Taugafræðilegur grunnur meðvitundar

The Neuronal Basis of Consciousness

Ef þú hefur einhvern minnsta áhuga á mannsheilanum, meðvitund okkar og skynjun þá mæli ég eindregið með því að þú dundir þér við að horfa á þessa fyrirlestra, sem Christof Koch prófessor hjá California Institute of Technology hefur gert aðgengilega á netinu, ég efast stórlega um að þú verðir fyrir vonbriðgum.

Samband Bandaríkjanna og nágranna þeirra í suðri

Hér fyrir neðan er að finna hlekki í viðtal við Noam Chomsky, þar sem hann stiklar á stóru varðandi samband Bandaríkjanna við löndin í Suður Ameríku. Verst að spyrillinn les spurningarnar upp af blaði og virkar við það afskaplega trénaður, en hvað um það, viðtalið er ekki nema ~20 min. í tveimur hlutum og vel þess virði að heyra.

Hluti 1
Hluti 2

Félagslyndar hýenur

Ágæt grein um samfélagsstrúktúr hýena, það virðist meira í þessi kvikindu spunnið en maður hefur gert sér grein fyrir.

Most of the research on the social brain hypothesis has focused on primates. One reason for that bias, Dr. Holekamp said, is many scientists thought that no other animals were worth studying. “Primatologists have argued for years,” she said, “that primates are unique in terms of the complexity of their social lives.”

From her experience with hyenas, Dr. Holekamp had her doubts. So she began to run experiments on spotted hyenas similar to the ones run on primates. She would play recordings of hyenas, for example, to see if other hyenas recognized them individually. They did. She soon came to see the primates-only view of the social brain as deeply flawed.

“I would argue that’s not true at all: spotted hyenas live in a society just as large and just as complex as a baboon,” Dr. Holekamp said, noting that spotted hyenas live in the largest social groups of any carnivore. “We’re talking about 60 to 80 individuals who all know each other individually.”

via 3quarksdaily

Rambar Bólivía á barmi borgarastyrjaldar?

Justin Produr ræðir við kólumbíska aktivistan Manuel Rozental um ástandið í Bólivíu og vandamálin sem Evo Morales stendur frammi fyrir.

Bolivia on the Brink

JP: So most of the land is just privately owned?

MR: Privately and also outright illegally owned, but owned. The clearest example is a fellow called Branco Marinkovic. He’s Croatian in origin, his family came to the flatlands, the eastern part of the country, where all the gas and soy is, around the time of WWII. He owns millions of hectares of land. The titles are illegally or irregularly obtained and wouldn’t hold in any court but he has an enormous amount of power and is one of the greatest enemies of Evo and his government.

The eastern region, is called the ‘media luna’. It is half of the country, Santa Cruz city and six other provinces, consisting of lightly populated, resource-rich lowlands essentially owned by 19 families (See for example in Spanish, Raul Bustamente’s article “En Santa Cruz ya reina el fascismo” in Argenpress, and “La Rebelion de los 100 clanes” in Econoticias Bolivia). Most of these families are of European ancestry or call themselves ‘whites’ even if they’re mestizos.

They are profoundly racist and well known to be. While we were in Bolivia, we were told by several people that these people still sell people with the land, a feudal practice. They have economic power and control over the media – all of the mainstream media is controlled by them except for one TV channel and one radio station that are government run. The judicial system within the government is still in the hands of the right. They won the ‘prefecturas’ -- the local governments in five of the six provinces in the media luna. Evo had the majority for the presidency, even in that region, but the right, or the 19 clans, won locally. They retain control in the eastern region.

Áhugaverð sýn á ástralska heimsveldið

Grein eftir John Pilger þar sem hann ræðir heimsvaldastefnu Ástralíu sem og stöðu frumbyggja þar í landi.

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This “top end” of Australia borders the Arafura and Timor Seas, across from the Indonesian archipelago. One of the world’s great submarine oil and gas deposits lies off East Timor. In 1975, Australia’s then ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, who had been tipped off about the coming Indonesian invasion of then Portuguese East Timor, secretly recommended to Canberra that Australia turn a blind eye to it, noting that the seabed riches “could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia . . . than with [an independent] Timor”. Gareth Evans, later foreign minister, described a prize worth “zillions of dollars”. He ensured that Australia distinguish itself as one of the few countries to recognise General Suharto’s bloody occupation, in which 200,000 East Timorese lost their lives.
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Australia is engaged in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, where its troops and federal police have dealt with “breakdowns in law and order” that are “depriving Australia of business and investment opportunities”. A former senior Australian intelligence officer calls these “wild societies for which intervention represents a blunt, but necessary instrument”. Australia is also entrenched in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rudd’s electoral promise to withdraw from the “coalition of the willing” does not include almost half of Australia’s troops in Iraq.
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Markaðssetning gvuðanna

Áhugaverð grein um það hvernig trúin í BNA er alltaf að snúast meira og meira um peninga, svona eins og allt annað í því blessaða samfélagi.

The Megachurch Juggernaut

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Modern megachurches tend to be characterized not only in size (over 2,000 members), but in subscribing to corporate standards of operation. Conspicuously epitomizing a “market approach” to Christ has given way to the term “seeker-friendly.” The seeker-friendly method aims at making church as unobtrusive and entertaining as possible in order to expand and exponentially thrive on an infinite base of new customers. Hence, what is often called—or what critics consider—a self-centered over God-centered theology seems to marginalize biblical orthodoxy by reducing God to a practical “domesticated deity,” to quote the New Yorker: “a God [demanding] no real sacrifice from his children.”
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Það er sjaldan sem maður fær tækifæri til að hrósa Micro$oft

En þetta myndskeið gefur svo sannarlega tilefni til þess.

Via Slashdot

Hvernig Palestína verður að engu

Þessi mynd segir allt sem segja þarf.

Via digg