Jamuse & Museworx

Remember the words Jamuse & Museworx if you need to 1; send and receive large files and 2, get access to creative talent for solving difficult design and communication problems. It's the most innovative pair of sites I've seen for doing things like this. Tres cool to the max & yes, they are the complete package for design types of all persuasions.

Color Sense

"What colour most improves brain performance and receptivity to advertising, red or blue?

It turns out they both can, it just depends on the nature of the task or message. The study, which could have major implications for advertising and interior design, finds that red is the most effective at enhancing our attention to detail, while blue is best at boosting our ability to think creatively.

"Previous research linked blue and red to enhanced cognitive performance, but disagreed on which provides the greatest boost," says Juliet Zhu of UBC's Sauder School of Business, author of the study which will appear in the Feb. 5 issue of Science. 'It really depends on the nature of the task.' "

When you look at this amazing research, one starts to realize that perhaps bills presented to Congress should be color keyed in order to facilitate cognitive and creative thinking on the part of our "wonderful" elected leaders who seem to have lost the ability to understand anything more complex than the crucial issue of getting reelected rather than dealing with the most important issues this country has ever faced since the founding of our nation.

Addendum,: The NY Times has a followup on this very important finding. Click Reinvent Wheel? Blue Room... to see why.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them. - Einstein

Coraline

This is one of the best reviews I have ever read about a film. The NY Times did it up brown by linking a set of seamlessly connected clips to a very well thought out review of a film which, IMHO, will become a classic not only in style but in substance. Neil Gaiman's work is mysterious and powerful and the film resonates with these qualities with a 3D look that simply must be seen to be appreciated. For sure, the Times hit a home run with this one as did Henry Selick, the director of this exquisite piece.

Born Believers

Now I know why so many people believe in god, our brains are configured to believe...

"So how does the brain conjure up gods? One of the key factors, says Bloom, is the fact that our brains have separate cognitive systems for dealing with living things - things with minds, or at least volition - and inanimate objects.

Bloom says the two systems are autonomous, leaving us with two viewpoints on the world: one that deals with minds, and one that handles physical aspects of the world. He calls this innate assumption that mind and matter are distinct "common-sense dualism". The body is for physical processes, like eating and moving, while the mind carries our consciousness in a separate - and separable - package. "We very naturally accept you can leave your body in a dream, or in astral projection or some sort of magic," Bloom says. "These are universal views."

The ability to conceive of gods, however, is not sufficient to give rise to religion. The mind has another essential attribute: an overdeveloped sense of cause and effect which primes us to see purpose and design everywhere, even where there is none. "You see bushes rustle, you assume there's somebody or something there," Bloom says.

Even so, religion is an inescapable artefact of the wiring in our brain, says Bloom. "All humans possess the brain circuitry and that never goes away." Petrovich adds that even adults who describe themselves as atheists and agnostics are prone to supernatural thinking. Bering has seen this too. When one of his students carried out interviews with atheists, it became clear that they often tacitly attribute purpose to significant or traumatic moments in their lives, as if some agency were intervening to make it happen. "They don't completely exorcise the ghost of god - they just muzzle it," Bering says"

Click here for the New Scientist view on why we are hard wired to believe.

Even though I fit in the Non-Religious category, exorcising the ghost of god is a very hard thing to do but then again, I do have help from a higher power. :)

Share & Share Alike

"The eldest of the fishermen, Memo, rubs his grizzled chin in somber recollection, for one of our students has just asked a pointed and painful question: Which species have disappeared in his lifetime?

Solemnly, as though he’s reciting the names of his own deceased ancestors, Memo begins: the sea cucumbers, the fan clam, the lion’s paw scallop . . . . He’s working his way back in time, I think, moving from the most recently vanished toward the creatures that disappeared when he was a child.

In the early ’90s, he reaches the sharks; in the ’70s, the sea turtles; in the ’60s, the giant sea bass; and in the years of his childhood, the great totoaba, a six-foot croaker that was once pulled from these waters by the million."

The author, Aaron Hirsh, goes on to speak eloquently about the Sole Owner and the art of sustainability.

"If a fish population is controlled by a single, perfectly rational agent — an idealized entity economists refer to as “the sole owner” — he or she will manage it to maximize its total value over time. For almost every population, that means leaving a lot of fish in the water, where they can continue to make young fish. The sole owner, then, will cautiously withdraw the biological equivalent of interest, without reducing the capital — the healthy population that remains in the sea.

But if the fish population is available to many independent parties, competition becomes a driving concern. If I don’t extract as much as I can today, there’s no guarantee you won’t take everything tomorrow. Sure, in a perfect world, you and I would trust each other, exercise restraint, and in the long run, grow wealthier for it, but I’d better just play it safe and get those fish before you do. The race for fish ensues, and soon, the tragedy of the commons has struck."

Add to this the radical notion of leaving some of the big ones to breed could bring back the fish stocks sooner than later. Click here to see why.

Don't click this image

Too late, you already did. Outrageous time killer and collaborative tool for the net. I will contribute my stuff for sure.

The image above is a sample from the Glocal Similarity Map Engine, (Surrey Tech Lab) the software search environment that connects similar pictures together.

The Web rules.

The Big "D"

"The vast majority, perhaps even all, of Congress, the general officer corps of the armed forces, top management of American defense manufacturers, prominent members of Washington’s think-tank community and nationally recognized “defense journalists” will hate this book. They will likely also urge that it be ignored by both parties in Congress and especially by the new president and his incoming national security team."

The problem with the vested interests who want this document to go away is the fact the 13 writers are non-partisan pentagon insiders who know the drill and know where the bodies lie. Sort of like Dick Cheney knowing Washington big time except these guys are telling the truth about something that's too important to ignore.

To add credence to Meltdown, read The New York Times Flames Out in Defense Dogfight by Chuck Spinney, a guy who was intimately connected to the pentagon as a top analyst specializing in new weapon systems. (Whistle Blower Supreme that even Congress listens to)

"Bottom line: The Pentagon is in a crisis, the editors of the New Times would unknowingly reinforce it. Readers interested in how we might reform the Pentagon's self-destructive-decision process are referred to my testimony cited in the previous paragraph or the somewhat different recommendations in a remarkable new anthology, America’s Defense Meltdown, published by the Center for Defense Information. This new anthology is designed to give President Obama and Congress a guide to placing the Pentagon back onto a pathway toward an effective defense at a cost a nation in recession can afford. Written by retired military officers and civilians with over 350 years experience in the defense business, this book is unique in that it provides a view from the trenches by people who have struggled to reform the way the Pentagon does business."

If civilian tech worked like the Pentagon, computers would never have left the staging area due to the inability to handle the vagaries of the real world.

The Fermi Paradox

"We have little to guide us on the question of the existence (of) intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. But the physicist Enrico Fermi came up with the most obvious question: if the universe is teeming with advanced civilizations, where are they?

The so-called Fermi Paradox has haunted SETI researchers ever since. Not least because the famous Drake equation, which attempts put a figure on the number intelligent civilisations out there now, implies that if the number of intelligent civilisations capable of communication in our galaxy is greater than 1, then we should eventually hear from them.

That overlooks one small factor, says Reginald Smith from the Bouchet-Franklin Institute in Rochester, New York state. He says that there is a limit to how far a signal from ET can travel before it becomes too faint to hear. And when you factor that in, everything changes."

Click here for the Broadcasting but not receiving PDF and here for an alternative view on why we hear nothing titled An Astrophysical Explanation for the Great Silence.

Beyond the Infinite - Kubrick/2001

I don't know about this one...

I love 3D. I sincerely believe it's the wave of the future for computer graphics and immersion tech but sometimes it can get out of hand and this may be one of those times, especially when one drives a car.

"A driver gets into his car and turns the ignition key. The dashboard, which was black just a moment ago, now reveals itself as a 3-D display with a simple but modern design. If his son were at the wheel, the controls for the mp3 player would now appear in the foreground: “Please select an artist”. After choosing some music, he would set off.

The display would show a 3-D model of the town, and the integrated navigation system would direct him to his destination. The car owner, however, prefers other types of information, such as the latest traffic reports. He also likes to have the rev counter in view at all times. After he has driven for a while, the display changes and an alert message literally jumps out at him: “Please refuel"."

With this tech, I can just see how imaginative the excuses will be when a fender bender happens. :)

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish...

This was the first catalog that was eagerly collected by yours truly starting way back in the late '60s. Filled with just about anything one needs to survive, Steward Brand's masterpiece was a counter culture icon read & revered by millions of us crazies, particularly when Tricky Dick was president. Now comes a worthy successor, wikiHow, the world's largest how to manual, something most definitely needed in these uncertain times.

Enjoy.