TIME TO GET OUT OF DODGE

I had to post this on the blog. It is an immoral or moral imperative, or both. I got to thinking about how scientists with financial backing and limitless resource materials of arms dealers and manufacturers are nothing more than uninhibited versions of me and some of my friends designing beer can cannons, pipe bombs and blowing up "porta-potties" when we were kids. Just a thought, a scary thought but true none the less.
L

In the news

This is messed up! But I seem to remember something like this happening before, coy dogs and once with feral cats that were released in NYC in the eighties to take care of the subway rat problems. Of course the cats did not kill humans but they were mean bastard. In the script for my graphic novel Covet, one of my characters is attacked by feral dogs.

http://bit.ly/10lyqj

Me on Robert Brewer's Blog Poetic Asides through Writers Digest

When I was a kid Writer's Digest was my Bible. My mother purchased me a subscription from the time I was thirteen that I maintained into my early twenties. I watched the mag go through many incarnations. I loved Lawrence Block's monthly articles. I learned more about writing from his wonderful biographical essays and his Write for your Life program than any creative writing class or writer's group or conferences. His energy is endless and his prolificness is legendary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Block
His website http://www.lawrenceblock.com/index_flash.htm
I liked WD's back page Chronicle and the profiles of famous writers, oh, and the Grammar Grappler, although interesting, was usually beyond my limited abilities at the time as a grammarian, but still interesting. I keep all my back issues of Writer's Digest at my mother's house on a shelf in her basement with all of my back issues of Rolling Stone, my comic books and other periodicals from my youth.
I was delighted to be invited to share my opinion about writer's block with Mr. Brewer. I had no idea my opinion would be posted with other writer's opinions on his Writer's Digest Website blog Poetic Asides.
I'm thrilled.
Thank you, Mr. Robert Brewer
L

Here is Mr. Brewer's question and my response:

Poets Helping Poets: Breaking through a writing slump
Posted by Robert

"Last Friday, I tossed out a question to the members of the Poetic Asides group on Facebook: How do you break through a writing slump?

Whether it's been days, weeks, months, or even years, we've all been through dry spots. Well, as I learned from the response, most of us have anyway.

In my own case, I find that reading new (to me) voices is what helps the most. Though listening to the news or going for a run, both usually work as well.

The response was so massive that I had to be selective with the answers, but here's what some of the poets wrote:"

I write book reviews for various online and print mags, so finding time to write my own stuff is hard. When I try to balance reviewing, family, my money jobs and my own pieces, I find that writer's block doesn't exist for me anymore. Because the reviews are on a deadline and I want to continue to be paid, I have to force myself to be a professional and write even when I don't feel like writing. Normally, when I am 5-10 minutes into the piece it starts to flow.
The reviewing and journalism has put my own writing in perspective and has made me realize, that if you're a writer, you write. Because my time is limited, I take the time that I'm given to work on my own stuff as a gift. If I have an hour or so, I apply Cory Doctorow's 20-minute method. For example, I know realistically that I do not have large chunks of time to write my novel. I give myself 25-30 minutes to write a chunk. I literally set my PDA alarm to go off in 20 minutes. The time goes by so fast, and when the alarm goes off I am usually in a white hot writing frenzy and I stop in the middle and I cannot wait to go back to it the next day.
I apply this technique to all my writing: play-writing, short stories, and even poetry. When you have finite time to write, you learn to inspire yourself. The book reviewing also teaches me to have more perspective about my own stuff. I discover quickly what works and what does not work.
My advice: Write like there is no tomorrow, because there isn't. Don't worry too much about revision or research, that's later. Get that initial draft down and write your butt off.
-Lee Gooden

Here is the link To Poetics Aside:
casides/Poets+Helping+Poets+Breaking+Through+A+Writing+Slump.aspx

The Prisoner Yesterday and the Future

Patrick Macgoohan has passed and we have lost a television series icon. AMC is running the entirety of the Prisoner online and they are ready to launch a remake of the series. I'll have to watch the show first before I can judge it. I am skeptical. Remember the Pretender? The Prisoner series worked so well due to the reflection of the time period...Don't know if that sense of "innocence lost" can be repeated. We have become a very jaded demographic of viewers where nothing surprises or shocks us anymore. Ah, early morning ramblings. Anyway, besides being an actor in the series, Macgoohan created it and wrote and directed many episodes. Here is a link to AMC's online episodes http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-prisoner-1960s-series/

L

RESEARCH: Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive

This article from New Scientist goes hand in hand with the research I have been checking out for my Stargate Stargate Atlantis cross over comic book script. Science Fiction is a hoot, but this real shit scares me more than anything that I can come up with out of my sick imagination.
L



Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive

* 12:02 31 August 2005 by Shaoni Bhattacharya

"A parasitic worm that makes the grasshopper it invades jump into water and commit suicide does so by chemically influencing its brain, a study of the insects' proteins reveal.

The parasitic Nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm to transform into an aquatic adult. Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would - causing them to seek out and plunge into water.

Once in the water the mature hairworms - which are three to four times longer that their hosts when extended - emerge and swim away to find a mate, leaving their host dead or dying in the water. David Biron, one of the study team at IRD in Montpellier, France, notes that other parasites can also manipulate their hosts' behaviour: "'Enslaver' fungi make their insect hosts die perched in a position that favours the dispersal of spores by the wind, for example."

But the "mechanisms underlying this intriguing parasitic strategy remain poorly understood, generally", he says."

The article continues here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7927-parasites-brainwash-grasshoppers-into-death-dive.html


http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn7927/dn7927-1_439.jpg

Robotics research

The study of motion can be divided into kinematics and dynamics. Direct kinematics refers to the calculation of end effector position, orientation, velocity and acceleration when the corresponding joint values are known. Inverse kinematics refers to the opposite case in which required joint values are calculated for given end effector values, as done in path planning. Some special aspects of kinematics include handling of redundancy (different possibilities of performing the same movement), collision avoidance and singularity avoidance. Once all relevant positions, velocities and accelerations have been calculated using kinematics, methods from the field of dynamics are used to study the effect of forces upon these movements. Direct dynamics refers to the calculation of accelerations in the robot once the applied forces are known. Direct dynamics is used in computer simulations of the robot. Inverse dynamics refers to the calculation of the actuator forces necessary to create a prescribed end effector acceleration. This information can be used to improve the control algorithms of a robot.

In each area mentioned above, researchers strive to develop new concepts and strategies, improve existing ones and improve the interaction between these areas. To do this, criteria for "optimal" performance and ways to optimize design, structure and control of robots must be developed and implemented.

Borderline Personality Disorder: No Man Is an Island

A new study provides an illuminating look into the brains of sufferers.

By Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is one of the most damaging
mental illnesses. By itself, this severe mental illness accounts for up
to 10 percent of patients in psychiatric care and 20 percent of those
who have to be hospitalized. The defining characteristic of BPD is a
pervasive instability in the patient’s life, especially when it comes
to interpersonal relationships. BPD patients also have difficulty
controlling their impulses and regulating their emotions. Close
relationships of patients are often tumultuous and compromised by
highly unpredictable behavior that can leave others baffled, angry and
frightened. This behavior exerts a tremendous toll not only on those
afflicted with the illness, but also on their social network and the
health care system. (A well known, if dramatized, example is the
character Glenn Close played in the movie Fatal Attraction.)
Surprisingly, despite the importance of this disorder, little is yet
known about what brain mechanisms might underlie it. In a recent paper in the journal Science, Brooks King-Casas and colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine provide an illuminating look into the brain in people suffering from BPD.



In this study, patients and healthy controls played a game in which
money is exchanged between an investor, who decides how much to invest,
and a trustee, who decides how much of the investment, which is tripled
during the transfer, to repay. For example, if the investor decides to
invest $10, then the trustee has $30 to divide ($10 x 3). Although this
game is at first glance about money, it is really about the development
of trust.
If both players cooperate, both benefit from the exchange, much more so
than if the investor keeps most of the money for him- or herself.



This trade requires a degree of trust
between the players that is built up through repeated fair offers,
however. An investor who does not trust the other player will not put
in much money. This small offering is exactly what happened at the end
of games with BPD trustees, indicating that they had difficulties
establishing and maintaining cooperative relationships. In contrast,
players without BPD (they were the healthy “control” subjects) still
had high levels of at the end of the game. They accomplished such
amounts through a “coaxing” strategy, in which wary investors
transferring small amounts of money were encouraged by generous
returns, which signal trustworthiness. The study found that healthy
players used this strategy twice as often as BPD subjects.



Investing in Trust



To find out why patients behaved this way, the researchers used
neuroimaging (fMRI) to study brain activation of trustees confronted
with a small investment, which usually signals a lack of trust on the
investor side. Although most healthy trustees would respond to such a
move with the coaxing strategy—is a demonstration of their own
trustworthiness—patients with BPD did not. Furthermore, the fMRI scans
revealed a crucial difference between BPD subjects and healthy players.
In healthy subjects, a region of the brain called the anterior insula
seemed to neurally represent the investment level, so that small
investments corresponded to large activation and vice versa. In BPD
patients, however, no such correlation existed. As expected from
previous work, this same brain area also represented the amount of
money subjects were about to repay to the investor, so that a large
activation in the insula predicted a small payment from the trustee.
Strikingly, however, this correlation was now the case in both subjects
with BPD and healthy controls. In other words, although healthy
controls had insula activations both to “distrustful” offers from
investors and “stingy” repayments, subjects with BPD represented only
their own actions. Their impairment seemed to selectively concern the
representation of the other player.



The anterior insula has long been associated with the representation of uncomfortable bodily sensations, such as pain.
In addition, many studies have since shown that this area also strongly
reacts to adverse or uncomfortable occurrences in social interactions,
such as unfairness, excessive risk, frustration or impending loss of
social status. This body of work suggests that the anterior insula
tracks information about the intentions and behavior of others and
colors them with a feeling of discomfort. If true, then one reason BPD
subjects may be impaired in maintaining cooperation is because they
lack the “gut feeling” (corresponding to the anterior insula signal)
that there is a problem with the relationship. Because they can’t
detect the breakdown of trust, they are less likely to trust others at
all.



A Network Problem?



This exciting finding prompts many new questions. The first is, What
causes this abnormal brain activity? Most research indicates that BPD
commonly arises from a combination of genetic predisposition and severe
early child trauma. Not everyone traumatized as a child develops BPD,
but it could be that a combination of risk genes makes the impact of
trauma on the developing brain more severe and enduring. It would be of
high interest to determine whether such genetic variants, which are
beginning to be identified, compromise the anterior insula structure
and function. Because no brain region operates in isolation, it will
also be relevant to fully characterize the brain network of which the
insula is a part.



Beyond the domain of BPD, the innovative approach used in this study of
a personality disorder can also be applied to other severe mental
illnesses in which social dysfunction is a prominent source of
disability, such as schizophrenia or autism. Such an advance should be
warmly welcomed by patients, their therapists and researchers.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=borderline-personality-disorder&page=2

Jaws 2009

Oh Boy, just when you thought it was safe

to tread the waters of the GOP again!

Jill Greenberg

Post #6436 by Warren Ellis on September 14th, 2008 in photography

(via Siege)

grist: autism

A new genetic analysis of large, inbred Middle Eastern families found that genes linked to a heightened risk of autism are crucial to a child's ability to learn.

A group of scientists, led by a team at Children's Hospital Boston, has pinpointed six new genes that may contribute to autism, a disorder characterized by asocial behavior, difficulty communicating and repetitive actions that affects an estimated one in 150 children born in the U.S. each year. They report in Science that all of the linked genes are involved in forming new and stronger connections, called synapses, between nerve cellsin the brain, which is the biological basis of learning and memory formation.

"We're showing, on the one hand, that autism seems to have a large genetic component," says study co-author Christopher Walsh, chief of genetics at Children's Hospital. "But, the genes that are involved are actually those that are involved in responding to the environment and learning."

The findings, Walsh says, reinforces the importance of early diagnosis of autism and intervention, particularly behavioral therapy and learning in enriched environments through repeated activities. Performing these sorts of tasks may help strengthen cellular connections, compensating for the malfunctioning genes.

The researchers studied 88 families in which one or more children had been diagnosed with autism, and the parents of each autistic child were cousins. Marrying second and third—and even first cousins—is not uncommon in the Middle East, and by studying such families scientists were able to track recessive genetic traits (caused by mutations that only affect individuals with two copies of the flawed genes). Such traits occur far more frequently in inbred families than in others.

The team found a total of six mutations affecting genes that had previously not been linked to autism. The mutations came in the form of deletions, where part or all of both copies of the genes were missing in a child with the disorder. All of the genes are known to be involved in parts of the same process: creating and strengthening synapses.

Normally, when nerve cells (neurons) activate in response to an environmental factor (such as processing a new face or a new sound), synapses between two active cells change to provide stronger connections so the cells can pass on information more efficiently. As the brain develops, new connections are continuously formed among nerve cells, reinforced and, in some instances, broken as the brain starts to mature and divvy up its different functions to specific groups of neurons.

According to the findings, "All of the relevant mutations could disrupt the formation of vital neural connections during a critical period when experience is shaping the brain," says Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Md. To wit, most children are diagnosed with autism between the ages of one and three years of age.

Walsh says the team believes these deletions—which in most cases found here only remove some, but not all, of the DNA that makes up a gene—may mean that the genes can regain some of their normal function. In fact, some of these genes may just be switched off. "This presents the possibility that in some kids we could get the gene going again without necessarily having to put it back in the brain," he says.

Jim Sutcliffe, a molecular physiologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., in a Science editorial notes that the majority of autism research is geared toward prenatal development, even though the brain continues to develop well after a child is born. "Experience and environmental input play an important role in subsequent development," he says. He calls the notion that learning in early life is disrupted by these autism genes "an intriguing proposal," but says that further research is needed to validate it.

Dan Geschwind, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that to test the hypothesis that autism genes affect synaptic strength, it would be important to examine the 20 to 30 other genes that have been implicated in autism and see which ones also play a role in strengthening neuronal connections. "If its a significant proportion," he says, "that would provide support for the hypothesis being put forward."

Walsh notes that many children diagnosed with autism tend to show vast improvement when they are placed in environments that allow them to practice learning repetitively. He says that these activities essentially train the neurons to make up for their lost function.

"Our work reinforces the importance of early intervention and behavioral therapy," he says. "The more we understand about genetics the more we understand how important the environment is."

a mind is a terrible thing to...waste?

Charlie Stross is a great Sci-fi writer. Hell, the man is brilliant in so many different fields, I can't list them. Read his stuff and check out his website.

http://.antipope.org/charlie/

People are entitled to their opinion, but man, read the following: Some people shoud just keep their uninformed ignorant rantings to themselves.

"The book is not that interesting, as tales of desperation and survival are actually quite common."

What do the public really think of literature?

Here are some examples, in the form of reviews culled from the reader comments on Amazon.com.

1984 by George Orwell:

Caitlyn from Atlanta, GA, wrote: "1984 is the worst book I have ever read. I would advise anyone who is thinking about reading this book to reconcider! George Orwell is not a bad writer, however, this book he does not do evry well on, as some of his others. Prehaps he was getting old and lost his touch. Animal Farm was okay, but 1984 was horrible. It took him forever, it seemed like, to get into the accual book. If someone were to take out all of the useless part of 1984, it would be half as long. Why would he wirte so much about nothing? I havent ever meet someone who could wirte such a boring book about the goverment. I have meet many people who have loved this book, but i dispised it. I am not at all intrested in the goverment. This may be part of the reason that I didnt like it. I would advise you not to read this book."

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez:

R. Vanderhoof wrote: "I spent several weeks slogging through this book and found it to be very repetitive and tedious in the extreme. Keeping track of the family tree is a constant effort. At best, Marquez reveals an egalitarian attitude that seems to pervade the Americas south of the Rio Grande (no wonder those countries are in constant economic trouble). Marquez should study supply side economics as described by Milton Friedman, another Nobel Prize winner, in order to give his book better balance."

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley:

Ashley Lue wrote: "This was the worst book that I have ever read! The way that Huxley wrote the book was awful. He was writing about something that could never happen to our society. Back then he thought that our world would pretty much go to hell and the book portrayed the world that we should be living in today. Nothing that he said made sense. I don't understand why he would want anyone to live in that weird world that those people had to live in. People should have emotions and actual relationships. No one should be punished like that. I advise you not to read this book, unless you want to fall asleep!! :)"

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:

goosedog 69 (New York) wrote: "if you don't like reading books with way too much detail than don't buy this book. when i was reading it i couldn't understand anything it said. if you are older maybe you wouldn't think it's boring, or if you like this author's books, but i thought it was very boring and it took me forever and a half to read."

A reader wrote: "I found this book difficult to follow and hard to hold my interest. I am an English teacher so I don't think it's me. I was revved about the book and started it immediately unpon receipt. I didn't even finish it--which is something I can say about few books..."

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer:

[A — presumably — different] A reader wrote: "his book has potential but fails to deliver the goods. too much time is invested for the pay off. i hated the time machine sequences they were a total waste of time, eventually i just skiped them to help get the book over. this is a shame because there were some very good parts to the book a good editor could have improved it by trimming a few hundred pages."

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:

Son of Sammy wrote: "i just read this book. everybody like always talks about how great it is and everything. but i don't think so. like, it's been done before, right?? soooo cliched. omg."

The Quiet American by Graham Greene:

Jorge Frid (in Mexico City) wrote: "AT first you think that you are going to read about some secret agent in Vietnam that was killed, but when you see that the story of the book is not that man, is a journalist from England that doesn't want to go back to his country you will be disappointed, the book doesn't have any main story, it has the story of the journalist, his girlfriend (who was also the girlfriend of the "secret agent") and many more, but you will not be interested in one story at all, a real waste of time this book."

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe:

Newton Ooi (in Phoenix, AZ) wrote: "If imitation is the highest form of praise, then this book must be one of the most praised books in the English canon. A man from a middle-class upbringing leaves it and ends up stuck on a tropical island. This story would inspire Swiss Family Robinson, Castaway, and probably Lord of the Flies. Mr. Crusoe is a white, Englishman with a wife and kids. After the wife dies, he leaves the kids to go on his own and to serve God. He ends up stuck on an island by himself. There he encounters cannibalistic natives, and one of their intended victims. The former scares him, and he essentially enslaves the latter, teaching him to call him Master.

"The book is not that interesting, as tales of desperation and survival are actually quite common."

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy:

A reader wrote: "I love classic novels. Some of my favorites: Gone with the wind/The catcher in the rye/Huck Finn/The Iliad..I adore Shakespeare... this book was B-O-R-I-N-G!!! I stopped reading at 400 pages. I am someone that almost never stops reading books. I couldn't stand it any longer. I don't mind the parts the were actually about Anna and human relationships. I could not stand all of the boring Russian politic talk or Levin and his boring farming or hunting talk. AHH! I do not recommend this book. If I truly hated someone, I would them to read this book."

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck:

Jef4Jesus wrote: "So, I'm only on page 478 of 619, but I've been disgusted at the amount of profanity. So far I've found more than 500 uses of profanity! On average every page (with relatively big writing, even) has more than one swear. Yikes! I'm never going to read Grapes of Wrath again, and won't be recommending it to anyone. If you don't like profanity, be careful."

M. Landis wrote: "This book was 600 pages written purly about a bunch of hicks from Oklahoma starving. Thanks, but no thanks."


Posted by Charlie Stross at 11:05 AM