who you are..,

NYTimes | Before Kahneman and Tversky, people who thought about social problems and human behavior tended to assume that we are mostly rational agents. They assumed that people have control over the most important parts of their own thinking. They assumed that people are basically sensible utility-maximizers and that when they depart from reason it’s because some passion like fear or love has distorted their judgment.

Kahneman and Tversky conducted experiments. They proved that actual human behavior often deviates from the old models and that the flaws are not just in the passions but in the machinery of cognition. They demonstrated that people rely on unconscious biases and rules of thumb to navigate the world, for good and ill. Many of these biases have become famous: priming, framing, loss-aversion.

Kahneman reports on some delightful recent illustrations from other researchers. Pro golfers putt more accurately from all distances when putting for par than when putting for birdie because they fear the bogie more than they desire the birdie. Israeli parole boards grant parole to about 35 percent of the prisoners they see, except when they hear a case in the hour just after mealtime. In those cases, they grant parole 65 percent of the time. Shoppers will buy many more cans of soup if you put a sign atop the display that reads “Limit 12 per customer.”

Kahneman and Tversky were not given to broad claims. But the work they and others did led to the reappreciation of several old big ideas:

We are dual process thinkers. We have two interrelated systems running in our heads. One is slow, deliberate and arduous (our conscious reasoning). The other is fast, associative, automatic and supple (our unconscious pattern recognition). There is now a complex debate over the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two systems. In popular terms, think of it as the debate between “Moneyball” (look at the data) and “Blink” (go with your intuition).

We are not blank slates. All humans seem to share similar sets of biases. There is such a thing as universal human nature. The trick is to understand the universals and how tightly or loosely they tie us down.

We are players in a game we don’t understand. Most of our own thinking is below awareness. Fifty years ago, people may have assumed we are captains of our own ships, but, in fact, our behavior is often aroused by context in ways we can’t see. Our biases frequently cause us to want the wrong things. Our perceptions and memories are slippery, especially about our own mental states. Our free will is bounded. We have much less control over ourselves than we thought.

This research yielded a different vision of human nature and a different set of debates. The work of Kahneman and Tversky was a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves.

They also figured out ways to navigate around our shortcomings. Kahneman champions the idea of “adversarial collaboration” — when studying something, work with people you disagree with. Tversky had a wise maxim: “Let us take what the terrain gives.” Don’t overreach. Understand what your circumstances are offering.

Many people are exploring the inner wilderness. Kahneman and Tversky are like the Lewis and Clark of the mind.

the prophet (PBUH) ridin too?

Mohammed meets the prophets Ismail, Is-hak and Lot in paradise. From the Apocalypse of Muhammad, written in 1436 in Herat, Afghanistan (now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris).

Scribd | This paper will highlight some of primary evidence for entheogenic plant use in Islamic cults that partake of a vastly older legacy of ritual plant use. The accumulated research on entheogens and religions demands that certain traditions be reevaluated in light a continuing and coherent symbolism that enshrines holy plants as high mysteries in diverse faiths. Following thesoma/ haoma complex through Asia and Chinese Shamanism and into Persian and Islamic cults the use of entheogens meets with traditions in the ancient Middle East that shared doctrines of magic plants and cup rituals of visionary wine. The Greek, Semitic and Hermetic traditions merge with the shamanic techniques that persist in the esoteric symbolism of the Shia Muslims and Sufi as demonstrated in their holy books, art and poetry. The alchemical tradition thus emerges has having a definite entheogenic context that was cherished and protected by initiates from the profane. This speculative hypothesis rests on the collective evidence of religious traditions surrounding Islam that possessed similar rituals and reverence for plants that becomes a hidden aspect of mystical Islam.

Muhammad the Prophet Shaman

The prophet Muhammad spoke to the angelic messenger of God and underwent visionary initiatory voyages to the heavenly and infernal regions (1). He mounted the mysterious shamanic beast,al -buraaq, which means “lightning” in Arabic and which begins to draw associations with mushrooms, as they have ancient folklore links with lightning and thunder perhaps due to their sudden appearances after rains. Wasson notes thatBanat ’u’rrad , “Daughters of Thunder” are used as an expression for fungus, but an unnamed species, in the dictionary of classical Arabic in his discussion of “Lightingbolt and Mushrooms” (Wasson 1986). Though described in Islamic literature as being white and something like a donkey or a mule, the fabulous creature is curiously depicted in some examples of Islamic art as being red and white in a design consistent with Amanita muscaria mushroom, the entheogen suspected to be a major candidate for the soama/haoma and the symbolic colors of alchemy.

In the above images, Muhammad is seen riding the red and white creature, again the colors of the Amanita mushroom, in his shamanic night journeyisra' and ascension to heaven mi'raj reminiscent of the ascent of Arda Viraf who takes a narcotic and takes a visionary flight through heaven and hell (Seguy 1977). This representation of Buraq may indicate that regional cults viewed the Islamic revelation through their own shamanic traditions or that Islam retained the ritual heritages of the ancient world. These traditions would be enshrouded in the mysteries of Shia gnosis, alchemy and Sufism that spread into Europe. The other image depicts Imam Ali on a similar creature with the red and white colors and in a scene entitled “Gabriel Shows Ali’s Valor to the Prophet” from the 15th century Persian epic of Ali, the Khavaran Nameh, which shows his steed in these colors particularly in scenes of battle where it is grey in other scenes though more research is needed to fully develop these curious depictions of the changing mounts (Birjandi 2004). Another uncle of the Prophet Muhammad is Amir Hamza, whose folktales date back to the time of the Prophet and whose exploits unite Chinese, Indian Persian, Greek and Arabian cultures, also rides a similarly described winged-demon steed Ashqar Devzad (Lakhnavi and Bilgrami 2007). This series of tales involves treasures under trees and occult lore of the Prophet Khizir and Imam Ali (even before he was born) in aiding in battles and traveling to the land of thejinns for temporal and spiritual jihad for the True Faith anticipating the coming of the Prophet Muhammad.

the hidden world

Video - excerpted interview with Prof. Carl Ruck.

Amazon | A thorough investigation of European fairy tales reveals a rich and enchanting psychedelic lore.

In this academic masterpiece, Professor Carl Ruck and his band of sleuthers (Prof. José Gonzalez, Dr. Blaise Staples and Mark Hoffman) uncover the facts regarding whether or not entheogenic drug use was prominent throughout European fairytales, legends and folklore, teasing out the intricate clues in their most thorough investigation on this topic to date.

By comparing these ancient stories and untangling the threads that seem unrelated in their weaves, we come to see that the mysteries of the entheogenic rites were not lost to the Europeans, and that European folklore is rich with evidence that should make anyone who cares to investigate the many thorough citations a believer without a doubt.

In 1968 Gordon Wasson published Soma in which he argued that the Hindu Soma of the Rig Vedas was the Amanita muscaria or fly-agaric mushroom. Wasson opted to argue in this and subsequent publications that he could find no evidence of mushroom use in European ancestry. As he states on page 176: "I shall begin by saying where in Europe's past I have not found the cult of the sacred mushroom." He then goes on to discuss witchcraft, the druids and berserkers.

But from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, to the werewolves and the mysteries of lycanthropy, to vampires, to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, to the berserkers and many others, by following the threads of these stories Ruck and crew find shamanic stories embedded throughout European folklore stemming from Druidic, Mithraic, Manichaean and Catharic histories, right into modern-day Christianity.

This book is a linguistic, as much as historical and mythological investigation of religious and folkloric themes. It's a deep and powerful book. It's one of those books I would happily read several times over to discover what previous reads missed.

As someone who has read many, if not most, of their citations, I can attest to the thoroughness of their investigation. I am genuinely impressed by the quality of this presentation - the eloquence of which they lay on the late Dr. Staples. But it is clear that in this book they've all gone out of their way to present a thorough and well argued masterpiece.

Charting new territory

The Hidden World as a title does not refer to the theme of occult secret societies and mystery schools (like Eleusis) and the suppression of pagan rites in the Pharmacratic Inquisition, but to the hidden world of the fairies, the gnomes and dwarves - the hidden world that lies just beyond our normal senses. It is important that people understand this while reading this book. I should make clear that the book does discuss those themes. However, it is important to understand the proper context of the hidden world on which the authors are focused.

This book should be recognized as one of the best pieces on entheogenic scholarship to date. It is by far, in my opinion, the authors' best work. The writing pose, the depth of the study, the quality and originality of research all weigh heavily in my evaluation; and I'm not one who has shied away from being critical of these authors in the past.

Weaknesses in the book, two of which should have been properly addressed by the publisher but were not, include: A) lack of illustrations. It is grueling to have to look up the illustrations one by one (even if I already had many of them). This book was clearly written with the intention of illustrations being included, but for some reason, their publisher did not include them. For the price of the book, the publisher could have easily done so. Thankfully the included DVD contains wonderful illustrations for the section Heretical Visionary Sacraments (chapter 2). B) There is no standard bibliography, which I find a great hindrance to researching their citations. You have to go to the footnotes of each page to find the citation there, rather than a simple bibliography at the back of the book. C) Lastly, this book discusses at length the many stories of Amanita muscaria and the shamanic tradition of urine consumption. But it should be noted that other mushrooms (psilocybe), and other entheogens, can also be recycled. A more encompassing investigation with this inclusion might yield some fantastic information and is something that deserves focus.

mushrooms myth and mithras

Citylights | Anthropological evidence has long suggested that psychedelic plants have played important roles in indigenous communities for thousands of years, but most scholarship does not address their larger sphere of influence on western culture.

In their groundbreaking new book, Mushrooms, Myths & Mithras, classics scholar Carl Ruck and friends reveal compelling evidence suggesting that psychedelic mushroom use was equally influential in early Europe, where it was central to initiation ceremonies for the Roman elite.

Through art and archeology, we discover that Nero was the first Emperor to be initiated by secret "magical dinners," and that most of his successors embraced the ritual and its sacramental use of the psychedelic mushroom as a source of spiritual transcendence. The secret religion was officially banned after Roman Conversion, but aspects of its practices were assimilated or co-opted by Christianity, and have influenced many subsequent secret societies, including the Freemasons. Mushrooms, Myths & Mithras is a fascinating historical exploration of a powerful force kept hidden behind the scenes for thousands of years.

Praise for Mushrooms, Myths & Mithras:

"This is real renaissance scholarship. Mushrooms, Myths & Mithras is a brilliant and exciting synthesis of data gleaned from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, botany, linguistics, astronomy, archaeology, art history, pharmacology and classical literature. The history of recreational drug use it distills from the material and literary sources is both captivating and compelling. It effortlessly straddles the modern academic divide between the sciences and the arts. The authors' multidisciplinary approach sets a higher standard for research in the humanities." —D. C.A. Hillman, author of The Chemical Muse

Full Interview with Carl Ruck by Jan Irwin of Gnostic Media Research here.

drug culture, ecstasy and philosophy in ancient greece

Video - excerpted interview with Michael Rinella.

joergo.de | Dr. Rinella, what significance, what weight did the Greeks of the Classical Period attach to intoxication?

Let us consider the question of significance or awareness first. It surprises me that there are many analysts who believe that intoxication was not a condition subjected to a constant, regular, and on-going ethical inquiry in ancient Greece, simply because ancient thought lacked, to give one example, something like our contemporary theory of addiction. In other words they argue that the ancient Greeks had no “drug problem” and were in a sense oblivious about drugs. Well of course that is true if by “drug problem” you are thinking of the specific set of responses to recreational drug use in play since roughly the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. But if you consider Greek thought on intoxication in its own terms you’ll find a discourse as rich and complex as the ancient discussion of food and sex.

And the emphasis?

The question of weight or emphasis is equally important. In contemporary market economies non-productive drug use has been problematized as a disease condition to be subjected to a juridical intervention by a criminal justice system, a medico-therapeutic intervention by a drug-abuse system, or both because these systems tend to operate in loose conjunction or alliance with one another (each having a normalizing role within late-capitalist society). In ancient Greece intoxication was problematized largely on aesthetic grounds. At least until Plato, who was considerably more sophisticated than his peers in terms of understanding human psychology.

What were the parameters of an aesthetic appraisal of intoxication? And what did Plato change?

The central idea within the symposia of the elite was to drink well, and wisely. And by “drink well” they meant becoming intoxicated. If you met this goal your peers considered you properly aristocratic, refined, and a truly attractive human being. The ancient Greek poets speak of this constantly. To allow the mind to be completely unseated by a substance such as wine was considered boorish, ugly, and unattractive for several reasons. On the one hand it was considered unmanly; it made the warrior emotional and feminine. On another it led to hubristic behavior, something that was, in a culture heavily based on honor and shame rather than responsibility and guilt, about as taboo as you could get. The ugly side of intoxication was seen as a primary cause of discord in the social body politic, what the Greeks called stasis. In the politically charged atmosphere following the end of the Peloponnesian War and the trial and execution of Socrates Plato comes along and introduces a new way to think about social discord. For instance in the Republic he uses the term stasiazonta, or “stasis within” and this allows him to begin to question the value of intoxicated states from a new perspective.

Was the most common choice of intoxication at that time, wine, comparable with our wine today?

No, it really wasn’t, and this is a continuing source of misunderstanding. Ancient wine was frequently combined with other substances, including what we would today call “recreational drugs.” The surviving textual record offers ample proof of this but, as classicist Carl A. P. Ruck and a handful of others discovered, purely textual evidence was easy to dismiss or, worse, simply ignore. Now, however, the latest techniques of archeological analysis have confirmed the presence of other intoxicants in Greek wine, to the point it is simply incontrovertible. I’m thinking specifically of anthropologist Patrick E. McGovern’s works, like Ancient Wine.

who's not a salesman?

Video - Salesman by Albert Maysles

Sales IS the epitome of the psychopathology of American Capitalism. Salesmen capitalize on weaknesses due to human cognitive errors to dishonorably extract consumer's creative value (their hard-earned money). Bosses capitalize on salesmen by using same manipulative techniques on employees to extract most of their time and creativity. Sales bosses do absolutely nothing creative and yet extract most of the productive value of consumers and their employees. Dale.

Why do you impart (negative) morality to sales? I see sales itself, as inherently amoral. Surely you are not against consciously influencing the decisions of other people? Or consciously influencing yourself? MLK, Gandhi, Steve Jobs --and of course Hitler, David Duke, Bill Gates :). Whether I'm selling crack or a fitness regime, myself as a social success, a palatable worldview and coping strategy, or really killer solar panels, the goal is always to influence the behavior or worldview of others. DD.

the basic truth of the great-many-versus-very-few protest narrative

RollingStone | Anyway, if you listen to the whole Rush segment, you can hear frustration and croaking, bullfroggish anxiety in his voice at the fact of so many different politicians capitulating, at least verbally, to OWS. He’s sensing that politicians are seeing danger in the “99%” concept, and he's expressing dismay that everyone from Mitt Romney to Barack Obama is now trying hard to position himself as not being in the 1%.

This isn't evidence that mainstream politicians are caving to the movement, of course, but what it does show is that those same politicians are endorsing OWS rhetoric, and by extension tacitly admitting the basic truth of the great-many-versus-very-few protest narrative.

Rush chalks this up to a media deception, a mirage of TV images and “media-Democrat-industrial complex” manipulations designed to con the country into believing in the existence of a mass movement.

The reality, of course, is that people like Rush, Romney and Obama are all becoming cognizant of the deep frustrations that exist across the political spectrum and are growing desperate to prevent the powder keg from blowing completely – hence the intense effort to describe OWS as a top-down manipulation.

Of course the notion that this is all a media fabrication is ludicrous. Dylan Ratigan didn’t invent four million people in foreclosure, he didn’t invent ten trillion dollars in bailouts, and he didn’t invent Wall Street’s $160 billion bonus pool the year after the crash of its own creation.

People out there do not need media figures to tell them how fucked things are, or how pissed they should be that the same bankers who caused the crash are now enjoying state-supported bonuses in the billions, while everyone else gets squeezed. As someone who has been covering this stuff for three years, I can say with confidence that people across the country don’t need a push to be angry. They’re already there, and have been there for years. Rush should go hang out outside a foreclosure court in his home state of Florida for a few hours, if he wants to see where the rising heat under these protests is coming from.

Anyway, the hysterical responses from the Rushes of the world are just more signs that these protests are working. I never thought I’d see it, but some of the dukes and earls high up in America’s Great Tower of Bullshit are starting to blink a little bit. They seem genuinely freaked out that OWS doesn’t have leaders or a single set of demands, which in addition to being very encouraging is quite funny.

frame yourself before others frame you?

Video - Bill Maher New Rules on Occupy Wall Street

truthout | I was asked weeks ago by some in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement to make suggestions for how to frame the movement. I have hesitated so far because I think the movement should be framing itself. It's a general principle: Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you - the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends. I have so far hesitated to offer suggestions. But the movement appears to be maturing and entering a critical time when small framing errors could have large negative consequences. So, I thought it might be helpful to accept the invitation and start a discussion of how the movement might think about framing itself.

About framing: It's normal. Everybody engages in it all the time. Frames are just structures of thought that we use every day. All words in all languages are defined in terms of frame circuits in the brain. But, ultimately, framing is about ideas, about how we see the world, which determines how we act.

In politics, frames are part of competing moral systems that are used in political discourse and in charting political action. In short, framing is a moral enterprise: it says what the character of a movement is. All politics is moral. Political figures and movements always make policy recommendations claiming they are the right things to do. No political figure ever says do what I say because it's wrong! Or because it doesn't matter! Some moral principles or other lie behind every political policy agenda.

Two Moral Framing Systems in Politics
Conservatives have figured out their moral basis and you see it on Wall Street: It includes: The primacy of self-interest. Individual responsibility, but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is "deserving," defined by success. And the highest principle is the primacy of this moral system itself, which goes beyond Wall Street and the economy to other arenas: family life, social life, religion, foreign policy and especially government. Conservative "democracy" is seen as a system of governance and elections that fits this model.

Though OWS concerns go well beyond financial issues, your target is right: the application of these principles in Wall Street is central, since that is where the money comes from for elections, for media and for right-wing policy-making institutions of all sorts on all issues.

The alternative view of democracy is progressive: Democracy starts with citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that sense of care, taking responsibility both for oneself and for one's family, community, country, people in general and the planet. The role of government is to protect and empower all citizens equally via The Public: public infrastructure, laws and enforcement, health, education, scientific research, protection, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, and on and on. Nobody makes it one their own. If you got wealthy, you depended on The Public and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The Public so that others can benefit in the future. Moreover, the wealthy depend on those who work and who deserve a fair return for their contribution to our national life. Corporations exist to make life better for most people. Their reason for existing is as public as it is private.

how to spot a liar

Video - Pam Myer How to spot a liar.

TED | Okay, now I don't want to alarm anybody in this room, but it's just come to my attention that the person to your right is a liar. (Laughter) Also, the person to your left is a liar. Also the person sitting in your very seats is a liar. We're all liars. What I'm going to do today is I'm going to show you what the research says about why we're all liars, how you can become a liespotter and why you might want to go the extra mile and go from liespotting to truth seeking, and ultimately to trust building.

Now speaking of trust, ever since I wrote this book, "Liespotting," no one wants to meet me in person anymore, no, no, no, no, no. They say, "It's okay, we'll email you." (Laughter) I can't even get a coffee date at Starbucks. My husband's like, "Honey, deception? Maybe you could have focused on cooking. How about French cooking?"

So before I get started, what I'm going to do is I'm going to clarify my goal for you, which is not to teach a game of Gotcha. Liespotters aren't those nitpicky kids, those kids in the back of the room that are shouting, "Gotcha! Gotcha! Your eyebrow twitched. You flared your nostril. I watch that TV show 'Lie To Me.' I know you're lying." No, liespotters are armed with scientific knowledge of how to spot deception. They use it to get to the truth, and they do what mature leaders do everyday; they have difficult conversations with difficult people, sometimes during very difficult times. And they start up that path by accepting a core proposition, and that proposition is the following: Lying is a cooperative act. Think about it, a lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.

So I know it may sound like tough love, but look, if at some point you got lied to, it's because you agreed to get lied to. Truth number one about lying: Lying's a cooperative act. Now not all lies are harmful. Sometimes we're willing participants in deception for the sake of social dignity, maybe to keep a secret that should be kept secret, secret. We say, "Nice song." "Honey, you don't look fat in that, no." Or we say, favorite of the digiratti, "You know, I just fished that email out of my spam folder. So sorry."

But there are times when we are unwilling participants in deception. And that can have dramatic costs for us. Last year saw 997 billion dollars in corporate fraud alone in the United States. That's an eyelash under a trillion dollars. That's seven percent of revenues. Deception can cost billions. Think Enron, Madoff, the mortgage crisis. Or in the case of double agents and traitors, like Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames, lies can betray our country, they can compromise our security, they can undermine democracy, they can cause the deaths of those that defend us.

Deception is actually serious business. This con man, Henry Oberlander, he was such an effective con man British authorities say he could have undermined the entire banking system of the Western world. And you can't find this guy on Google; you can't find him anywhere. He was interviewed once, and he said the following. He said, "Look, I've got one rule." And this was Henry's rule, he said, "Look, everyone is willing to give you something. They're ready to give you something for whatever it is they're hungry for." And that's the crux of it. If you don't want to be deceived, you have to know, what is it that you're hungry for? And we all kind of hate to admit it. We wish we were better husbands, better wives, smarter, more powerful, taller, richer -- the list goes on. Lying is an attempt to bridge that gap, to connect our wishes and our fantasies about who we wish we were, how we wish we could be, with what we're really like. And boy are we willing to fill in those gaps in our lives with lies. Fist tap Arnach.

the pattern behind self-deception

Video - Michael Shermer explains the pattern behind self-deception.

TED | So since I was here last in '06, we discovered that global climate change is turning out to be a pretty serious issue, so we covered that fairly extensively in Skeptic magazine. We investigate all kinds of scientific and quasi-scientific controversies, but it turns out we don't have to worry about any of this because the world's going to end in 2012.

Another update: You will recall I introduced you guys to the Quadro Tracker. It's like a water dowsing device. It's just a hollow piece of plastic with an antenna that swivels around. And you walk around, and it points to things. Like if you're looking for marijuana in students' lockers, it'll point right to somebody. Oh, sorry. (Laughter) This particular one that was given to me finds golf balls, especially if you're at a golf course and you check under enough bushes. Well, under the category of "What's the harm of silly stuff like this?" this device, the ADE 651, was sold to the Iraqi government for 40,000 dollars apiece. It's just like this one, completely worthless, in which it allegedly worked by "electrostatic magnetic ion attraction," which translates to "pseudoscientific baloney" -- would be the nice word -- in which you string together a bunch of words that sound good, but it does absolutely nothing. In this case, at trespass points, allowing people to go through because your little tracker device said they were okay, actually cost lives. So there is a danger to pseudoscience, in believing in this sort of thing.

So what I want to talk about today is belief. I want to believe, and you do too. And in fact, I think my thesis here is that belief is the natural state of things. It is the default option. We just believe. We believe all sorts of things. Belief is natural; disbelief, skepticism, science, is not natural. It's more difficult. It's uncomfortable to not believe things. So like Fox Mulder on "X-Files," who wants to believe in UFOs? Well, we all do, and the reason for that is because we have a belief engine in our brains. Essentially, we are pattern-seeking primates. We connect the dots: A is connected to B; B is connected to C. And sometimes A really is connected to B, and that's called association learning.

We find patterns, we make those connections, whether it's Pavlov's dog here associating the sound of the bell with the food, and then he salivates to the sound of the bell, or whether it's a Skinnerian rat, in which he's having an association between his behavior and a reward for it, and therefore he repeats the behavior. In fact, what Skinner discovered is that, if you put a pigeon in a box like this, and he has to press one of these two keys, and he tries to figure out what the pattern is, and you give him a little reward in the hopper box there -- if you just randomly assign rewards such that there is no pattern, they will figure out any kind of pattern. And whatever they were doing just before they got the reward, they repeat that particular pattern. Sometimes it was even spinning around twice counterclockwise, once clockwise and peck the key twice. And that's called superstition, and that, I'm afraid, we will always have with us.

I call this process "patternicity" -- that is, the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise. When we do this process, we make two types of errors. A Type I error, or false positive, is believing a pattern is real when it's not. Our second type of error is a false negative. A Type II error is not believing a pattern is real when it is. So let's do a thought experiment. You are a hominid three million years ago walking on the plains of Africa. Your name is Lucy, okay? And you hear a rustle in the grass. Is it a dangerous predator, or is it just the wind? Your next decision could be the most important one of your life. Well, if you think that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator and it turns out it's just the wind, you've made an error in cognition, made a Type I error, false positive. But no harm. You just move away. You're more cautious. You're more vigilant. On the other hand, if you believe that the rustle in the grass is just the wind, and it turns out it's a dangerous predator, you're lunch. You've just won a Darwin award. You've been taken out of the gene pool. Fist tap Arnach.

beyond nature vs. nurture

The Scientist | A journalist once asked the behavioral psychologist Donald Hebb whether a person’s genes or environment mattered most to the development of personality. Hebb replied that the question was akin to asking which feature of a rectangle—length or width—made the most important contribution to its area.

The “nature vs. nurture” conundrum was reinvigorated when genes were identified as the units of heredity, containing information that directs and influences development. When the human genome was sequenced in 2001, the hope was that all such questions would be answered. In the intervening decade, it has become apparent that there are many more questions than before.

We’ve reached a point where most people are savvy enough to know that the correct response isn’t “nature” or “nurture,” but some combination of the two. Yet scientists and laymen alike still spend too much time and effort trying to quantify the relative importance of nature and nurture.

Recent advances in neuroscience make a compelling case for finally abandoning the nature vs. nurture debate to focus on understanding the mechanisms through which genes and environments are perpetually entwined throughout an individual’s lifetime. As neurobiologists who study stress, we believe that research in this area will help reframe the study of human nature.

Researchers have historically approached the study of stress from two perspectives: 1) a physiological account of the stress response, which consists of tracking the stress hormone cortisol and its effects on metabolism, immune function, and neural processes; and 2) a psychological/cognitive focus on how the perception and experience of a stressor influences the stress response. These approaches align with the nature vs. nurture debate, pitting nature, represented by the biology of cortisol responses, against nurture, in the form of external experience influencing cognitive processing. Academic researchers typically study stress by adopting one of these perspectives. However, anyone who’s been stuck in rush hour traffic or faced a looming deadline knows that the causes and consequences of stressful experiences do not adhere to these academic divides.

In the past decade, researchers have made great strides in understanding the cellular, molecular, genetic, and epigenetic processes involved in the regulation of the stress response. Surprisingly, as stress research elucidated this molecular dimension, it shed light on the powerful role of environment and experience in remodeling our molecular makeup. It became clear that the environmental effects (nurture) are modulated by genetic polymorphism and epigenetic programming of gene expression (nature) to shape development. So, as the molecular underpinnings are elucidated, the need to study the interaction between environment and our genome is highlighted, and the divide seems less relevant.

Recent advances in stress research (focused on genetic, epigenetic, and molecular events) are inverting implicit assumptions about gene/environment relationships and the nature/nurture divide. The most current data indicate that environments can be as deterministic as we once believed only genes could be, and that the genome can be as malleable as we once believed only environments could be. For example, increased expression of the glucocorticoid receptor gene in particular brain regions improves the ability to regulate a stress response. In the lab we’ve demonstrated that enhanced maternal care provided to young rats serves to permanently increase expression of this gene in brain regions that ultimately influence how the animals respond to stress. Early nurturing regulates the expression of a gene that is crucial to modulating the stress response.

The mind/body divide is disappearing, too, as we discover that mental phenomena have physical correlates, an understanding of which can help us develop new approaches for research, teaching, and policy related to stress and health. While this integrative view of stress probably seems obvious to the average thinking person, it’s taken basic scientists fifty years to reach the same conclusion. The false dichotomy of nature vs. nurture is quickly eroding, and the modern era of stress research makes a compelling case for the study of the dynamic interplay between our genomes and our experiences.

the banking cabal that runs the world

NewScientist | AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core's tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. "If one [company] suffers distress," says Glattfelder, "this propagates."

"It's disconcerting to see how connected things really are," agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank. Fist tap ProfGeo.

SPLASH!!! let it go, let it go, and feel alright....,

Video - Screamin Jay Hawkins Constipation Blues

Slate | As teens get older, they may not only get wiser, but also smarter, a new study suggests. Or, well, less smart.

The study, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, found that a teen’s IQ scores can fluctuate significantly over a period of a few years. That contradicts the long-held belief that IQ scores remain essentially fixed throughout a person’s life.

The research team from University College London tested 33 teenagers in 2004, when they were between 12 and 16 years old, and again in 2008, when they were 15 to 20. They found that individual subjects’ scores rose or fell by as much as 20 points. That means a child with a score of 110, which is in the average range, could move to 130, classified as “gifted,” USA Today points out.

And MRI scans showed that the changes in scores are reflected in the teens’ brains. For those whose verbal IQ scores improved, grey matter density increased in a part of the brain activated by speech. For those whose nonverbal scores rose, grey matter changed in a brain region activated by finger movements.

To say the teens got smarter or dumber is a simplification, of course. As Science magazine points out, IQ may stand for intelligence quotient, but what it actually measures is open to debate. And the Nature study doesn’t tackle the question of what causes the changes in score.

Still, the findings may be empowering for parents and teens, said Cathy Price, senior author of the study. “People's attitude is to decide early on that this is a clever kid, and this is not a clever kid—but this suggests you can't make that assessment in the teenage years,” she told Science.

The study didn’t look at adults but left open the possibility that some variability in IQ may continue beyond the teenage years.

meanwhile, NPR disavows free speech..,

Video - Lisa Simeone - Why I will be fired by NPR.

Raw Story | A broadcaster that hosts several programs that air on NPR was reportedly fired Wednesday for her participation in “October 2011/Stop the Machine” protests in Washington, D.C. after conservative websites suggested “apparent ethics violations.”

Lisa Simeone said Thursday that she was read NPR’s code of ethics as she was fired as the host of Soundprint.

She also works as a freelance host on NPR’s World of Opera.

“We recently learned of World of Opera host Lisa Simeone’s participation in an Occupy DC group,” NPR’s Anna Christopher wrote. “World of Opera is produced by WDAV, a music and arts station based in Davidson, North Carolina. The program is distributed by NPR. Lisa is not an employee of NPR or of WDAV; she is a freelancer with the station.”

The “October 2011″ antiwar protest and the “Occupy D.C.” protest have demonstrated side-by-side, but the two groups have made it clear that they are separate. Simeone was not involved in organizing the Occupy D.C. protests.

WDAV said in a statement that Simeone would not be fired.

“As host of World of Opera, Lisa Simeone is an independent contractor of WDAV Classical Public Radio. Ms. Simeone’s activities outside of this job are not in violation of any of WDAV’s employee codes and have had no effect on her job performance at WDAV. Ms. Simeone remains the host of World of Opera.”

In a video posted to YouTube in July, Simeone declared her intentions to participate in the “October 2011″ protest.

“I’m going to Washington, D.C. on October 6 because our moment has come,” she said. “Life, peace, justice. That’s what we want. That’s what we’re going to demand… We’re not leaving. We’re not just going to go there and march around with signs. We’re going, we’re going to sit down on that nice cold ground for however long we have to, how ever many days, however many weeks. We’re going to stay and we are going to demand that our leaders listen to us.”

Simeone’s alleged firing comes just one day after conservative websites The Daily Caller and Fox News suggested that she had broken NPR’s ethics rules by becoming an activist.

“I find it puzzling that NPR objects to my exercising my rights as an American citizen — the right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly — on my own time in my own life,” Simeone told WarIsACrime.org’s David Swanson, a noted peace activist. “I’m not an NPR employee. I’m a freelancer. NPR doesn’t pay me. I’m also not a news reporter. I don’t cover politics.”

alec baldwin keeps it 100%

Video - Alec Baldwin chats with OWS about the Fed'n'thangs...,


Video - Alec Baldwin's quintessential channeling of the American ethos.

the energy trap

DoTheMath | Many Do the Math posts have touched on the inevitable cessation of growth and on the challenge we will face in developing a replacement energy infrastructure once our fossil fuel inheritance is spent. The focus has been on long-term physical constraints, and not on the messy details of our response in the short-term. But our reaction to a diminishing flow of fossil fuel energy in the short-term will determine whether we transition to a sustainable but technological existence or allow ourselves to collapse. One stumbling block in particular has me worried. I call it The Energy Trap.

In brief, the idea is that once we enter a decline phase in fossil fuel availability—first in petroleum—our growth-based economic system will struggle to cope with a contraction of its very lifeblood. Fuel prices will skyrocket, some individuals and exporting nations will react by hoarding, and energy scarcity will quickly become the new norm. The invisible hand of the market will slap us silly demanding a new energy infrastructure based on non-fossil solutions. But here’s the rub. The construction of that shiny new infrastructure requires not just money, but…energy. And that’s the very commodity in short supply. Will we really be willing to sacrifice additional energy in the short term—effectively steepening the decline—for a long-term energy plan? It’s a trap!

When I first encountered the concept of peak oil, I was most distressed about the economic implications. In part, this was prompted by David Goodstein’s book Out of Gas, which highlighted the potential for global panic in reaction to peak oil—making the gas lines associated with the temporary oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 look like warm-up acts. Because I knew Professor Goodstein personally, and held him in high regard as a solid physicist, I took his message seriously. Extrapolating his vision of a global reaction to peak oil, I imagined that the prospect of a decades-long decline in available energy—while we strained to institute a replacement infrastructure—would destroy confidence in short-term economic growth, thus destroying investment and crashing markets. The market relies on investor confidence—which, in some sense, makes it a con job, since “con” is short for confidence. If that confidence is shattered on a global scale, what happens next?

I still consider economic panic to be a distinctly possible eventuality, but psychology can be hard to predict. Market optimists would see the tremendous investment potential of a new energy infrastructure as an antidote against such an outbreak. Given this uncertainty, let’s shy away from economic prognostication and look at a purely physical dimension to the problem—namely, the Energy Trap.

ows: the strategic brilliance of facelessness

crmbuyer | The Occupy Wall Street Movement has sometimes been criticized for having no demands and no distinct leader. However, this is one of its strengths. Leaders can be discredited on an individual basis, though in the days before all of our new social and mobile technology, it may have been necessary to operate close to the center with leaders and manifestos. Social media does that work now.

I am developing an appreciation of the Occupy Wall Street movement that surprises me. You know the news about it and how over the weekend the movement went global. You probably also know that the authorities are not dealing with it effectively. They've been content to watch and wait, hoping that the movement will exhaust itself. That's a good strategy for the last millennium, and the movement may wear out if only because as winter approaches it gets harder to remain committed to living on the street. But I wouldn't bet on it.

That end game is not assured, and my interest is in the day-to-day workings of the movement. There is no leader and as yet there are no demands, which is part of the brilliance of everything that has transpired. Let me tell you why I think so.

The Trouble With Spokespersons
Demands would require a leader, someone to give a face and a name to the demands. Without formal demands, we are left to presume from the actions of the loose group that it is protesting the situation that drove the economic crisis in 2008, which has not been resolved to anyone's satisfaction and which is responsible for the dismal economic outlook -- especially for people in their 20s looking for their first real jobs.

So there's neither message nor demands, but with a nod and a wink we all know what's unspoken. But look at the effect this has. No spokesperson means no individual for the media to fixate on, and that means the message can't be diverted very easily.

Compare this to the WikiLeaks situation. Julian Assange quickly became the focus of the controversy. His organization made the leaks, but Assange's personality was quickly the story, and it was instantly trashed, up to and including arrest on specious charges related to sexual misconduct. In short order, the controversy became the man, and the issues over which he'd hoped to spark a discussion evaporated when a more salacious story became available -- one that required much less effort on the part of the fifth estate to bring to us. This well-worn script suddenly isn't wearing well.

noam chomsky on occupy wall st.

Video - Noam Chomsky being interviewed by RT's Marina Portnaya about Occupy Wall Street.

the awakening in america

bopsecrets | A radical situation is a collective awakening. In such situations people become much more open to new perspectives, readier to question previous assumptions, quicker to see through the usual cons. People learn more about society in a week than in years of academic “social studies” or leftist “consciousness raising.”. Everything seems possible — and much more is possible. People can hardly believe what they used to put up with in “the old days.”. Passive consumption is replaced by active communication. Strangers strike up lively discussions on street corners. Debates continue round the clock, new arrivals constantly replacing those who depart for other activities or to try to catch a few hours of sleep, though they are usually too excited to sleep very long. While some people succumb to demagogues, others start making their own proposals and taking their own initiatives. Bystanders get drawn into the vortex, and go through astonishingly rapid changes. Radical situations are the rare moments when ualitative change really becomes possible. Far from being abnormal, they reveal how abnormally repressed we usually are; they make our “normal” life seem like sleepwalking. —Ken Knabb, The Joy of Revolution

The “Occupy” movement that has swept across the country over the last four weeks is already the most significant radical breakthrough in America since the 1960s. And it is just beginning.

It started on September 17, when some 2000 people came together in New York City to “Occupy Wall Street” in protest against the increasingly glaring domination of a tiny economic elite over the “other 99%.” The participants began an ongoing tent-city type occupation of a park near Wall Street (redubbed Liberty Plaza in a salute to the Tahrir Square occupation in Egypt) and formed a general assembly that has continued to meet every day. Though at first almost totally ignored by the mainstream media, this action rapidly began to inspire similar occupations in hundreds of cities across the country and many others around the world.

The ruling elite don’t know what’s hit them and have suddenly been thrown on the defensive, while the clueless media pundits try to dismiss the movement for failing to articulate a coherent program or list of demands. The participants have of course expressed numerous grievances, grievances that are obvious enough to anyone who has been paying attention to what’s been going on in the world. But they have wisely avoided limiting themselves to a single demand, or even just a few demands, because it has become increasingly clear that every aspect of the system is problematic and that all the problems are interrelated. Instead, recognizing that popular participation is itself an essential part of any real solution, they have come up with a disarmingly simple yet eminently subversive proposal, urging the people of the world to “Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone. Join us and make your voices heard!” (Declaration of the Occupation of New York City).

Almost as clueless are those doctrinaire radicals who remain on the sidelines glumly predicting that the movement will be coopted or complaining that it hasn’t instantly adopted the most radical positions. They of all people should know that the dynamic of social movements is far more important than their ostensible ideological positions. Revolutions arise out of complex processes of social debate and interaction that happen to reach a critical mass and trigger a chain reaction — processes very much like what we are seeing at this moment. The “99%” slogan may not be a very precise “class analysis,” but it’s a close enough approximation for starters, an excellent meme to cut through a lot of traditional sociological jargon and make the point that the vast majority of people are subordinate to a system run by and for a tiny ruling elite. And it rightly puts the focus on the economic institutions rather than on the politicians who are merely their lackeys. The countless grievances may not constitute a coherent program, but taken as a whole they already imply a fundamental transformation of the system. The nature of that transformation will become clearer as the struggle develops. If the movement ends up forcing the system to come up with some sort of significant, New Deal-type reforms, so much the better — that will temporarily ease conditions so we can more easily push further. If the system proves incapable of implementing any significant reforms, that will force people to look into more radical alternatives.

energy vs. analysis

Video - Futurama Do the Hustle

MorrisBerman | Like most folks reading this, I want the Wall St. protests to succeed, though at this point I'm not exactly clear as to what that would look like. Minimally, the arrest and trials (preferably at the World Court in The Hague) of numerous CEOs for financial terrorism; confiscation of the wealth of the top 1% and the redistribution of it among the rest of us; immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan; reduction of the Pentagon budget by 90%; massive reparations, plus heartfelt apologies, to Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, and several other countries, for the horror we visited upon them through the CIA and our foreign policy; and so on. In terms of what needs to be done in order to turn America around, these are admittedly very small steps—baby steps, really—but one has to begin somewhere, after all. However, this is to get ahead of ourselves. Right now, as far as Occupy Wall Street goes, anything might happen. Historically speaking, demonstrations that seemed tame suddenly caught fire, as in the case of, say, the Russian Revolution. So it’s hard to predict the outcome of these protests in any definitive way.

That being said, I confess it doesn't seem likely that these protests can reverse 400 years of a culture based on “hustling,” as I call it in my most recent book, Why America Failed, or the post-Civil War consolidation of corporate America. Which brings to mind a quote from Lincoln: we must "disenthrall" ourselves, he said. Are we now clutching at straws, and getting all enthralled? Look at the enthrallment over Obama in 2008, and how he turned out to be the very opposite of what he said he was. (Basically, a George Bush who can speak English.) I hear Michael Moore saying how these protests will sweep the country, and I think: but you thought Obama was going to sweep the country. Maybe it's time to look at our tendency toward enthrallment, and figure out why “sweeping” is not very likely.

So much is made of the role of the “social media” in these types of uprisings; I remain skeptical on a number of grounds. I mean, Facebook didn’t play much of a role that I know of in Paris during 1789; and where is the Egyptian “revolution” now? But it goes much deeper than this. Even if we credit the social media with being able to mobilize youthful energy, this is only Stage 1 of any successful protest. Stage 2 is really being able to know and analyze what this country is about, or what a new US foreign policy might consist of; and on this score, the very things that made Stage 1 possible now ironically serve to make Stage 2 extremely difficult, if not impossible. For it is because of these media, and the cumulative impact of television and the Internet in our lives, that young Americans are literally unable to think. They don't know what the difference is between information and knowledge, nor do they really understand what an argument is; and thanks to the new telecommunications technologies, they now have the attention span of a gnat. Printed books take time; they are designed for thinking and reflection, whereas screens are designed for scanning, for bouncing around, for “Whassup, dude?” And if these folks should happen to attend a lecture, they typically sit there and check their e-mail or text-message their friends. In such a context, Stage 2 of the protest is not likely to come about.

chris hedges: ows exposing mendacity, corruption, and decay

Video - Chris Hedges shares his thoughts on where OWS has come from and where it's headed.

consistency is the hobgoblin of truth

Video - Ron Paul's message to OWS "stop interventionism and end the Fed".

help stop COICA 2.0

Video - President Obama urged repressive regimes around the world to stop censoring the Internet. But at the same time, the United States Congress is hatching a plan to censor the Internet here at home. A new bill being debated this week would instruct the Attorney General to create an Internet blacklist of sites that US Internet providers would be required to block

DemandProgress | Oppose PROTECT-IP Act: U.S. Government Wants To Censor Search Engines And Browsers Tell Congress to Kill COICA 2.0, the Internet Censorship Bill

UPDATE: Great news. We don't always see eye-to-eye with Google, but we're on the same team this time. Google CEO Eric Schmidt just came out swinging against PROTECT IP, saying, "I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily [implementing] simple solutions to complex problems." And then he went even further. From the LA Times:

"If there is a law that requires DNSs, to do X and it's passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it," he said, according to the report. "If it's a request the answer is we wouldn't do it, if it's a discussion we wouldn't do it."

Big content is irate. The Motion Picture Association of America released a statement saying, "We’ve heard this ‘but the law doesn’t apply to me’ argument before – but usually, it comes from content thieves, not a Fortune 500 company. Google should know better."

ORIGINAL: We knew that members of Congress and their business allies were gearing up to pass a revised Internet Blacklist Bill -- which more than 325,000 Demand Progress members helped block last winter -- but we never expected it to be this atrocious. Last year's bill has been renamed the "PROTECT IP" Act and it is far worse than its predecessor. A summary of it is posted below.

Senators Leahy and Hatch pretended to weigh free speech concerns as they revised the bill. Instead, the new legislation would institute a China-like censorship regime in the United States, whereby the Department of Justice could force search engines, browsers, and service providers to block users' access to websites, and scrub the American Internet clean of any trace of their existence.

Furthermore, it wouldn't just be the Attorney General who could add sites to the blacklist, but the new bill would allow any copyright holder to get sites blacklisted -- sure to result in an explosion of dubious and confused orders.

Will you urge Congress to oppose the PROTECT IP Act? Just add your name at right.

PETITION TO CONGRESS: The PROTECT IP Act demonstrates an astounding lack of respect for Internet freedom and free speech rights. I urge you to oppose it.

Review of Lieutenant Colonel Fleming’s U.S. Army War College thesis on Peak Oil

EnergyBulletin | LTC Christopher M. Fleming has made a valuable contribution to peak oil research with his concise thesis, Considering Oil Production Variance as an Indicator of Peak Production (June 2010, 26 pgs).

In his Abstract, LTC Fleming summarized both the purpose and the conclusions of his research: “Peak Oil predictions range from the year 2000 to 2100 with the highest concentration of forecasts from 2005 to 2016. Confidence in international oil reserves data is lacking. As such, different forecasters make different assumptions about future undiscovered oil amounts and oil reserves, resulting in a wide range of peak oil estimates. Viewing this wide time disparity in forecasts as problematic, the research objective was to look for an economic cross-check indicator, metric, or alternative data-based means to corroborate or refute existing peak oil estimates."

The primary finding was unprecedented statistical variance in oil production rates as well as in oil prices beginning approximately 2005 to 2010. In the case of oil production rates, variance is at historically low levels. In the case of oil prices, variance is at historically high levels. The data indicate a new higher order of inelasticity between oil price and oil production.

These findings support peak oil forecasts in the range of 2005 to 2010 and together provide strong evidence that geological factors could presently be limiting world oil production.”

In his section, Hydrocarbon Man and the Petroleum Age, LTC Fleming clearly appreciates the fundamental role of petroleum: “All the marvels of the twentieth and twenty-first century were made possible by our connection to cheap, plentiful fossil fuels.”

He then provides a compelling analogy to express the energy density of petroleum in practical terms:
“There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil which contains about 1667 kilowatt-hours of energy. A gallon of gasoline energy content is about 33 kilowatt-hours. In perspective, 33 kilowatt-hours is the equivalent of a healthy male pedaling a stationary bike for 330 hours – if he can maintain 100 watts per hour. If he pedals 40 hours per week, he will generate the same amount of energy as in one gallon of gasoline in about eight weeks. Pedaling 40 hours per week for just over eight years equates to 1667 kilowatt-hours of energy in a barrel of oil.

Now, if we attach a financial cost per hour to the pedaling, we begin to understand what is meant by “cheap” abundant fossil fuels. At the current $7.25 per hour minimum wage, the coast of pedaling 330 hours (energy in one gallon of gasoline) is $2,392.50; and pedaling 16,667 hours (energy in one barrel of oil) cost $120,835…. We have exploited this cheap abundant source of energy for over 150 years” (p. 3).

In his section, Oil Discoveries in Perspective, LTC Fleming points out how recent high-profile reports of oil discoveries should be interpreted as evidence of trouble ahead, rather than as reassurance that all is well: “BP’s discovery of three billion barrels of oil represents a 1.15 month supply to the overall global market” (p. 9). Fleming adds, “It should be noticed that the explorations, whatever they might be, tend to be setting records for depth, and are in harsh, forbidding places” (p. 10).

The chief contribution of this thesis is its statistical analysis of oil production variance and oil price variance (with a particular focus on the five years between March 2005 and February 2010):

“Oil production variance and oil price variance have never been so far apart…. [There is] an inelasticity at least ten times greater than at any time during the previous 30 years, and 100 times greater than during the previous decade. One might conclude that what we have considered ‘normal’ oil production and oil price cycles have ceased to exist” (p. 15-16).

LTC Fleming concludes, “The synchrony of unprecedented low production variance, unprecedented high price variance, and the number of peak oil forecasts in the range of 2005 to 2010 provide strong evidence that, regardless of price pull, geological factors could be presently limiting world oil production” (p. 17).

Finally, LTC Fleming notes the gravity of what lies ahead and the need for realistic planning: “It is important to make the distinction between a temporary oil supply disruption and oil’s terminal production decline. Managing the risk of one is much different than managing the risk of the other” (p. 12).

LTC Fleming and his War College advisers are commended for their concise, insightful analysis of one of this century’s most formidable challenges, the peaking of global oil production. The US war colleges have produced a number of first-rate analyses of peak oil during the past six years, and this recent thesis is a significant contribution to that body of research.

LTC Fleming’s study is available here.

what is nanotechnology?

crnano | A basic definition: Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. This covers both current work and concepts that are more advanced.

In its original sense, 'nanotechnology' refers to the projected ability to construct items from the bottom up, using techniques and tools being developed today to make complete, high performance products.

The Meaning of Nanotechnology

When K. Eric Drexler popularized the word 'nanotechnology' in the 1980's, he was talking about building machines on the scale of molecules, a few nanometers wide—motors, robot arms, and even whole computers, far smaller than a cell. Drexler spent the next ten years describing and analyzing these incredible devices, and responding to accusations of science fiction. Meanwhile, mundane technology was developing the ability to build simple structures on a molecular scale. As nanotechnology became an accepted concept, the meaning of the word shifted to encompass the simpler kinds of nanometer-scale technology. The U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative was created to fund this kind of nanotech: their definition includes anything smaller than 100 nanometers with novel properties.

Much of the work being done today that carries the name 'nanotechnology' is not nanotechnology in the original meaning of the word. Nanotechnology, in its traditional sense, means building things from the bottom up, with atomic precision. This theoretical capability was envisioned as early as 1959 by the renowned physicist Richard Feynman.

I want to build a billion tiny factories, models of each other, which are manufacturing simultaneously. . .The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom. It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big. Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in physics

Based on Feynman's vision of miniature factories using nanomachines to build complex products, advanced nanotechnology (sometimes referred to as molecular manufacturing
will make use of positionally-controlled mechanochemistry guided by molecular machine systems. Formulating a roadmap for development of this kind of nanotechnology is now an objective of a broadly based technology roadmap project led by Battelle (the manager of several U.S. National Laboratories) and the Foresight Nanotech Institute.

Shortly after this envisioned molecular machinery is created, it will result in a manufacturing revolution, probably causing severe disruption. It also has serious economic, social, environmental, and military implications.

Four Generations
Mihail (Mike) Roco of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative has described four generations of nanotechnology development (see chart below). The current era, as Roco depicts it, is that of passive nanostructures, materials designed to perform one task. The second phase, which we are just entering, introduces active nanostructures for multitasking; for example, actuators, drug delivery devices, and sensors. The third generation is expected to begin emerging around 2010 and will feature nanosystems with thousands of interacting components. A few years after that, the first integrated nanosystems, functioning (according to Roco) much like a mammalian cell with hierarchical systems within systems, are expected to be developed.

dylan ratigan on political efforts to hijack OWS

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

occupy lsx welcomes julian assange

Video - Julian Assange addresses Occupy LSX at St. Paul's Cathedral

SMH | WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has joined about 800 people at a heavily policed rally in London's financial heart, part of worldwide protests against corporate greed and budget cutbacks.

The demonstrators, some of them masked, were pushed back by police as they marched from St Paul's Cathedral to the London Stock Exchange, around the corner from the famous landmark.

There were only minor scuffles with five people arrested, three for assaulting police officers and two for public order offences, Scotland Yard said.
Advertisement: Story continues below

"Today's protest has been largely calm and orderly," a statement said.

The demonstration went on after nightfall, with police urging protesters to leave the area.

Organisers in a group calling itself OccupyLSX were hoping for thousands of participants after some 15,000 people expressed support on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter.

Assange, flanked by bodyguards, received a warm reception from the demonstrators as he addressed them from the cathedral steps.

"One of the reasons why we support what is happening here in Occupy London is because the banking system in London is the recipient of corrupt money," the Australian said.

The marchers, bearing banners reading "Strike Back", "No Cuts" and "Goldman Sachs Is the Work of the Devil", were ringed by police cordons while mounted officers and vehicles stood by.

After London's police were severely criticised for being caught out by riots in August, they were clearly taking no chances on Saturday and were out in force.

"Police have a duty not just to provide a proportionate response, but to minimise the potential disruption to Londoners going about their business. This isn't an easy balance to strike," Scotland Yard said.

Ben Walker, 33, a teacher from Norwich in eastern England, was carrying a rolled-up sleeping bag and said he planned to spend one or two nights in the area.

"I'm here today mainly as a sense of solidarity with the movements that are going on around the world," he told AFP. "We're hoping for a kind of justice in the global financial system."

British student Amy Soyka, 22, who set up a tent outside the cathedral said: "I feel passionately that young people have been let down. All this hope and opportunity has been taken away from them ... it's a terrible situation and we shouldn't even be in this economic situation."

She was among a number of students at the rally. Others came from Greece, Spain, South Korea and the US.

But the protest, to the sound of guitars and drums, was overwhelmingly peaceful and the cathedral remained open to visitors.

Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement and Spain's "Indignants", people took to the streets across the world during the weekend, targeting 951 cities in 82 countries.

the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed..,

Nature | Self-replication of information-bearing nanoscale patterns. DNA molecules provide what is probably the most iconic example of self-replication—the ability of a system to replicate, or make copies of, itself. In living cells the process is mediated by enzymes and occurs autonomously, with the number of replicas increasing exponentially over time without the need for external manipulation. Self-replication has also been implemented with synthetic systems, including RNA enzymes designed to undergo self-sustained exponential amplification1, 2, 3, 4, 5. An exciting next step would be to use self-replication in materials fabrication, which requires robust and general systems capable of copying and amplifying functional materials or structures. Here we report a first development in this direction, using DNA tile motifs that can recognize and bind complementary tiles in a pre-programmed fashion. We first design tile motifs so they form a seven-tile seed sequence; then use the seeds to instruct the formation of a first generation of complementary seven-tile daughter sequences; and finally use the daughters to instruct the formation of seven-tile granddaughter sequences that are identical to the initial seed sequences. Considering that DNA is a functional material that can organize itself and other molecules into useful structures6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, our findings raise the tantalizing prospect that we may one day be able to realize self-replicating materials with various patterns or useful

wall st. is privately critical of the protesters

NYTimes | Publicly, bankers say they understand the anger at Wall Street — but believe they are misunderstood by the protesters camped on their doorstep.

But when they speak privately, it is often a different story.

“Most people view it as a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” said one top hedge fund manager.

“It’s not a middle-class uprising,” adds another veteran bank executive. “It’s fringe groups. It’s people who have the time to do this.”

As the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have grown and spread to other cities, an open question is: Do the bankers get it? Their different worldview speaks volumes about the wide chasms that have opened over who is to blame for the continuing economic malaise and what is best for the country.

Some on Wall Street viewed the protesters with disdain, and a degree of caution, as hundreds marched through the financial district on Friday. Others say they feel their pain, but are befuddled about what they are supposed to do to ease it. A few even feel personally attacked, and say the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have been in Zuccotti Park for weeks are just bitter about their own economic fate and looking for an easy target. If anything, they say, people should show some gratitude.

“Who do you think pays the taxes?” said one longtime money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.”

He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

Generally, bankers dismiss the protesters as gullible and unsophisticated. Not many are willing to say this out loud, for fear of drawing public ire — or the masses to their doorsteps. “Anybody who dismisses them publicly is putting a bull’s-eye on their back,” the hedge fund manager said.

economics has met the enemy, and it's economics...,

GlobeandMail | After Thomas Sargent learned on Monday morning that he and colleague Christopher Sims had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for 2011, the 68-year-old New York University professor struck an aw-shucks tone with an interviewer from the official Nobel website: “We're just bookish types that look at numbers and try to figure out what's going on.”

But no one who'd followed Prof. Sargent's long, distinguished career would have been fooled by his attempt at modesty. He'd won for his part in developing one of economists' main models of cause and effect: How can we expect people to respond to changes in prices, for example, or interest rates? According to the laureates' theories, they'll do whatever's most beneficial to them, and they'll do it every time. They don't need governments to instruct them; they figure it out for themselves. Economists call this the “rational expectations” model. And it's not just an abstraction: Bankers and policy-makers apply these formulae in the real world, so bad models lead to bad policy.

Which is perhaps why, by the end of that interview on Monday, Prof. Sargent was adopting a more realistic tone: “We experiment with our models,” he explained, “before we wreck the world.”

Rational-expectations theory and its corollary, the efficient-market hypothesis, have been central to mainstream economics for more than 40 years. And while they may not have “wrecked the world,” some critics argue these models have blinded economists to reality: Certain the universe was unfolding as it should, they failed both to anticipate the financial crisis of 2008 and to chart an effective path to recovery.

The economic crisis has produced a crisis in the study of economics – a growing realization that if the field is going to offer meaningful solutions, greater attention must be paid to what is happening in university lecture halls and seminar rooms.

While the protesters occupying Wall Street are not carrying signs denouncing rational-expectations and efficient-market modelling, perhaps they should be.

They wouldn't be the first young dissenters to call economics to account. In June of 2000, a small group of elite graduate students at some of France's most prestigious universities declared war on the economic establishment. This was an unlikely group of student radicals, whose degrees could be expected to lead them to lucrative careers in finance, business or government if they didn't rock the boat. Instead, they protested – not about tuition or workloads, but that too much of what they studied bore no relation to what was happening outside the classroom walls.

They launched an online petition demanding greater realism in economics teaching, less reliance on mathematics “as an end in itself” and more space for approaches beyond the dominant neoclassical model, including input from other disciplines, such as psychology, history and sociology. Their conclusion was that economics had become an “autistic science,” lost in “imaginary worlds.” They called their movement Autisme-economie.