Free Will: An Illusory Driver of Behavior

"Our freedom to choose, to make good or bad decisions about everything from which dessert to select to whether to save a life or commit a crime, seems part of our basic human nature. Long the province of philosophers and theologians, recently free will has become a question that fascinates neuroscientists. Looking for its basis in the brain has led some to argue that free will is only an illusion—a perception not congruent with the unconscious biochemical processes that they see as leading to thought and action. Two senior scientists, a neurologist and a psychiatrist, debate the meaning of free will and whether brain science can, now or ever, fully explain it. Each scientist first wrote a position statement; they then exchanged statements to write rejoinders." read article in its entirety

Artist of the Week: Eva Eun-Sil HAN

website / myspace / flickr

I met Eva through Myspace and instantly fell in love with her brilliant work. Elle Est Câline (above) is the piece that I plan to purchase from her as soon as I can afford it. When you get a chance make sure to explore her extensive catalog.

Japanese Journalist Killed in Burma Protest Crackdown

"The killing of Kenji Nagai was photographed by a colleague yesterday in Rangoon, Burma. The photojournalist was one of nine killed and 11 injured when the military junta ordered troops to fire into a crowd of pro-democracy demonstrators.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets for a second day in the country’s main city, defying the government repression that has drawn international appeals for restraint.

...Even after being shot, Nagai attempted to continue video taping the attacks on protesters." read article in its entirety

Intelligent Art is a Foolish Concept

"'Intelligent' is a pretty stupid adjective. Like 'beautiful' or 'cool,' the word carries enormous authority as if its definition were universally clear. Yet the qualities signified by the word are actually vague, subjective and debatable.

Since the early 80s it has been widely accepted that there are multiple intelligences that override the conceit that what quantifies or qualifies a person's intellectual ability is IQ, or the group of traits that IQ supposedly tests. One such intelligence is 'spatial intelligence,' which relates to artistic practice. But the notion that visual or artistic aptitude can be summed up by designating someone as 'intelligent' hardly does justice to what artistic intelligence means, or what it means to be an intelligent artist." read article in it's entirety

Colds and Flus Are Good For You

"The next time that you experience a cold or the flu, remember this: giving your body plenty of rest while allowing the cold or flu to run its course is good for your health.

Conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry would have you believe that there is no "cure" for the common cold, that you should protect yourself against the flu with a vaccine that is laden with toxic chemicals, and that during the midst of a cold or flu, it is favorable to ease your discomfort with a variety of medications that can suppress your symptoms.

Unfortunately, all three of these positions represent a lack of understanding of what colds and flus really are, and what they mean to your body." read article in its entirety

Nintendo 64 Controller Bong

thanks Aeropause

Grandma's Reverse Evolution Theory

"A long, long time ago, longer than any living person could fathom, there were no monkeys or baboons in the world. Then some human beings refused to work their farms and went off into the bush to seek freebies. As years passed, they gradually became hairy as they degenerated into wild animals. They lost all human traits, among them walking upright, speech, wearing clothes, using tools and fire, and living in houses.

What was most fascinating about my grandmother's reverse evolution theory was that she was able to "demonstrate" that beyond looks, or mere physical similarities, there was a discernible lingering memory, some consciousness, among the primates about their days as humans." read article in its entirety

see also..."These creatures have clearly shown that they have no respect for women."

Lights Out San Francisco

"The former Google spokesman returned home to launch Lights Out San Francisco, an ambitious grass-roots campaign. For one full hour -- between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Oct. 20 -- he wants the people of this city to turn off all unnecessary lights as a way to reduce carbon emissions and preserve natural resources.

Tyler isn't talking about creating a public safety hazard by shutting off street lamps or traffic lights. He's targeting nonessential lighting: floodlights at used-car lots, atmospheric illumination of the Golden Gate Bridge, the neon movie marquee and all the bulbs left burning at night in empty high rises.

He's also not advocating major personal lifestyle changes -- at least not yet. For now, he wants family members, neighbors and colleagues to join together in taking one simple, hourlong stand against mindless energy use. Turn off a hallway light, a computer, a TV. See how good it feels, he says, and you might begin to reconsider the extent of your personal energy use." read article in it's entirety

World's Top 10 Most Polluted Places

"Sumqayit in Azerbaijan gained the dubious distinction this week of being added to Blacksmith Institute's top 10 list of the world's most polluted sites. Yet another heir to the toxic legacy of Soviet industry, the city of 275,000 souls bears heavy metal, oil and chemical contamination from its days as a center of chemical production. As a result, local Azeris suffer cancer rates 22 to 51 percent higher than their countrymen and their children suffer from a host of genetic defects ranging from mental retardation to bone diseases." read article in it's entirety

also... Parking Lots Outnumber People, Add to Pollution

Edward Hopper @ The National Gallery of Art

"WASHINGTON, DC.- Edward Hopper marks the first time in more than 25 years that a comprehensive exhibition of this great artist's work has been seen in American museums outside New York and is the most complete survey of his career ever presented in Washington. The exhibition of 96 paintings and works on paper focuses on the period of the artist's great achievements—from about 1925 to mid century—when he produced such iconic paintings as Automat (1927), Drug Store (1927), Early Sunday Morning (1930), New York Movie (1939), and Nighthawks (1942).

Edward Hopper is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where it debuted May 6 through August 19, 2007; National Gallery of Art, Washington, on view September 16, 2007 through January 21, 2008; and The Art Institute of Chicago, where it will be seen February 16 through May 11, 2008." read article in it's entirety

Hopper is one of my favorite American painters and I'm really looking forward to experiencing his work in person. Eleven a.m. (above) is one of my favorite Hopper paintings. He had such an amazing ability to capture natural light that his paintings are eerie at times.

Evolution Makes Us Fat

"What's more shocking is that, as she points out, in the decade since then, things have got much worse – by 2004, people were eating 50 per cent more fast food, and the annual medical bill had risen to $117 billion. The problem, in other words, is bad, and it's getting worse, and we can't seem to stop it. So why does fattening food – sugar, starch and fat itself – have such a grip on us?

The answer, says Barrett, lies in the study of evolution. As animals, we are genetically almost identical to our Stone Age ancestors. We live in advanced societies, with supermarkets and cars and lifts, but we are built to be hunter-gatherers. We are programmed to seek out fat, sugar, starch and salt, because, in the Stone Age, these things were hard to come by. When they turn up in abundance, our bodies, for the most part, can't say no." read article in its entirety

The Legacy of Hollywood's Favorite Sci-Fi Writer

"PHILIP K. DICK, the science-fiction author who struggled for years with personal demons, never saw 'Blade Runner,' the first Hollywood adaptation of his writing. He died of a stroke just four months shy of its release in 1982. His grieving daughter Isa, then 15, remembers going to see the film in a San Rafael theater hoping that it might, somehow, keep part of her father alive." read article in it's entirety

also... The Hollywood Afterlife of Philip K. Dick (NPR)

About A Son

"Kurt Cobain About A Son is a an intimate and moving meditation on the late musician and artist Kurt Cobain told entirely in his own voice without celebrity sound bytes, news clips, sensational tabloid angles or attempts to mimic a grunge aesthetic. Instead, filmmaker AJ Schnack has created something closer to an autobiography of Cobain a profound first hand account of Cobain's own successes and failures, thoughts and experiences, allowing the audience unprecedented intimacy with a legendary figure in popular culture set against the wildly divergent Pacific Northwest locations that loomed so large in Cobain's life. " website

Let's see:


About A Son is playing October 26th (two days after my birthday) in Washington DC @ the E Street Cinema... I will be there. I was a huge fan of Nirvana when I was younger and I fell Kurt Cobain's presence is still looming over modern rock.

Speaking of Nirvana... derek_ has a pretty amazing cover of Nirvana's "Dumb" that you should check out. Besides being a (new) contributer to Evolve Happy he's also quite an accomplished musician and artist.

The Apes + These Are Powers 09/29/2007

This Saturday at The Bobby Fisher Memorial, The Apes and These Are Powers will be performing together. Both bands are renowned for their amazing live performances. If you are in the DC area this will be a show you do not want to miss. Roberto C. Madruga and I will both be in attendance, if you'd like to say hi, we'll be the ones passing out Evolve Happy stickers. Hope to see you there.



"The Apes are a guitarless quartet from Washington DC who create a raw and primal bombast of hard-rock mysticism and thunder with the power of heavy bass, Hammond organ, and energetic live performances."



These Are Powers "Ghost-punk gave voice to environmental death, cultural death, religious death, death of personal freedom, death of dreams, and fear of death.
Post-ghost punk continues to explore dreams and other messages of spiritual origin, while it aspires to abolish music (Ghost-punk) without realizing it and realizes music (Post-ghost punk) without abolishing it.

Repetition creates emotional resonance. Creation resonates."

Let's see:


The Apes website / myspace
These Are Powers website / myspace
Bobby Fisher Memorial website / map

Garry Kasparov: The Match Of His Life

"(CBS) For 20 years Garry Kasparov was the greatest chess player in the world. He won his first world championship at the age of 22 and was ranked number one almost continuously until he retired from international competition two years ago, a Russian hero and a very wealthy man. He could have done anything he wanted. Instead, he chose to make the riskiest move of his career: he entered the treacherous world of Russian politics, and has become one of President Vladimir Putin's harshest critics, accusing him of abolishing democratic reforms, and turning over the country's vast natural resources to a small political elite.

It is the match of his life. As correspondent Steve Kroft reports, the odds are long, and the dangers considerable, but Kasparov believes the soul of a nation is at stake." read article in it's entirety

While visiting my grandparents this past Sunday, I had a chance to actually watch this on television. Valerie and I have opted not to have cable, so watching something on television, when it's actually on, is a rarity. Mr. Kasparov seemed very posed to make a difference in his home country. I'm very impressed with a man in his position taking a stand against the powers that be. It's the Russian equivalent of Tiger Woods becoming a political activist in the states.

also... Chess Master's Risky Anti-Putin Game Plan

Parallel Universes Really Do Exist

"Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as 'one of the most important developments in the history of science'.

The parallel universetheory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed.

In Everett's 'many worlds' universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe." read article in its entirety

Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins

"Sometimes the maturity of a field of science can be measured by the heft of its ambition in the face of the next daunting unknown, the mystery yet to be cracked.

Neurobiology probes the circuitry of the brain for the secrets of behaviors and thoughts that make humans human. High-energy physics seeks and may be on the verge of finding the so-called God particle, the Higgs boson thought to endow elementary particles with their mass. Cosmology is confounded by dark matter and dark energy, the pervasive but unidentified stuff that shapes the universe and accelerates its expansion.

In the study of human origins, paleoanthropology stares in frustration back to a dark age from three million to less than two million years ago. The missing mass in this case is the unfound fossils to document just when and under what circumstances our own genus Homo emerged.

The origin of Homo is one of the most intriguing and intractable mysteries in human evolution. New findings only remind scientists that answers to so many of their questions about early Homo probably lie buried in the million-year dark age." read article in it's entirety

also... Is ‘Do Unto Others’ Written Into Our Genes?

Hektor the Spray-Painting Robot

"Hektor is a portable Spray-paint Output Device for laptop computers. It was created in close collaboration with engineer Uli Franke for Jürg Lehni's diploma project at écal (école cantonale d'art de Lausanne) in 2002.

Hektor’s light and fragile installation consists only of two motors, toothed belts and a can holder that handles regular spray cans. The can is moved along drawing paths just as the human hand or old plotters would. During operation, the mechanism sometimes trembles and wobbles, and the paint often drips. The contrasts between these low-tech aspects and the high-tech touch of the construction hold ambiguous and poetic qualities and make Hektor enjoyable to watch in action." website

Let's see:


thanks Make

Thousands Descend on Town to Support 'Jena Six'

"JENA, LA. -- -- In a scene reminiscent of civil rights protests of decades past, thousands of protesters descended on this small Southern town Thursday to peacefully decry what they said was the unfair treatment of six black teenagers charged with beating a white schoolmate.

The case of the Jena Six, as the defendants have come to be known, attracted a cast of famous black leaders, but many said the crowd was called by fresh chorus of voices -- among them bloggers, black radio personalities and Web-networked college students.

Organizers said the crowd swelled to 50,000; state police said it was too spread out to count. As the visitors began pouring into this mostly white central Louisiana community of 3,000 at daybreak, they encountered a ghost town: The courthouse, the high school and almost all the businesses -- from the barber to the bail bondsman -- were closed." read article in it's entirety

Damien Hirst's Diamond-Encrusted Skull Sells for $100 Million

"LONDON.- London’s White Cube gallery announced that British artist Damien Hirst diamond-encrusted skull sold for $100 million dollars, a record price for work sold by a living artist. The work is entitled 'For the Love of God,' and is a skull cast in platinum and encrusted with 8,601 diamonds. According to the gallery a group of anonymous investors purchased the work. The investment group plans to resell the work later." read article in it's entirety

Damien Hirst's website is currently under construction.

Monks’ Protest Is Challenging Burmese Junta

"BANGKOK, Monday, Sept. 24 — The largest street protests in two decades against Myanmar’s military rulers gained momentum Sunday as thousands of onlookers cheered huge columns of Buddhist monks and shouted support for the detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Winding for a sixth day through rainy streets, the protest swelled to 10,000 monks in the main city of Yangon, formerly Rangoon, according to witnesses and other accounts relayed from the closed country, including some clandestinely shot videos.

It came one day after a group of several hundred monks paid respects to Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi at the gate of her home, the first time she has been seen in public in more than four years.

The link between the clergy and the leader of the country’s pro-democracy movement, the beginnings of large-scale public participation in the marches and a call by some monks for a wider protest raised the stakes for the government." read article in it's entirety

WolframTones

" WolframTones works by taking simple programs from Wolfram's computational universe, and using music theory and Mathematica algorithms to render them as music. Each program in effect defines a virtual world, with its own special story--and WolframTones captures it as a musical composition." website

see also...A New Kind of Science

Artist of the Week: Richard Colman

website

Stop Bitching Start A Revolution.

I recently attended some art festival in Old Town Alexandria. It was an endless barrage of visual art that did absolutely nothing for me. While walking back to the car I was stopped by a dark-haired guy with dreadlocks talking about the farm he lives on. He said they wanted to create a society that 'doesn't suck'.

His name is Peiro and he lives on Zendik Farm in West Virginia.



The artist commune was started in 1969 by Wulf and Arol Zendik. Zendik was not his birth name. It is a sanskrit word which means 'outlaw; one who thinks outside the established order'.

"At that time, their anthropological and sociological studies led them to believe that human beings' natural environment is a social, tribal atmosphere. Wulf and Arol were performing musicians at the time and they had a vision of the community as a place for artists to get away from the pressures and demands of the city."
website

see also....Who Are These People

If You Think You're Good At Shoot 'em Ups (shmups)

"Bullet hell (Japanese : danmaku 弾幕, lit. "bullet curtain", n. barrage), is a sub-genre of shoot 'em up video games in which the entire screen is often almost completely filled with enemy bullets. The genre is also occasionally known as curtain fire after a broken translation on the initial loading screens of the Touhou series of games, all of which begin with "This game is curtain fire shooting game." [sic] However; 'curtain fire' could be considered a reasonable explanation of what occurs in the games. Games that have this genre are sometimes known as manic shooters."

Team Shanghai Alice is the cream of the crop of these style games. The 'Team' is actually one guy who goes under the pseudonym Zun. He also works for Taito but for the Touhou games he creates every last detail by himself (music, graphics, programming).

Since the bullet patterns are extremely ridiculous the hit zone on your character is only a pixel in the middle of the sprite, which is why it looks like the player is getting hit sometimes.

I started playing Shoot The Bullet sometime last winter. The gameplay is a bit different than the others. It's comprised of only boss stages and the way to attack the boss is to take photos of them. Since I first got the game I've only been able to get to Level 3. The fun part of playing it is that when you stop, you keep seeing the bullet patterns. I highly recommend it if you're up for the challenge. The game is beautiful to watch even if you're not playing.

Watch Level 10-8, played by someone very skilled:

Robot Maker Builds Artificial Boy

"RICHARDSON, Texas (AP)- David Hanson has two little Zenos to care for these days. There's his 18-month-old son Zeno, who prattles and smiles as he bounds through his father's cramped office. Then there's the robotic Zeno. It can't speak or walk yet, but has blinking eyes that can track people and a face that captivates with a range of expressions.

At 17 inches tall and 6 pounds, the artificial Zeno is the culmination of five years of work by Hanson and a small group of engineers, designers and programmers at his company, Hanson Robotics. They believe there's an emerging business in the design and sale of lifelike robotic companions, or social robots. And they'll be showing off the robot boy to students in grades 3-12 at the Wired NextFest technology conference Thursday in Los Angeles." read article in it's entirety

also... Meet Zeno, boy robot

Chimps Help Define Human Skills

"Chimps often seem so much like us. I have a vivid childhood memory of seeing a chimp at the zoo, mirror in one hand, and brushing his hair with the other. Had he been watching humans doing their hair and started imitating them? Had he been specially trained?

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany have been trying to determine which skills differentiate us from our primate relatives. They compared how orang-utans, chimps, and two-year-old humans dealt with physical concepts like space and quantity, as well as their capability for social learning." read article in it's entirety

Let's see:


also... Chimps pinch papayas to impress potential mates

World Carfree Day (September 22) 2007

"Every September 22, people across the globe get together to swear off their cars (if only for one day) in a collective reminder that we don't have to accept car-dominated societies, cities, or personal lives. Since its earliest incarnations in the 1970s and '80s, WORLD CARFREE DAY has grown into a massive global celebration of human-centric communities and people-powered transportation.

Carfree Day 2007 could turn out to be the biggest yet. For the first time, China's government is hopping on board, with official events talking place in more than 100 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai." web page

also... World Carfree Network

Tim Heidecker's Fifth Stand-Up Performance

Tim Heidecker from Tim and Eric's Awesome Show Great Job! and co-creator of Tom Goes To The Mayor decided to work on a hilarious stand-up routine that would be fun for the whole fam.

"Hey! I'm Tim Heidecker. I've been involved with alternative and sketch comedy, but as I grow older, I can realize the value in wholesome, family oriented comedy. It's a big change for me as a man and I hope you'll all give me a chance to proove that you can be clever, witty and funny without being weird and rude. Thanks! FYI, I do say bitch and damn in my set. We'll see."

Let's see:


also...watch stand ups #1, #2, #3, & #4 to watch this professional comedian refine his work

Hello Duudle Posters

"Each poster is 711 x 1016mm, printed on 157gsm white coated high quality art paper with a gloss sealer." product page

Get Better At Things By Sleeping

"'People know a lot about the brain chemistry of sleep, and people know a lot about the brain chemistry of memory,' he says. 'But very few people have started to try and put those two fields together to understand why sleep seems to offer these benefits to memory. We're really just starting to scratch the surface now'." read article in its entirety

The Age of Virtuous Machines

"In the 'hard takeoff' scenario, a psychopathic AI suddenly emerges at a superhuman level, achieving universal dominance. Hall suggests an alternative: we've gotten better because we've become smarter, so AIs will evolve "unselfish genes" and hyperhuman morality. More honest, capable of deeper understanding, and free of our animal heritage and blindnesses, the children of our minds will grow better and wiser than us, and we will have a new friend and guide--if we work hard to earn the privilege of associating with them." read article in its entirety

Olafur Eliasson Subverts Spectacle

"SAN FRANCISCO -- Who wouldn't want to burrow inside a kaleidoscope, surrounded by captivating shards of abstract patterning in a shifting blaze of chromatic splendor?

That's what Berlin-based artist Olafur Eliasson offers visitors who climb the stairs to the fifth-floor bridge at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where the first American survey of his radically enchanting Light and Space art opened Saturday. The show cements the 40-year-old artist's burgeoning reputation. Born in Denmark to Icelandic parents, he's the first major European artist whose work evolved from a Los Angeles precedent -- Light and Space art, a unique perceptual aesthetic of the 1960s and 1970s.

As a come-hither gesture into the show's galleries, Eliasson's seductive 'One-way colour tunnel' can't be beat. The dazzling purple-cobalt-emerald-teal interior is made from light-shattering translucent and reflective triangular panels of coated acrylic, suspended -- just like a visitor on the footbridge -- within a metal framework." read article in it's entirety

Olafur Eliasson's "Round Rainbow" (below) is the only piece of his that I've seen in person. Last time it was shown at the Hirsshorn I stared at it for at least 10 minutes... mesmerized by the vivid creation in front of me.

Let's see:

Climate Change Spurred Human Evolution

"A drastic shift in the tropical African climate many thousands of years ago may have given a significant push to early human evolution, a new study says.

Before about 70,000 years ago, the climate in parts of Africa was wildly variable, with extreme droughts occasionally completely drying up lakes and killing off many plant and animal populations.

But after that time, the climate stabilized and became wetter, allowing lake levels to rise dramatically. It was around this same time that early human populations in Africa grew rapidly and began to migrate." read article in it's entirety

also... It's No Delusion: Evolution May Favor Schizophrenia Genes

Low Technologies, High Aims

"CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Beneath the bustling “infinite corridor” linking buildings at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, just past a boiler room, an assemblage of tinkerers from 16 countries welded, stitched and hammered, working on rough-hewn inventions aimed at saving the world, one village at a time.

M.I.T. has nurtured dozens of Nobel Prize winners in cerebral realms like astrophysics, economics and genetics. But lately, the institute has turned its attention toward concrete thinking to improve the lives of the world’s bottom billion, those who live on a dollar a day or less and who often die young.

This summer, it played host to a four-week International Development Design Summit to identify problems, cobble together prototype solutions and winnow the results to see which might work in the real world." read article in it's entirety

Living Your Dreams, in a Manner of Speaking

"THE kiss you share with the exquisite stranger is electric, deep and seemingly endless — that is until you open an eye and see drool on your pillow.

If only you could have slept long enough to consummate the seduction. Then again, you had no idea you were dreaming. Besides, you cannot control the nightly ride on the wings of your subconscious. Or can you?

Maybe, if you learn to practice “lucid dreaming,” a state in which a sleeping person becomes aware he or she is dreaming and may even be able to direct the action. Those who regularly experience the phenomenon say that like the physics-defying characters in “The Matrix,” they are able to generate or manipulate the fantastical events that unfold. They can fly without wings, play instruments they never learned, go bowling with T. S. Eliot — and, yes, indulge sexual fantasies." read article in it's entirety

Honey Bee Mystery Solved?

"For months, the headlines have been increasingly worrisome: Honey bees around the United States are dying out in huge numbers, endangering agriculture, and perhaps Bee portending larger environmental problems.

Now a group of genetic researchers say they may at last have at least part of the explanation for this so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

As published on Science's Web site yesterday, researchers say they've isolated a particular virus, called Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), in a large sample of bees affected by CCD. The virus, which has appeared in Israel, as well as in samples taken from Australia, paralyzes bees, often outside their hives.

The collapse of honey bee populations has raised serious worries around the world, particularly in agricultural communities. The bees are responsible for pollinating more 130 fruit and vegetable crops in the United States, with the value of those crops in the United States alone reaching more than $15 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture." read article in it's entirety

thanks treehugger

Human Family Tree Now a Tangled, Messy Bush

"For anthropology students 30 years ago, learning human evolution was a breeze. It went from Australopithecus to Homo habilis to Homo erectus to various Homo sapiens. It was a straight shot that one could learn in a few minutes late at night while cramming for an exam.

But in the late 1970s, we entered a golden age of human fossil discoveries that has repeatedly punched holes in the naive idea that our evolution would be that clear, clean, and straight.

Like most animals, humans have a checkered past, and our family album is now full of side branches and dead ends. And it's populated with creatures, such as the little people (Homo floresiensis) of Flores Island in Indonesia, that we could never have imagined in our wildest dreams.

The straight line has blossomed into a spreading, rather uncontrolled bush and we don’t like it. We want our history to be nice and neat, but the fossils keep messing us up." read article in it's entirety

Left-brain Dominance Is Costing Our Sanity

"New sleep-deprivation record holder Tony Wright tells Gelf he's altered his brain chemistry and thus can stay up indefinitely."

He's developed a technique to switch between the hemispheres. It was a PR stunt to promote his book called
'Left In The Dark'.

"GM: Why do you think your views are controversial?

TW: I think it's a combination of things. People have so many preconceived notions about diet and food, that my diet is easily dismissed. Also, it's quite a radical theory—basically, that humans are currently dysfunctional because our brains don't develop. I view it in a positive light, as something that we can fix. I am driving a bulldozer through people's views. Then again, maybe it's because I look like a born-again hippie or something. I don't know." read article in its entirety

Arist of the Week: Diversionmary

website

Aurora Borealis

"Aurora happens in both the southern and northern hemispheres, particularly in the polar zone. It is called Aurora Borealis (also known as Northern Lights) in the Artic region and Aurora Australis in the Antartic region. Streaming plasma clouds, composed of fast moving charged particles, form a solar wind. It is the tangential interaction of the solar wind with the earth’s magnetic field that traps some of these charged particles. These trapped particles then flow along the magnetic field lines of the earth into the upper most regions of our planet’s atmosphere. That’s when the lights become manifest and their dance begins."

see a wonderful collection of pictures and video

Evolution Timeline — From first life-forms to homo sapiens

• The background indicates inches and feet.
• 1/20th in. = roughly 100 thousand years. (108,000)
• 1 inch = about 2 million years. (2,160,000)
• 1 foot = about 26 million years. (25,920,000)
• The whole page is about 135 feet wide, almost half a football field, representing 3.5 billion years. (3,500,000,000)

See complete timeline

DC Shorts Film Festival

"DC Shorts turns the spotlight on truly independent short films from all over the globe, created by new and established filmmakers in an era when the art of filmmaking is opening to all. We select films from every genre for our competition screenings—with a special focus on films created by metropolitan Washington, DC-based directors and writers. After each screening, filmmakers have the opportunity to speak to the audience as part of a moderated panel.

This year, we will present 89 films and 7 live script performances, culled from 14 countries. Once again, our venue will be the Landmark E Street Theatre in Penn Quarter. With new specialty competitions—High Definition Shorts sponsored by Discovery HD Theater and the Screenwriting Competition sponsored by FinalDraft—DC Shorts is growing into one of the most influential film festivals in the country." website

The Anatomy of Sarcasm

"WASHINGTON — The ability to comprehend sarcasm depends upon a carefully orchestrated sequence of complex cognitive skills based in specific parts of the brain. Yeah, right, and I’m the Tooth Fairy. But it’s true: New research details an 'anatomy of sarcasm' that explains how the mind puts sharp-tongued words into context. The findings appear in the May issue of Neuropsychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

The Israeli psychologists who conducted the research explain that for sarcasm to score, listeners must grasp the speaker’s intentions in the context of the situation. This calls for sophisticated social thinking and 'theory of mind,' or whether we understand that everyone thinks different thoughts. As an example of what happens when 'theory of mind' is limited or missing, autistic children have problems interpreting irony, the more general category of social communication into which sarcasm falls." read article in it's entirety

"My sarcasm is flawless... Down by law like my life was directed by Jim Jarmusch." - Diabolical No-Name