05-04
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.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.
Baboons prove reading an ancient skill
Talking to Colin Spencer
Colin Spencer, whom Germaine Greer once called “the greatest living food writer,” turns 80 next year, and shows no signs of slowing down. His latest book, “From Microliths to Microwaves,” a history of food in Britain from pre-historic times to the present, is the work of a scholar. (In it he argues, in a way that’s reminiscent of Jared Diamond , that agriculture — or at least agriculture as it’s practiced now — is one of the great tragedies of the human race.) Yet Spencer’s scholarship is only one of his many achievements. Indeed, he’s as close to a Renaissance man as you can get, an accomplished artist, novelist, analyst, activist, playwright and journalist.
This is Not a TV or a Piece of Furniture -- It's IKEA Blowing Your Mind!
In the race to create the next great home entertainment option, IKEA has one-upped the competition by introducing the UPPLEVA, which is a smart LED HDTV (complete with built-in Blu-ray player), a 2.1 sound system and a piece of furniture all in one piece (plus wireless subwoofer). They'll be rolling this out in Europe to start with this fall (Sweden, Italy, France, Poland, Denmark, Spain, Norway and Portugal), with more countries being added in the spring of 2013. This definitely fits a more European sensibility, but we totally see this selling in larger cities like New York where space is always limited.
There is no CG in the video above. What you’re seeing is pure, awesome science. The black liquid mixture is known as a ferrofluid , and is made up of nano-sized, iron-containing particles suspended in water or an organic solvent.
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.
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.
The 'Greenest' Restaurant in the USA is in Chicago
16 April 2012 Last updated at 01:57 ET 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.
Cardboard cathedral for quake-hit New Zealand city
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.
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.
Nadine Boughton
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.”
Mining Our Own Personal Data, for Self-Discovery
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.
The Other Arab Spring
Privacy-first ISP raising money for online services that can't and won't fink you out to spy agencies
Jon sez, "Nicholas Merrill, who previously first challenged the expansion of the National Secret Letter in the Patriot Act, is working on building a ISP infrastructure based on privacy. Help him raise funds on IndieGogo ." Here's Declan McCullagh on CNet: "The idea that we are working on is to not be capable of complying" with requests from the FBI for stored e-mail and similar demands, Merrill says. A 1994 federal law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act was highly controversial when it was enacted because it required telecommunications carriers to configure their networks for easy wiretappability by the FBI. But even CALEA says that ISPs "shall not be responsible for decrypting" communications if they don't possess "the information necessary to decrypt."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 more than 70 different flights to date, constitute the raw material of the project. While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in March 2010, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror using my cellphone.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.