Saturday, November 15, 2008

Rikers Island Inmate Visiting Hours Schedule

The vintage car which I am

leave today I feel. And not as a woman, a good friend or good of all spirits. Much worse. I feel abandoned by most of evolution itself, now that I am 30 years old, I am of the primal forces of natural selection that have produced this amazing diversity of living things become really care. As of now, my health and my physical well-being as it were put on automatic pilot - and when I die in five or fifty years, Nature is the same. It was 5 years ago, very different.

The aging of an organism is not so obvious. There are creatures who - really - are immortal. Easy it is for individual learning, sharing only yes, but never die . Thus, if environmental conditions are favorable, it is conceivable that a specific microbe has survived the last Ice Age to the present day. Also interesting is the life of this colleagues here - the polyp undergoing regularly just built a makeover and will return to teenagers. We humans are built but a bit more complicated - and therefore mortal (although recently known cases be, in which the aging does not seem to progress).

If we ask ourselves why we age, the question is wrongly put. It would be correct to ask why the body created by evolution should make the effort to prevent aging. Genes, which not only blind separation as the single-genes, so basically two ways to survive a long time - by forcing their bodies to live forever, or by the body to produce offspring with these same genes. You can use the body that is the one to a survival machine with protective mechanisms against harmful external factors (predators, starvation, disease, weather changes) and provide a perfect metabolism without toxic side effects. So quite a few investments. Or they can replace quality with quantity and focus on the motto "If my body just in time produce enough viable offspring that in turn pass on the genes, I do not care his future survival." Exactly for this second possibility have the genes "decided" in the higher organisms. Our body is thus used as quickly as possible to produce offspring and to make them viable. After that, he is our genes do not care. The biological theory is appropriate for even less flattering "disposable soma theory " (to German as: theory of expendable body). However, as is observed in the natural environment among primitive tribes average life span due to external factors in about 30 years ago, the human body has probably been shot this out - sexual maturity at 14-15 years, then possible get fast kids, feed them, so the transfer back of the genes, and then your body is just a classic car: The successor generation is there, it goes even still, but how far and how long he creates is his thing. He has a nostalgic value nurmehr, repaired it is a makeshift, there are better things to do.

The sexual drive is hence the stronger than about the impulse to eat a healthy diet. Not for nothing men cause traffic accidents when they see a mini-skirt , but not when they drive past a poster with organic food. Old age is to reach, the genes simply do not care. And since I am now come to this age of genetic importance, I am overcome by the forces of natural selection that bring a living being, so a proper fitness for survival left. Sadly, a vintage to be.

What to do? I want to grow old or die at least not immediately, so you look around for solution strategies. So far the only proven approach to calorie restriction To extend the life proven. For a small portion of extra years, it is also sufficient, happily married to his or (or both, what should happen occasionally), or self younger present. The micro-cellular and biological causes of aging are, moreover, now also known . It is mainly wear (intra-and extra-cellular waste, mutations in the mitochondria, shorter telomeres with each cell division) - so basically nothing Irreversible, a rather technical problem. Some serious scientists, including futurist Ray Kurzweil and biogerontologists Aubrey de Grey have announced the aging why the fight. De Grey believes that with proper effort, you can stop in a few decades, aging and eventually will turn around. For him, the aging of a disease, an evil, which leaves die every day about 100,000 people. Another question is whether immortality is a good thing. But de Grey is right when he says that we do research first and then if we have the technologies, people should have to decide whether to take it to complete. Healthier and more vital, this research would make the people in any case. Perhaps it is enough so, if, as Luis Bunuel once joked, once in ten years just waking up, reading the paper and be amazed.

Too good to be true? In the journal "Technology Review" a competition was created in order to refute de Grey's arguments. Until now no one has done. On the other hand, was assigned by his "Methuselah Foundation" a award to a research group from Illionis , who had managed to make mice live longer than half as long as usual In humans, this would have been 180 years old.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Examples Of A Word Chart

A quite banal hero




This video shows a traffic accident, which happened in May 2008 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. We see an elderly man as he is hit by a car and lie on the ground remains. More than a minute nothing happened. People walk past the scene of an accident, cars are happy their way, a scooter driver makes even around an elegant bow to the seriously injured, only to disappear afterwards. Eventually the police come, until then no one has even approached the poor man only. All stop and stare only.

shocking, right? The police chief looked for even prompted to say : "We have lost our moral compass." But is that really so? Well, not necessarily. This behavior, however unpleasant it may seem to us, is in some sense "normal". For there is something can produce some mighty, the good people to do evil. The great physicist Steven Weinberg once said: "For good people to do evil things, that takes religion." I would like to add something: "... or situation".

The incredible power of the situation is the psychologist for about a half a century known. Many experiments have been performed, which showed how far people in order to adapt to the prevailing circumstances, not to attract attention, "normal" to act, so to be like. It all started innocently, as Solomon Asch 1951 demonstrated that subjects shown a simple question answered incorrectly only because the rest of the group in which they were (all consecrated men of straw), also a wrong answer. If it all say, I say that too. Asch was later the doctor father of Stanley Milgram, who shocked 1962 World . In his experiment people were ready to torture another on a partly sadistic manner and to bring even in danger of death because it "required the experiment and did the experimenter, as if everything is fine. Further, it was nine years later with the Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo , a college friend Milgram, in the normal students were brutal beasts, because you put them in uniforms and improvised in a Prison guards than can work. The top of the situational-related madness occupied psychologists Darley and Latane 1968: In its attempt , 90% of people willing to defend even their own lives in great danger, just because it was appropriate to the situation behavior. They sat in a room suddenly invaded the vast amounts of smoke. Since the other people in the room (initiates) showed no reaction, also beat the subjects no alarm and remained sitting in the room. Had it been a real smoke, they would be stifled without exception.

The force of the situation is so immense. That just Philip Zimbardo, author of the prison experiment suggests, therefore, a new Definition of a "hero": a hero is not as we imagine it to us, a knight on horseback with flowing hair, good looks and superhuman strength. He is not a super-or Spiderman. He does not like a fallen on subway tracks unconscious student en after jumping in to save him. Held to be, as Zimbardo says very "banal" . It is enough if you are a Average person who helps once in a lifetime, if it is necessary to break through the walls of the situation-induced rigidity and indifference, does something that does not make others, and as an old on the road lying injured man when onlookers stare only. It is so easy when thinking about it. People should control a situation, not vice versa.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

What To Do When Gropeyou In The Streets

Bin Laden's nightmare

It's a hot summer day, and you are looking for a relief from the heat. A coke is at hand, but the soul is longing for something supernatural, Vitaminreicherem and healthier. For example, a handful of beautiful fresh water drop covered grapes. Only: Where can I take it for her on the fly? - I've got a suggestion for you, seeker: You join simply to Islam, go to a school extremists, blow you in the name of Allah in the air.



In Paradise, knows every decent Islamic fanatics are waiting for a 72 jihadists willing young women for the purpose of successive or simultaneous making love. The text of Sura 56 describes all sorts of delights for the brave warrior of faith, including wine, meat in abundance - and "houris with nice big eyes like pearls well-protected as a reward for their good deeds" (see here ). Huris are brought to interpret the celebrated young women who are 33 years old, (now peeing, sleeping, shoes) no period or other human needs and whose virginity is renewed after every act at all times. Many scholars go further and dream of the wonderful physical attributes of the Huris.

Das zum Beispiel ist ein Video-Ausschnitt aus einer Predigt, in der der saudische Imam etwa Folgendes vorschwärmt (Übersetzung aus dem Arabischen): "...What hair! What a chest! What a mouth! What cheeks! What a figure! What breasts! What thighs! What legs! What whiteness! What softness! Without any creams – no Nivea [!!!], no vaseline. ... There is no god but Allah. He told us that if you entered one of the palaces, you would find ten black-eyed virgins sprawled on musk cushions. ... When they see you, they will get up and run to you. .... When they get hold of you, they will push you onto your back, on the musk cushions. Allah Akbar! ... One of them would place her mouth on yours and do what ever you want. Another one would press her cheek against yours, yet another would press her chest against yours, and the others would await their turn ... "

Another cleric, Al-Suyuti (d. 1505), went further in his Sex Fantasies (quoting here): "Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected Neversoft. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one will marry seventy houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetizing vaginas. "

Too early gesabbert, gentlemen! Apart from the fact that this idea does not make much sense (what about female martyrs, how can a torn into pieces the suicide bomber reached still get something erection like that? If one then also 72 mothers * horror *?), It seems now as if the dream of 72 playmates get a painful shock. A German philologist and Semitic Studies, who performs under the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg ", wrote a book in 2000 in which he proposes a new reading of the Koran. He believes the former lingua franca in the area was not Arabic, but Syrian a Absprengsel of Aramaic, which today only Mindeheiten is spoken. If you read the Koran but in part to Syriac, then connect amazing things to light - including Luxenberg's exegesis shows that the word "hur" in Syriac means nothing other than "white grapes."

This adds both well in the overall context of Sura 56 (the aforementioned "well-guarded pearls" fit much better grapes than to women), and has the whole idea of paradise simple originate in a garden (see altira severally " pairidaeza " - park, garden, enclosure). Since fit sex orgies not know. In addition, the just promised elsewhere, that they along with their earthly wives and houris "in the shadow on carpets" will relax. The "time" remarks only relish: "A place to meet the wives and maidens each other deserves the name is hardly paradise."

Luxenberg's book, scholars from Princeton to have taken to Beirut with interest and approval, has moved many moderate Muslims to think. I will, however, until the new translation will be refuted, for the time being continue to buy my fruit at the supermarket.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Jewel Denyle Cops And Robbers

ill listless egoists

"Homo homini lupus - Man is a wolf to man, Thomas Hobbes said 400 years ago. From state-theoretical perspective, perhaps even justifiable, that is anthro and sociologically very wrong. Not only has he "insulted one of the most sociable and most loyal cooperators in the animal kingdom - and such a loyal, that our ancestors domesticated it wisely" (quote from here ). But the quote is the man who - in addition to all its cruelty - is a thoroughly social and altruistic nature, is also in a false light dar. The compassion, the desire to help others, we socialize with others and in our genes and deep-rooted. But unfortunately, probably not for long.

Our current living conditions have in fact removed from the original so much that the millions of years old mechanisms that made us what we are today, now work differently. Therefore, people will change in the near future - and eventually mutate to ill, listless egoists. Sad, is not it?

sick Why? - If we invent better drugs and treatment methods, we take into natural selection. If a child predisposed to myopia (like me) used to eat from the nearest tigers or at least significantly reduced reproductive opportunities, it now gets a fashionable glasses and other equivalent in the biological "fitness". This idea can be generalized. By the - to ensure basic medical care, we prevent natural selection - no doubt a moral imperative so that the gene pool "dirty". Since such "unfavorable" genes are passed, there will be more and more people with more and more aches and pains.

listless Why? - Well, a lecher has previously fathered 20 children in his life, which then wore each of the genes in the libertine (we keep for simplicity in men). These genes were then already numerically an advantage over the wallflower-philosopher, the only wrong three times in his life with a passionate declamation of Thomas Hobbes with a woman and was a lonely child in the world. Today it's different. Since the sensualist can avoid using the latest scientific knowledge simply, it is his Lust, enjoy themselves without getting 20 children. His genes have thus the same statistical distribution opportunities as the wallflower-philosopher. The average sexual desire in the general population will thus decrease with each generation.

What most frightens me, however, is also the next general genetic selfishness. A gene is basically only interested in his own distribution, so basically selfish. All of us familiar forms of altruism and self-sacrifice (donations to helpless, cooking for friends, helping the old lady crossing the street) are - you should not be surprised - that's why only one instance of this same genetic selfishness.

Altruism has evolutionsbioliogische namely two statements - the reciprocal altruism and group selection . The correct assumption of the two, is that people and their ancestors used to always lived in smaller groups . The reciprocal altruism developed as a kind of insurance - I scratch your back and wasting my resources for you, because you know me, you remember the massage and the next time you revanchierst. The group selection is different - we are all in this small group related to each other quite closely, it's worth it for my own selfish genes, me for altruistic Behavior to move. Because if I lose my life to protect my group in front of the big bad wolf, the more or less the same genes of my family will survive from the group. So my genes made copies save in my aunt and my distant cousin, sacrificing myself. Sent, but effective. We are of course one always to have acted from higher motives, but actually it is these genetically branded conduct.

And these millions of years old genetic mechanism is abolished in more and more of us now. Why? - Because the small groups are no longer there. People live in huge collections. If I am an old grandmother who has fallen down on the street, not help, then this will interest no one. I will perhaps look at passers-by evil, but because neither they nor the grandmother know who I am, they can "exclude" do not punish me or otherwise. Even my relatives and genetic similarity with the neighbors out of my panel is pretty straightforward. To them I need not worry about me because I do not favor that the copies of my own genes, but any that concern me. As the extended family than those in Western societies at risk of extinction, there is virtually no evolutionary pressure further to act altruistically. People are always selfish to support their lifestyles, without meaning to.

Our children and grandchildren as sick, listless egoists - where's my cyanide ..? Or - maybe we should just be good to each other and care for each other while we are still inclined to that?

Sunday, June 15, 2008

How To Find Quickbooks Product Number

Y tu Mama

the left here, dear reader, is a very familiar face to you. It is, to be exact, the first face that you perceive in your life. Yes, you have misunderstood me - it's your mother. And no, I will not insult your mother still keep you or me crazy. Let me tell you. I bet I can prove it.



If babies are born, they are in a state of shock. Instead is a dark warm liquid all-inclusive hotels are light and smells and screams (usually their own) and cold. The right to life begins so stressful. Yes, because if one could look right first time ... And there starts the problem: Newborns do not see much. Perhaps we remember the first time because the eyes have been built in the course of evolution rather nonsensical. Not only is the wrong image on the retina around arrives. Not only does the light before it hits the photoreceptors, by no fewer than six cell layers including blood vessels must pass our "raw image" so clouded and streaked with red threads. No, the poor Infant has to have such bad eyesight that there would be no single driving license test: it is short-sighted and only see up to a distance of a mother's outstretched arm (more so it must not be seen). Its not enough, he can also not distinguish between colors and has extreme focusing problems , so that the image is blurred and without details. Furthermore, a newborn is suffering under severe astigmatism , so the picture just at the edges distorted is. In short, the baby looks really beautiful ... Lecht. It must also see the other's not good because his mom does the rest improve Moreover, the visual defects within months to the normality of.

But how does a baby because then the mother's face? In the light of the above visual defects, the psychologist Frederick Malmstrom a photo of a normal woman like this has worked:




Oblong colorless face with prominent eyes, high forehead, long nose and no facial and skin details - it does not fit the typical image of Alien similar? Malmstrom draws the interesting conclusion that the - mostly obtained under hypnosis - images of aliens in our brains unconsciously stored "model image" of a person present, that helps us seen after the birth of our mother as such. Whether the simmt, further studies will be reserved. However, it is a bit weird that the man who looks like our closest, warmest and most intimate, is for us shortly after birth as a monster. So because of the Oedipus complex ...

Friday, May 2, 2008

Denise Milani Just For You

The Messiah

Let's see if you can guess the person on whom I will tell you the same. The story should be familiar to you, and you come on it determined.

The person is more a myth. No one knows if they ever existed. According to tradition it was a very special man who could do all sorts of miracles. He disappeared, but promised to return and usher in a new era in which all will live happily with each other and no one will miss something. He had spent several disciples who knew him, including one particularly zealous missionary was, is and has been around much convinced many people, the new religion, whose distinctive mark a cross join. The teachings of the Prophet included about the commandment to be kind to one another to follow customs that held together the community, and all material things, especially money, to attach any great significance. In the beginning was the fresh beliefs suppressed by the former occupying power - the new leader of the cult were arrested, in jail plugged and harassed. The religion survived, and flourishes to this day so much more away, in constant expectation of the return of the Messiah, but whose spirit dwells among us and pray as long as the can.

Well guess? - Jesus? Far from it! He speaks of the holy John Frum of the island of Tanna in the Melanesian island nation of Vanuatu. The " Jo (h) n Frum (From) - movement" was in the 40s of last century, when American soldiers came in droves to the islands in order to establish military bases in the war against Japan. The natives were on the capabilities of the new arrivals so excited - especially the fact that suddenly out of the air cargo giant arrived from food, tools, weapons, medicines and other goods (cargo) by air. The only apparent unusual activities which were going about the white people, but just sitting in the control tower with headphones, the waving signal flags at the airstrip and the rolling paper in the office. Since none of these activities immediately produced the desired goods, the natives concluded that there were magical acts that required the gods to get out of the air, out of nowhere to drop cargo. The Melanesians tried to imitate the actions of whites - it did not. Irgenwas they had to have done wrong. As the soldiers War, withdrew incurred, various "cargo cults " of which the most successful of the John Frum is attributed. Evil to him who thinks of soldiers who introduced himself as "John from America". Whether it's a John or more were, at least melted together from the whole story by the end of a mythical figure who as described above is revered .

The "John Frum - Religion is a minor cult on islands at the end of the world who are interested in any. But what if it would have been a more powerful state, which would have the faith then established as the state religion and spread it out? Would we then perhaps all "Frumisten"? And if so, what would be the difference in content to Christianity, Islam, etc., except that the prophets and the saints were called differently? One thing is clear: Who is a man who has a bad temper and needs a bit of confirmation you should get a ticket to Tanna, 15 February (the John Frum Day) get onto the plane and introduce himself as John Frum, holding in his hand a few New Year's Eve fireworks. Then the day is immediately saved. "Air New Zealand " already flies from 1300 €.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Finished Brazillian Wax

bounceback

This left here is a very unassuming beach in East Africa. Because of the prevailing dangerous underwater currents called it "Bab-el-Mandab" or "the gates of sorrow." Here is the narrowest part in the Red Sea, and it tells a story of courage, fear and hope. This story was reconstructed using advanced genetic techniques and procedures. And it comes not from a dime novel.


... There was a minor species of mammals that lived about 70,000 years ago in Africa. She was neither particularly big nor particularly fast or strong, and her beauty was within manageable limits. She supported in principle by all that met her - a bit of fruit, roots, fungi hunt, and they could also reasonably. Unfortunately, the climate was much to her - the former glacial caused that more and more water was pooled in the form of ice, so that the earth more and more dried out. Food was scarce. The poor species have escaped first by collecting shellfish on the beach, but soon also the stocks were exhausted. Of the poor animals there were on earth, only about 2,000 copies - they were threatened with extinction by today's standards. A group of them sat hungry at the beach of Bab-el-Mandab and counted the survivors. It was in this group 150, a maximum of 200th This species was homo sapiens sapiens. She was at the end. But

see her! - On the other side of the strait attracted the mountains of present-day Yemen. There was food in abundance - just as is you there? Long live the Red Sea coast or along the Nile? Probably not - you had to overcome the inhospitable Sahara, which at that time was particularly hostile. What remained was the breakneck companies crossing the waters - 20 km of sea with no nautical experience. But the group has done it. Of these 150-200 people, we are all - apart from some African tribes - really from all . This could be observed by comparing the mitochondrial (inherited from the mother) and Y-chromosomal DNA (from papa). Once the adventurers were on the Arabian peninsula, they could (or their children) along the coast of Persia, India and Indonesia penetrate as far as Australia. Lateral branches were swept away to Europe and the Neanderthals ( here you can hear the songs). Humanity was a poor little group of the last survivor to a 6.3 billion-strong army.

An important consequence of the fact that there were then only 150 -200 folks, is the degree of genetic similarity of most people. In a group of gorillas, one can find a greater genetic diversity than in the whole of humanity. The idea of any "superior race" can lubricate the brown "thought leaders" on the nose - we're all so close together related, as it does not get any closer.

Strange thoughts go through your mind. - What if the few desperadoes would not have married at that time? If they were lost in the sea? If it had on the other side but not given as much food as expected? Would we then still a minor subspecies of mammals in equatorial Africa? Or we could have managed not to this day and had been carried off by a virus, which is in Africa are not known to too few? Who has been the leader of the group, who then proposed the dangerous action, as he was or looked like, we do not know. However, we should from time to remember him gratefully. If I have time and money, I would definitely like to go to this beach, there idly throwing stones into the water and eagerly look across to Yemen.

( Here can find out the walk of his own ancestors by DNA testing. The project, for example, a Greek woman and an Indian together who have a common great-mother. This was the first reunion of the two distant " siblings "since 30,000 years ago.)

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Headphone Cord Container

The audacity of life

I will now provide two times the statements in the room that are very closely linked. How - that you learn at the end of this paper. 1: Nylon stockings for breakfast to eat, tastes awful. No. 2: We are certainly not the only life form in the universe.

Confused? And rightly so. But I promise that two paragraphs later, the matter is resolved. There is no more and no less to the old question of whether we're alone in the universe "or whether there are other life forms. No, I do not (only) the green creatures with antennae on his head, get out of flying saucers. But in general the question of whether life in all its complexity, we can observe on earth (our brain is demonstrably the most complex object that people have ever seen), a unique exception in the dreary cold darkness out there.

Although we will probably never know for sure - the exchange of information in the universe is limited by the speed of light and therefore due to the incredibly huge distances in space far too slowly - we can try for example the probability. On the one hand, the chances for such ideal conditions, as we have on Earth, is rather limited (read more here ). On the other hand, even if the probability, so to grab a 5-star spa hotel as our earth is only 0.0001%, one must remember how incredibly, incredibly there are many stars. A popular saying among astronomers is that already in the known, observable universe, there are more stars than grains of sand on all the beaches on earth. And even if not nearly every star has planets at all, it is among the billions of stars certainly be quite a plethora of favorable constellations.

And if the conditions are acceptable or less, are making life not long in coming. You can see very well in the history of our planet. A billion years after the formation of the Earth, the surface is fairly cool, and the constant bombardment by meteorites stopped slowly. About the same time already created primitive life forms. Life was So, as soon as circumstances allowed reasonably, fairly quickly there and has since not get rid of the blue planet. Where were the so-called extremophile life forms not found it - in boiling hot springs (up to 113 ° C), sulphate of mud holes, underground oil drains, oxygen-free and dark mountain caves or highly concentrated brine. This microbe survived the 1000 times the lethal dose for humans radioactivity by using its DNA completely torn to pieces composed just like a puzzle again. Even in the hostile vacuum of space to survive these comrades here. There are now even bacteria, which - as promised tension closes! - Feed on nylon . And if those are related to gourmets everywhere before our eyes - then can not escape the thought that the chemistry of life is such a way that it takes many forms and adapt to all possible living conditions. And we can also relate only to the carbon-based nukleotidvererbende life as we know it - the sky with respect to other biological concepts are no limits.

Life seems to be quite cheerful, cheeky and also tough. Alone in the universe - what an arrogant idea!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Doenlod Vido Bangbros

The end of the world

"Some say, the world will end in fire, some say - in ice" Robert Frost once wrote and thus to the current state of research not so wrong. The end of the world, the moment when everything, absolutely everything we know ceases to exist, has engaged the people a long time. songs were written about in religious end-time scenarios, the most terrible things disclosed . Most of the world goes in a huge disaster in, the fantasy adventure of all animals, not pain is sadistic, not a battle tableau to gigantomanic. In ice is rather rare among the world (a rogue, while the higher the narrative action of the fire inferno compared to the boring cooling assumed). Fascinating the end of the world was in any case always. Doomsday cult members committed suicide in droves even voluntarily so they escaped the earthly apocalypse, could start a new life on distant planets with their astral bodies. We now know pretty much what will the drain end of the world - depending upon what is defined as the end of the world, he is free after Robert Frost, very hot or icy cold.

If we leave on our Earth, then we should get in about five years Miliarden a good sunscreen. For then shall the sun due to changes in nuclear fusion processes to "red Giant inflate swallow , Mercury and Venus and the Earth will fry. With evaporated oceans and surface temperatures over 1000 degrees can survive difficult.

shocking? No, not yet. So far it is that is does not come. Just two billion years before it will prevail by a capital collision between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy ( here an animation). you can fly at the time pretty much each other. stars will collide, gravitational waves shatter the space-time, the career of the sun and distort planet and plunge the Earth into either the sun or move away from the sun, so they of flying asteroid collisions and other waste can be taken.

fire, fire everywhere - what about the ice? Well, then we have to wait real end of the world - the end of the whole universe. The mysterious "dark energy" that preceded whips the expansion of the universe ever, suggests the conclusion that it will expand more and more and more. At the end there is the Kältetod . The last stars are extinguished, the atoms fall apart, a dark, empty, infinite gauge on the absolute zero (-273 ° C) to meet us yawn. So the world ends in the ice. But until then, we still have a lot of time at each other weapons of mass destruction to slaughter, to pollute the earth beyond endurance and succumbing to new generations of viruses. So let's enjoy the happy prospect!

Oh - the next date of would-be prophets of doom for the expected end of the world currently is the year 2012 . Gaudeamus igitur!

Monday, January 28, 2008

Herpes Outbreak For A Month

The non- too free will

__________________________________________________
Decide now ask whether you want to read this text!
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Decided? And if so - of free will? want to think



who have their own thoughts and decide on their own decisions come quickly into trouble. So the old question of "free will" of the people is much debated, but until now not been solved last authentic. The free will of the people were ready when it came despite the supposed goodness of the alleged God to explain the atrocities in the world, he was also regarded as an essential difference between the "divinely inspired" people and "stupid", instinct-driven animals . The latest findings in brain research shed some more light on the debate and may the hassle out of merely theoretical and abstract discussions of the last centuries, a little place on the earth.

to do something is the most natural thing in the world. (There is a fun to do a macabre way disease , really because of the people nothing more - and they do not interfere). However, there is first the surprising finding that our "will" is far less active than we think. Too many processes are automated, caused in part by quirky little things. Thus, John Bargh shown by the Yale University in an experiment that students who when age-related words like "wrinkles, gray, tired, sick," read, after it went slower than a comparison group. They set out to just read the attributes appropriated, without whose will also be aware in the slightest. People looked to by a poster (!) A pair of eyes, behaved unconsciously honest than usual, it was found in another attempt . Almost Charlie Chaplin-worthy the experiment , in man, during a cartoon show a pencil held horizontally with the mouth (ie like a smiley) the cartoon were funnier than those in which it like a lollipop forward stood out. People who put themselves into a professor in had performed better at Trivial Pursuit off than those who have a football hooligan hatten.Wir front of ourselves that is already in general much less under control than we think.

But when the man comes time to decide to be aware of, and the decision is "free" should be, this assumes, first, that it is subject to the decision not perceived by him constraints - are in it, everyone agrees. If he wants, he can lift the right finger - or the left. Commit a crime - or remain law abiding. Is that enough already for the adoption of free will? Or rather, the decision free from any restrictions yes causes, arise from a kind of autonomous, independent Black Box? Probably not - because the universe is subject to causal processes. A decision as an electrochemical process in the human brain must be strict causal criteria also. A 'decision' in which leaves the brain power "free will" the laws of physics and non-causal and therefore, as it randomly chooses, would be anything as my own. It would be a non-decision, one springing from the vacuum process, which I would watch in amazement. A decision is only "free" if it is through me (through my recent experiences, traits, current mood, etc.) reasons. Condition of freedom, so understood (or rather self-determination) is thus ironically determination.

interested Wen neurophysiology, dare a look at the circus in our skull. Firstly, there were the experiments of Benjamin Libet, who in the early eighties has shown that precede any conscious impulse Will unconscious brain activities in the tenth-second range. Awareness therefore not really take the decisions, but is the prior decisions only "informed" and formed into place, it would have even decided. Its not enough: 10 years later, Alvaro Pascual-Leone and colleagues clearly demonstrates that one can make people willing puppets. They generated magnetic fields in the area of the brain responsible for movement of the left or right side. Then they asked the subjects who knew nothing of all this, move the right or left finger, as they want to. Depending on the stimulation of moving subjects corresponding exactly to the magnetically treated brain finger. However, this worked only when - surprise, surprise - the stimulation of the decision was preceded by exactly the Libet measured by tenths of a second range. The subjects were, however - even after they have been informed of the magnetic fields - which adamantly convinced themselves and decided to have "free". Stimulation of various brain areas resulted in one subject in a further attempt to marry the experimenter "voluntarily" to do. Also in other experiments people were manipulated, without that they felt manipulated.

Eckart von Hirsch Hausen aptly put it - the awareness is not the government, rather it is the government spokesman, dress of the decisions already taken in beautiful words and must be represented to the outside. This also makes sense from the evolutionary point of view: an awareness that the unconscious is completely under control, no right to exist. Because the area of the brain responsible for consciousness (cerebral cortex or cortex), is to hundreds of millions of years later emerged as the primary, unconscious instinct-driven "reptilian brain". That the "newbie" like control of the whole "store" would assume - as in real life - not very likely.

And now? So we are all robots, dolls and bio-mechanisms? To some degree already. Our decisions are determined - even if we insane because of the complexity of the human brain can predict with certainty can never be. This makes But nothing - we have a will, we subjectively - would be free call - quite rightly. Allowing a person make a decision and then you rewind the clock back 100 times, there are good reasons to believe that he is 100 times choose exactly the same - in full awareness, to act freely. That's confusing, but still compatible with one another contradiction between the first and the third-person perspective. "While we can have to do what we want, but we can only do we want to necessarily because of our experience": to the great Schopenhauer easy to modify.

(See here on the effects of the missing Anders-action-ability of the criminal law)

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

How To Dry Italian Soppersata

of axes, ships and souls

"This is my grandfather's ax," Americans care to tell sometimes. "Her head was indeed replaced three times and its handle four times, but it's still the same good old ax of my grandfather." This tongue in cheek sentiment is a good introduction to the problem of identity. What do we mean when we say "the same"? And what you have to change so that "the same" is merely "the same"? An older, slightly more civilized version of the question is, among many other metaphors the so-called ship of Theseus been disclosed in a Work of Thomas Hobbes, but probably already thought of Plutarch. Suppose there is a ship sails from port A. While it is sailing, rotting planks, and eventually all, of which it consists. However, they are then immediately replaced by new ones. When the ship arrives in port B, there is a ship not a single "original plank", since all have now been replaced by new ones. - Is it still the "same boat"? If they had built from new components right at the beginning of a second ship, we would certainly say - no, it was not the same boat, only an identical. But if the planks are built gradually in the old ship, as in our example, then most tend to say, the incoming ship in port B is the same. Why? - It has the same identity, same story.

tell Why all this? - Because it fits well on us people. "I" is one of the most used words in our language, but what we really mean by that? We all are ships of Theseus, which sail through the ocean of life. Although this statement seems to come from a penny dreadful, they are absolutely right for a closer look. Because what makes our identity? What led us to predict, we are "the same person as last year? Our body? - Not determined. For as the ship of Theseus, our "building material" changed regularly - old cells die, resulting in new their body looks the same and perform exactly the same function - as the boards of the ship. Our body - and that's the good news for people who do not want to age - is never older than 7 - 10 years . Only a few nerve cells in the brain are always the old one. Statistically, however, they are negligible. And even in this "change resistant" cells are the building blocks - organic molecules - replaced again and again. A constant physicality would chase us so vain - that does not exist. Someone once used the image of a dune, the wind drives away in the desert sand - the form remains, but the sand grains are always others.

So if our body is, the basis of our uniqueness, what then? You'd think it would be the memories, the entire wealth of life experience we have accumulated, the path traveled by us, as the ship of Theseus. Or our character traits that make up our personality? Both are not convinced. Our memories of the past disappear, the more we will get around to our way of life. On special experiences we can remember more, but the rest we forget. Only the current events are still halfway present. Or you can still remember what you made before 8, 18, 28 years, so what was important to you, what you has hung around? - Than in very broad strokes. Even our character changes. Now feel and behave most of us, but significantly different than at puberty. What remains? What ever the word "I" when neither the body nor the mind remains the same? Perhaps this - perhaps unconscious - longing for constants in an ever-changing self-image and self-understanding what has led our ancestors to believe that there is some mysterious "soul", which always remains the same, in spite of all external and internal changes are .

The adoption of a "soul" but answered nothing but - as well as the concept of a God - a joker card without proper meaning. We are now again - and at this thought it is a bit fishy to me - just not constant, not identical but somewhat diffuse, constantly changing, adaptive and evolving - even most like life.