SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
Science & TechnologyS
The US is headed for a showdown with much of the rest of the world over control of the internet at this week's UN summit in Tunisia.
Growing interest in the economic habits of other primates is revealing that we may be less special than we imagined. Although economic rationality suggests that we should give equal weight to small gains or losses, countless experiments indicate that the pain associated with a loss tends to outweigh the pleasure of an equivalent gain. For example, if you give each of a group of people an object - a mug, say - and then ask how much money they would want to give it up, they usually demand much higher amounts than others are willing to pay to obtain the same mugs.
...Chris Niebauer, who now teaches at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, claims that handedness is correlated in a more general way to people's attitudes. Niebauer has collected results that he says suggest that mixed-handers are less likely to believe in creationism or be homophobic and more likely to be hypochondriac. He explains this by drawing on renowned neurologist V.S. Ramachandran's view that the left hemisphere controls rational thought, while the right is the world-view challenger, updating beliefs when contradictory information becomes overwhelming. Niebauer argues that in mixed-handers, a larger corpus callosum helps the right hemisphere revise its beliefs more frequently, updating the person's overall belief system and washing away entrenched ideas...
Comment: David Wolman is a left-handed writer in Portland, Oregon. His new book, A Left-Hand Turn Around the World: Chasing the mystery and meaning of all things southpaw, is published this week by Da Capo Press at £14.50/$23.95
Has anybody heard about this poor guy stuck on the space station due to bureaucracy?
European immigrants may have passed on agricultural skills, but not their genes.
A group of travellers brought farming to Europe about 7,500 years ago. But did their children thrive and hand down the skill? Researchers studying ancient DNA say instead that the idea was stolen by more successful locals, as the farmers failed to leave their mark on Europe's genes.
A group of travellers brought farming to Europe about 7,500 years ago. But did their children thrive and hand down the skill? Researchers studying ancient DNA say instead that the idea was stolen by more successful locals, as the farmers failed to leave their mark on Europe's genes.
Hamilton, ON A gigantic ape, measuring about 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,200 pounds, co-existed alongside humans, a geochronologist at McMaster University has discovered.
Using a high-precision absolute-dating method (techniques involving electron spin resonance and uranium series), Jack Rink, associate professor of geography and earth sciences at McMaster, has determined that Gigantopithecus blackii, the largest primate that ever lived, roamed southeast Asia for nearly a million years before the species died out 100,000 years ago. This was known as the Pleistocene period, by which time humans had already existed for a million years.
Using a high-precision absolute-dating method (techniques involving electron spin resonance and uranium series), Jack Rink, associate professor of geography and earth sciences at McMaster, has determined that Gigantopithecus blackii, the largest primate that ever lived, roamed southeast Asia for nearly a million years before the species died out 100,000 years ago. This was known as the Pleistocene period, by which time humans had already existed for a million years.
© Getty
In quantum physics, nothing is as it seems. As physicists continue to study the universe they continually run into new questions that shake how humans understand the universe's intricate mechanics.
UC Berkeley physics professor, Raphael Bousso, is trying to break down the mysteries of the universe with a concept called the holographic principle. Physicists stumbled on the idea while studying black holes. It is a concept, which ultimately questions whether the third dimension exists.
Comment: His complex calculations can't prove it exists. But all other calculations, including those of birds, pilots and astronomers take the third dimension into account and they are successful. The guy is like a man who can't distinguish between red and blue, so he thinks that no one can prove they exist as different colors.
It is true that we are storing our information 2-dimensionally. For instance we store books on the shelves on the wall. Storing them 3-dimensionally (some libraries have moving walls) is a pain! But to FIND and ACCESS this information we are using (in fact, we HAVE TO USE) the third dimension.
Tech humour, really, move along, nothing to see here
In a scenario dubbed the "big trip", so-called phantom energy trickling into a wormhole will cause it to swell up so much that it eventually engulfs the entire universe, says cosmologist Pedro Gonzalez-Diaz at the Institute of Mathematics and Fundamental Physics in Madrid, Spain.
A University of California, Berkeley seismologist has discovered a way to provide seconds to tens of seconds of advance warning about impending ground shaking from an earthquake.
While a few seconds may not sound like much, it is enough time for school children to dive under their desks, gas and electric companies to shut down or isolate their systems, phone companies to reroute traffic, airports to halt takeoffs and landings, and emergency providers to pinpoint probable trouble areas. Such actions can save lives and money.
While a few seconds may not sound like much, it is enough time for school children to dive under their desks, gas and electric companies to shut down or isolate their systems, phone companies to reroute traffic, airports to halt takeoffs and landings, and emergency providers to pinpoint probable trouble areas. Such actions can save lives and money.
Comment: As is usual in this crazy world of ours, serious issues get reduced down to slogans and talking points that obscure the complexity of the underlying reality. In the case of the Internet, we have a situation where the technology that enables the net grew out of the needs of the US military-industrial complex to have a communications network that would resist the threat of nuclear war. The solution was a network of nodes where data could be moved around via myriads routes. If one node was taken out, communication between the other nodes remain intact and secure.
This is a great step forward when the net became available to everyone because it permitted a quick and easy way for the grass roots to connect with one another. The growing anti-globalisation movement used the net to effective measure as it stood up against the plans of international capital to open the markets of the world. We are told, on the other hand, that it has permitted those evil villains at al Qaeda to hook up and organise their terrorist attacks.
The Powers That Be do not want the grass roots to have this type of political weapon: the ability to share information outside of the official channels and to organise responses. Our flash animation, Pentagon Strike, has been seen by half a billion people around the globe. It is not only China, Cuba, or Iran, the three countries named in the article, who wish to control the flow of information: all countries have the same interest. Often, the question comes down to one of means: is this censorship down openly, or is it down on the sly? IS it down by the outright banning of access to certain sites or types of information, or is it done by weighing search results and corporate filters justified through appeals to employees wasting their time at work surfing the net? The same result is achieved through the two approaches, yet the soft approach permits the culprit to accuse the first of heavy-handed censorship and anti-democratic oppression of its people.
The Internet is now a world-wide resource. In a perfect world, everyone would have a say in its management. Obviously, we live in a less-than-perfect world. Representative forms of democracy tend to obscure political control rather than guarantee it is in the hands of the governed.
It is normal that other countries wish to have a say. The level of trust one can put in the United States has plummeted in recent years with the innumerable lies that have come out of Washington. Although the US claims it is an arbiter of freedom of speech, wishing to protect the Internet, it is clear that this is a political stance it is using against those countries that use the hard methods of censorship. The US monitors all Internet traffic, from the content to the simple fact of who is in communication with whom. We would be naive to think otherwise.
Prognostications go from creating phoney bodies to give the appearance of input to multiple Internets to allow certain countries to more directly control the content. The upshot for the public is that no matter which side wins, or what kind of compromise is achieved, the Internet as we have known it will change to the detriment of freedom of speech and access to information.
The clampdown that is coming will be world-wide.