How will you complete this quote?
“…the theories, technologies and findings of molecular biology, evolutionary developmental biology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, linguistics and anthropology can be productively combined to…”
Stone Encephalon
A new Encephalon is out, rounding up the best mind/brain blogging. The Mouse Trap is hosting, and this edition includes a good selection of posts.
Visit Encephalon #79.
The latest Four Stone Hearth rounds up anthropology blogging over at Spider Monkey Tales. I really have to highlight the spectacular photos of a male drill monkey, with an accompanying post. I worked with drill monkeys for a year, so this was great to see!
Visit Four Stone Hearth #81.
Wednesday Round Up #93
Here’s this week – top, mind, teaching & new media, anthropology, and science & life.
Top of the List
David L. Chandler, Rethinking Artificial Intelligence
A broad-based MIT project that aims to reinvent artificial intelligence for a new era. By going back and fixing mistakes, researchers hope to produce ‘co-processors’ for the human mind.
Petra Boynton, Celebrating This Blog’s Fifth Birthday!
“Sex educator, Agony Aunt, Academic” – here’s to five more years!
Sandra Kiume, Brain-Based Sex Differences
Mythbusting sex differences in the brain. Includes a video with Lise Eliot.
Sarah Kershaw, Addiction on 2 Fronts: Work and Home
Explains why Dr. A. Thomas McLellan accepted the nomination to be the government’s number two drug-control official – his life and his research surrounded by addiction.
Jessica Palmer, Beautiful Hunger
A YouTube video on swarming sea creatures. Another great one from Bioephemera is Eat Your Veggies.
ScienceDaily, First Evidence of Brain Rewiring in Children: Reading Remediation Positively Alters Brain Tissue
New white matter from 100 hours of reading – communication matters!
Mind
Benedict Carey, Study Suggests Methods and Timing to Treat Fears
Testing variations in extinction training for traumatic memories/associations – the sooner the better. Ed Yong provides greater depth about the actual research.
Copenhagen Climate Change
All eyes in the world should be on the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference as we wait with a stuttering heartbeat to learn about the policies that will guide humanity through the next great evolutionary bottleneck. The topic I will be keeping an eye on is overpopulation.
Overpopulation is the greatest ethical problem we face as a species as we begin to recognise our pivotal impact on the planet and start to actually do something about carbon emissions, pollution and poverty. If there weren’t so many of us, our levels of consumption would be reduced, our effluent would be minimised and our cultural habits would be manageable. But how do we go about ethically addressing the issue of population growth? I find it hard to condone China‘s one-child policy, but could the rest of the world be owing carbon credits to China in light of new research which shows that for every $7 spent of family planning we can reduce more than one tonne of CO2 emissions? One thing is clear, reducing the world’s population is a necessity but it is an issue that can only be approached through education not enforcement. A decade of lost opportunities to increase contraceptive prevalence was noted as recently as the 1980s (Diczfalusy, 1991). It is clear that now, more than ever, widespread distribution of family planning and contraceptive technology is crucial to our future on this planet.
To what degree is our concern about climate change altruistic? I do not believe that we are concerned about the health of our planet as much as we are concerned about our existence on it. At the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, are we discussing what changes need to be made or merely what changes we are prepared to make? And if so, how effective will such egocentric, ethnocentric and anthropomorphic changes be?
There are a few things I would like to know about the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. Did the attendees travel by plane or did they sail the northerly trade-winds to Denmark? Will the menu be meat free? Are they travelling by car from their hotels to the conference? Or will they choose public transport? I’m not sure if meat, cars and planes are things that many people are willing to go without! Slipping on a condom, however, might just be the barrier between our greed and our hypocrisy. During the UN conference, there will need to be unbiased decisions about what measures we need to go to, which cultural habits will be sustainable and what solutions we can implement in order to reduce our impact on the ecology of our world.
Complete this quote: “…we have the means to…”
How would you complete this quote?
“To some extent, in a variety of imperfect ways, individually and collectively, we have the means to…”
Continue reading “Complete this quote: “…we have the means to…””
Mind & its Potential
Our regular readers may recall a post about the Mind & its Potential conference in late October and a reference to this conference in the weekly “Complete this quote”. The Vajrayana institute organised and hosted their annual “Mind & its potential” conference this week. There were a choice of two pre-conference workshops, two packed days of presentations, a gala dinner that raised well over $7000 for the Lifehouse foundation and eight post-conference workshops. It was a fantastic jam-packed week of meaty brain-related presentations and workshops! Some of the biggest stars from the Brain Sciences and Buddhist traditions were on stage for an incredible show of collaboration, integration and contemplation. With my long-held interests in Buddhism and the brain, this conference was a must-see event for the latest developments in both areas.
Neuroanthropology 