Brain Stimulant: Virtual Fly Brain Computer Model

"Most people think about ways that they can get rid of insects. However, some scientists are actually considering what it would take to create artificial insects with virtual brain's. Researchers are now planning to create a computer simulation of a fly's brain (drosophila). Could this virtual fly brain enable military mad scientists to fine tune a bug's functioning? Perhaps you could recalibrate a bug's pleasure circuitry so it would find enjoyment in injecting deadly poison into enemy combatants. Or maybe this might allow the development of increasingly complex forms of insect behavior like swarming or intelligence gathering by precisely altering the bug's neural wetware (with the help of the model)."

Video: How to Build a High Traffic Blog | Tim Ferriss

"Over the last WordCamp San Francisco Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek (name of both his book and blog), gave a presentation on “how to build a high traffic blog without killing yourself.”

It lasts 50 minutes, and he covers a wide range of topics, from posting frequency to blogging tools and community building. The cool thing is that most of the stuff is coming from the tests that Tim run over the years. Worth watching."

Google D.C. Talks: "National Security and Web 2.0"

This too, for reference...

The Power of Counter-Intuitive Thinking

"Why did the Swiss lose the watch market to the Japanese and others?

According to Bill Byron Concevitch, chief learning officer for Verint, the Swiss discovered the idea of a transistorized watch over 40 years ago, yet they did nothing about it. In his book, Counter-Intuitive Selling (Kaplan Publishing, 2007), Concevitch points out what happened. The Swiss didn’t pursue the idea of a transistorized watch because it was counter-intuitive to their thinking.

Some Japanese businessmen were visiting Switzerland, heard about the idea, and asked the leaders of the Swiss watchmaking industry if they planned to pursue the idea. Told no, the Japanese recognized the opportunity. As Concevitch explained during a visit to AMA, the Japanese were prompted to pursue the idea because they had no preconceived notions about watches. The story, he shared, points out the importance of giving up old habits and embracing new ways of thinking and acting—counter-intuitive to our current thinking.

“Today,” said Concevitch, “the Swiss still have a small piece of the global watch market, but 80% of watches today are built in Japan and elsewhere."

World Of Sport - The Unmasking Of Kendo Nagasaki

Awakening from a Cultural Trance: An Ecopsychological Case Study by Molly Young Brown

This is a story of awakening -- to the cultural trance and mythology of a home town, and to the psychological and spiritual effects on someone growing up in that culture. It is an ecopsychology story because of its implications about an individual's interrelationships within the larger human world and the more-than-human world, and because the awakening took place on a vision quest in the wild.

I was raised in Los Alamos, the "Atomic City," the birthplace of the atomic bomb. Los Alamos is nestled in the mountains of Northern New Mexico, so my childhood playground was nature. From an early age, I camped, picnicked, and played in the woods and canyons which interlaced the town, establishing a strong relationship with trees, mountains, creeks, and critters. I believe it was this relationship which sustained me and eventually helped me to awaken to the cultural trance of my home town.

Welcome to Neuroanthropology

Neuroanthropology is a collaborative weblog created to encourage exchanges among anthropology, philosophy, social theory, and the brain sciences. We especially hope to explore the implications of new findings in the neurosciences for our understanding of culture, human development, and behaviour.

The God Chemical: Brain Chemistry And Mysticism | NPR

For much of the 20th century, mainstream science shied away from studying spirituality.

Sigmund Freud declared God to be a delusion, and others maintained that God, if there is such a thing, is beyond the tools of science to measure.

But now, some researchers are using new technologies to try to understand spiritual experience. They're peering into our brains and studying our bodies to look for circumstantial evidence of a spiritual world. The search is in its infancy, and scientists doubt they will ever be able to prove — or disprove — the existence of God.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Connectivity

Blogged with the Flock Browser

10 Ways to Stay Marketable When You’re Out of Work | Business Pundit

Out of work? That doesn’t mean you’re also out of opportunities. Any single one of the ten methods below will help you stay marketable. If you try all ten suggestions, you’ll dramatically increase your odds of landing a new job, client, or key relationship.

Richard Thieme - Relativity and the Art of War

Gawker - How to Pry Money Out of Google - Newspapers

"The New York Times and Washington Post are in informal talks about the online news business. The obvious subtext: The newspapers want Google to pay for their headlines. They're going about it all wrong.

The morosely moribund newspaper industry is looking for a bailout. The government and Google are the only people with cash on hand these days; even superstar investor Warren Buffett, who owns stakes in the Post and the Buffalo News, says he won't put more money into the business."

Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated By Spies - WSJ.com

"Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.

'The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid,' said a senior intelligence official. 'So have the Russians.'"

Technology Review: Crowd-Sourcing the World

"As smart as computers may seem, they can't match humans in certain tasks: describing the contents of an image, rating the quality of Web search results, or transcribing and translating text from another language, to name a few. Tapping into human expertise to tackle problems that computers struggle with is also a growing business: Google lets customers refine its search results, and Amazon uses a system called the Mechanical Turk to off-load all manner of simple tasks to humans around the world; people will work on these tasks, even for pennies."

The Anonymity Project

Social and cognitive correlates of children’s lying behavior | V Talwar and K Lee (2008)

The relation between children’s lie-telling and their social and cognitive development was examined. Children (3-8 years) were told not to peek at a toy. Most children peeked and later lied about peeking. Children’s subsequent verbal statements were not always consistent with their initial denial and leaked critical information revealing their deceit. Children’s conceptual moral understanding of lies, executive functioning, and theory-of-mind understanding were also assessed. Children’s initial false denials were related to their first-order belief understanding and their inhibitory control. Children’s ability to maintain their lies was related to their second-order belief understanding. Children’s lying was related to their moral evaluations. These findings suggest that social and cognitive factors may play an important role in children’s lie-telling abilities.

The Outing of a Blogger: Social Transparency or Violation? | The Blog Herald

"We live in an age of transparency. I’d say that “transparency” should have been the word of the year last year, and it’s popularity as a buzz word this year continues. It pops up in most news reports, demanding transparency from banks and financial institutions, politicians, governments, corporations, and individuals.

It also litters our social media interaction. We want our online social interchanges to be with real people who want to know us as real people. We want people leaving comments on our blogs to have names. We want folks on Twitter to have real names, not CD Handles and cute nicknames or keywords. So is it okay to be anonymous any more?

Over the years, there as been an ongoing debate about anonymous bloggers as more and more people take to the Information Highway to have their say. For some, anonymity is a matter of life or death. For others, it’s just wiser. But it isn’t for everyone."

Counter-Intuitive Selling | www.mindcrossings.com

The counter-intuitive sales professional quickly comes to the realization that there is more hiding behind the reason for a lost sale than the customer shares.

At the heart of counter-intuitive selling is the principle that for our sales results to change, our sales behaviors and habits must change. It's hard for seasoned sales professionals to change habits-as habits are ingrained and reflex. This is readily apparent when it comes to lost business and lost opportunities.

Do you really take a look at why you lost a piece of business?

Do you change your sales behavior to make sure you do not make the same mistakes again and again-leading to more lost business?