Mirror Body and Virtual Self

This image is for the wifi article below

Brain-robot training triggers improvement in paralysis
BBC, Aug 2016

"In virtually every one of these patients, the brain had erased the notion of having legs. You're paralysed, you're not moving, the legs are not providing feedback signals.

"By using a brain-machine interface in a virtual environment, we were able to see this concept gradually re-emerging into the brain."

The team intended to use that re-awakened control to drive the robotic legs - but within 12 months they saw such improvement in basic clinical scores that four of the eight patients were upgraded to a diagnosis of only partial paraplegia.

"When I saw this, I couldn't believe it," said Prof Nicolelis.

[and don't forget]
'Brain wi-fi' reverses leg paralysis in primate first
BBC, Nov 2016

And then, let's also not forget that in the remote controlled monkey brain experiments, the wifi-controlled monkey across the world gets its remote signal faster via wifi than our own nervous system. In other words, it takes longer to go from your brain to your legs than it does to go from NY to Shanghai.

Fake Police

You got that??

'Chemtrails' not real, say leading atmospheric science experts
Aug 2016, phys.org

"Well-understood physical and chemical processes can easily explain the alleged evidence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program, commonly referred to as "chemtrails" or "covert geoengineering," concludes a new study from Carnegie Science, University of California Irvine, and the nonprofit organization Near Zero."

POST SCRIPT

On the Illusion of Intent and Mass Conspiracy
Network Address, circa 2014

Culture Fail 
Network Address, circa 2012

On Knots

Captain Tying Knots

You've heard of string theory. What about knot theory?
Feb 2016, phys.org

Tait Flyping Conjecture: the basis for a periodic table of knots in which hydrogen would be the "unknot" — the unknotted circle — and heavier elements would be knots whose filaments crossed over themselves an ever-higher number of times.

A new mathematical model predicts a knot's stability
Jan 2020, phys.org

On Science and Religion

Study finds beliefs about all-knowing gods fosters co-operation

Feb 2016, phys.org

The research, an international collaboration among anthropologists and psychologists, looked at how religion affects humans' willingness to co-operate with those outside their social circle.

I'm a strong believer that religion serves the purpose of large-scale human population cooperation, and that despite how much people (like myself even) think it instead today acts as a thought-smothering default state in response to difficult decision-making tasks, it has been, in the early development of human civilization, totally necessary for that development to take place, and that science (a kind of anti-religion) would not exist today had it not been for religion, and that the two are part of the same continuum of cultural evolution. This piece here is a good start for a more well-articulated discussion on the matter.

A New Way of Seeing

image source

New imaging system uses an open-ended bundle of optical fibers—no lenses, protective housing needed
Feb 2016 phys.org

In Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants 2011, he mentions how seeing always makes eyeballs, and digestion the gut.

***
cool blog about eyes
and a video about the The Evolution of the Human Eye

What One is Not

image source

The Surreal Drama of Actors Playing Sick for Med Students
WIRED, Jan 2016

I thought this was cool because I like pretend things, and especially fake things.

“The important thing about simulation is that imagination, or suspension of disbelief, is required,” Botz says. “Pretending to be a doctor is not easy for some, but life requires a certain amount of pretending to be what one is not. As a young resident, you must convince a patient you are more competent than you feel.”
-photographer Corinne May Botz

(check out her series of photos Bedside Manner here)

And btw, I heard someone say the other day they were 'texting all messed up' when they called-out of work, which made me think this is the new version of coughing while you're on the phone with your boss.

Nature Nature Everywhere

Van Gogh's starry swirls are generally known to be formed according to Levy distributions, which are mathematical formulae, and can be found in turbulent water and other natural phenomena

Musical melodies obey same laws as foraging animals
phys.org, Jan 2016

"The researchers found that the distribution of melodic intervals in two classical concertos and two folk songs can be modeled by a Lévy distribution... [which] describes many other diverse scenarios, such as the turbulent motion of a particle in a liquid or gas, the changes in the price of a stock, earthquake activity, and the foraging paths of wild animals."

It really makes you wonder natural vs artificial, and free will etc.

Did Van Gogh really put those lines there, or was he just following his animal instinct. Debussy?

POST SCRIPT

Music, the Arts and Ideas
Leonard B. Meyer, U. of Chicago, 1967

“It is impossible to stand outside of culture, for the models and categories we use on conceptualizing and ordering the world are necessarily limited to, if not determined by, those which are provided by our particular culture.” (viii)

“A culture, like a musical style, is a learned probability system.” (p17, footnote 21)

Culture as Learned Probability System
Network Address, 2012