Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Steampunk rugged corset

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:47 PM PDT

Steampunk maker Nifer Fahrion worked with Robynne Winchester of Tulgey Wood Designs to whip up this rugged, construction grade corset to wear at Burning Man with the Man KCrew:

To create this hybrid corset, I first chose a fabric consisting of same type of rugged cotton canvas found throughout the Carhartt line. Durable, practical, and breathable, the material allows me to get down and dirty with my hammer and drill without fear of damaging my corset.

Next it was important the corset be functional and versatile. I attached holsters for a hammer, drill, tape measure and pliers, as well as pockets to use for assorted needs while working.

All the tool holsters and pockets are attached to the corset with heavy-duty snaps allowing me to change the configuration according to my needs on the job site.

NifNaks - Rugged Femininity, my new work corset!: (Thanks, Jake!)

Flurb #8 is out -- Rudy Rucker's sf webzine kicks so much ass

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:37 PM PDT

Cause for celebration: the new issue of Flurb, Rudy Rucker's wonderful free sf zine, is live, including work from Greg Benford, Paul Di Filippo, Howard Hendrix, and many other talented and lovely individuals.

We have a lot of great stuff in Flurb #8. A big thanks to all the writers!

This summer I taught a writing workshop at Clarion West in Seattle, and one of favorite stories I saw there was "My Only Sunshine," by the new writer Emily C. Skaftun. It has a mythic feel and a nice twist at the end.

The old pro Gregory Benford brings us a short and snappy piece, "Paradise Afternoon," about longevity.

Wonderfully weird Charlie Jane Anders is back for another Flurb appearance, with "Henry's Penis," a rather touching coming of age story, complete with hardcore nanotech.

Flurb: A Webzine of Astonishing Tales, Issue #8, Fall-Winter, 2009
Previously:


GameBoy as hard-drive enclosure

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:33 PM PDT


Nice work here: [_n3o_] shoved an 80GB hard drive into an old GameBoy, replacing the screen with a printout that makes it appear that a game is running, and hooking up the power-light to the drive's power.

Exclusif LS : Une gameboy de 80Gb ! (via IZ Reloaded)

Hairstylists could be early-warning systems for senior health problems

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:30 PM PDT

Researchers at Ohio State University have studied the relationship that hairdressers have to older clients, who are apt to discussing all their problems during haircuts. As such, the stylists are well-situated to act as early-warning systems for dementia, neglect and poor health.
"Hair stylists are in a great position to notice when their older clients are starting to suffer from depression, dementia, or self-neglect," said Keith Anderson, co-author of the study and assistant professor of social work at Ohio State University.

"While not expecting too much beyond the scope of their jobs, we may be able to help stylists direct elderly people in trouble to community services..."

"Their older clients may sit in a chair for an hour or longer while they're having their hair done, and this may happen once or twice a month. So stylists are in a good position to recognize when things change with a client, and when they may need help."

Hairstylists Can Help Identify Older Clients Who Need Health Services

Boing Boing fan art video

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:25 PM PDT

Strangpork sez, "Boing Boing fan art created with Quartz Composer, using appropriate iconography." Nice work! Love the repurposed Boing Boing video art!

Boing Boing Iconography / Plaid TV (Thanks, Strangpork!)

3D printed silver brooches featuring your favorite landscapes

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:21 PM PDT

3D printing comes to custom jewelry: this German company will let you pick your favorite piece of terrain from the planet Earth and they'll make a silver brooch featuing it. I'm holding out for the hyper-detailed version that includes nanoscale clockwork people who meander up and down your tiny silver mountains making ultrasonic bird calls.
The Earth Brooch Silver is an eclectic custom piece of jewelry you can easily design yourself. Just select your desired location. Within a few seconds the place's distinctive landscape turns into a 3d-preview of your custom jewelry.

As soon as you are satisfied with the preview we cast the custom brooch with fascinating detail in 975 silver. The Earth Brooch Silver perfectly makes for a unique silver wedding or other special anniversary gift.

Earth Brooch Silver (via Futurismic)

Harvard Crimson runs ad for Holocaust denier

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:49 PM PDT


The Harvard Crimson took an ad from "The Committee for the Open Debate on the Holocaust," a front for Holocaust denier Bradley Smith.
Bradley Smith, the founder of the organization that placed the ad, is a known Holocaust denier who has been identified for his hiding behind the veil of free speech in America. Here's his coolest quote: "I don't want to spend time with adults anymore. I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled."
Harvard Crimson Publishes Holocaust Denial Ad (Thanks, Adam!)

Update: The Crimson has apologized for running the ad, saying it was the result of an unspecified oversight: "Yesterday's advertisement was the result of that miscommunication. And while running the ad was not our intent, we accept responsibility for our failure to carry out the planned cancellation. We recognize how sensitive a subject this is for our community and appreciate all the e-mails and letters we have received about it from concerned members of the University. We have made sure that the rest of the ad's planned run has been terminated, and any money that has changed hands in exchange for the ad to date will be returned. "

Wondermark's steampunk helicopter

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 10:38 PM PDT


Dave from the Wondermark webtoon sez, "Hi folks. I made a steampunk helicopter for my most recent Wondermark comic. It's collaged together in my usual fashion from scans of old Scientific American magazines. I've been making helicopter noises with my mouth as I walk around this morning and realized that I'm just super duper proud of it, so I thought I would share. Thanks, hope you like it!"

Wondermark » Archive » #550; In which Salvation is summoned (Thanks, Dave!

Previously:


Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 09:03 PM PDT

Mitch Horowitz is the editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin and responsible for the publication of such seminal esoterica books as Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages: Reader's Edition, The Book of the Damned: The Collected Works of Charles Fort, and a slew of other contemporary and classic works of high weirdness. Mitch is also a great writer on the occult himself. His own new book, Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation, went on sale today. I haven't read it yet, but Mitch wrote an overview of the book for Graham Hancock's site and it's terrific. I'm delighted that Mitch is going to guestblog on Boing Boing a few weeks from now too! I'm sure every post will be a gem from the equinox. From Mitch's essay, also titled Occult America:
Occult America High Res Cover By the 1830s and 40s, a region of central New York State called "the Burned-Over District" (so-named for its religious passions) became the magnetic center for the religious radicalism sweeping the young nation. Stretching from Albany to Buffalo, it was the Mt. Sinai of American mysticism, giving birth to new religions such as Mormonism and Seventh-Day Adventism, and also to the spread of Spiritualism, Mesmerism, mediumship, table-rapping, séances, and other occult sensations - many of which mirrored, and aided, the rise of Suffragism and related progressive movements.

The nation's occult culture gave women their first opportunity to openly serve as religious leaders - in this case as spirit mediums, seers, and channlers. America's social and spiritual radicals were becoming joined, and the partnership would never fade.

The robust growth of occult and mystical movements in nineteenth-century America was aided by the influence of three mighty social and spiritual movements: Freemasonry, Transcendentalism, and Spiritualism. Each helped transform the young nation into a laboratory for religious experiment and a springboard for the revolutions in nontraditional and therapeutic spirituality that eventually swept the globe. Consider:

• Freemasonry is, perhaps, a direct remnant of the most radical thought movement to emerge from the Reformation, and it instilled a strong anti-authoritarian streak in America's early religious culture. Masonry's penchant for occult and pagan symbolism suggests how some of the nation's Founders - many of whom were Masons - understood religious truth as emanating from a common source that could be found in different cultures throughout history, including those of a mystical and pre-Christian past. American Masonry emphasized religious tolerance, which its highly placed members, including George Washington (pictured in Masonic garb at left) and Benjamin Franklin, modeled and interwove throughout American life. Early in his presidency, Washington took matters a step further. In a letter to the congregation of a Rhode Island synagogue, the first president wrote: "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts." In other words, minority religions were no longer guests of the new republic, but full members. Whatever Freemasonry's airs of secrecy and images of skulls, pyramids, and all-seeing eyes, it is in this principle where one finds the order's truly most radical, even dangerous, idea: the encouragement of different faiths within a single nation.
"Occult America" at the Official Graham Hancock Website

Buy "Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation"

More on court ruling against Ashcroft and "preventative detention" under Bush administration

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 07:45 PM PDT

Last week, I blogged about a federal appeals court decision which could make former Attorney General John Ashcroft personally liable for decisions leading to the detention of a US citizen as a material witness after 9/11.

John Schwartz at the New York Times has filed a more thorough report than the AP item I blogged. His piece includes details about the Kansas-born man who filed the lawsuit, with representation from the ACLU. Snip:

witness_190.jpg The lawsuit was brought in 2005 by Abdullah al-Kidd, who was born Lavoni T. Kidd in Kansas and converted to Islam in college. He was arrested in 2003 at Dulles Airport as he prepared to fly to Saudi Arabia for graduate work in Islamic studies, and was held for weeks under a law that allows the indefinite detention of material witnesses to a crime. After his detention, he was ordered to stay with his in-laws in Las Vegas; his travel was restricted over the next year.

Mr. Kidd, who was not called as a witness in the case in which he was detained and was never charged with a crime, sued Mr. Ashcroft and other officials in 2005, challenging his detention as unconstitutional and saying it cost him his marriage and his job. His lawyers argued that he was held as part of a secret Bush administration policy to use the material witness statute as a tool to detain and interrogate people when there was insufficient evidence to charge them with a crime.

Panel Rules Against Ashcroft in Detention Case (NYT)

I love Bladerunner, therefore I require these t-shirts.

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 07:12 PM PDT

nexus.jpg

How did I not know about this film-themed online t-shirt shop before? Last Exit to Nowhere has several really nice Bladerunner-themed t-shirt designs. What set you from? Nexus 6. What's yo hood? Off World Colonies. And More Human Than Human is Our Motto. Also, dig this 2001: A Space Odyssey design. I require one of each immediately.

Previously:


More cute videos from Google Japan

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 07:09 PM PDT


Here are more sweet stop-motion videos from Google Japan. (Thanks, Scott!)

Previously:


Rocky and Balls perform "Gaysong"

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 05:08 PM PDT


Here's another snappy ukulele-enhanced tune by the teen Brit sensation, Rocky and Balls. George Formby would be proud of this duo.

Previously:


Unbelievably detailed scratch-built model ATV

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 04:46 PM PDT


200909081642
Gareth Branwyn of MAKE posted this video and photos of a super-realistic 1:10 scale model of a UAZ-469 ATV.

Swine flu fears from Penny Arcade Expo

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 03:57 PM PDT

paxa.jpg

I'm seeing a number of tweets from participants and organizers of the recent PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) which indicate at least one case of swine flu has been confirmed, and more feared.

kurtz.jpgPAX is a three-day game fest for tabletop, videogame, and PC gamers, and took place September 4-6 in Seattle. Perhaps folks more familiar with the details than I can update us in the comments here. Organizers are using the hashtag #paxflu to track updates on Twitter. Of course, this could also be a very crafty viral marketing campaign. Seriously, though: to those who contracted it or are at risk, get health care pronto, and get well soon. (via @willsmith)

Infographic: Hierarchy of Digital Distractions

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 03:31 PM PDT

hierarchy.jpg

The Hierarchy Of Digital Distractions: levels of digital activity, visualized. (by David McCandless, via Scott Beale)

Photos from Kraut Fest 2009

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 03:22 PM PDT

Img 0232

About 160 heads came to Kraut Fest 2009, held at Machine Project in Los Angeles on Sunday, September 6.

Of those 160 heads, 40 were human and 120 were cabbage. The humans were there to learn how to change the cabbage into sauerkraut (based on my Russian grandmother's recipe), kimchi, and choucroute garni (a "meat fiesta" from the Alsace region in France).

I recognized the nice couple in the photo above from Picklefest 2008, which was held last year at Machine Project. The couple that ferments together stays together!

Many thanks to Machine Project founder Mark Allen for hosting the event, Slow Food LA for sponsoring it, Urban Homestead authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen for organizing it, Granny Choe for the kimchi lessons, and Jean-Pail Monsché for the mouth watering choucroute garni!

Photos of Krautfest 2009

Ouija boards and dial plates

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 01:10 PM PDT

Diaf
I fell down a rabbit hole into the weird history of ouija boards and ended up at the insanely comprehensive online Museum of Talking Boards. There, I learned about a variation of the classical ouija, called "dial plate" talking boards. From the Museum:
Diag Today, we might consider a kitchen table a peculiar piece of equipment to use to speak with spirits. For the spiritualist mediums of the 1850's, it seemed quite natural. A table was an available and commonplace piece of household furniture and a natural gathering place for family members. It also provided an ideal contact surface for those performing a séance. It worked very simply: the sitters placed their hands palms down on the tabletop and asked questions of the spirits. The spirits responded by tilting the table and rapping a leg against the floor. One knock meant, "no," two knocks meant, "doubtful," and three knocks meant, "yes." For complicated messages, spiritualists either called out the alphabet and let the spirits knock at the appropriate letter, or they employed an alphabet pasteboard. A member of the group held up the pasteboard with one hand, and with the fingers of the other, passed them slowly over the letters. The spirits knocked when the fingers touched the desired letter. Although somewhat time consuming, it was a simple and effective way to spell out messages from the "Dearly Departed."

Some mediums believed that there might be better methods of interpreting messages than using tables and alphabet boards. Modeling their equipment after the new dial plate telegraphs of the period, the logic was plain: if you could contact the living using the telegraph, then why not the non-living? In 1853, a Thompsonville, Connecticut spiritualist, Isaac T. Pease, called his invention, suitably enough, the "Spiritual Telegraph Dial." Just a dial with letters arranged around the circumference and a message needle to point to them were necessary. There was no need for messy wires or electricity.
Dial Plate Talking Boards

Previously:


Scavenging power from trees

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 12:56 PM PDT

Images Newsreleases 2009 September 20090904 Pid51873 Aid51869 Treepowergroup W600
Engineers have run an electrical circuit using the power of tree, seemingly the first demonstration of its kind. The University of Washington researchers determined that bigleaf maples on the school's campus generate up to few hundred millivolts. (The current is not mentioned.) So they built a low-power sensing circuit that could scavenge enough juice from a tree to operate. From UWNews:
The tree-power phenomenon is different from the popular potato or lemon experiment, in which two different metals react with the food to create an electric potential difference that causes a current to flow.

"We specifically didn't want to confuse this effect with the potato effect, so we used the same metal for both electrodes," (electrical engineering professor Babak) Parviz said.

Tree power is unlikely to replace solar power for most applications, Parviz admits. But the system could provide a low-cost option for powering tree sensors that might be used to detect environmental conditions or forest fires. The electronic output could also be used to gauge a tree's health.

"It's not exactly established where these voltages come from. But there seems to be some signaling in trees, similar to what happens in the human body but with slower speed," Parviz said. "I'm interested in applying our results as a way of investigating what the tree is doing. When you go to the doctor, the first thing that they measure is your pulse. We don't really have something similar for trees."
"Electrical circuit runs entirely off power in trees"

Scott Hove's cakeland

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:46 AM PDT

Cakeeeeeee
Artist Scott Hove created this scary/sweet installation of cake art. He made the Cake Vault from acrylic media, paint, wood, and cardboard. Hi-Fructose posted a selection of images from the Cake Vault, including a Quicktime VR tour of the surreal space. From the Cakeland artist statement:
Images Blog 2009 09 TrophyCakeland is a sculptural installation resembling a collection of perfect delicious cakes-- wall mounted, hanging and standing-- a walk-through cake environment complete with its own lighting.  It is a sweet refuge, an endless kaleidoscopic landscape of cake, a respite from the grinding realities of the outside world.

The sculptures have all of the appeal of the best cake you have ever tasted, but can never be eaten.  Whereas the nature of edible cake is fleeting, lasting only as long as the brief celebration it was made for, these cakes last as long as the artist or society have the wherewithal to preserve them, in order that they remain a place of pilgrimage, a seemingly idyllic oasis.
HF Exclusive: Explore Scott Hove's Cakeland!

William S. Burroughs documentary

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:35 AM PDT


A new documentary on William S. Burroughs is in production and the trailer looks fantastic. Titled "A Man Within," the film is directed by Yony Leyser and features the likes of WSB's friends and collaborators Laurie Anderson, Iggy Pop, V. Vale, Anne Waldman, James Grauerholz, Genesis P-Orridge, and David Cronenberg. Peter Weller narrates and Sonic Youth composed the soundtrack! William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

Robert Spinrad, computer pioneer, RIP

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 10:17 AM PDT

Pioneering computer designer Robert Spinrad, former director of Xerox PARC, has died. He was 77. Dr. Spinrad was a prototypical maker who turned his passion for hacking electronics into groundbreaking research on laboratory automation and the use of computers in scientific experimentation. From the New York Times:
Images 2009 09 07 Technology 07Spinrad190 Trained in electrical engineering before computer science was a widely taught discipline, Dr. Spinrad built his own computer from discarded telephone switching equipment while he was a student at Columbia. He said that while he was proud of his creation, at the time most people had no interest in the machines. "I may as well have been talking about the study of Kwakiutl Indians, for all my friends knew," he told a reporter for The New York Times in 1983.

"Robert Spinrad, a Pioneer in Computing, Dies at 77"
Dr. Spinrad was the father of our pal and former BB guestblogger Paul Spinrad, an editor at MAKE. Our thoughts go out to Paul and his whole family.

They Might Be Giants: "Meet the Elements" music video (BB Video)

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 02:30 PM PDT

(Download / Watch on YouTube, video duration: 3:47.)

Today in Boing Boing Video: we proudly debut a new music video from They Might Be Giants. "Meet The Elements," an animated upbeat ode to the periodic table of elements and how they form our world. Video directed by Feel Good Anyway.

This track appears on the new TMBG kids' album "Here Comes Science."

Cory reviews the album here. (Thanks, John Flansburgh!)

They Might Be Giants' awesome new kids' CD: HERE COMES SCIENCE!

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 08:58 AM PDT


I am thoroughly smitten with the new They Might Be Giants kids' album, Here Comes Science, which ships with a charming DVD of videos and supplementary material. In the best traditions of awesome educational kids music -- Schoolhouse Rock, the Animaniacs, Electric Company -- Here Comes Science combines top-notch pop music with humor that's aimed at both kids and adults (I once heard the creators of Sesame Street discuss how the inclusion of humor targeted at adults meant that grownups were more likely to watch with the kids, and thus be on hand to answer questions and discuss the material; this should be gospel for everyone who makes media for kids). And, of course, the material is great. Better than great. Perfect. This is the album They Might Be Giants was put on Earth to record: they are genuine science nerds, and it shows.

For Here Comes Science contains a broad, inclusive and thought-provoking tour through science in all its facets. Songs like "Science is Real" (which explains how scientific beliefs are different from beliefs in unicorns and other beliefs formed without rigorous testing) and "Put It To the Test" (possibly the best kids' song ever written about falsifiablity in hypothesis formation) cover the basics, the big Philosophy of Science questions.

Then there's songs for all the major disciplines: "Meet the Elements," "I am a Paleontologist" (also delving into the joys of a science career), "My Brother the Ape," "How Many Planets," and the diptych formed by "Why Does the Sun Shine?" (stars considered as superheated gas) and "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?" (stars considered as superheated plasma) -- these last two are a brilliant look into how different paradigms have different practical and theoretical uses. "Photosynthesis," "Cells" "Speed and Velocity" -- you get the picture.

Finally, there's some jaunty little numbers about technology: "Computer Assisted Design," and "Electric Car" and one genuinely silly and delightful track, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett (In Outer Space)." (I haven't enjoyed an "in outer space" reworking of a beloved classic so much since "Josie and the Pussycats In Outer Space").

These songs definitely address themselves to an older audience than the last two TMBG kids' discs, Here Come the 123s and Here Come the ABCs, but if you've got kids who started with these two, they're certainly ready to move up to Here Comes Science. And even if you don't, I defy you not to rock out to this excellent disc.

Here Comes Science on Amazon

Here Comes Science on They Might Be Giants' site

Previously:


Radical ideas to prevent global warming disaster

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 08:12 AM PDT

Space mirrors? Flying "volcanoes"? Over at National Geographic, my pal Mason Inman presents five extreme geoengineering proposals to prevent a global warming catastrophe. The ideas were included in report from the United Kingdom's Royal Society. From National Geographic:
Computer-controlled ships could ply the remote seas, pumping out seawater mist, which would encourage low, thick clouds to form, researchers say. The clouds would reflect sunlight back into space.

It would cost more than a billion dollars to launch a fleet of a few hundred of these ships, the new study says—a relatively small sum, as geoengineering costs go. But the cloud ships' ability to change local temperatures and weather could raise fears that countries will clash over control of the clouds...

Instead of trying to block sunlight via Earth's atmosphere, another approach would be to take the fight to outer space.

Huge mirrors or thin, reflective disks could orbit alongside Earth and block solar rays, some scientists say.

The approaches would be safe, with little in the way of side effects, the Royal Society says.

But it could cost a few trillion dollars and take decades to design, build, and launch, requiring "a space program many times larger than anything yet attempted."
"5 Last-Ditch Schemes to Avert Warming Disaster"

Rapist/kidnapper Garrido's creepy van in Google Maps: Xeni on Today show

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 08:05 AM PDT

Remember the BB blog post last week about one of our commenters spotting Garrido's creepy molester van following the Google vehicle in Google Street View? NBC's Today Show stopped by the Boing Boing Video studios yesterday and included a brief show-and-tell about this internet moment in a segment about what we can learn from the Garrido case, which ran earlier this morning. Yeah, it's his van alright.

Related Boing Boing Posts:
* The blog of Philip Garrido, serial rapist and kidnapper: "sound control" gadget hallucinations.
* Did Google Street View spot rapist/kidnapper Garrido?

Banksy mural accidentally painted over

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 07:56 AM PDT

The Hackney Council had workers paint over an East London mural by famed street artist Banksy. The mural was on a private building and it was painted over by, er, mistake. The Council had sent letters requesting to "clean" the building but they had gone to the wrong address. From the BBC News:
Media Images 46323000 Jpg 46323030 BanksyafterProperty owner Sofie Attrill gave consent for the mural to be painted on the building so it could be photographed for the launch of Blur's 2003 single Crazy Beat.

Since then it has attracted tourists from all over the world and become a local landmark...

Hackney Council was initially unrepentant.

Cllr Alan Laing said: "The council's position is not to make a judgement call on whether graffiti is art."

But he later added: "Due to a problem at the land registry unfortunately our letters stating our intention to clean this building didn't reach the owner.

"As soon as we realised this, work stopped. We are now speaking with her about how to resolve the issue."
Blur Banksy is ruined by mistake (Thanks, Antinous!)

Recently on Offworld: Comic jumping, three for the Wii, Metroid in Lego

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 07:58 AM PDT

infpolystd.jpgEven with yesterday's holiday, we still caught up on some of the weekend's biggest news from PAX or otherwise, as Twisted Pixel -- the indie dev behind the recent fantastic one-button Xbox Live Arcade platformer Splosion Man -- unveils Comic Jumper, a superhero run and gun that will change its style as you, well, jump between comics from PowerPuff to Sin City. Elsewhere we saw oversized, super-punching blob-mech-fighters invading WayForward's remake of the NES original A Boy and his Blob, a new WiiWare Gauntlet-esque action game take on Pokemon, and the first video of the gorgeously Miyazaki-ish world in WiiWare LostWinds sequel Winter of the Melodias. Finally, we took the latest work in progress look at Power Pill (above), the upcoming ultrastylish iPhone collaboration between Fez creators Polytron and Marian creators Infinite Ammo, and our 'one shot's for the day: variations on a Slime, and Metroid in Lego.

Boston's amazing Papercut Zine Library needs a home

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 10:55 AM PDT


Aaron sez, "papercutzinelibrary.org is 'a free lending library that specializes in independently published media, particularly zines.' They have been kicked out of their space in Cambridge, MA and are desperately looking for a new home. Their needs are relatively small, but it can be tough getting the word out. I encourage anyone in the Boston/Cambridge, MA area to check out their site and see if you can help. It would be a shame to let all the wonderful zines become unavailable!"

I dropped in on this place a few years ago and was absolutely charmed and delighted. This is a very worthy cause indeed.

Papercut needs new space for August 15 (Thanks, Aaron

HOW WE DECIDE: mind-blowing neuroscience of decision-making

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 05:39 AM PDT

Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide is the latest in a series of popular neuroscience books (Brain Rules, Stumbling on Happiness, Mind Wide Open, The Brain that Changes Itself) to (literally) blow my mind.

Lehrer, author of the celebrated Proust Was a Neuroscientist, lays out the current state of the neuroscientific research into decision-making with a series of gripping anaecdotes followed by reviews of the literature and interviews with the researchers responsible for it.

Lehrer is interested in the historic dichotomy between "emotional" decision-making and "rational" decision-making and what modern neuroscience can tell us about these two modes of thinking. One surprising and compelling conclusion is that people who experience damage to the parts of their brain responsible for emotional reactions are unable to decide, because their rational mind dithers endlessly over the possible rational reasons for each course of action. The Platonic ideal of a rational being making decisions without recourse to the wordless gut-instinct is revealed as a helpless schmuck who can't answer questions as basic as "White or brown toast?"

But overly emotional decisions are also likely to lead us into trouble. There is clearly a sweet-spot between white-hot emotional thinking and ice-cold reason, and Lehrer is trying to find it. By the end of the book, I'm nearly convinced he has.

My copy of How We Decide has literally dozens of dogeared pages that I've marked to return to in this reviews as examples of the kind of thing that made me go Wow! and sometimes even buttonhole nearby friends to read them passages. I'll run a few down for you here:

Lehrer's description of the amazing ability of dopamine to "predict" upcoming events is gripping all the way along, but I was delighted to learn that neuroscientists call signals for missed predictions (that is, the signal released when dopamine is released in anticipation of a reward that doesn't come), emanating from the anterior cingulate cortex the "Oh shit" circuit. The ACC is closely wired to the thalamus, so activation of the "Oh shit" circuit galvanizes the conscious mind, bringing the stimulus right to the front of our attention.

These mistakes are critical to good decision-making, as they are our best tutors. Lehrer describes a famous study from Stanford psych research Carol Dweck, who administered easy tests to 10-year-olds, who did well on it. The control group was praised for "being smart." The experimental group was praised for "trying hard." With only this difference, the two groups were then administered progressively harder tests. Dweck discovered that the "smart" kids did worse: they believed their initial good result was due to some innate virtue beyond their ken or control, and feared that a failure would show that they lacked this intangible. But the "hard-trying" group had been rewarded for taking intellectual risks, and so they continued. Afterwards, the "smart" kids rated the hardest tests as their least favorite; the "tryers" rated it as their most favorite.

Dopamine is the neurochemical star of the book, and its many pathologies make for gripping reading. There's a case study of Ann Klinestiver, a sedate school-teacher who was given strong doses of Requip a dopamine agonist (it imitates dopamine's action in the brain), as treatment for worsening Parkinson's Disease. Like 13 percent of Requip patients, Ann developed a gambling compulsion for slot machines that eventually ruined her life, costing her her husband, her family, and all her assets (she finally went off Requip and opted for severely constrained movement but no gambling).

The pathology here is all about missed predictions. Dopamine helps the brain to find patterns and thus make predictions about the future. But slots are random, and so in a normal brain, slot-play follows a common pattern: first the brain is delighted by the chance to chew on such a meaty problem. It formulates hypotheses about the slots' action, and then new input (mistakes that light up the Oh shit circuit) cause it to start over. But after a short time, a normal brain gives up -- there is no pattern to see, so there's no point in playing on.

But in a brain where the dopamine levels are abnormal, surrender never happens. The brain is in a constant state of reward, because of all the "new input" (random noise) that arrives every time the lever is pulled.

Irrationality doesn't just play a role in pathological gambling; the big casino on Wall Street is also a great confounder of reason. Neuroscientist Read Montague performed an experiment in which subjects were given play money and sat down in front of stock-market simulators that had, unbeknownst to them, been programmed to simulate great crashes (Dow 1929, Nasdaq 1998, Nikkei 1986, S&P 1987). Montague found that the subjects played out exactly the same panics that real-world investors fell prey to.

Subjects set out conservatively, with small bets that rocketed upward in the pre-crash bubble. Their Oh shit circuits lit up at the thought of all the money they hadn't made (the brain overvalues loss, which is why "One day only!" sales work). Subjects progressively increased their bets, putting more and more money into the bubble (which grew and grew). And then the bubble burst and Oh shit fired again, and the same subjects refused to cut their losses and take their money out of the market, because they were fixated on how much they'd lost, and couldn't bear the thought of leaving the game while they were down.

Indeed, investors follow this trend more generally, selling stocks that do well, and holding onto stocks that do poorly (because they can't part with them while they're still "behind"). Eventually, the investor's portfolio is filled with nothing but declining bad bets.

However, this loss-aversion can be short circuited with simple gimmicks, especially credit-cards. The brain just doesn't register the same loss when you swipe your card as it does when money leaves your pocket. Carnegie Mellon neuroeconomist George Loewenstein says, "credit-cards...anaesthetize your brain against the pain of payment." MIT business professors demonstrate this by showing that students bidding for tickets to a Celtics game on average bid twice as much when the betting is done by credit-card than by cash.

The answer to this is meta-cognition: think about what you're thinking. Think about what you're feeling. Think about your circumstances and what happened the last time you were here.

But don't think too much. There are classes of problems -- ones in which there are more variables than the conscious mind can juggle -- where thinking overwhelms your brain's ability to synthesize all these variables into a good conclusion. Timothy Wilson, a U Virginia psychologist, asked two groups of female college students to choose and keep their favorite art print from a selection containing a Monet, a van Gogh, and some inspirational kitten posters. A control group was asked to rate each poster from 1 to 9 and keep their top one. The experimental group was asked to fill in questionnaires about what they liked about each poster.

The controls overwhelmingly picked the fine art. Follow-up questions established that they were still happy with their decisions weeks later.

But the experimental group -- the group that had to explain what they liked about each poster -- chose the kittens. And when they were followed up, they were disappointed with their decision.

Wilson explains that the failure arises because the good things about fine art are difficult to describe: they are intangible aesthetic elements. We like them, but most of us can't explain why. On the other hand, the virtues of a kitten-picture are easy to enumerate. When asked to explain, rationally, which one is best, kittens win every time. But it is this very superficiality that causes us to quickly tire of the kittens and wish for a Monet.

Of course, it's not just kittens. Ap Dijksterhuis at the Dutch Radbout University has shown that the same failure plagues house-buyers. When given the choice of a modest house in the city near work and amenities and a huge McMansion in the suburbs, introspection favors the McMansion. It has easy-to-enumerate virtues: we can have big dinners there, the family can come to stay, and so on. But we only have a few big dinner parties and houseguests a year, and the rest of the year we're stuck with long commutes and no night-life.

Introspection is also critical to the placebo effect. Being told that you are about to experience a pharmacological effect primes you to feel that pharmacological effect. And vice-versa: students who are administered an energy beverage after being told that it is expensive experience 30 percent higher alertness than those who are told that it is a discount alternative. Likewise, people tasting wine they are told is cheap have measurably different brain activity -- and preferences -- from subjects who are told the same wine is expensive.

All this introspection takes place in the prefrontal cortex, which has lots of other work that it has to keep on top of, so when it is distracted, our ability to make good decisions decline. In one experiment, control subjects are asked to remember two numbers and are then walked down a hall to another room where they will be asked to recall them. On the way, they pass a refreshment table with chocolate cake and fresh fruit. The experimenters measure their ability to pick the "right" snack -- that is, the one that, in the light of cold reason they would opt for.

The experimental group goes through the same test -- only they're asked to remember seven numbers, which is somewhere near the upper range of what the average person can remember.

The experimental group eats cake. The control group eats fruit. When we're distracted, we stop introspecting and listen to our emotional minds. This fact is not lost on retail psychologists who design stores to maximise this effect.

Having too much information is a plague in many fields. In an experiment with MIT business students, one group is given extremely detailed reports on companies and asked to buy and sell their stocks based on what they learn. Another group is just given the stock-prices. The latter group -- betting blind -- bets better than the "overinformed" group, who have so much information that they can't decide what is and isn't important. The same thing happens to guidance counsellors who are given detailed dossiers on students and asked to predict their academic performance -- they do worse at predicting performance than counsellors who are just given student transcripts.

By the end of the book, Lehrer is ready to draw some conclusions from all this fascinating material. What he comes up with, basically, is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (a technique that has worked for me during a bout of depression). CBT consists, basically, of introspectively interrogating your emotional response to events, to see where and how emotion is influencing reason and vice-versa. CBT requires that you write things down (at first, anyway) so that your brain can't pull a fast one by selectively recalling your track record. It's the Goldilocks of introspection: not too much, not too little, just enough.

It's great advice, and a great book, too.

How We Decide

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