I guess I'm what you call a critical luddite. I only got a computer like 3 years ago. I don't have an IPOD. And I still don't own a cellphone. I question the latest trend to gadgetize. I critically evaluate the need for having to be so connected to people elsewhere that I am displaced from my immediate enviroment. I'm amused at people's shock when I tell them I don't own a cellphone. It's like I have leprosy or something. What's wrong with you! What if you get lost? What if you need to dial 911? Then I'll just deal with it. Besides, how did the world suddenly become so fraught with danger and uncertainty since the invention of the cellphone? It isn't. Our technology changes our world view. The cellphone generates its own addictive need to always be connected to someone. As if being unconnected is now to be vulnerable, and isolated, and {god forbid!) unprepared. I reject that premise outright. I'm fine with being a discrete sensory-limited primate wandering the vast terrain of the modern world. I'm fine with taking risks for the reward of being free and independent. If people need to get ahold of me, I have a recording machine and email. I'm fine with that. And so is this person:
"A gay Irish bull facing slaughter has been saved following a worldwide appeal backed by the co-creator of The Simpsons.
Benjy, a Charlerois bull, was being fattened up for an abattoir after he failed to impregnate any heifers this year at a County Mayo farm in western Ireland.
Vets had determined he was fertile, but was more attracted to the bull that replaced him.
On learning of his fate, activists launched a social media campaign to raise £5,000 to send Benjy to the Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Norfolk, which is home to about 2,000 unwanted farm animals and horses.
Sam Simon, the co-creator of The Simpsons and a philanthropist, has now put up the money needed to buy Benjy and transport him to the sanctuary. His transfer is expected to take place in time for Christmas."
"Being in a position of power can fundamentally change the way you speak, altering basic acoustic properties of the voice, and other people are able to pick up on these vocal cues to know who is really in charge, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
"We tend to focus on our words when we want to come across as powerful to others, but these findings suggest that basic acoustic cues also play an important role:
"Our findings suggest that whether it's parents attempting to assert authority over unruly children, haggling between a car salesman and customer, or negotiations between heads of states, the sound of the voices involved may profoundly determine the outcome of those interactions," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Sei Jin Ko of San Diego State University.
The researchers had long been interested in non-language-related properties of speech, but it was former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher that inspired them to investigate the relationship between acoustic cues and power.
"It was quite well known that Thatcher had gone through extensive voice coaching to exude a more authoritative, powerful persona," explains Ko. "We wanted to explore how something so fundamental as power might elicit changes in the way a voice sounds, and how these situational vocal changes impact the way listeners perceive and behave toward the speakers."=====http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...081040.htm
EXCERPT: For years physicists have been looking for the universe's elusive dark matter, but so far no one has seen any trace of it. Maybe we are looking in the wrong place? [...] In a new research paper, he [Chris Kouvaris] and [Ian] Shoemaker study the possibility that dark matter can indeed interact substantially with atoms. They claim that depending on the properties of the dark matter particles, deep placed detectors can be blind because particles might have lost most of their energy before reaching the detector.
"In such a case, it would make more sense to look for dark matter signals on the surface of the Earth or in shallow sites", Kouvaris argues....
EXCERPT: You’re at a slumber party with your friends. One friend asks “if a guy at school asked you out, but you weren’t really attracted to him, would you go?” You laugh and shake your head no: “Why would I, if he’s not my type?”
Or imagine you’re at school, sitting in the cafeteria. A guy who you think is attractive but who has some unsuitable personality traits comes up and asks you out. You say yes, even though what you really meant to say was no. “Why did I do that?” you wonder.
According to new research from the University of Toronto and Yale University, rejecting unsuitable romantic partners is easy in hypothetical situations, but not so when considering a face-to-face proposition.
“When actually faced with a potential date, we don't like to reject a person and make them feel bad, which is not necessarily something that people anticipate when they imagine making these choices,” says the study’s lead researcher, psychology PhD candidate Samantha Joel. “The fact that we underestimate how concerned we’ll feel about hurting the other person’s feelings may help to explain why people's dating decisions often don't match up with their stated dating preferences.”...
EXCERPT: For such an obscure corner of the medical literature, Cotard’s delusion is remarkably well known as the delusion that you’re dead. This was supposedly first described by Jules Cotard in 1880 but I seem to have found a description from 1576.
It’s worth noting that although Cotard’s delusion has come to represent ‘the delusion that you’re dead’, Jules Cotard’s original description was not actually that – it was a delusion of negation where the patient believed, as noted by Berrios and Luque, that she had “no brain, nerves, chest, or entrails, and was just skin and bone”, that “neither God or the devil existed”, and that she did not need food for “she was eternal and would live forever”.
In its modern use, Cotard’s delusion typically refer to the belief that you’re dead, you don’t exist, or that your body is rotting or absent. It is rare but can occur in severe psychosis....
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