Human Dignity and the Manipulation of the Sense of Happiness: From the Viewpoint of Bioethics and Philosophy of Life. Journal of Philosophy of Life Vol.2, No.1 (March 2012):1-14 If our sense of happiness is closely connected to brain functions, it might become possible to manipulate our brain in a much more refined and effective way than current methods allow. In this paper I will make some remarks on the manipulation of the sense of happiness and illuminate the relationship between human dignity and happiness. The President’s Council on Bioethics discusses this topic in the 2003 report Beyond Therapy, and concludes that the use of SSRIs might make us “feel happy for no good reason at all, or happy even when there remains much in one’s life to be truly unhappy about.”
I will extend their line of thought through two thought experiments. In the first, a “perfect happiness” drug is given to a person, and in the second a happiness device with an on/off switch is placed inside a person. [PDF] [Repository] Open Access. Baboons prove reading an ancient skill. Although baboons have no linguistic skills, they are able to classify a four-letter sequence as either a real word or a random sequence. This challenges the long-held view that accurate word recognition is dependent on language. Credit: CNRS photothèque / Cyril FRESILLON ABERYSTWYTH: Baboons have mastered one of the basic elements of reading – identifying the difference between sequences of letters that make up actual words from nonsense sequences.
Although the animals have no linguistic skills, they were able to classify a four-letter sequence as either a real word or a random sequence. These findings challenge the long-held notion that the ability to recognise words in this way – as combinations of objects that appear visually in certain sequences – is fundamentally related to language.
It now appears that when humans read, we are partly drawing on an ancient ability, predating the evolution of our own species. Reading and language Baboons recognise words Human language development. Talking to Colin Spencer. This is Not a TV or a Piece of Furniture -- It's IKEA Blowing Your Mind! Video: Bizarre Magnetic Ferrofluids Will Blow Your Mind | Wired Science. For snakes, hunting bats in a cave is like shooting fish in a barrel | MattSoniak.com. When the sun goes down in the subtropical forests of Puerto Rico, hundreds of thousands of bats emerge from the caves that stud the island’s northern end. After a day of sleeping, the animals are ready for a hard day’s night of hunting insects.
For some of them, though, there will be no feast of beetles and mosquitos, and they’ll instead wind up a meal themselves for the snakes that have set up an ambush at the cave’s entrance. After providing a warm, safe place to sleep all day, the caves become death traps once darkness falls. Puerto Rican boas slither in from all over the forest to turn the bats’ exodus into their own hunting ground. The nightly ritual is played out on its largest scale at La Cueva de Los Culebrones, or the Cave of the Long Snakes.
Even with the steady stream of food flying right into their mouths, the snakes can be picky, and competitive. Sometimes, a snake that’s not having any luck with its own hunting will attempt to steal a bat from another snake. The 'Greenest' Restaurant in the USA is in Chicago. Every morning, the executive chef of Chicago’s Uncommon Ground, climbs up onto the rooftop garden and chooses, along with the restaurant’s hired farmer, the day’s produce. Once he returns to the kitchen, he decides what the daily special will be according to the vegetables at his disposal. And the regular lunch and dinner menus change seasonally, as does the 60 square meter of pesticide-free garden, which grows everything from raspberries to zucchini, parsley to rosemary, and which generated 317 kilos of ingredients last year.
The food that doesn’t arrive from the roof comes from locally-sourced suppliers. At Uncommon Ground, the keyword is environmental awareness. Some of their measures are quite common by now: the use of solar panels, LED lighting, strict adherence to recycling practices, and the re-use of rain water. The two Uncommon Ground restaurants have both earned top marks, while in the U.S., there are only 5 restaurants that have earned the maximum points. Cardboard cathedral for quake-hit New Zealand city. 16 April 2012Last updated at 05:57 GMT The Christchurch cathedral, built in the 19th century, sustained significant quake damage A cardboard cathedral will be built in the New Zealand city of Christchurch to temporarily replace the one damaged by the 2011 earthquake, officials say. The 25-metre-high NZ$5m ($4.1m, £2.6m) cardboard version, to rise close to the quake-damaged cathedral, is to be completed in December.
Christchurch cathedral itself is to be demolished after it was deemed beyond repair. The 22 February quake left 185 people dead and many buildings badly damaged. The Transitional Cathedral, to be made mostly out of cardboard tubes, will be built about 300m from the cathedral, Anglican church officials said. Designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, it will have a seating capacity of 700 people.
The proposed temporary structure, described as weather and fire-proof, is projected to last for at least 20 years. Conservationists, however, have asked for the decision to be reconsidered. 9-year-old's DIY cardboard arcade gets flashmobbed. Nirvan says: "I just finished this short film about a 9-year-old boy's elaborate DIY cardboard arcade. Caine made his arcade using boxes from his dad's used auto parts store.
He hadn't had many customers, so we set up a fun flashmob to make his day, and filmed his response. I hope it brings a smile to your day. P.S. Caine Monroy is a 9-year old boy who spent his summer vacation building an elaborate DIY cardboard arcade in his dad’s used auto parts store. Zero UI will "change design" Zero UI is the new term for “invisible interfaces”—what happens in the future when all the clicking and tapping and typing is history: “If you look at the history of computing, starting with the jacquard loom in 1801, humans have always had to interact with machines in a really abstract, complex way.” Get essential tools and recipes for the at-home bartender with this set from MakersKit Shake, stir, and muddle your way to delicious homemade cocktails with this must-have bar set.
Nadine Boughton. The Annenberg Center for Photography’s IRIS Nights will be featuring a lecture with Nadine Boughton on Thursday evening, April 19th in Los Angeles. Tickets are available here at noon today, Pacific Standard Time, and tomorrow at 9:30am. The lecture accompanies the exhibition, Digital Darkroom that takes a look at the intersection of art and technology. Nadine grew up in Rochester, New York, under the shadow of George Eastman’s Kodak Tower. She studied photography with Garry Winogrand, and at Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, and Lesley University Seminars, Cambridge, MA. She currently lives in Gloucester, MA where she teaches photography, collage and creative writing. Nadine’s unique approach to image making has garnered her recognition as one of the Top 50 portfolios in the Critical Mass 2011 competition, Photolucida, and her collages will be exhibited at Photo Center Northwest, Seattle, WA, Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, OR and RayKo Photo Center, San Francisco, CA.
Safe Sex for Seniors PSA Is So Hot It Kind of Burns. Mining Our Own Personal Data, for Self-Discovery. Stephen Wolfram, a scientist and entrepreneur, wondered: Could all of that information be compiled into a personal database, then analyzed to tell us something meaningful about our lives? Maybe it could suggest when we tended to be the most creative or productive, along with the circumstances that led up to those moments.
Dr. Wolfram runs Wolfram Research, which is deeply steeped in data analysis, along with Wolfram Alpha, a computational search engine that provides many answers for Siri, the personal assistant for Apple’s 4S. Computers are good at spotting patterns, and Dr. Wolfram thought an analysis of his own personal data might reveal patterns in his life — for example, when he was most likely to come up with new ideas, “preferably good ones.” Dr. Wolfram, who lives in the Boston area, calls himself a “remote C.E.O.” — interacting with his company, which is based in Champaign, Ill., almost exclusively by e-mail and phone.
The algorithms that Dr. Dr. Dr. The Other Arab Spring. All these tensions over land, water and food are telling us something: The Arab awakening was driven not only by political and economic stresses, but, less visibly, by environmental, population and climate stresses as well. If we focus only on the former and not the latter, we will never be able to help stabilize these societies. Take Syria. “Syria’s current social unrest is, in the most direct sense, a reaction to a brutal and out-of-touch regime,” write Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, in a report for their Center for Climate and Security in Washington. “However, that’s not the whole story. From 2006-11, they note, up to 60 percent of Syria’s land experienced one of the worst droughts and most severe set of crop failures in its history.
An analysis by the U.S. “The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone,” noted Martin Hoerling, of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, the lead author of the paper. Privacy-first ISP raising money for online services that can't and won't fink you out to spy agencies. Nina Katchadourian. "Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style" from Seat Assignment 2010 and ongoing Improvising with materials close at hand, Seat Assignment consists of photographs, video, and digital images all made while in flight using only a camera phone. The project began spontaneously on a flight in March 2010 and is ongoing. At present, over 2500 photographs and video, made on nearly 200 different flights to date, constitute the raw material of the project. While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in January 2011, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror using my cellphone.
The image evoked 15th-century Flemish portraiture. I decided to add more images made in this mode and planned to take advantage of a long-haul flight from San Francisco to Auckland, guessing that there were likely to be long periods of time when no one was using the lavatory on the 14-hour flight. Scroll down for more images. Online dating for preppers, survivalists, doomsday believers - Mar. 29. One Survivalist Singles member, Mtexplorer2, says "a woman wearing a backpack in her profile picture is an automatic 10.
" NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- For people who spend every day preparing for disaster -- whether it's a 2012 apocalypse, a nuclear meltdown, an economic collapse, a hurricane or a tsunami -- it can be hard to find a compatible partner. Canning venison, shooting firearms, living off the grid and creating manure from human waste just aren't traditional interests many people look for when browsing mainstream dating sites like eHarmony or Match.com. That's why a site called Survivalist Singles has entered the online dating scene, catering specifically to this niche community of "preppers," "survivalists" and "doomsdayers.
" Survivalist Singles, which officially launched in 2010, boasts the slogan, "Don't face the future alone. " My doomsday tab: $130K on bunkers, guns and more For female preppers interested in finding a man, the site is a dating goldmine. Fancy a doomsday date? If things get really bad, it may be your best bet | Alice Bell. Has global economic collapse got you looking for survivalist skills in a prospective mate? Photograph: Peter Zelei/Getty Images/Vetta "Doomsday dating" really does exist: websites designed to match those with particular skills and resources for dealing with disaster, be it nuclear attack, extreme weather or economic collapse.
Only in the US, perhaps, but with the petrol panics of last week (not to mention that "well from hell" off the coast of Scotland) maybe we could do with a version for dear old Blighty. If you prefer fictional romance to the point-and-click experience of internet dating, Daniel Kramb has a book about love and climate change activism out next month, complete with the tagline "They want the burning to stop.
I was slightly surprised when a friend pointed out there are three books in Amazon's "Books › Fiction › Erotica › Global Warming & Climate Change" section. Love and war is an old trope, of course, and it's not all about the kids either. Open-data Cities Conference. Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. How to weaponize office supplies. 19 Regional Words All Americans Should Adopt Immediately. When traveling across the United States, it sometimes feels like the locals are speaking a whole different language. That's where the Dictionary of American Regional English comes to the rescue.
The last installment of this staggering five-volume tome, edited by Joan Houston Hall, was published in 2012, and let me tell you, it’s a whoopensocker. In celebration of slang, here’s a list of 19 delightful obscure words from around the U.S. that you'll want to start working into conversation. 1. whoopensocker (n.), Wisconsin You know when something’s wonderfully unique, but the words “wonderful” and “unique” don’t quite cut it? That’s why the Wisconsinites invented whoopensocker, which can refer to anything extraordinary of its kind—from a sweet dance move to a knee-melting kiss. 2. snirt (n.), Upper Midwest A gem of a portmanteau, this word means exactly what it sounds like: a mixture of windblown snow and dirt.
Also, for your linguistic pleasure, try out the adjective version: snirty. US tops global clean energy investment rankings. 12 April 2012Last updated at 04:11 ET By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News Global solar generation capacity increased by almost 30 gigawatts in 2011 The US has regained top spot from China as the biggest investor in clean energy in 2011, according to global rankings. The table, published in a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, showed that US invested more than $48bn (£30bn) in the sector, up from $34bn in 2010. China slipped to second place, the authors reported, with investment only increasing by $0.5bn to $45.5bn. Globally, overall financial backing in clean energy technologies hit a record $263bn, up 6.5% from 2010 levels. The report, Who is Winning the Clean Energy Race, showed that G20 nations accounted for 95% of the investment in the sector (which does not include nuclear power). The data, compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ranked the UK as seventh in the world, with $9.4bn of investment in 2011.
"We now have 565GW of installed (generation) capacity around the world. Project RE_ by Samuel Bernier. UPcycling with an UP! Personal and Portable 3D Printer. This experiment of Project RE_ explores 3D printing as a DIY tool for upcycling. Customised lids are created using low cost 3D printing. They are then clipped or screwed onto standard jars, tin cans and bottles to create new and personal objects. In the first collection 14 objects were made : a watering can, an hour glass, a long pasta container, a bird house, a bird feeder, a mug, a rain catcher, a maple syrup bottle, a piggy bank, a orange juicer, a snow globe, a paint brush cleaner, a dumbbell and a lamp. After finishing the content of a mason jar (pickles, mustard, jam...), I always clean it and keep it for later use.
All is needed to reproduce these objects is a jar or tin can and a ABS FDM 3D printer (500$- 3000$) After downloading any of these designs, people can calibrate the dimensions, choose the color, customize the shape and so on. I really really want this Objet 3D printer, so please, please, PLEASE vote for me! Decommissioning Space Shuttles. Self-sculpting sand. CNC Mill Kits - Shapeoko. Solar Winds Desert Power Plant to harness clean energy for local grids. Transform Your iPhone Into a Microscope: Just Add Water | Compound Eye. Interactive plants react and convey emotions. Typogami: A Free Animated Typeface Inspired By Origami. Flux machine. Hacker Grants: Supporting Women in Technology | Etsy News. The Toy Fair. Seed Libraries Crop Up. Synapse Magazine - Electronic Music and Synthesizers.
US Coast Guard sinks tsunami 'ghost ship' Resistance spread 'compromising' fight against malaria. BBC Nature - World's rarest ducklings Madagascan pochards hatch. The Life Unlucky « what things do. Rolling Words: Snoop Dogg’s Smokable Book. News - Print-your-own-robots developed in US.