate mu opioid receptors in the brain. this opioid system in turn affects the mesolimbic dopamine system involved in craving, reinforcement, and motivation. the mu opioid receptors are encoded by a specific gene, oprm 1, and they come in two varieties: the g and a version.

Results indicate that individuals with the G allele had higher subjective feelings of intoxication, stimulation, sedation, and happiness across trials as compared to participants with the A allele.

which sounds great for those with the g allele. but there's a major drawback to this higher level of enjoyment - it creates more stimulation of those dopamine receptors involved in reinforcement and motivation, leading to higher probability of addiction. it seems to follow that this pattern may be the same for other drugs that stimulate the opioid system such as heroin, opium, and cocaine (cocaine indirectly, because as with alcohol it is not an opiate derivative).

this is an incredible finding with heath and policy implications. it is important to be aware of a genetic predisposition for any disorder, so one may modify his/her behavior. just one may watch his/her eating and exercise habits if predisposed to diabetes or heart disease, one with a g allele should be careful of alcohol consumption.

as g allele folks get "higher subjective feelings of intoxication, stimulation, sedation" and etc. with lower blood alcohol levels than the a types. should a and g allele folks be subject to the same blood alcohol levels in drunk-driving tests, then? (actually, a different test would be better still)

in addition, i wonder if those with a alleles are subject to comparatively heavier binge drinking and therefore health problems than one with a g allele (for those who do not develop chronic alcoholism). since a types must drink more to become intoxicated, and to many the goal of drinking is intoxication, it seems logical that they would drink more on a particular night. just imagine if you needed 1,000 more calories per day to feel full than someone else the same size. you'd definitely feel the physical effects of that.

reference: Hutchison, K. E. and Ray, L. A. "A polymorphism of the gamma-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1) and sensitivity to the effects of alcohol in humans." Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, 28, 12

Labels: neuroscience, well being

mary eberstadt writes in policy review (via arts & letters daily):

If yesterday’s rock was the music of abandon, today’s is that of abandonment. The odd truth about contemporary teenage music — the characteristic that most separates it from what has gone before — is its compulsive insistence on the damage wrought by broken homes, family dysfunction, checked-out parents, and (especially) absent fathers.

eberstadt points out that analyzing the effect of today's music without understanding why kids love it is wrong-headed. she argues that current artists are simply answering "to what ails the modern teenager." her point has been made before and is worth repeating: we should examine both cause and effect of popular music. via the free market kids selected this particular type of music to identify with and be wildly popular, which could be evidence of a collective dysfunctional childhood experience.

Where parents and entertainers disagree is over who exactly bears responsibility for this moral chaos. ... [T]he music idols who point the finger away from themselves and toward the emptied-out homes of America are telling a truth that some adults would rather not hear. In this limited sense at least, Eminem is right.

the cause/effect is not clear. it's been well documented that media can influence a child's behavior, but only to a limited extent and only if there is little parental involvement. from a 1999 study:

The data also revealed that parental mediation works by first influencing either how important children perceive violent TV to be or how much attention they grant this content, which, in turn, influence aggressive tendencies. Hence, parental mediation seems to socialize children into an orientation toward TV that makes them less vulnerable to negative effects.

so it seems bad parenting causes not only affinity for, but also vulnerability to, the negative influence of media violence.

Labels: economics

ny times magazine reviews the book "overconfidence and war" this week. author dominic johnson questions why leaders are often overconfident in their nation's warring capabilities. overconfidence in battle served the evolutionary purpose of scaring one's opponent into submission.

Military overconfidence, in other words, is a psychological holdover -- a cognitive appendix -- from an earlier period in human history. It is perhaps most dangerous when it prompts a decision for war in the first place.

overconfidence has been rendered obsolete by modern technology and bureaucracy, johnson argues. one doesn't intimidate opponents with a strong battle cry anymore. but my favorite line is this:

[A] cocky disposition is as likely to be suicidal as it is glorious.

that might be as true in war as it is in peace.

Labels: decision making

holy crap. a completely blind man can identify whether the faces he is "looking" at are happy, angry, sad, or fearful.

the man suffered stroke damage to his visual cortex, rendering him blind. because his optic nerve and retinal cells are still intact, they are presumably still sending signals to the brain, and clearly those signals don't go just to the visual cortex, but also to the amygdala. this indicates that we have an automatic recognition system for certain perceptual cues such as displayed emotion.

update: just realized that some folks might not know what the amygdala does. it is thought to be one of the brain's primary (and more primitive) emotion centers.

Labels: neuroscience

research in the 80's indicated that supernatural feeling, a "presence in the room," could be replicated easily in the laboratory using magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobe, debunking all things otherworldly as just electrical impulse malfunctions in the brain.

although the research was thorough and widely cited, swedish researchers are now unable to replicate the results of this study using double-blind procedures (i.e., neither subject nor scientist knew who was in the control group, or what the hypothesis was). the researchers debunked the 80's study, saying:

Without such a [double blind] safeguard, "people in the experimental group who are highly suggestible would pick up on cues from the experimenter and they would be more likely to have these types of experiences," says Pehr Granqvist of Uppsala
University, who led the research team.

subtle cues are powerful in experiments and in life - recall clever hans? humans and animals can give and pick up surprisingly subtle ideomotor cues unconsciously. what surprised me was the large percentage of participants indicating a "strong spiritual experience." two-thirds of the control and half of the experimental group indicated such. perhaps this is the power of suggestion on the survey forms at work.

Labels: neuroscience

it's old news by now, but i just wanted to say i'm excited that private space exploration is finally legal. earlier i whined that legislation was stifling private space exploration. i read fantastic news that a similar bill has now passed ordering the faa to issue licenses for private travel. an interesting (and surprising) element of the bill:

The final version allows the Federal Aviation Administration to begin issuing regulations to protect the safety of passengers and crew only eight years after the bill becomes law. Before then, the agency may restrict design features or operating practices only if they've resulted in a serious or fatal injury to passengers or crew, or caused an unsafe unplanned event.

it's impossible to foresee all the safety needs of something that hasn't been created, but eight years seems like a long time to allow the free market to take care of safety procedures that haven't arisen from injury or death (yet). i'm no legal historian or scholar, but this surprises me. furthermore, i wonder why regulators will feel the need to restrict design features that have not resulted in death, injury, or an "unsafe unplanned event" even after the eight year moratorium is up...?

Labels: political

generally research indicates that women have a lower threshold for pain (despite the urban legend claiming the inverse). scientists aren't really sure why, and aren't just satisfied with the answer that women are just wussier. biological, psychological, and even psychosocial factors have been implicated.

pain research and gender differences is very important, as millions in the us suffer daily with chronic pain. transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (shortened to “tens” for obvious reasons) is one method used by scientists to both increase pain threshold and inhibit pain processing. new research (pdf) indicates that tens helps women increase their pain threshold, but has little effect on men, likely because of interaction of hormones and opioid receptors:

The present results show that the subjects in this study responded to high frequency TENS in a gender-related manner at the electrical pain threshold level. Women's thresholds were systematically increased whereas the men's were unaffected on the group level. On an individual basis some men reported an increase in thresholds. However, others did not, and some even reported a decrease. To our knowledge, other studies on TENS-induced effects on pain thresholds have not reported on gender-related differences. Taken together, a plausible interpretation is that women may benefit from high frequency TENS whereas the response from men varies.

this seems like a breakthrough in pain research to me. article is in-press and will be forthcoming from neuroscience letters.

update: neither the doi link or the fulltext article link are working for some reason. i'll try to find better ones.

reference: Iréne Lund, "Gender differences in electrical pain threshold responses to transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS)," Neuroscience Letters, In press. doi cite: doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2004.10.068

Labels: neuroscience

the ny times has an interesting article about hangover cures. prickly pear extract appears to be the way to go. i began the article as a fyi regarding the kinds of new "cures" for this self-inflicted set of maladies, but the article touches on more than that.

jonathan glater delves into the morals of hangover research, if briefly. hangovers and other "alcohol-related problems" cost the us $150 a year in lost productivity, and i'm sure that many americans have been less productive on a friday morning than they're willing to admit. creating a cure is certainly financially justifiable. however, would it create a nation of alcoholics?

The development of a foolproof hangover cure, for example, might encourage people to drink more, knowing they could take a pill to avoid suffering the next day.

would a hangover cure increase the amount that people would drink? i say yes, but only minutely so. first, i'm willing to bet most people forget how truly awful their last hangover was. second, the reason most people drink to the point they are physically ill in the morning is that they do what economists call discounting the future. in this phenomenon, people put less weight on their future well-being than on their current wellbeing. a hangover doesn't factor into one's choice of beverage as much as it should anyway for these reasons, so i see little reason for the hangover cure to make a huge impact on decisions. (more on discounting the future)

even if it did encourage people to drink a bit more, so what? well, glater notes:

And the prospect of bus drivers' or airplane pilots' popping hangover pills and going to work is enough to give anyone pause.

but consider the alternative: the pilot that doesn't have an effective hangover cure, and has to go to work anyway. who would you want holding your life in their hands? the benefits may outweigh the possible risk of a few more people having another drink.

Labels: social

the pacific research institute just came out with their index of economic freedom for states (similar to heritage's index for countries). i'd like to note that my home state of ohio ranks an impressive 43 out of 50. way to go, ohio! it seems from just briefly glancing at their map that economic freedom and population might have weak inverse correlation, excluding the south and a few other outliers:

and it's also interesting, but not surprising, to compare this to the red/blue election map:

read more about what pri considers economic freedom to be, and why they feel it's important. to quote:

Economic freedom is the right of individuals to pursue their interests through voluntary exchange of private property under a rule of law, and this freedom forms the foundation of all market economies. We start from the position that freedom requires that people be safe and secure in body, home, and property. We assume the necessity of a "minimal state" that provides a rule of law in order to have any freedom.

Labels: economics

i just came across these great examples of products that are banned in the us. the very short articles go into little detail on the philosophy behind banning products, but strike a surprisingly anti-ban tone. anyway, the galleries are interesting, if not a bit frustrating. for example, who knew what akees were, or why they were banned? according to the gallery:

It causes Jamaican vomiting sickness, which affects the central nervous system and is characterized by convulsions -- not a pleasant way to die

it's not clear why are they banned just because they're poisonous. buckeyes are poisonous, and they're ohio's state tree, for pete's sake. the gallery notes that akees, as well as having a "texture like scrambled eggs or brains," are not poisonous when ripe, making the ban even more peculiar.

courtesy of uncle sam google, the fda alert:

the possibility that green or over-ripe fruits or seeds could get into the cans during commercial canning, or be consumed when eating the fresh fruit leads CFSAN to conclude that all shipments of ackees, ***EXCEPT from those firms identified in the Attachment to this alert, ***should be detained without physical examination. ***The processors listed in the Attachment have food safety controls in place to ensure that only properly ripened ackees, without seeds, membrane, or outer rind, are used for canning.***

from this we learn that the ban is not complete, as was hinted at in the gallery's article. the ban actually applies to private individuals and all firms except a select few - six, to be exact, as of the publication of this document.

Labels: political

i may be a snob, but there are some things that i've always thought are simply wrong, at least as far as pronunciation goes. some examples include poinsettia as "poinseta," crayon as "cran," and nuclear as "nucular."

i must admit that merriam webster, that bellwether for language trends, has proven me wrong on all counts. poinsettia can also be pronounced "poinseta." although crayon's deviant doesn't merit a wav file, there it is: "'kran." and yes, one of nuclear's three pronunciations is "nucular." go figure.

for those of you who now feel justified in your mispronunciations, i would like to note that the division symbol next to the phonetic spelling of "poinseta" and "nucular" indicates that some snobs like me feel the pronunciation is incorrect. (i discovered this over at andrew moroz's blog.) to my great distress the symbol does not appear beside "kran." if anyone wants to sign the petition to add it, just let me know.

i decided the blog's format was annoying, so i've changed it. i hope it's less so now. the content is another story... but there are serious questions i had to consider when re-doing it, such as: do i really need a left and a right sidebar? i'm fairly sure the answer is "no." but it is prettier this way, i think.

and blue is cool. the old site was supposed to be reminiscent of piet mondrian's later compositions, but it didn't really turn out too well - i don't think anyone "got it." on a related note, create your own mondrianesque art here.

any thoughts on the switch are welcome. i'm not sure i'm committed to it.

Labels: personal

the global language monitor cites the term "progressive" used to replace "classical liberal" as number six on its top ten politically correct words and phrases of the year. is this a typo? do they mean modern liberal? i'm confused...

Labels: ideology

this month’s scientific american has a timley article about marijuana. i was horribly ignorant of most scientific research on the drug. the article's best quote:

Everyone grows a form of the drug, regardless of their political leanings or recreational proclivities. That is because the brain makes its own marijuana, natural compounds called endocannabinoids.

john p. walters himself produces thc-like substances, which likely is a source of great internal conflict and self-loathing. perhaps this invalidates the theory of cognitive dissonance. if scientists created an endocannabinoid pill, would it be illegal?

it's no surprise, however, that endocannabinoids exist. the mere fact that pot created psychotropic effects, illustrating that there were pot-receptors were in the brain, indicated that there was an endogenous chemical that acted on those receptors. however, marijuana studies did actually caused a major shift in how we think about neuron communication, which is summarized in the article. basically, before this landmark research, communication between neurons was believed to be one-way: from pre- to postsynaptic cell, carrying the signal on down the line. however, endocannabinoids proved that communication -inhibition, in this case- can actually occur in the opposite direction, having the effect of a neuron basically saying "do not disturb" to a cell trying to send it a signal.

one of the most fascinating parts of this history was, however, a study that bred mice lacking the endocannabinoid receptor. this means that the mice, among other things, are physically incapable of getting high. if getting high is so dangerous, why not throw money into learning how to breed all humans without the receptor? speaking of czar walters, perhaps i should fax the article to him as an fyi.

also, speaking of good ol’ j.w., check out his fascinating marijuana myths if you want some more “facts” about this dangerous schedule one drug.

Labels: drugs, neuroscience

mount st. helens is washington state's number one polluter, producing between fifty and two-hundred and fifty tons of sulfur dioxide per day. although the state's regulators can't technically fine a volcano, it doesn't seem like they are taking active measures to prevent the release of these gases. one official astutely observes that "you can't put a cork in it." how true.

what is this distinction between natural and human-made "polluters"? sulfur dioxide is sulfur dioxide, no matter its origins, and it causes acid rain regardless. regulators can't just plug up the hole, but they could construct the same types of scrubbers and processors that are required in private factories. if such requirements are made of factories producing much less sulfur dioxide, why not install such an apparatus on the volcano? of course, development, installation, and operation costs for such a device on a volcano would be expensive. however, regulators don't shrink from requiring factories to create and install extremely expensive environmentally-friendly devices, so there must be some other distinction. why won't we ever put a cap on mount st. helens?

what about intent? the volcano doesn't really want to produce sulfur dioxide. it has no will of its own. the volcano doesn't really know it is releasing sulfur dioxide into the environment, and doesn't care; it's not a moral agent. although companies as a whole aren't moral agents, their executives sure are. then again, pollution is only a byproduct of production for factories, not their goal, either.

installing pollution-control equipment on mount st. helens - and passing a tax to do so - would be impossible because of the direct expense. it's a more obvious and direct cost than those levied on factories. the complete - and huge - environmental regulation costs for factories are not voted on or paid for in taxes out of a state budget. instead, the costs are passed on in higher prices for electricity, toys, paper, etc. in essence it seems like the same thing.

in addition to the cost, the device would be ugly and would decrease the public's enjoyment of a national treasure. it seems most people have strong intuitive objections to tampering with nature, or at least the appearance of nature, to such a large degree. factories are already ugly, and were never revered for their beauty. factories never attracted millions of ($$$) tourists into their states. mount st. helens brings in almost five million visitors per year, and that’s a lot of revenue.

according to a recent study reported by both wired and msn, it's apparently more difficult to lie than to tell the truth. my personal experience is at times contrary to this evidence. sometimes it's much easier to blurt out some untruth than fess up.

researchers should investigate truth vs. lying in situations where the truth would be painful to oneself and/or others. for example, if your friend really does look fat in that dress, it might be easier to just say "no, of course not" instead of making an effort at tact while explaining that yes, thanksgiving did hit a little harder than usual this year. this study also only investigated an actual event - a studying on thoughts, beliefs, and feelings would turn up interesting results too - is it more difficult to lie about those things?

these reports are interesting for a number of other reasons. traditional lie detector tests are fairly easy to fake if you practice long enough, since they measure things you can train yourself to control, such as skin temperature and heart rate. you cannot, however, train your brain to utilize a different region - or at least we haven't found out how (unless one area is damaged, then a different area may be able to take over, but that's a different story). i wonder the impact of this kind of thing on false memories - what region would they "light up"?

Labels: neuroscience