Total Control

What if we evolve to have a bigger brain and this brain is then capable of self-awareness ?

By self-awareness I mean being intimate with the workings of our body like we are with workings of machines. And not just knowing it like we know the functioning of organs but are not aware of them. We know how the heart works but in our daily lives we cannot monitor or control the heart in any way. The awareness I am talking about should enable us to control our emotions, feelings of pain and other behaviors which we exhibit now but are not completely aware of.

Right now we claim to have self awareness and this is a step over most of the species on this planet. However most of the time we dont know why we behave or react the way we do. I feel happy and motivated when I get back from the gym with nothing else but a few new chemicals being released as a result of my physical exertion. What if my brain could order the release of these chemicals just because I chose to ? That way we could chose not to feel too hungry, we could choose to burn all the fat we have. We could chose to sharpen any skills that we choose to, choose to form certain memories or erase uncomfortable memories.

Daily Mail : Chocolate bars for PMT

More than the article I think I like this picture

BBC : Islamists debate rape law moves

Women protested outside parliament as the debate was held

Until now, rape cases were dealt with in Sharia courts. Victims had to have four male witnesses to the crime - if not, they faced prosecution for adultery. Under the amended law, the civil courts will be able to try rape cases according to the British-influenced penal code.

I am trying to think what the supporters of Sharia are thinking.
How deep rooted the feeling of "second-class status for women" would be in the minds of these men ?
Do we know how to rid people of blind faiths which have become pillars of their paradigm of the world ?
Its so damn frustrating. They just wont listen to you, because they think you are talking "non-sense". Its like teaching a mad person to do something civil.

Side note :
I watched Dor yesterday. Very nice work by Kukunoor to play on this theme. It had a street play feel to it.

Quote

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
  - Russell Baker

Quote

"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
- Russell Baker"

Gaane Anjaane

I am watching Mouna Raagam. Once again I am awed Mani Rathnam and Revathi.

So I am watching a song , when they go sight seeing in Delhi (SPB rocks. I think his voice in the background adds as much to the film as the people in front of the camera). This song is supposed to hint to us that when these two spend time together they are sexually attracted to each other. I was wondering if there was a more raw way to show this. What would a European director do with this idea, when he cant insert a song. Did Mani Rathnam take the easy route ? I think it would be rather difficult to see these emotions displayed in a real life situation. You can sense this based on how the other person looks at you and if they are body language when you are in close proximity. But that would be a huge challenge to capture on the screen. Desi songs give us(Indians) a good tool.

Toothpick Art

Thanks Boing Boing

What’s Wrong With a Child? Psychiatrists Often Disagree - New York Times

[ NYTimes] Katherine Finn, a 14-year-old who lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., said she was grateful for the growing awareness of the disease. Possessed by feelings of worthlessness as early as the fourth grade, Katherine said that by the sixth grade she "threw my sanity out the window." She became impulsive, loud, and abrasive, she said, adding, "I would blurt things out in class, I would moo like a cow, act like a little kid, just say the most random stuff." A psychiatrist promptly diagnosed the problem as bipolar disorder, after learning that there was a history of the disease on her mother's side of the family. Katherine began taking drugs that blunted the extremes in her mood, and she now is doing well at a new school.


Is there weight to the argument that when we don't know anything for sure about a problem then not doing anything to solve it is as good as doing something (totally random) to solve it ?  Mathematically this might be accurate assuming not doing anything might qualify as a solution. Like in the case of kids it is possible that their hormones settle down and they lose all the symptoms. Medicating them would have taken them down the wrong road. For a problem like "not being able to find a job" it is painfully obvious that this is not a solution.

Russell Rocks

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)

Moronland.net - Hercules the Liger

Evolutionary pressure from humans ??

Metcalfe's law - Wikipedia

Metcalfe's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n2). First formulated by Robert Metcalfe in regard to Ethernet, Metcalfe's law explains many of the network effects of communication technologies and networks such as the Internet and World Wide Web."

The law has often been illustrated using the example of fax machines: A single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases.

The Firefox Kid and Parakey

IEEE Spectrum: The Firefox Kid: "Pointing to the screen of his laptop, Ross shows me what he calls a “family portal” for a fictional clan named the Andersons. Mom has a page with her recipes displayed. Dad has his collection of war documents. The kids have their party photos. Although it looks like a Web site—down to the Firefox-style tabs that run across the top of the page, which each family member uses to display his or her own section—it is, in fact, something much more ambitious: a universal interface. Even though Parakey works inside your Web browser, it runs locally on your home computer, which allows Parakey developers to do things inside your Parakey site that a traditional Web site could not do, such as interact with your camera. So instead of clicking between, say, the Windows desktop and a MySpace home page displayed in a Web browser, you are always operating within your Parakey site.

Take digital photos, for example. Here’s how the Parakey experience works: you plug in your camera, and your photos get stored seamlessly on your computer in such a way that you can view them quickly and easily through your Parakey site. No more digging through folders for the right image files. They’re organized and displayed as attractively as a site like Flickr might display them, as thumbnails with identifying text beneath them. Parakey allows for serious editing functions—from cutting and cropping to eliminating red-eye—all within the context of your Parakey page. But it also brings some more basic (and fun) scrapbooking habits into the digital realm. Ross clicks on an icon representing what he calls the Toy Box. Open the Toy Box and there are all sorts of accessories for dressing up the pictures: word balloons, devil horns, goofy fonts.


Now let’s say you want to share your collection of graduation photos with some select family and friends. The problem today is that there are several layers to getting that done. Many sites require users to register before seeing a photo a"

It took me sometime to understand how parakey would be different from a clean next revision of Google Desktop. I was thinking they were trying to do something like this too. But then they could be caught up in the parts that they have bought. Maybe the sum would be much less than the parts itself. I can see Blake's effort having a better chance for success with the open-source community to back him up. Its easy and more functional to put stuff together when they have been designed to a more common interface specification. Google's inorganic growth does not give it that luxury, but then they always have the potential to "shock and awe".

[thanks /.]