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MonthAugust 2012

Nation’s Lower Class At Least Grateful It Not Part Of Nation’s Middle Class

August 2, 2012 /

From The Onion:

The survey found nearly 87 percent of the nation’s lowest earners take comfort knowing they are far enough down the economic chain that their children and grandchildren won’t possibly be able to live in circumstances any worse than their own, while 65 percent noted they have enough bills to worry about without the additional middle-class burden of making student loan payments or contributions toward a retirement plan that will probably go bust in the next market crash, anyway.

In addition, half of all destitute Americans said that while they lack medical coverage, at least they aren’t stuck paying increasingly high premiums for an increasingly terrible health insurance plan. And nearly all survey participants agreed they are grateful not to be trapped chasing “some sort of fantasy dream life” of middle-class American prosperity that no one in the year 2012 can ever possibly attain.

The Onion: Nation’s Lower Class At Least Grateful It Not Part Of Nation’s Middle Class

(via Andrew McAfee)

Global Brain Connectivity Explains 10 Percent of Variance in Individual Intelligence

August 2, 2012 /

Science Daily reports on a recent study using magnetic imaging found that about 6.7% of variation in individual intelligence can be predicted by the overall size of the brain, another 5% can be predicted by the size of the lateral prefrontal cortex and another 10% can be predicted by the strength of the connection between the left lateral prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain. From the story:

“This study suggests that part of what it means to be intelligent is having a lateral prefrontal cortex that does its job well; and part of what that means is that it can effectively communicate with the rest of the brain,” says study co-author Todd Braver, PhD, professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences and of neuroscience and radiology in the School of Medicine. Braver is a co-director of the Cognitive Control and Psychopathology Lab at Washington University, in which the research was conducted.

One possible explanation of the findings, the research team suggests, is that the lateral prefrontal region is a “flexible hub” that uses its extensive brain-wide connectivity to monitor and influence other brain regions in a goal-directed manner.

Science Daily: Brain Imaging Can Predict How Intelligent You Are: ‘Global Brain Connectivity’ Explains 10 Percent of Variance in Individual Intelligence

(via Ryan Yonck)

Todo In Portland: Weird Shit Con 2012

August 1, 2012 /

Adam Rothstein is organizing an unconference later this month here in Portland: Weird Shit Con.

Weird Shit Con 2012
Portland, Oregon, Cascadia, Western Standard Time, North America, Earth
August 17th & 18th

What is Weird Shit Con?

Tag cloud as suggested by survey responses:

Drone hacking / noise music / DIY transhumanism / graffiti divination / gonzo futurism / ritualistic architecture / geological timescales / cosmic order / the techno-peasantry / Follow the gnarl / math is cheaper than drugs / The Age of Horus / the New Economy / pseudo-coordinated motherfuckery / the color of a dead channel / various individuals and cells coming together to discuss their Great Work / a þing or folkmoot / gathering of the internet tribes, for real-world scenius-based hilarity / a supercollider for weird, spiky ideas / hoaxes / vapourware / paths not taken, and things buried or overlooked / the rough edge, rather than the bleeding edge / strong and weak signals / weird shit is weird for a reason, because it doesn’t fit into existing frames of reference / collecting and disseminating weird shit should be one of the first principles of any good network of power-weirdos / Solarpunk / robots / machine vision / technologies disruptive to society and government / insert the contents of our twitter comments to each other here, as annotated and expanded on by an orangutang that’s been subjected to several successive generations of cognitive enhancement therapy, who’s currently coming down from mushrooms and ranting about post-neoDarwinist Marxism / resilience / design fiction / futurism / sci fi / weird history / VARIOUS ESOTERIKA / systems / synthesis / solidarity

More info here.

I’ll be there.

Nano Breakthrough Paves Way For Super Cheap Solar Panels

August 1, 2012 /

New from me at Wired, a graphene inspired photovoltaics breakthrough:

Two things hold back the mass adoption of solar energy as a source of sustainable energy. One is the need to store and transmit excess power, a problem people like Danielle Fong are working on solving by developing innovative new ways to store power. The other is the high cost of solar panels. One of the reasons solar panels are so expensive is that it’s tricky to extract electric currents from semiconductors, the materials used to convert solar radiation into electrical energy.

Up til now, this could only be done with a few materials — usually silicon. But a new breakthrough will enable manufacturers to make efficient photovoltaics using almost any semiconductor, including cheap and abundant materials like metal oxides, sulfides, and phosphides.

A typical photovoltaic cell is built with silicon and treated with chemicals. This treatment is called “doping,” and it creates the driving force needed to extract power from the cell. Photovoltaics can also be built with cheaper materials but many of these can’t be doped chemically. But a method developed by Professor Alex Zettl’s research group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley makes it possible to dope nearly any semiconductor by applying an electric field instead of chemicals. The method is described in a paper published in the journal Nano Letters.

Wired Enterprise: Nano Breakthrough Paves Way For Super Cheap Solar Panels

See also: Real-Life Steampunk Wants to Hack the Power Grid

Photo courtesy of Paul Takizawa, the Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley.

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