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Thursday, Nov 18, 2004
Bush + Kiss + Rice + Appointment
I was surprised by the PDA that Dubya gave Condi. Seemed odd. Out of place. Unprofessional. At my work, we keep the kissing down to a minimum, even during promotion announcements. And tongue play is way past the limit.
Out of curiousity, I googled on the combination above at news.google.com, and found exactly one relevant story.
The Australian -- November 18, 2004
Roy Eccleston, Washington correspondent
WITH a peck on the cheek from George W.Bush and a few discreet tears, Condoleezza Rice prepared yesterday to take the reins of US foreign policy on a world stage dotted with hot spots from the Middle East to the Sudan, and North Korea to Afghanistan.
Perhaps, I'm all wrong. Perhaps it wasn't an inappropriate display of personal endearment during what should have been a solemn, businesslike occasion during an actual shooting war.
Drain Bamage
Among my hobbies is brain science.
No, that isn't right.
Among my hobbies is reading about brain science. It's a marvelously complicated subject of which I can only skim the surface. Perhaps it will come in handy as most of my grandfather's siblngs went of Alzheimers.
My first fascination came about when I was a small child, while reading about the work of Jane Goodall with some of the furry hominids, and reading about Koko. The nature of human minds and human language quickly come to mind when speaking of the nature and behavior of our hairy cousins.
In the 9th grade, I was drawn to an introduction of experiential models of mental perception and language-based models of cognitive reasoning that were presented in a speech class. The teacher's theory was that if you want to manipulate .... um ... convince people of something, one must start with an understanding how their minds process ideas.
In college I was fascinated with psycho-acoustics, which really should be called neural-acoutics because they keep finding the neural systems that underlie auditory perception. It's all about the wetware.
In the eighties, I closely followed a substantial and long-running series in EE Times about AI, programmed expert systems, self-programming neural nets, etc., that approached the ideas about thinking from a rather geeky, bottoms-up, engineering perspective.
In the eighties I also dabbled in the literature of psychology, primarily the type one can find in a certain section of your local Barnes and Noble. (Hey, you probably wore big hair, acid wash jeans and pink in the eighties, so lay off.)
In the nineties I dated a mental health counselor and
was exposed to neural models for conciousness as described in Descartes Error. And now I'm fascinated the the neural biology of the retina, the most complex neural structure outside of the brain. In fact, it starts as part of the brain, and migrates during fetal development.
So this accusation kind of bugged me ...
Hatred is easy. Hatred is cheap. Hatred is ancient. Hatred doesn't sleep.
Hatred makes you mad. Hatred makes you angry. Hatred stokes your fear.
If they did choose to rely more on their prefrontal cortexes, they might experience these brain functions more deeply ...
- attention span
- planning
- judgment
- impulse control
- problem solving
- critical thinking
- forward thinking
- learning from experience and mistakes
- empathy
The amygdala is very close to the brain stem, and is the center of fear, rage and aggression. It can and should be regulated by the cognitive functions. And it's a matter of choice. That's all I'm saying.
Wednesday, Nov 17, 2004
Red State Coda
As mentioned previously, I had some red state visitors recently. The SF hotel industry is in the middle of labor negotiations, with lockouts and noisy picket lines. My Mom said something so heartwarming ... so Christian ... so ... Red State.
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