Richard Dawkins was on the box last night, talking about Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Last year I read 'The Selfish Gene' written by Dawkins and found it pretty interesting and would recommend it to anyone. That said he seems stuck up his own ass, please do excuse the language. His views are very "2D" and he takes everything literally. I think if he was more opening minded when discussing his thoughts and opinions with others he'd gain much more respect from none atheists. When he's talking to others who do not share his opinions, his body language is like that of a child, who is ready to pounce with a witty response rather than trying to understand what they're saying. I think it would be fair to call him an absolutist, which is fine and we need people who are willing to discuss their thoughts in public and have ideas to back it up, but personally I think he's allowed science to blind him to the illusion in which we exist.

If you were to throw a word at me, agnostic would probably stick best

Cheers
Ryan Partington

Today I came across this interview whilst reading new scientist, and I was amazed by the content. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did

From New Scientist 19th April 2008 edition:
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On 10 December 1996, neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor had a stroke when a blood vessel ruptured in her brain. Robbed of her memory, motor skills, even personality, she retreated into herself and dwelled primarily in her brain's right hemisphere. During the eight years to full recovery, she found ways to control her thoughts and rebuild her mind. She tells Michael Reilly why the stroke was the best thing that ever happened to her

What did the stroke do to you?

Because the haemorrhage was in my cerebral cortex, it wiped out my cognitive mind. I was very fortunate, though, in that my body was going to be OK.

Describe the days that followed.

I was in hospital for five days. On the morning of the third day my mother came to my side. Now, I did not know what a mother was, much less who my mother was. She came in, acknowledged everyone in the room, and then immediately picked up the sheet and crawled into bed with me. I didn't know who this person was. I didn't know what this person was. All I knew was that this very kind woman just crawled into my bed, wrapped her arms around me and started rocking me, like I was her baby. And I was her baby. She just recognised that I was an infant again and that was that.

What did you do for your rehabilitation?

The only formal rehab I had was speech therapy. I saw a speech therapist for about three months. My real rehab was done by my mother from the day she brought me home. She was an angel in my life. She would take me to the bathroom, feed me and then if I had any energy left she would work me - children's puzzles, teaching me to read, walking me around the apartment and then the block, those kinds of things. I would not be here if it were not for her.

The advantage I had was that I believed in the ability of the brain to recover itself. That meant primarily for me to get out of its way.

How do you get out of the brain's way?

My number one recommendation is sleep. The brain needs sleep. These cells have been traumatised. The person is totally burned out and fried, and they want to sleep. In our society, generally what happens in a rehabilitation environment is that wake-up time is at 7 am. Everyone gets awakened. If you are a stroke survivor and you are zoned out and don't want to be awake, you will be pumped with amphetamines. Stimulus is stuck in your face, often in the form of a TV set in the room, sometimes literally a foot from your face. It's pure pain. And then we keep these people awake through dinner. After dinner they're put back to bed. The idea is that if you're going to recover, you have to act like a normal person. If that had been my experience, honestly I would have chosen not to engage. There's no question in my mind that we're not treating stroke survivors effectively.

You have said that you retreated into the right hemisphere of the brain. What was that like?

When I had the haemorrhage, the personality of my left hemisphere was traumatised. I shifted all the way into the right hemisphere, because the left-brain personality became non-functional and released her dominance, or released the dominating neural fibres that were inhibiting my right hemisphere. That's from an anatomical perspective.

As time went on, different circuits in the left hemisphere started to become functional again. It was like repairs. So it was a long process of me in relationship with my brain, day after day, year after year, rebuilding. I was consciously choosing and rebuilding my brain to be what I wanted it to be.

Did you actually consciously reconstruct your brain with your thoughts?

Yes, renewing or rerunning neurocircuits was a cognitive choice. The non-functional circuits started to come back online one at a time and I could choose to either hook into that circuitry or not feed it. For example, when the anger circuit wanted to run again, I did not like the way it felt inside my body so I said "no" to its running. Every time it tried to get triggered and run again, I brought my attention back to it - I did not like the way anger felt so I shut it down. Now that circuit rarely runs at all, mostly because I feel it getting triggered and nip it in the bud.

It was so clear to me during my recovery that every ability I had was because the circuit that controlled it was good, it was functioning. I learned that certain thoughts that I had could stimulate the emotional circuitry, which could then result in a physiological response.

So, I look at us as a collection of neurocircuitry of thoughts and emotions and physiological responses. When you see the brain as the kind of computer network that it is, it becomes easier to manipulate. But you have to be willing. People say "Oh I'm so much more than my thoughts, I'm so much more than neurocircuitry," and I'm like, yeah, I had that fantasy once, too. I don't any more. As human beings we all have the ability to focus our minds on what we want to think about.

This sounds like the claims made by meditators.

I think folks who meditate are willing to pay attention to their thoughts so that they can purposefully redirect their minds. Mantras, prayer beads, consciously thinking about one's breathing - these are tools that provide the brain with an alternative to the constant brain chatter, permitting the mind's focus to shift to something else. It's the same sort of thing. There are people who are comfortable witnessing their thoughts, while there are others who think they are their thoughts. Learning to observe our neural circuitry and not engage with it is a skill we all can learn.

When did you know you had recovered?

I felt I was completely recovered when I felt I had become a solid again. Up until then I felt that I was a fluid.

What do you mean by becoming a "solid"?

I'd get up in the morning and take my dog out. I have woods out back, and I knew I had recovered when everything blended, everything radiated the energy of life - the trees and the light coming through them, the grass and the sparkling dew. Everything was vivid, beautiful and connected, and I was a part of it all. That's very different to saying "I am a solid, and that's a tree and that's a blade of grass and that's a drop of dew," and everything is separate. I don't know how else to describe it.

You do a lot of stained-glass work now. Has your perception of the artwork, and indeed your life, changed much since your stroke?

Oh yeah, everything's more vibrant, more alive and more beautiful now. More fluid, more curves, fewer lines, more relative, less disconnected, more similar, less different. Everything in my life has changed like that since the stroke. If someone said to me, "Okay Jill, we're going to put you in a time capsule and let you wake up that day again and you get to choose to have the stroke or not have it," I would have the stroke in a minute.

Profile
Jill Bolte Taylor studied neuroanatomy at Indiana State University. She then worked at Harvard University, where she investigated the influence of schizophrenia on the brain's perception of reality. Having fully recovered from her stroke, she now teaches neuroanatomy at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. Her book, My Stroke of Insight, was published in 2006

The great art of forgetting. Yesterday I was on my way to a client's site and remembered I was climbing that evening. I had not however remembered to pack my kit before leaving for work.

We may look at forgetting as a negative, but what would it be like to remember everything? Would our mind be able to cope with all that information and how would we sort useful memories from useless? Later in this article we look at someone who never forgets and the pain and stress this can introduce. Before we do I'd like you to understand how memory works and why forgetting is as important as remembering.

New Scientist, 16th Feburary 2008:
In simple terms, new memories start life as the temporary excitation of synapses in a network of neurons. If you recall a memory, the same neural pathways are reactivated. The more times this happens, the more important the brain deems the memory to be and the more likely it is to be converted into a long-term memory, by forming permanent connections between the neurons. These connections are reinforced each time the memory is recalled, making it easier to retrieve. The brain contains so many potential synaptic connections that, in theory at least, there is no limit to the number of long-term memories that the brain can store. [End quote from New Scientist]

When reading technical books you are reminded of the same important concept throughout and now we can see the benefits of such teachings. I feel much more comfort when I'm reading a book or article and don't quite 'get' what is being said. I can now put it down to new information, a new memory which while it may be important and accurate, it will need to prove it's worth over time. Instead of reading it over and over again, move on. If it's of any value you'll come across it again in the future. This is assuming you continue reading about that topic or technology in the future. My point being, if you want to be good at something, read as much as you can about it. Worry not about understanding but about getting to the end and starting the next book or article. Mass information may prove more useful than the quality of a single source. Why though can we not just remember everything?

New Scientist, 16th Feburary 2008:
"A system that records every detail willy-nilly and makes that information accessible on an ongoing basis is one that will result in mass confusion," according to Dan Schacter of Harvard University. He says we forget because the brain has developed strategies to weed out irrelevant or out-of-date information. Efficient forgetting is a crucial part of having a fully functioning memory. When we forget something useful, he says, it just shows that this pruning system is working a little too well.[End quote from New Scientist]

A real life example of a 42 year old woman who cannot forget

New Scientist, 16th Feburary 2008:
SOME things in life are best forgotten. Unfortunately for AJ, forgetting is a luxury she can only dream of. A 42-year-old woman from California, AJ remembers every day of her life since her teens in extraordinary detail. Mention any date since 1980 and she is immediately transported back in time, picturing where she was, what she was doing, and what made the news that day. It's an ability that has baffled and amazed her family and friends for several decades, but it comes at a price. AJ is locked in a cycle of remembering that she describes as a "running movie that never stops". Even when she wants to, AJ cannot forget.[End quote from New Scientist]

Cheers
Ryan Partington

Science, a truth of fact and evidence. My interest grew in science because I thought it was more accurate than any other explanation. I thought information was backed up by experiments and analysed by experts in the field. This being the case, the information provided by science was more believable than from anywhere else. However, the more I read about time travel machines and such like remote possibilities, science started to sound like science fiction. Some may go as far as saying it's like religion, but for people who think they're smarter.

Have a read of this article from a recent copy of new scientist; reality check required.

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IF SOME Russian mathematicians are right, then 2008 will be a year to remember. Extraordinary as it sounds, this could be when humanity unwittingly creates its first time machine and we receive our first visitors from the future - presumably wearing, as future-fashion dictates, silver jumpsuits and driving flying cars.

These theorists speculate that at the much-delayed opening of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN on the French-Swiss border, the assembled scientists and dignitaries may be treated to a big surprise. The LHC could, thanks to some mooted possibilities crashing around on the wilder shores of physics, become a time machine - specifically, the end of a "closed timelike curve" connected to the future (see "The accidental time machine").

This is not the first time we have been told that the LHC could change, or rather end, life as we know it. A few years ago someone calculated that the collider might create a mini black hole which would promptly set about eating the planet, starting with Switzerland. Or worse, create a weird subatomic particle called a strangelet that could devour the entire universe. Physics and cosmology stories are like this these days. Once it was all hard sums and red-shifted galaxies; awesome enough one would have thought. Now it's time machines and universe-eating particles.

Does any of this bear any relation to reality? Or is Big Physics guilty of some serious sexing-up, drifting away from the realm of hard data and into the softer universe of science pornography?

As well as accidental time machines we are told of cosmic strings - gigantic filaments of super-stuff that warp and tear space-time like ladders in a pair of celestial stockings - and crashing branes, titanic slabs of maths that give rise to the big bang in the exotically lovely ekpyrotic universe of Neil Turok.

Not crazy enough for you? What about the multiverse? One of the biggest sell-out lectures at last year's Hay-on-Wye festival in Wales starred the UK's astronomer royal, Martin Rees, who entertained his audience with a discussion of the possibility, indeed the probability, of multiple worlds - endless parallel realities existing in a gargantuan super-reality that makes what we think of as the universe as insignificant as a gnat on an elephant's backside. Or there's the simulation argument, philosopher Nick Bostrom's delicious idea that since it should be possible to replicate an entire universe in a computer, and that this could be done countless times, statistical cleverness proves that we are not the real McCoy but the figments of some electronic entity's imagination.

Don't get me wrong, I love parallel universes. I love the idea that, 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 100 light years away is an identical me, sitting down at his computer writing this very same article in a world exactly the same as mine except that the gear stick on the Honda Accord is a slightly different shade of grey. And I love the idea that every time a subatomic particle goes hither or thither, a whole new creation is invoked; forget half-dead cats in boxes, we are talking worlds in which Hitler won the second world war, or where there was no Hitler, and no second world war and no Honda Accords at all.

It is fun to know that serious scientists believe the fabulous alternate realities of the Philip Pullman novels could be accurate descriptions of reality (for in a multiverse of infinite size and scope there will, somewhere and somewhen, be a world where a little girl called Lyra befriends a talking polar bear and where people's souls take the form of animal familiars).

Fun yes, but is it harmless? Scientists, and people like me who stick up for science, are happy to pour scorn on astrologers, homeopaths, UFO-nutters, crop-circlers and indeed the Adam-and-Eve brigade, who all happily believe in six impossible things before breakfast with no evidence at all. Show us the data, we say to these deluded souls. Where are your trials? What about Occam's razor - the principle that any explanation should be as simple as possible? The garden is surely beautiful enough, we say, without having to populate it with fairies.

The danger is that on the wilder shores of physics these standards are often not met either. There is as yet no observational evidence for cosmic strings. It's hard to test for a multiverse. In this sense, some of these ideas are not so far, conceptually, from UFOs and homeopathy. If we are prepared to dismiss ghosts, say, as ludicrous on the grounds that firstly we have no proper observational evidence for them and secondly that their existence would force us to rethink everything, doesn't the same argument apply to simulated universes and time machines? Are we not guilty of prejudice against some kinds of very unlikely ideas in favour of others?

Believing in ghosts takes a different mindset to advocating parallel worlds or cosmic strings. But do we really believe that we are all the creations of a computer sitting in some higher-dimensional adolescent's bedroom, or that time travellers will land at the LHC? Or are we, too, seeing fairies at the bottom of the garden?

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Cheers
Ryan partington