Meet the new effort to map the wiring of the human brain. The brain connectome "offers a unique opportunity to understand the complete details of neural connectivity. The Human Connectome Project (HCP) is a project to construct a map of the complete structural and functional neural connections in vivo within and across individuals." Do check out the images at the link location.
Senator Al Franken speaks somberly about this impending merger.
Glenn Greenwald is one of my most trusted self-critical sources of information. He writes for Salon.com. Check out this post (and explore his other recent writings) and consider viewing the short video interview at CNN, and you’ll see why I’m so cynical about the mainstream media, including host Jessica Yellin of CNN (BTW, the ex-Bush adviser on this clip is really a piece of work). And then check out this post and the following comments, where Yellin tries to redeem herself: The following comment to the video sums up Yellin’s alleged even-handedness nicely:
Jesse Frederik December 28th, 2010 7:33 pm ET Compare the questioning of Fran Townsend: "[After showing a video of Joe Biden calling Assange a high-tech terrorist] Is it fair to call him a terrorist?" "Is there anything good that can come from what Assange is doing?" To the questioning of Glenn Greenwald: "Shouldn't he go to jail in defense of his beliefs?" "Any qualms about that he is essentially profiting of classified information?" [Bob Woodward anyone?] And do you see any irony in the fact that he's making money of a corporate publisher?' "What is his ultimate goal, beyond embarrassing and disrupting the US government? What good do his supporters hope will really come from everything he's doing?" "Do you think [the rape charges] are part of a smear campaign? And beyond that do you think it hurts his credibility?" Is the difference in the questioning not obvious?My feelings about Wikileaks and the person(s) that leaked the most recent cables are inextricably woven with the many disturbing revelations disclosed by Wikileaks. This is not the sterilized slow drip of information that you get from the mainstream media, such that we only really learn what was going on 30 years after we could have done something about it. Wikileaks has enabled a torrent of important and often disturbing information and it is causing massive embarrassment to the elites that run this country, and they run it far too often in secret. Yes, I live in the U.S., but it is no longer my country. The leaders of the U.S. rarely speak for me anymore because they don’t treasure the First Amendment, they are crushing our children with debt and they are xenophobic and unapologetic warmongers and torturers. [More . . . ]
I recently stumbled upon a book called The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It, by David Niven, PhD (2000). The book offers quite a bit of solid commonsense advice. For instance: - Cultivate friendships, - Turn off the TV ("TV reduces personal contentment "by about 5% for every hour a day we watch"), - Get a good nights sleep, and - Money does not buy happiness. Fair enough. Interspersed with the good advice, however, is quite a bit of advice with which I am not impressed. For instance, Chapter 8: Accept yourself-unconditionally. Chapter 12: Have realistic expectations. Chapter 16: Believe in yourself. Chapter 23: Belong to a religion. Chapter 26: Root for a home team (a sports team). Chapter 34 It's not what happened; it's how you think about what happened. [More . . . ]
Glenn Greenwald recently wrote about the efforts of Julian Assange to fight extradition to Sweden, including the following paragraph:
And now we have the spectacle of Julian Assange's lawyers citing the Obama administration's policies of rendition and indefinite detention at Guantanamo as a reason why human rights treaties bar his extradition to any country (such as Sweden) which might transfer him to American custody. Indeed, almost every person with whom I've spoken who has or had anything to do with WikiLeaks expresses one fear above all others: the possibility that they will end up in American custody and subjected to its lawless War on Terror "justice system." Americans still like to think of themselves as "leaders of the free world," but in the eyes of many, it's exactly the "free world" to which American policies are so antithetical and threatening.