Time to Upgrade!

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Monk signs into Windows Live Messenger and groans upon seeing that they want you to install yet a newer version. Can't they wait at least once a year to put out a supposed upgrade? (Or has it actually been a year already?) It is tiring that everyone is constantly wanting you to upgrade. I don't even want to think about that new Windows Vista deal!

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Time to Upgrade!

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Monk signs into Windows Live Messenger and groans upon seeing that they want you to install yet a newer version. Can't they wait at least once a year to put out a supposed upgrade? (Or has it actually been a year already?) It is tiring that everyone is constantly wanting you to upgrade. I don't even want to think about that new Windows Vista deal!

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Global Fever

It has been pointed out many times, including by me, that we are engaged in a titanic global experiment. The further it proceeds, the clearer the picture should become. At age 71, I’m unlikely to be around when it resolves to everyone’s satisfaction — or dissatisfaction. Many of you may be, and a lot of your descendants undoubtedly will be.

Good luck to you and to them.

-- William K. Stevens for The New York Times

Hah, even he has doubts though:

To say that reasonable doubt is vanishing does not mean there is no doubt at all. Many gaps remain in knowledge about the climate system. Scientists do make mistakes, and in any case science continually evolves and changes. That is why the panel’s findings, synthesized from a vast body of scientific studies, are generally couched in terms of probabilities and sometimes substantial margins of error. So in the recesses of the mind, there remains a little worm of caution that says all may not be as it seems, or that the situation may somehow miraculously turn around — or, for that matter, that it may turn out worse than projected.

And they were talking about global cooling not so long ago. Isn't that right, Mr. Steyn and the other dissenters? Eco-porn, bah humbug!

Besides, with Iraq and the War on Terror going as it is, we may have bigger problems than a little global warming.

From the frying pan to the fire, baby. Life is for the bold.

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Global Fever

It has been pointed out many times, including by me, that we are engaged in a titanic global experiment. The further it proceeds, the clearer the picture should become. At age 71, I’m unlikely to be around when it resolves to everyone’s satisfaction — or dissatisfaction. Many of you may be, and a lot of your descendants undoubtedly will be.

Good luck to you and to them.

-- William K. Stevens for The New York Times

Hah, even he has doubts though:

To say that reasonable doubt is vanishing does not mean there is no doubt at all. Many gaps remain in knowledge about the climate system. Scientists do make mistakes, and in any case science continually evolves and changes. That is why the panel’s findings, synthesized from a vast body of scientific studies, are generally couched in terms of probabilities and sometimes substantial margins of error. So in the recesses of the mind, there remains a little worm of caution that says all may not be as it seems, or that the situation may somehow miraculously turn around — or, for that matter, that it may turn out worse than projected.

And they were talking about global cooling not so long ago. Isn't that right, Mr. Steyn and the other dissenters? Eco-porn, bah humbug!

Besides, with Iraq and the War on Terror going as it is, we may have bigger problems than a little global warming.

From the frying pan to the fire, baby. Life is for the bold.

xXx

The Insula

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In response to the recent news about how a little damage to the brain caused people to instantly give up cigarettes, Ms. Sandra Blakeslee gives us a further report on this spotlighted part of the brain, the insula:

They say it is the wellspring of social emotions, things like lust and disgust, pride and humiliation, guilt and atonement. It helps give rise to moral intuition, empathy and the capacity to respond emotionally to music.

... For example, the insula “lights up” in brain scans when people crave drugs, feel pain, anticipate pain, empathize with others, listen to jokes, see disgust on someone’s face, are shunned in a social settings, listen to music, decide not to buy an item, see someone cheat and decide to punish them, and determine degrees of preference while eating chocolate.

...[T]he insula was “assigned to the brain’s netherworld,” said John Allman, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology. It was mistakenly defined as a primitive part of the brain involved only in functions like eating and sex. Ambitious scientists studied higher, more rational parts of the brain, he said.

The insula emerged from darkness a decade ago when Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist now at the University of Southern California, developed the so-called somatic marker hypothesis, the idea that rational thinking cannot be separated from feelings and emotions. The insula, he said, plays a starring role.

... It is in the frontal insula, Dr. Craig said, that simple body states or sensations are recast as social emotions. A bad taste or smell is sensed in the frontal insula as disgust. A sensual touch from a loved one is transformed into delight.

The frontal insula is where people sense love and hate, gratitude and resentment, self-confidence and embarrassment, trust and distrust, empathy and contempt, approval and disdain, pride and humiliation, truthfulness and deception, atonement and guilt.

Maybe the insula is the seat of the soul?

Maybe it is the wasteland between desire and disappointment.


(Source: Sandra Blakesless for The New York Times)

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The Insula

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In response to the recent news about how a little damage to the brain caused people to instantly give up cigarettes, Ms. Sandra Blakeslee gives us a further report on this spotlighted part of the brain, the insula:

They say it is the wellspring of social emotions, things like lust and disgust, pride and humiliation, guilt and atonement. It helps give rise to moral intuition, empathy and the capacity to respond emotionally to music.

... For example, the insula “lights up” in brain scans when people crave drugs, feel pain, anticipate pain, empathize with others, listen to jokes, see disgust on someone’s face, are shunned in a social settings, listen to music, decide not to buy an item, see someone cheat and decide to punish them, and determine degrees of preference while eating chocolate.

...[T]he insula was “assigned to the brain’s netherworld,” said John Allman, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology. It was mistakenly defined as a primitive part of the brain involved only in functions like eating and sex. Ambitious scientists studied higher, more rational parts of the brain, he said.

The insula emerged from darkness a decade ago when Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist now at the University of Southern California, developed the so-called somatic marker hypothesis, the idea that rational thinking cannot be separated from feelings and emotions. The insula, he said, plays a starring role.

... It is in the frontal insula, Dr. Craig said, that simple body states or sensations are recast as social emotions. A bad taste or smell is sensed in the frontal insula as disgust. A sensual touch from a loved one is transformed into delight.

The frontal insula is where people sense love and hate, gratitude and resentment, self-confidence and embarrassment, trust and distrust, empathy and contempt, approval and disdain, pride and humiliation, truthfulness and deception, atonement and guilt.

Maybe the insula is the seat of the soul?

Maybe it is the wasteland between desire and disappointment.


(Source: Sandra Blakesless for The New York Times)

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The Dignified D'Souza

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The Times has another review on the Dinesh D'Souza book. I thought that it was going to be a countering positive review, perhaps even in sympathetic response to D'Souza's own impassioned self-defense. Instead, I was relieved to see that the book was trashed anew, with D'Souza being put with the Ann Coulter set.

His new book, “The Enemy at Home,” is filled with willfully incendiary — and preposterous — assertions that “the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11”; that the left is “secretly allied” with the movement that Osama bin Laden and Islamic radicals represent “to undermine the Bush administration and American foreign policy”; and that “the left wants America to be a shining beacon of global depravity, a kind of Gomorrah on a Hill.”

He writes that American prisons at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib “are comparable to the accommodations in midlevel Middle Eastern hotels” in terms of cleanliness, food and amenities, and argues that abuse at Abu Ghraib did not reflect a disregard for human rights, but rather “the sexual immodesty of liberal America.” (“Lynndie England and Charles Graner were two wretched individuals from red America who were trying to act out the fantasies of blue America.”)

... In this shrill, slipshod book, Mr. D’Souza often sounds as if he has a lot in common with those radical Middle Eastern mullahs who are eager to subject daily life to religious strictures and want to curtail individuals’ freedoms and civil liberties.

It’s an interpretation he does not deny: “Yes,” he writes, “I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I’d have to confess that I’m closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap.”

I imagine that D'Souza was tempted by the fame and money of the Coulter-type of pundit, and he pushed himself further to get in on some of that action. But he has neither Rush Limbaugh's personality nor Ann Coulter's legs. Now he has some work to do to reclaim his scholarly credientials, if he should care to do so.


(Source: Michiko Kakutani for The New York Times)

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The Dignified D'Souza

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The Times has another review on the Dinesh D'Souza book. I thought that it was going to be a countering positive review, perhaps even in sympathetic response to D'Souza's own impassioned self-defense. Instead, I was relieved to see that the book was trashed anew, with D'Souza being put with the Ann Coulter set.

His new book, “The Enemy at Home,” is filled with willfully incendiary — and preposterous — assertions that “the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11”; that the left is “secretly allied” with the movement that Osama bin Laden and Islamic radicals represent “to undermine the Bush administration and American foreign policy”; and that “the left wants America to be a shining beacon of global depravity, a kind of Gomorrah on a Hill.”

He writes that American prisons at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib “are comparable to the accommodations in midlevel Middle Eastern hotels” in terms of cleanliness, food and amenities, and argues that abuse at Abu Ghraib did not reflect a disregard for human rights, but rather “the sexual immodesty of liberal America.” (“Lynndie England and Charles Graner were two wretched individuals from red America who were trying to act out the fantasies of blue America.”)

... In this shrill, slipshod book, Mr. D’Souza often sounds as if he has a lot in common with those radical Middle Eastern mullahs who are eager to subject daily life to religious strictures and want to curtail individuals’ freedoms and civil liberties.

It’s an interpretation he does not deny: “Yes,” he writes, “I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I’d have to confess that I’m closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap.”

I imagine that D'Souza was tempted by the fame and money of the Coulter-type of pundit, and he pushed himself further to get in on some of that action. But he has neither Rush Limbaugh's personality nor Ann Coulter's legs. Now he has some work to do to reclaim his scholarly credientials, if he should care to do so.


(Source: Michiko Kakutani for The New York Times)

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Elvis: Always On My Mind

Elvis: Always On My Mind