I have discovered what may be the Best Thing Ever. It’s a 2002 episode of the BBC’s Look Around You dedicated to the brain. Take out your copy books, as you will learn things such as the following:
"The brain is basically a wrinkled bag of skin, filled with warm water, veins, and thought muscles. Think of it as a kind of modified heart, only with a mind, or brain."
Today is the one-year anniversary of my first post on this blog. I have since made a little over 100 posts and received close to 50,000 pageviews.
When people come to my blog from search engines, I can see the search terms they used. In September, I listed my top 12 favorite searches over the first six months of SilverJacket. It’s time to cover the second six months. Some of the words in the queries are spread over multiple posts, but I have linked the queries to the posts most responsible for luring the reader.
10. where did katrina cocker spaniels go after hurricane Katrina [Um, they were shot, right? I think that was on the news.]
9. retarded boy scouts photos [And queers still can’t join? That’s BS.]
8. can dogs be given Beano [Can and should.]
7. funny questions in polymer science [Reminds me of this one time at polymer science camp…]
6. "how to use a photocopier" [Press the button.]
5. speculum blog [Christ, there’s a blog for everything now.]
4. zen fractal technology nature [Dude… what’s the sound of my mind being blown?]
3. comedian terry schiavo dance [I think it’s like the Humpty Dance, but mellower.]
2. escape closure of universe become god [If I knew how, I wouldn’t tell you.]
1. irony alert matt [Thanks for watching my back, dog. Irony is my Kryptonite.]
Honorable Mentions:
Paula Abdul recurring dream, spanking soleil moon frye, kicking grandma’s head, engrish kama sutra, bologna snowflakes, scientology and brushing teeth, funny penmanship award
Thanks for playing.
I should also note that as of October 11, the number 33 hit in a Belgian Google image search for hard porn was my head shot. Awesome very much.
Previously: Can I Help You?
Sometimes errors in articles inspire great mental images. For example, this Nature News article describes a pair of satellites that orbit "several hundred metres from Earth." If I worked on an upper floor of the Sears Tower I might apply for relocation right about now. I picture Doc Edgerton’s famous bullet-through-the-apple photo, with glass instead of pulp. (Satellites in low Earth orbit go about 18,000 mph, 10 times faster than Doc’s bullet.)
The gaff resembles an announcement I’ve rehearsed in my head for many years: "We’ve now reached our cruising altitude of 20 feet." The question that plagues me is: What altitude in that scenario produces the greatest comedic effect? For now, I’ve settled on 20 feet. (9/11 has rendered the absurdity much darker, but I retain the right to muse innocently. I don’t go beyond cutting off treetops in my imaginary thrill ride.)
For the record, the two satellites mentioned in the Nature News article orbit at 300-500 kilometers (not meters.) They are part of a NASA program called GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment.) GRACE’s most recently published findings reveal that Antarctica is melting. The sat duo can measure the distribution of Earth’s mass by comparing subtle changes in their orbital speeds as they fly over. Mapping the results onto a globe and amplifying the results produces pictures of a lumpy Earth like these.
One might call the technique terrestrial phrenology. A shrinking bump on the bottom means an unstable Gaia. Apparently Mother Earth has more than just seasonal affective disorder.
Recently I noticed that Brokeback Mountain had spawned a new snowclone: when people want to say that X is gay, they might refer to "Brokeback X." So I emailed Mark Liberman, a linguist over at Language Log, about it, to see what he had to say. And I sent him the first three relevant examples I found, which he initially hesitated to post, deeming them offensive. (What could be offensive about a Broadway show in which Mohammed and his followers pray by forming daisy chains?)
Anyway, here’s his post, with larger commentary on the zeitgeist, and a note on the "competitive high-stakes field of lingua-blogging."
Left: The Atlantic, January/February 2006, page 137.
Right: The Atlantic, January/February 2006, page 147.
Synergy or Serendipity? Associative minds want to know.
(Illustration by Jason Schneider. Advertisement by Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC.)
Today at the beach a pontoon plane flew overhead.
Young woman #1: What’s that?
Young woman #2: It’s a plane.
Young woman #1: It doesn’t look like a plane.
Young woman #2: It’s the kind that can land on water.
Young woman #1: A hovercraft?
Exhibit A: Exhibit B:
Any questions?
Your grandparents were right. Rock and roll will rot your brain. (And if they know what trance music was, they’d be scared shitless.)
For years scientists have debated whether using ecstasy causes brain damage. (With no small amount of drama, thanks to the likes of George Ricaurte and his bobbled bottle debacle, the Hwang Woo-Suk-tastophe of the ecstasy wars.) But stimulant studies regularly rely on mice and monkeys distanced from human habits of use. Who sits in a silent cage and pops pills for fun?
To address the issue, Michelangelo Iannone and a team of scientists in Italy threw a rave for their rats. Well, with a few differences. Instead of music, there was loud static, and instead of scalp massages, there were holes in the scull and electrodes on the brain. The goal was to test if acoustic stimulation would affect the neurotoxicity of MDMA (ecstasy.)
The results? Yes. Blasting white noise at the maximum volume Italian nightclubs allow (95 dB) decreased neural activity in rats dosed with E. Depending on dosage, the brain blotto lasted from several hours to several days. You can download the report, published last week, here, or read about it here.
In the paper, the authors admit, "it is very difficult to indicate the mechanism underlying these effects." So I wondered whether the form the auditory stimuli took mattered. Listening to static at 95 dB can give anyone a headache, but I know subjectively (from taking E at raves as a teenager) that music can greatly enhance the experience of a trip. And I know objectively (from programming neural networks on computers) that random input like static can destroy the organization of a system. A high noise-to-signal ratio washes out meaningful relationships between neurons.
I asked Iannone if using input with some structure, such as actual music, instead of white noise would make a difference. He replied: "We made a lot of preliminary (and unpublished) experiments to assess if there is a difference between the two stimuli, using a brief ‘techno music’ brain. And I can say that there is no difference (in our hands) between discomusic and loud noise, in terms of effects." Oh well. Actually, it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s no difference. At the level of the effects that they’re measuring, the brain wouldn’t pay much mind to the informational complexity of the input. It’s all noise to the neurons.
Fortunately, the brain works at many levels. Under the right circumstances the benefits of E and other drugs can far outweigh the risks. Ecstasy was widely used in psychotherapy until it was outlawed in 1985, and today, researchers such as John Halpern at Harvard are fighting to bring it back. Click here to read about the attempts of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) to make ecstasy an FDA-approved prescription medicine.
In the Italian study, the authors report: "One of the questions which need addressing by research is how other factors typical of the ‘rave scene’, such as sensorial auditory (techno music) stimuli, can affect higher neural functions…" Now that they’ve tackled music, expect future studies to involve tripping rats subjected to candy necklaces and glow sticks.
Prepare for a whole new species of e-tard.
Harry Whittington had this to say today about getting shot in the face by Dick Cheney: "My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week."
In related news, Johnny Weir apologized to the fishing net that delayed his arrival to warmups last night and may have held him back from winning the first ever Winter Olympic gold medal for the lost city of Atlantis.
This IM chat just happened.
friend: woo hoo only 4 more days
me: YES
friend: do you have plans?
me: actually, now that i know what you’re talking about, replace that YES with a meh [definition]
friend: you do not know what i’m talking about
friend: whatever you think i’m talking about, this is more important
me: presidents day
friend: oh wow, i didn’t even realize they coincided
me: yes all the presidents coincide on that one special day
me: it makes the tides extra high
friend: even president neap?
me: is that real?
friend: since you asked…
friend: only four days
friend: until
friend: the dvd
friend: release of
friend: RENT
friend: we can watch it whenever!
me: replace my meh with a feh [definition]
friend: how do you spell that?
friend: with an "eh"?
me: yes
me: both etymologically distinct from teh [definition]
friend: indo european roots
friend: ?
me: teh has haxor rOOts
friend: you do
me: nah
Intelligent Design is great fodder for satire among the science set. In the new March issue of the The Atlantic Monthly, Bruce McCall riffs on the ID worldview with a short piece called "Not Conspicuously Intelligent Design." The designs that are not conspicuously intelligent include Minneapolis-St.Paul ("Only two big cities in a state of 80,009 square miles, yet less than half a mile apart") and sock static ("Wastes electricity"). I would have added Grape Nuts. No grapes… no nuts… What’s the deal? McCall’s gags hit closer to home with these biological examples:
THE NOSE
• Placement in exact center of face compels unsightly public discharge of liquid waste from headDEATH
• Crimps planning
• Totally one-sided decision leaves a bad taste
• After x-million years, exact function still debated
My favorite attacks on ID are of the "Why do men have nipples?" type. If there’s an omnipotent designer, what’s with all the useless doodads and embarrassing/deadly oddities we find in the biological world? The geologist Don Wise pushes the idea of incompetent design ("the other ID") in an interview for Seed. He says, "No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us," and goes on to list several of the examples: We have too many teeth, our pelvises aren’t straight, we have appendices and tonsils, our retinal receptors are facing the wrong way… And he quotes a man who wrote to him, "I would write more, but I have to go pee in Morse code, because some idiot designed my aging prostate."
The science writer Jim Holt took a more somber tone last year in an essay for the NYT Magazine titled "Unintelligent Design." He reminds us that nearly every species ever "designed" is now extinct. He mentions dying cancer patients who must suffer although the corporal status updates that physical pain provides are no longer required. And he notes that most pregnancies end prematurely. That last fact, combined with two common beliefs–that the soul originates at conception, and that one is a sinner unworthy of salvation until baptism–should lead to quite the quandary for many Christians. "Owing to faulty reproductive design," he writes, "it would seem that the population of limbo must be at least twice that of heaven and hell combined." Awwwwwk-ward…
Call it what you want: "Incompetent Design," "Unintelligent Design," "Design By Numbers–The Dyscalculic Deity Edition"… It reminds me of an engineering joke. Three engineers were arguing over what type of engineer God would be. The mechanical engineer said God had to be an ME because of our sophisticated skeletons. The electrical engineer claimed God as an EE because the human brain is the best damn computer around. But the civil engineer had the last word. "God would have to be a civil engineer. I mean, who else would run a sewage system through a major recreational area?"