This is a guest post by Bill Whitcomb
Dr. Mortal
Dr. Mortal was an elderly, but brilliant mad scientist who lived outside the city with Marlene, his attractive young niece. Marlene discovers her uncle is creating monsters such as his Super Automaton, Man-Ape, and the Infra-Red Monster.
Again with the Comics: Dr. Mortal.
711
One thing’s for sure — no other had the same occupation as this one. He roamed the underworld by night, in search of villains to bring in, like a good superhero should. But in the daytime, he hung around the jail where he was a convicted inmate.
Toonopedia: 711
International Catalog of Superheros: 711
(Click to see full size)
Madame Fatal
Madame Fatal is notable for being a male superhero who dressed up as an elderly woman and as such is the first cross-dressing comics hero. The original incarnation of the more famous cross-dressing character, Red Tornado, later that year, would become the first cross-dressing heroine.
Wikipedia: Madame Fatal
Again with the Comics: Madame Fatal
The studies in Kristiina Kompus’s dissertation show that these two different ways of remembering things are initiated by entirely different signal paths in the brain. Efforts to retrieve a specific memory are dealt with by the upper part of the frontal lobe. This area of the brain is activated not only in connection with memory-related efforts but also in all types of mental efforts and intentions, according to the dissertation. This part of the brain is not involved in the beginning of the process of unintentionally remembering something as a response to external stimuli. Instead, such memories are activated by specific signals from other parts of the brain, namely those that deal with perceived stimuli like smells, pictures, and words. Sometimes such memories are thought to be more vivid and emotional; otherwise they would not be activated in this way. But Kristiina Kompus’s dissertation shows that this is not the case — memories do not need to be emotionally charged to be revived spontaneously, unintentionally. Nor do memories that are revived spontaneously activate the brain more than other memories.
Science Daily: Different Signal Paths for Spontaneous and Deliberate Activation of Memories
(Photo credit: Kevin Dooley / CC)
A Journey Around My Skull scanned Harry Clarke’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Stunning stuff.
A Journey Around My Skull: Harry Clare, illustrations for E.A. Poe
(via Coilhouse)
Resilient communities hit Time:
Imagine a future in which millions of families live off the grid, powering their homes and vehicles with dirt-cheap portable fuel cells. As industrial agriculture sputters under the strain of the spiraling costs of water, gasoline and fertilizer, networks of farmers using sophisticated techniques that combine cutting-edge green technologies with ancient Mayan know-how build an alternative food-distribution system. Faced with the burden of financing the decades-long retirement of aging boomers, many of the young embrace a new underground economy, a largely untaxed archipelago of communes, co-ops, and kibbutzim that passively resist the power of the granny state while building their own little utopias. [...]
Work and life will be remixed, as old-style jobs, with long commutes and long hours spent staring at blinking computer screens, vanish thanks to ever increasing productivity levels. New jobs that we can scarcely imagine will take their place, only they’ll tend to be home-based, thus restoring life to bedroom suburbs that today are ghost towns from 9 to 5. Private homes will increasingly give way to cohousing communities, in which singles and nuclear families will build makeshift kinship networks in shared kitchens and common areas and on neighborhood-watch duty. Gated communities will grow larger and more elaborate, effectively seceding from their municipalities and pursuing their own visions of the good life. Whether this future sounds like a nightmare or a dream come true, it’s coming.
Time: The Dropout Economy
(via Global Guerrillas)
See also:
My Evoke post Dinner 2020.
Posts tagged “recession hacking”
After analyzing tools used by Neanderthals, British and American archaeologists say they were just as well-crafted as those used by our ancestors.
Flakes — wide-bodied stones used for cutting by Neanderthals and Homo sapiens — are just as useful, if not moreso, than narrow stone blades later favored by modern humans, who charged out of Africa 50,000 years ago and soon replaced their larger, hairier European forerunners.
“It’s not a better technology, it’s just a different technology,” said Metin Eren, a University of Exeter experimental archaeology student. [...]
The superiority of blades has long been seen as evidence of human superiority. But according to Eren’s team, blades had only one advantage: they can be easily attached to shafts.
Wired Science: Neanderthals Not Dumb, but Made Dull Gadgets
Alex and Allyson Grey are recovering after a serious car accident:
Nothing like a brush with death to help you appreciate life. On March 7th, around 1 pm, our lives changed dramatically. A beautiful clear day, we were returning to New York after celebrating Allyson’s father’s birthday in New Hampshire. Driving down freeway I-91 in Vermont, going around 65 mph, a very large dark gray SUV was alongside us on the left. Suddenly the SUV pulled into us, forcing us off the road onto the very rough shoulder of the road, our tire blew out, and we started swerving wildly back across the highway, into a shallow ravine, going so fast we drove directly up two trees and stopping abruptly against a granite outcropping, our car facing heavenward. “Oh God, Oh God!” we cried. “My back!” we echoed. “The cars on fire we’ve got to get out!” The doors were up too high off the ground to get out so we had to unbuckle and fall back into the back seat and jump from there to the ground. We hobbled to the side of the road. By this time some cars were stopping to help, but not the SUV. Some very kind strangers were consoling us and calling 911. State troopers and emergency vehicles arrived . Our car was totaled.
CoSM Blog: Grateful to be Alive!
(via Cole Tucker)
The findings come from a deceptively simple study of people using a computer mouse rigged to malfunction. The resulting disruption in attention wasn’t superficial. It seemingly extended to the very roots of cognition.
“The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly intertwined that they’re just one thing,” said Anthony Chemero, a cognitive scientist at Franklin & Marshall College. “The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.”
Chemero’s experiment, published March 9 in Public Library of Science, was designed to test one of Heidegger’s fundamental concepts: that people don’t notice familiar, functional tools, but instead “see through” them to a task at hand, for precisely the same reasons that one doesn’t think of one’s fingers while tying shoelaces. The tools are us.
This idea, called “ready-to-hand,” has influenced artificial intelligence and cognitive science research, but without being directly tested.
Wired Science: Your Computer Really Is a Part of You
(via Cole Tucker)
(Above: Me playing at the Psychetect album release party)
Psychetect interview on the G-Spot
A couple notes:
1. I announce during the interview the upcoming City of Dead Toys EP, a collaboration between Skerror and me.
2. I’ll be opening for The Steven Losambras at The Parlour in PDX on April 30th.
HipGnosis is the recording name of the Des Moines based electronic musician Eric Young. In addition to producing, Eric also DJs the Glitch.fm online radio show Between Zero and One every Wednesday from 10PM-12AM (CST).
Klint Finley: How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard it?
HipGnosis: Wow. Hmm. Experimental, psychedelic, electronic dance music combined w/ elements of hip-hop, classical, and plain weirdness.
I was classically trained, though I don’t play any “traditional instruments” any longer. Now I play a computer.
Read the rest of this entry »
Cracked has a surprisingly interesting article on the psychology of rewards and how it’s applied to game design:
Do you like your job?
Considering half of you are reading this at work, I’m going to guess no. And that brings us to the one thing that makes gaming addiction–and addiction in general–so incredibly hard to beat.
As shocking as this sounds, a whole lot of the “guy who failed all of his classes because he was playing WoW all the time” horror stories are really just about a dude who simply didn’t like his classes very much. This was never some dystopian mind control scheme by Blizzard. The games just filled a void.
Why do so many of us have that void? Because according to everything expert Malcolm Gladwell, to be satisfied with your job you need three things, and I bet most of you don’t even have two of them:
Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);
Complexity (so it’s not mind-numbing repetition);
Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the awesome results of your hard work).
Most people, particularly in the young gamer demographics, don’t have this in their jobs or in any aspect of their everyday lives. But the most addictive video games are specifically geared to give us all three… or at least the illusion of all three.
Cracked: 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted
(via Social Physicist)
Clackamas County Circuit Court Judge Steven Maurer sentenced Jeffrey and Marci Beagley to 16 months in prison this afternoon, calling the couple’s decision to not seek medical care for their 16-year-old son, Neil Beagley, a “crime that was a product of an unwillingness to respect the boundaries of freedom of religious expression.” [...]
“The idea of sending Jeffrey and Marci Beagley to prison is heart-wrenching,” Maurer said in a lengthy explanation of his sentence. “I think, certainly, that I’m in complete agreement with the jurors who observed that the Beagleys are good people.”
But Maurer said too many children had died unnecessarily because of the church’s beliefs: “It needs to stop.”
Oregon Live: Jeffrey and Marci Beagley sentenced to 16 months of prison for their son’s faith-healing death
(via Religion News Blog)
(Image Credit: mike 23 / CC)
This is a guest post by Chris Arkenberg. Many readers wanted to know more about systems thinking after my interview with Chris, so he’s returned to provide us with some resources. – Klint
The term “systems thinking” has a few different connotations. Classically, non-linear dynamic systems represents a set of principles that describe the organization of energy as an extropic function of information, driven by power laws and bounded by limits. The formulas within this domain are often applied to natural systems such as populations, fluid dynamics, and so-called chaotic processes like dripping faucets and epileptic seizures. Some of the better-known ideas within dynamic systems are attractors, bifurcations, and the process of iteration.
Read the rest of this entry »
The world’s first patient-ready and commercially available brain computer interface just arrived at CeBIT 2010. The Intendix from Guger Technologies (g*tec) is a system that uses an EEG cap to measure brain activity in order to let you type with your thoughts. Meant to work with those with locked-in syndrome, or other disabilities, Intendix is simple enough to use after just 10 minutes of training. You simply focus on a grid of letters as they flash. When your desired letter lights up, brain activity spikes and Intendix types it. As users master the system, a few will be able to type as quickly as 1 letter a second. Besides typing, it can also trigger alarms, convert text to speech, print, copy, or email. Retailing for €9000 (~$12,250), Intendix isn’t cheap, but it’s the first thought to type system available that’s geared towards easy to setup personal use in the home. Brain computer interfaces just got more accessible, and that’s a step towards them becoming more common all over the world.
Singularity Hub: Intendix, The Brain Computer Interface Goes Commercial
(via Edge of Tomorrow)
See also:
Chris Arkenberg’s 3 Scenarios for Brain Computer Interface.
I had no idea the link between serotonin and depression was in doubt. Very interesting:
Via Dormivigilia, I came across a fascinating paper about a man who suffered from a severe lack of monoamine neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin etc.) as a result of a genetic mutation. [...]
Overall, though, the biggest finding here was a non-finding: this patient wasn’t depressed, despite having much reduced serotonin levels. This is further evidence that serotonin isn’t the “happy chemical” in any simple sense.
On the other hand, the similarities between his symptoms and some of the symptoms of depression suggest that serotonin is doing something in that disorder. This fits with existing evidence from tryptophan depletion studies showing that low serotonin doesn’t cause depression in most people, but does re-activate symptoms in people with a history of the disease. As I said, it’s complicated…
Neuroskeptic: Life Without Serotonin
See also:
Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature
In addition to the number of frameworks and ideas, and the density of the interconnections among them, there was a strong normative quality to the material and its presentation. “If one hopes to make any progress at all,” we were told, “you need to both understand and accept these related ideas.”
This particular version of systems thinking is not unusual in this respect. Peter Senge’s 1990 edition of The Fifth Discipline describes one manager’s reaction to a five-day introductory workshop on his approach, which among other things, requires growing comfortable with eight archetypes: “It reminds me of when I first studied calculus (p. x).” Systems dynamics, the Soft Systems Method and other approaches face similar concerns.
Each of systems thinking’s various manifestations demands some degree of subscription to an orthodoxy (a particular view of just what systems thinking is). And each requires that the user master a large number of related ideas and techniques, most of which are not particularly useful on their own.
Fast Company: Lessons Learned — Why the Failure of Systems Thinking Should Inform the Future of Design Thinking
(Thanks James Curcio)
See also:
John Kay’s work on obliquity, which critiques decision science.
(Photo credit: Gutter / CC)
Shapeways has a round-up of evolutionary, algorithmic & generative design projects, including the “cellular bowl” above, designed with Processing.
The marriage of tech and design is all around us. In a world where everything is designed a meta “way to design” that algorithmically cuts through the clutter is very appealing. A perfect design algorithm could potentially engender choice in design the same way that Google’s PageRank set of algorithms do for the web. And this is what generative design already partially does. It simplifies design by codifying it and somewhere within lies the promise of “true”, “simple” & “beautiful” design.
With technologies such as 3D printing letting everyone design or co-design things there is also a real need for generative tools. They allow for unique designs but since each is machine made, the marriage is a conceptually comfortable and inexpensive one. Also, rather than forcing the customer into a “blank canvas conundrum” whereby the sheer possibility overwhelms them to the point inactivity, generated models could lead to choice or guided choice in design.
Shapeways: Dasign: data driven, evolutionary, algorithmic & generative design
(via Bruce Sterling)
Doctors treat millions of children with Ritalin every year to improve their ability to focus on tasks, but scientists now report that Ritalin also directly enhances the speed of learning.
In animal research, the scientists showed for the first time that Ritalin boosts both of these cognitive abilities by increasing the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine deep inside the brain. Neurotransmitters are the chemical messengers neurons use to communicate with each other. They release the molecule, which then docks onto receptors of other neurons. The research demonstrated that one type of dopamine receptor aids the ability to focus, and another type improves the learning itself.
The scientists also established that Ritalin produces these effects by enhancing brain plasticity – strengthening communication between neurons where they meet at the synapse. Research in this field has accelerated as scientists have recognized that our brains can continue to form new connections – remain plastic – throughout life.
PhysOrg: Ritalin boosts learning by increasing brain plasticity
(via Chris S.)
Above: Amal Graafstra’s self-administered RFID implant.
It sounds like something from a sci-fi film, but one in four Germans would be happy to have a microchip implanted in their body if they derived concrete benefits from it, a poll Monday showed. [...]
In all, 23 percent of around 1,000 respondents in the survey said they would be prepared to have a chip inserted under their skin “for certain benefits”.
Around one in six (16 percent) said they would wear an implant to allow emergency services to rescue them more quickly in the event of a fire or accident.
And five percent of people said they would be prepared to have an implant to make their shopping go more smoothly.
PhysOrg: One in four Germans wants microchip under skin: poll
(via Chris S.)
See also:
Scrapheap Transhumanism
Lepht Anonym’s blog
Amal Graafstra’s blog
Sotantar Simrat Singh – Sun Gong
I listened to this all morning. Love it. (Not laying down for the proper “gong bath” experience, but lovely none the less.)
(via Arthur)
Mac Tonnies posthumous book The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us is out from Anomalist Books.
I would have loved to interview Mac on this occasion. Seeing that the book is out makes me sad all over again. I look forward to reading it very much.
There’s also a new Mac Tonnies tribute site up.
Daniel Shenton should be the most irrational man in the world. As the new president of the Flat Earth Society, you’d imagine he would also think that evolution is a scam and global warming a myth. He should argue that smoking does not cause cancer and HIV does not lead to Aids.
Yes, that Flat Earth Society, a group that has become a living metaphor for backward thinking and a refusal to face scientific facts. Yes, it is still going, and no, this isn’t an early April fool.
In fact, Shenton turns out to have resolutely mainstream views on most issues. The 33-year-old American, originally from Virginia but now living and working in London, is happy with the work of Charles Darwin. He thinks the evidence for man-made global warming is strong, and he dismisses suggestions that his own government was involved with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
He is mainstream on most issues, but not all. For when Shenton rides his motorbike, he says it is not gravity that pins him to the road, but the rapid upward motion of a disc-shaped planet. Countries, according to him, spread across this flat world as they appear to do on a map, with Antarctica as a ring of mountains strung around the edge. And, yes, you can fall off.
Guardian: The Earth is flat? What planet is he on?
(Thanks Paul)
Do you want to make your own layer? This tutorial tells you how to do it! These are the requirements to create your own layer:
Webserver with PHP and JSON support
MySQL database with phpMyAdmin
For testing: Layar installation on your iPhone 3GS or Android based phone (with GPS and compass)
Stedelijk Museum: Creating a Layar layer: a step by step tutorial
(via Bruce Sterling)
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