How to insult in verse. By Robert Pinsky: "I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bar,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.
The senses are too gross, and he'll contrive
A sixth, to contradict the other five:
And before certain instinct will prefer
Reason, which fifty times for one does err."
New Scientist SPACE - News - Need a food or drug hit? Just relax: "STRESS can trigger binge eating and compulsive drug-taking. But how?
Kent Berridge of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues suggest that stress hormones might actually change how much we value a reward, increasing our desire for something pleasurable without actually increasing our enjoyment.
Berridge's team injected the stress hormone corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) into the nucleus accumbens of rats' brains, a part of the dopamine 'reward circuitry' responsible for wanting or desire. These rats had been trained to press a lever to get a dose of sugar and to associate hearing a certain tone with getting that sugar. The stressed rats worked harder at pressing the lever when they heard the tone than rats with low stress hormones (BMC Biology, DOI: 10.1186/1741-7007-4-8).
The effect looked exactly the same as when amphetamines were injected, something well known to increase desire. 'Stress magnifies the wanting,' says Berridge - but only when there's a cue, the tone, to advertise the reward as well. It's a bit like how seeing an advert for ice cream makes you desire it, he says. You might resist when you're not stressed, but the advert and the stress together make it irresistible.
The findings could explain why some stressful pursuits can be rewarding, and also how drug paraphernalia and stress can make relapse almost inevitable."
New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - Watching the brain 'switch off' self-awareness: "Goldberg found that when the sensory stimulus was shown slowly, and when a personal emotional response was required, the volunteers showed activity in the superfrontal gyrus – the brain region associated with self-awareness-related function.
But when the card flipping and musical sequences were rapid, there was no activity in the superfrontal gyrus, despite activity in the sensory cortex and related structures.
“The regions of the brain involved in introspection and sensory perception are completely segregated, although well connected,” says Goldberg, “and when the brain needs to divert all its resources to carry out a difficult task, the self-related cortex is inhibited.”
The brain’s ability to “switch off” the self may have evolved as a protective mechanism, he suggests. “If there is a sudden danger, such as the appearance of a snake, it is not helpful to stand around wondering how one feels about the situation,” Goldberg points out.
It is possible that research into how the brain switches self-awareness on and off will help neurologists gain a deeper understanding of autism, schizophrenia and other mental disorders where this functionality may be impaired."
New Scientist News - All the pleasures of alcohol, with no downsides: "In fact such 'partial agonists' of GABA-A receptors already exist in the form of bretazenil and pagoclone, which were developed as anti-anxiety drugs but never commercialised. These molecules also have the advantage of being instantly reversible by the drug flumazenil, which is used as an antidote to overdoses of tranquillisers such as Valium. Alcohol also inhibits NMDA receptors, which are part of a general excitatory signalling circuit, so a second ingredient of the alcohol substitute would be an NMDA antagonist such as dizoclipine, originally developed as a drug for stroke."
New Scientist SPACE - News - Lazy mole rats that get fat to have sex: "Damaraland mole rats and naked mole rats are thought to be the only mammal species that live and breed cooperatively, with some colony members devoting their lives to helping others reproduce."
The Dilbert Blog: Education and Religion: "“The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing.
If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent.
If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent.
If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent.
If they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?”
-- Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.), Aphorisms"
The Dilbert Blog: Education and Religion: "“The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing.
If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent.
If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent.
If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent.
If they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?”
-- Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.), Aphorisms"
Two new books about Jesus. By Richard Wightman Fox: "Emerson insisted, just wanted to impose a new conformity. 'It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.'"
