American Universities Running Scared--Academic Monkeys Don't Want You to Watch This Film!

Why are American Universities trying to prevent the public from looking behind the scenes into campus suppression of free speech? Indoctrinate U. is an indy film produced by young filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney. But Maloney has been sued by a major US university to prevent him from providing "Indoctrinate U." online. What is it about "free speech" that these academic monkeys cannot understand?

For now, Maloney's earlier film on free speech on campus is available online at Google Video. I will keep the film at the above link as long as Google keeps it online. If you have not seen Indoctrinate U., you can request a viewing at this link.

THEFIRE.ORG is a legal organisation dedicated to defending students' free speech rights. Attorneys at FIRE are accustomed to confronting academics and administrators who are seemingly unaware that the US Constitution applies on campuses. The recent U. Delaware attempt to run concentration/indoctrination camps from within its own student recidence halls is just one example of the egregious abuse of students' rights that universities seem to feel is within their power.



American universities have become bastions of intolerance and indoctrination. Parents who lovingly spend their life savings for a child's education should demand much more from a university than an academic lobotomy and brainwashing. Society should do the same.

The one-sidedness of university administrations and faculty in terms of political/philosophical points of view and financing of extra-curricular activities, lectures, films etc. to students, has crippled the modern students' ability to see more than point of view, or to persuasively argue his own perspective to intelligent and informed persons.

This is the opposite approach to that which universities should adopt. The diversity of ideas is the only form of diversity that is meaningful in education. By restricting students to one perspective, the students have been lobotomised. Too, too bad.

Women Putting MenHumans In Their Place

1. Delayed marriage
2. Expanded higher education and labor-force participation
3. Urbanization

When you combine the three demographic trends above, what do you get? You get large numbers of young women who marry late or not at all, are unlikely to ever reproduce to replacement, and build lives centered around limited concerns having mostly to do with themselves.

You may say, "So what? Men have been doing that for decades--it's called "The Peter Pan Syndrome". Maybe it's time women start doing the same? If men have retreated from family responsibility and parenting, why can't women?"

Well, they can, of course, and they are doing so.

Today, the average woman in the world bears half as many children as did her counterpart in 1972. No industrialized country still produces enough children to sustain its population over time, or to prevent rapid population aging. Germany could easily lose the equivalent of the current population of what was once East Germany over the next half-century. Russia's population is already contracting by three-quarters of a million a year. Japan's population, meanwhile, is expected to peak as early as 2005, and then to fall by as much as one-third over the next 50 years -- a decline equivalent, the demographer Hideo Ibe has noted, to that experienced in medieval Europe during the plague.

Foreign Affairs

In large numbers, across North America, Western Europe, East Asia, and now Eastern Europe, women are dictating the terms of the human future.

Seek out the trendy shoe stores in Shanghai, Berlin, Singapore, Seoul, and Dublin, and you’ll see crowds of single young females (SYFs) in their twenties and thirties, who spend their hours working their abs and their careers, sipping cocktails, dancing at clubs, and (yawn) talking about relationships. Sex and the City has gone global; the SYF world is now flat.

Is this just the latest example of American cultural imperialism? Or is it the triumph of planetary feminism? Neither. The globalization of the SYF reflects a series of stunning demographic and economic shifts that are pointing much of the world—with important exceptions, including Africa and most of the Middle East—toward a New Girl Order. It’s a man’s world, James Brown always reminded us. But if these trends continue, not so much...

Combine these trends—delayed marriage, expanded higher education and labor-force participation, urbanization—add a global media and some disposable income, and voilà: an international lifestyle is born. One of its defining characteristics is long hours of office work, often in quasi-creative fields like media, fashion, communications, and design—areas in which the number of careers has exploded in the global economy over the past few decades. The lifestyle also means whole new realms of leisure and consumption, often enjoyed with a group of close girlfriends: trendy cafés and bars serving sweetish coffee concoctions and cocktails; fancy boutiques, malls, and emporiums hawking cosmetics, handbags, shoes, and $100-plus buttock-hugging jeans; gyms for toning and male-watching; ski resorts and beach hotels; and, everywhere, the frustrating hunt for a boyfriend and, though it’s an ever more vexing subject, a husband.

The SYF lifestyle first appeared in primitive form in the U.S. during the seventies, after young women started moving into higher education, looking for meaningful work, and delaying marriage. Think of ur-SYF Mary Richards, the pre-Jordache career girl played by Mary Tyler Moore, whose dates dropped her off—that same evening, of course—at her apartment door. By the mid-nineties, such propriety was completely passé. Mary had become the vocationally and sexually assertive Carrie Bradshaw, and cities like New York had magically transformed into the young person’s pleasure palace evoked by the hugely popular TV show Sex and the City. At around the same time, women in Asia and in post-Communist Europe began to join the SYF demographic, too. Not surprisingly, they also loved watching themselves, or at least Hollywood versions of themselves, on television. Friends, Ally McBeal, and Sex and the City became global favorites. In repressive places like Singapore and China, which banned SATC, women passed around pirated DVDs.

By the late 1990s, the SYF lifestyle was fully globalized. Indeed, you might think of SYFs as a sociological Starbucks: no matter how exotic the location, there they are, looking and behaving just like the American prototype. They shop for shoes in Kyoto, purses in Shanghai, jeans in Prague, and lip gloss in Singapore; they sip lattes in Dublin, drink cocktails in Chicago, and read lifestyle magazines in Kraków; they go to wine tastings in Boston, speed-dating events in Amsterdam, yoga classes in Paris, and ski resorts outside Tokyo. “At the fashionable Da Capo Café on bustling Kolonaki Square in downtown Athens, Greek professionals in their 30s and early 40s luxuriate over their iced cappuccinos,” a Newsweek International article began last year. “Their favorite topic of conversation is, of course, relationships: men’s reluctance to commit, women’s independence, and when to have children.”

City Journal

Of course, you have the old "chicken and the egg" question about which came first: The Peter Pan Syndrome, or the SYF "Sex and the City" lifestyle. But does it really matter? The end result is the same:

But as with any momentous social change, the New Girl Order comes with costs—in this case, profound ones. The globalized SYF upends centuries of cultural traditions. However limiting, those traditions shaped how families formed and the next generation grew up. So it makes sense that the SYF is partly to blame for a worldwide drop in fertility rates. To keep a population stable, or at its “replacement level,” women must have an average of at least 2.1 children. Under the New Girl Order, though, women delay marriage and childbearing, which itself tends to reduce the number of kids, and sometimes—because the opportunity costs of children are much higher for educated women—they forgo them altogether. Save Albania, no European country stood at or above replacement levels in 2000. Three-quarters of Europeans now live in countries with fertility rates below 1.5, and even that number is inflated by a disproportionately high fertility rate among Muslim immigrants. Oddly, the most Catholic European countries—Italy, Spain, and Poland—have the lowest fertility rates, under 1.3. Much of Asia looks similar. In Japan, fertility rates are about 1.3. Hong Kong, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, at 0.98 has broken the barrier of one child per woman.

For many, fertility decline seems to be one more reason to celebrate the New Girl Order. Fewer people means fewer carbon footprints, after all, and thus potential environmental relief. But while we’re waiting for the temperature to drop a bit, economies will plunge in ways that will be extremely difficult to manage—and that, ironically, will likely spell the SYF lifestyle’s demise. As Philip Longman explains in his important book The Empty Cradle, dramatic declines in fertility rates equal aging and eventually shriveling populations. Japan now has one of the oldest populations in the world—one-third of its population, demographers predict, will be over 60 within a decade. True, fertility decline often spurs a temporary economic boost, as more women enter the workforce and increase income and spending, as was the case in 1980s Japan. In time, though, those women—and their male peers—will get old and need pensions and more health care.

And who will pay for that?

City Journal

Of course we see large numbers of third world immigrants making their way into Europe and North America, willing to reproduce well beyond replacement rates, and looking for economic opportunity of one sort or another. Will these newcomers be willing to work their way up the economic scheme of things, or will they want to become dependents on the state--just like the decadent westerners? Why should the third-worlders work their glutes off so the flabby old westerners can live it up on state pensions?

As it happens,men and women look at the world a bit differently. Tradition and social/biological expediency have driven men and women together in the past, for companionship and reproduction. Those forces are much weaker, and other influences and incentives are taking over. Where will these take humanity?

If one takes a look at demographic trends, one sees that the high-achieving "North" is being out-reproduced by the low-achieving "South". IQ testing of populations correlates with GDP of nations. Low IQ/Low GDP nations have excess populations that are moving into the population vacuum created by SYFs and their Peter Pan male cohorts.

What will be the end result of this transition? After all, can we not expect the new immigrants to first world countries to be able to pick up the burden of responsibility, and carry on with what needs to be done? If you actually believe that there is no qualitative difference between a population with low IQ and a population with high IQ, I encourage you to read about "The Smart Fraction."

While it helps to understand basic statistics when studying populations (and most other modern issues), the concepts involved are fairly simple and easy to understand even if you are like most western university graduates--innumerate. The problem is accepting obvious facts that contradict your university indoctrination. Some people can, and some can't. If you can't, don't beat yourself up over it. You are in the same boat with most academically lobotomised, psychological neotenates.

The narcissism observed in Peter Pans and SYFs is simply what happens when life centers around oneself for lack of better alternatives and circumstances.

Interestingly enough, there are some western populations that are reproducing above replacement. Religious orthodoxies, evangelicals, and various sectarian religions are contrarians in the reproduction arena. While this trend may resist some of the dysgenic forces at work, it will not be enough.

Am I saying that you should prepare for the Idiocracy?
No, this is not a message of nihilism and futility. It is merely a prod, a grain of sand within the oyster shell. We live in a comfortable age, where hard work can lead to lifestyles of relative luxury and complacency. I am suggesting that while we are enjoying the results of our hard work, that we consider larger trends that need to be addressed.

More on this theme later.

Peak Oil: Meet Oil from Wood

It is getting harder and more expensive to find large new reserves of petroleum. While "peak oil" is impossible to calculate without better knowledge of true global oil reserves, it is almost certain that the cost of oil will continue to trend upward--and energy planners should take those higher costs into account.

But while we transition from a fossil fuel dependency to a more sustainable and diversified energy repertoire, what other "tricks" may science/technology hold up its collective sleeve?

The way to make cellulosic biofuels viable, says Bioecon's founder, Paul O'Connor, is to use catalysts to convert biomass into a hydrocarbon biocrude that can be processed into gasoline and diesel in existing petroleum refineries. After decades developing catalysts for the petroleum industry, O'Connor started Bioecon in early 2006 to develop methods for converting biomass directly into biofuels. His first success is a catalytic process that can convert cellulosic biomass into short-chain hydrocarbons about six to thirteen carbon atoms long. Khosla Ventures agreed to provide an undisclosed amount of series A funding to spinoff Kior in order to commercialize the process. Vinod Khosla, founder of the venture fund, believes that converting biomass into liquid transportation fuels is key to decreasing greenhouse-gas emissions and compensating for dwindling petroleum reserves. Khosla is funding a number of biofuels startups with competing technologies and says that Kior's approach is unique. "They have some very clever proprietary catalytic approaches that are pretty compelling," he says. "They can produce relatively cheap crude oil--that's attractive."

Technology Review

Alternative processes for making usable hydrocarbons from cellulose/lignin involves high temperature and pressure processes to produce syngas as an intermediary. This is too expensive at current oil prices. Likewise, previous methods to use catalysts in the conversion have had low yields.

Kior's method would reportedly:

would eliminate the need for the superhigh temperatures and toxic catalysts used in other thermochemical methods for cellulosic-biofuel production. While O'Connor says that he is still improving Kior's catalyst, his first versions are different kinds of modified clays, which are both cheap and environmentally friendly. The product is high quality as well, containing less acid, oxygen, and water. These characteristics make it suitable for burning as heating oil or for use in petroleum refineries, which can use existing processes and equipment to convert it into the longer hydrocarbon chains of gasoline and diesel fuel.

It may take up to five years for this method to prove itself in the marketplace. But it is certainly reasonable to look for technological ways to "speed up" the conversion of bio-waste to hydrocarbons--to use industrial processes to produce in days what nature takes millions of years to produce. Once nanotechnology learns to create more efficient catalysts, the process will be speeded even more--and decentralised as well.

The next 5 to 10 years are the pivot. While peak oil scenarios are being spun for maximum impact on the public imagination, real scientists and engineers are busy creating alternative paths from here to there--paths that do not involve massive death and destruction such as that imagined by peak oil enthusiasts.

Hat tip KurzweilAI.net

Using Vinegar to Squeeze Oil from a Stone

Oil shale is an unconventional fossil fuel source that is abundant within the Green River Basin of the US. Physicist Harold Vinegar, of Royal Dutch Shell, is at the forefront of efforts to turn shale oil into usable fossil fuel products.

Vinegar is the energy industry's leading expert on the complex petroscience of transforming solid oil shale into synthetic crude - a liquid fuel that can be refined into diesel and gasoline. The breakthroughs this 58-year-old physicist has achieved could turn out to be the biggest game changer the American oil industry has seen since crude was discovered near Alaska's Prudhoe Bay in 1968.

If that sounds like hyperbole, then consider this: Several hundred feet below where Vinegar is strolling lies the Green River Formation, arguably the largest unconventional oil reserve on the planet. ("Unconventional oil" encompasses oil shale, Canadian tar sands, and the extra-heavy oils of Venezuela - essentially, anything that is not just pumped to the surface.)

Spanning some 17,000 square miles across parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, this underground lakebed holds at least 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. That's triple the reserves of Saudi Arabia.

..."Companies just aren't discovering new Prudhoe Bays anymore," says Bear Stearns oil analyst Nicole Decker, who thinks Shell has hit on a breakthrough technology. "This could be very significant - certainly bigger, to our knowledge, than any new discoveries that might be available globally."

Fortune

While the combination of shale oil and tar sands will not replace oil from unstable dictatorships such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia (Russia?), they represent a significant domestic source of fossil fuel that, along with coal, can ease the transition to a post-oil economy. Fossil fuels are dirty and increasingly expensive to extract and refine. The entire purpose of discovering and perfecting new sources of fossil fuel at this time should be to ease the societal and civilisational disruptions that are inevitable in any major transition.

Hat tip, Brian Wang at Advanced Nanotechnology

Best Science Blog: Climate Audit

Steve McIntyre's self-financed blog Climate Audit has done a lot to ensure accountability and responsibility among the well-financed and trendy ranks of climate scientists. It is fitting that his blog should win this years Best Science Blog award. Results so far are tentative, pending review.

Compare the post-voting sentiments expressed by the top 3 finalists and skim the comments:

Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit

Phil Blait at Bad Astronomy

PZ Myers at Pharyngula

McIntyre has always displayed an abundance of class, and his post above is a good example. Blait displays only the mildest of "sour grapes", although he does give in to that sentiment a bit more than is seemly. Myers, on the other hand, has come absolutely unglued in his invective and non-sequitur filled posting and comments. To make it worse, he goes over to Bad Astronomy and displays the same lack of class and good sense there. Someone obviously took this silly little blog award a bit too seriously.

Had McIntyre lost the contest, he would have been first to offer a hearty and sincere congratulations, because that is the type of first-class person he is. I wish the other two--particularly Myers--had been made of the same stuff.

Update 10 November: Adjustment of the tally after the polls closed has placed Climate Audit in a dead tie with Bad Astronomy. The final winner will be announced in two days on 12 November. Congratulations to the two front-runners.

As you will notice, Steve at Climate Audit added a link to Bad Astronomy to his blogroll. As of this time, Bad Astronomy has not reciprocated. That small bit of courtesy could easily be the tie-breaker in favour of CA blog.
;-)

Case Study in Adult Neuroplasticity: Charles Darwin

Thanks to Alvaro at SharpBrains for this fascinating peek into how Charles Darwin's thinking changed over his adult life.

I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists.

Darwin's Autobiography

Darwin's own writing style apparently changed over the years--to his own satisfaction.

Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could
have written deliberately.

ibid

That is a technique that I have found useful as well, even in short comments. The first sentence I write is often useful as a summary, after I work through the ideas a little better. It helps to put the ideas out in the open first for modification and reconstruction.

Darwin's brain experienced neuroplasticity and modification from the "overuse" of some faculties at the expense of other faculties--such as appreciation of poetry and music. His observations of the natural and human worlds may have gained a certain rigour and precision in this process of "selective cultivation" of cortical real estate.

If Darwin had been given the opportunity to relive his life, and thus was able to carry out his plan-in-hindsight of listening to music and reading poetry at least once a week--would his scientific writings have been as clean and precise? An interesting question.

While the neuroplasticity of both motor and sensory cortex following strokes, other denervation, and amputation, are well documented, the neuroplasticity of the associative cortex--prefrontal lobes etc--still requires study to delimit the possibilities. The old saying "you are what you think" is likely to be proven truer than many people would like.

You can find Darwin's works free online here or here.

Blog Carnivals and Blog Wars

Three of my favourite blog carnivals are up:

Tangled Bank #92 is hosted at PaddyK. A veritable biological cornucopia.

Carnival of Space #28 is hosted at The Planetary Society. The latest in space news and commentary.

Encephalon #35 is hosted at The Primate Diaries. The premiere neuroscience blog carnival.

And what "blog wars," you may ask? Well, the voting for the Best Science Blog concludes today, and number 3 in the running, Pharyngula by PZ Myers, is throwing out some feces tainted mud at a fellow science blog that is running a bit ahead currently. The remaining blog in top three running, Bad Astronomy Blog, is trying to stay above the fray--good on him!

These contests sometimes bring out the worst in otherwise civilised bloggers. Here's hoping that all concerned are capable of recovering from partisan squabbles soon enough to resume science blogging tomorrow!

You Look Like You Need To Go To Bed--And Don't You Ever Wash Your Underwear?

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are not just for the battlefield anymore. They are being used to watch public spaces like open air rock concerts, and other large assemblies that may turn rowdy. They are flying above the US-Mexico border, looking for smugglers of drugs and people. A small "dragonfly" UAV may be looking through your window right now, listening to your phone conversation or monitoring the emissions of your computer. Because--I hate to tell you this--UAV's are small enough and cheap enough for most cities and mid-sized corporations to be able to afford them.

Having evolved from military use, drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are taking to the air in increasing numbers for public-service and civilian roles. They are being operated by groups as diverse as police, surveyors and archaeologists. A UAV helped firemen track the blaze that recently ravaged southern California. The most immediate advantage of a UAV is cost: operating even a small helicopter can cost $1,000 an hour or more, but the bill for a drone is a fraction of that.

...UAVs can peek much more easily and cheaply than satellites and fixed cameras can. Although it is possible to peer into someone's back garden with Google Earth, the images are not “live”—some are years old. Live satellite images can be impaired by clouds and darkness. A UAV, however, is more flexible. It can get closer to its target, move to new locations faster and hover almost silently above a property or outside a window. And the tiny ones that are coming will be able to fly inside buildings. Before long paparazzi will put cameras in them to snatch pictures of celebrities.

...Some hovering types can land automatically. One such device is made by Microdrones, a German company. Their flying machine looks like a small flying saucer with four rotor blades on stubby arms. It is not much bigger than the laptop computer used to program its flight and monitor what it is looking at. It can stooge around for about 20 minutes carrying video and infra-red cameras. Some police forces have started to try it out. Earlier this year British bobbies used one to keep an eye on a music festival, busting people for drug offences and catching others breaking into cars.

...The Portsmouth team is working on a UAV small enough to fit on a hand. Charlie Barker-Wyatt, a member of the university group, says all he can reveal about the device is that it contains sensors, can remain airborne for about 15 minutes, has a range of 500 metres and flies like a “hovering and spinning frisbee”.

Economist
Smaller UAV's present more options for local surveillance and spying. For example, the ability to power a small UAV indefinitely on beamed microwaves has been around for over ten years.

Beamed power micro UAVs would have obvious limitations – they're not going to be flying hundreds of miles away over enemy territory. But for covert surveillance in the domestic arena, they might be just the thing. I have no idea whether there are any dragonfly spies out there yet; but if there aren't now, there soon will be.

Wired

Wired's Chris Anderson runs a website that acts as an information clearinghouse for amateur UAV builders and flyers. It is becoming a DIY hobby for enthusiasts and techno-hackers. Using the "Lego Autopilot" and other off-the-shelf parts, Chris has built one UAV for around $1000.

While some have expressed concerns about people like Chris Anderson "giving away information to terrorists," you could have said the same thing about Steve Wozniak or Bill Gates--or the early developers of cell phones. In an open society such as the US or Canada, people are going to hack technology--all kinds of technology. Accept it.

Larger UAV's are potentially hazardous for civilian and military aircraft, and will have to be regulated to minimise that danger. Smaller UAV's are more dangerous for the many nefarious activities to which they could be put. I was going to give examples, but why should I give information away to the terrorists?
;-)

More Times Than You Can Imagine

Peak Energy: Meet Seawater Uranium

Brian Wang posted a promising look at the prospects of mining uranium oxide from seawater. How much uranium is in seawater compared to expected uranium reserves on land?

It is estimated that there is 4.7 million tonnes of uranium ore reserves (economically mineable) known to exist, while 35 million tonnes are classed as mineral resources (reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction).[32] An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s proved that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was feasible).[33][34]

Wikipedia

Brian estimates that the value of uranium in seawater at today's prices may approach US $720 trillion!

Uranium oxide would be retrieved from seawater with irradiated polymer (eg polyethylene) woven into netting, and moored in seawater for app. 60 days to absorb uranium. The netting would be retrieved, the uranium would be removed from the netting, the netting replaced in the sea, with the polymer absorbent re-used multiple times similar to fish nets.

Methods for improved harvesting of uranium from seawater suggested by Brian:

1. Functionalize an algae bloom to concentrate Uranium
See the work of Matt Francis at Berkeley for functionalizing virus shells and microbes for anti-cancer or for solar power. Many others are trying to engineer microbes using synthetic biology.

The goal would be to increase the concentration of Uranium from 3 parts per billion to 300 parts per million. The higher concentration allows regular methods of Uranium mining to take over. It is an increase of 100,000 times....

2. Nanomembrane Filtering
Nanomembrane filtering is starting to be used for desalinization of water at 100,000 gallons per day using a 6 inch diameter membrane.
If one could filter 1 billion gallons per day then there would be $1.92 million/day worth of Uranium. (3 mg per ton of water. 1 billion gallons is 4 million tons. 12,000 kg of Uranium in 1 billion gallons) Ten thousand of the 6 inch diameter nanomembrane enabled filtration pipes would be needed.

Advanced Nanotechnology

Here is an abstract from one of the most active Japanese research groups:

The total amount of uranium dissolved in seawater at a uniform concentration of 3 mg U/m3 in the world's oceans is 4.5 billion tons. An adsorption method using polymeric adsorbents capable of specifically recovering uranium from seawater is reported to be economically feasible. A uranium-specific nonwoven fabric was used as the adsorbent packed in an adsorption cage 16 m2 in cross-sectional area and 16 cm in height. We submerged three adsorption cages in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 20 m at 7 km offshore of Japan. The three adsorption cages consisted of stacks of 52 000 sheets of the uranium-specific non-woven fabric with a total mass of 350 kg. The total amount of uranium recovered by the nonwoven fabric was >1 kg in terms of yellow cake during a total submersion time of 240 days in the ocean.

Source

More here.


Seawater contains many thousands of years worth of uranium at current usage. No one actually believes that human civilisation will still be based upon nuclear fission and fossil fuels one thousand years from now. Fossil fuels will still be around then, but will be considered too dirty, expensive, and valuable to burn for fuel. Nuclear fission will still be around if needed--certainly there is plenty of uranium and thorium--and may be used in particular applications where the fuel available makes clean fission more practical.

Most tech forecasters expect nuclear fusion to be widely available for large scale power generation within the next one thousand years--if not the next one hundred years. We will not need but a fraction of the available uranium and thorium over the long run.

Of course, that prediction is based upon the continuation of western civilisation--or perhaps other successor civilisations just as friendly to scientific/technological research and personal/economic freedoms currently guaranteed by the west. A surrender to reactionary religious fanatics or ideologues (luddites) would introduce a significant element of pessimism into the forecast.

Recent pessimistic "peak oil" pronouncements have been taken far too seriously by the many uninformed persons who attempt to follow trends. A recent declaration that peak oil occurred in 2006, was particularly ludicrous--since it was based upon selective production figures without taking into account reserves or various factors that could influence their production data. Too much peak oil "research"--like much of climate change research--is infested by ideologues who assume the result and carefully craft data to fit that result.

The important thing is to understand that it is resource prices--and how society reacts to price changes--that matter in the long run. It is natural for modern societies to begin to move from more expensive (particularly if dirtier like fossil fuels) to more economical and sustainable technologies. That is basic economics and will occur over time regardless of any "Kyoto" or other treaties or regulatory schemes.

For those of us interested in the next level, the singularity, or just a very promising future, it is always important to watch important trends, while always looking a little farther ahead.

IQ, Executive Function, and Emotional Intelligence

There are many components of a person's life that will contribute to his success--or lack of success. Three of the most important ingredients for success are IQ, executive function, and emotional intelligence. IQ is moderately correlated with executive function, and executive function can be very highly correlated with emotional intelligence--depending upon how the two ideas are defined.

You would expect that children with above average IQ, executive function, and emotional intelligence, would be more successful in school, socially, and career wise.

In this study 141 healthy children between the ages of three and five years took a battery of psychological tests that measured their IQs and executive functioning. Researchers found that a child whose IQ and executive functioning were both above average was three times more likely to succeed in math than a kid who simply had a high IQ.

"[The fact] that executive function, even in children this young, is significantly related to early math performance suggests that if we can improve executive function, we can improve their academic performance," says Adele Diamond, professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of British Columbia.

SciAm

Improving IQ, executive function, and emotional/social intelligence would seem to be worthy pursuits of the education/child care professions. But how amenable are these "metrics" to improvement through training and education?

James Flynn is one optimistic researcher of human intelligence, who believes that "IQ gaps" can be narrowed (or eliminated), and that success in life should not be held hostage to an IQ test score.

Once you break intelligence down into its autonomous components, many things become clear. For example, the Nation’s Report Card shows that today’s children are ahead of their parents in reading at early ages and then the gains fade away by the age of 17. How is that possible? The children are doing much better on heavily g loaded IQ tests like the WISC at all ages. Should not brighter people be able to read adult novels better?....

Cato Unbound

Here is a short list of executive functions:

1. * planning for the future and strategic thinking
2. * the ability to inhibit or delay responding
3. * initiating behavior, and
4. * shifting between activities flexibly

Source

Here are some components of emotional intelligence:

1. Delay Gratification: Take right action even though there may not be an immediate reward.
2. Prioritize: Bring to the forefront of your mind to a “checklist” of what is more important so that you can weigh decisions and actions.
3. Manage Feeling: Use the simple feelings to act.. not react.
4. Optimism: Recognize that you have choices, that you can make a difference, that you are an important part of a living whole.
5. Accountability: Hold yourself to high standards and do what is right, even when it seems hopeless

Emotional Intelligence

What are the chances of being able to increase IQ, EF, or EI? Here, many people stumble upon the concept of "heritability." When researchers state that IQ is up to 80% heritable, executive function is up to 99% heritable, and emotional intelligence is also significantly inherited, many people despair of ever escaping the "gene trap."

People should indeed take inheritance and genetics seriously when looking at the effects of inherited factors on societal success and prosperity. But not at the expense of optimistic creativity in designing training and educational systems to maximise the realisation of "potential talents" that everyone possesses in varying amounts. Children cannot raise themselves, they cannot carry themselves to mastery on their own. But it is clear that our current system of government education and university indoctrination is not properly developing and refining the innate talents of youth.

Educational alternatives are important--from the earliest ages up through university and adult education. Fortunately, more people in positions of influence--although outside the government/education/industrial complex--are becoming aware of the critical problems and opportunities in this area. While the educational system of the US appears mired in a quagmire of political inbreeding and theoretical "dead-endism", fruitful ideas are being generated from the outside. Outside the sanctioned edu-establishment, and outside the US itself.

It is important not to get stuck on "g", or IQ, as the be all and end all of life success determinants. But it is also important to understand that even with EF and EI, genetics and heredity play a significant role. We absolutely must face the reality of the genetics of human behaviour and potential, but we must also understand that we are nowhere close to being able to optimise the potential of all students. The goal is optimal performance, not the impossibility of equal performance.

How Many Times Can You Fall in Love at One Sitting?

Women can recreate themselves in many ways. Using hair, makeup, clothing, and natural/artificial mood changes, women can seem to be many persons in one. But what if they could actually change their facial forms, like the women in the art video? How would that change the nature of romance and marriage? It is coming. The only question is, which will come first--real women morphing themselves, or realistic morphing robo-femmes?

Hat tip Racial Reality Blog

Stratospheric Dreams, Harsh Realities

Thanks to Michael Anissimov and Brian Wang for emailing information about the Strato Cruiser luxury dirigible seen above. The conceptual art at dezeen.com is magnificent.

The human imagination has limits, but we are nowhere close to reaching those limits. As human knowledge and technology expand, the human imagination will expand its own range. We will also learn how to become more intelligent, so as to be able to develop the many wonders that our imaginations and dreams reveal to us.

What are the harsh realities?

Our intelligence--our IQ combined with executive function and emotional/social intelligence--and our physical talents, need to be trained. Think of our intelligence as a mineral ore that needs refining. We need the best education--free of indoctrination--that is available. We need to be sure to provide a diversity of ideas--the only type of diversity that means anything in an educational context--to all of our children.

Sadly, our higher educactional system (and lower government educational systems) are failing us badly--even while educational costs are skyrocketing.

If our universities were providing a quality product, we might excuse their economic ineptness and tendency to pamper sinecured faculty and staff at the expense of parents and taxpayers. Unfortunately, universities have become indoctrination centers--particularly in the liberal arts and social sciences.

One of most perverse results of the massive indoctrination into a "monocultured multiculture" of focused entitlement, is the decade-long wave of "fake hate crimes" that have swept university campuses from George Washington University to Gonzaga to Boise State to Claremont to "Ole Miss" to too many campuses to list.

As law professor Glenn Reynolds stated: If hate crimes did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.

And so they have--by the gross. Why? Consider the phenomenom of "Women's Studies Departments", "Ethnic Studies Departments", "Sexual Orientation Studies Departments" etc. What are students taught in these superfluous departments that prepare students for nothing except teaching in similar departments, or other forms of professional indoctrination? These backwater (but well-compensated) departments teach their students strong feelings of grievance, entitlement, and perpetual hostility toward "the man" that keeps them down.

In the absence of the hate crimes they are taught to expect, what can these fantasy-rich, deluded minds do but to re-create the atmosphere of hostility, hatred, and abuse that their professors immerse them in each day?

It is a matter of cause and effect. For those who continue to associate Al Sharpton with Tawana Brawley, this is not a new phenomenon. But it has become an endemic phenomenon, thanks to the near ubiquitous phenomenon of "gender, racial, sexual "grievances departments" on campuses. The Duke U. faculty group of 88 response to the lacrosse team rape allegations, and the media circus that followed every rumour and inuendo of the case until it finally collapsed in its own emptiness, is a peripheral example of what the "grievance philosophy" has wrought on campus and within society in general. Fake crimes against "the man", and overlooking/excusing real crimes by the "aggrieved."

Universities spend huge amounts of money on ideological indoctrination--a type of "holy crusade" felt by many sinecured monkeys of academia to be the raison d'etre of university education.

This is not what Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had in mind.

It is an absurd and disgraceful joke by academia upon academia. It is stunting the growth of a better society, and subverting the stratospheric dreams of our imaginations.

The Yellow Brick Road

The road to the "Emerald City" of the future is taking us past some interesting technological scenery. From biotech to nanotech to robotics and machine intelligence, if we can keep the violent religious and ideological fanatics occupied elsewhere, our future should look even stranger than the Land of Oz.

A few weeks ago, bioengineers at Keio University in Japan demonstrated control of the computer game Second Life using a non-invasive “brain-computer” interface. Cyberonics, a Houston-based company, markets an implantable brain chip that was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat depression.

Of course depression is just one of many human ills the Transhumanists promise to eliminate — along with cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, baldness, poverty, global warming, aging and ultimately death.

Perhaps the futurists’ predictions are too wild, and their time scale overly ambitious. Surely human inefficiency, religious reticence and global political instability could slow down the transformation. But ultimately, we are quibbling over when, not if, it will happen.

Source

Consider the many things you will ask your "Home Fab" to make for you. And once we understand the magic of "self-assembly" better, what nanotechnological marvels will we eventually "shake and bake?"

We need smarter brains, and pharmacologists are working on that. Using marvelous new tools for imaging the body and the functioning brain, scientists are solving many of the problems that have prevented us from shaping our own future selves.

We do need to be smarter, and certainly if we suffer damage to our brains, we need better ways of restoring ourselves to full neural function. We plan to live a long time, and the brain will certainly suffer from traumatic and degenerative change over many decades and centuries of time.

We can try to follow the many projects of organisations such as SENS, CRN, The Lifeboat Foundation, the Singularity Institute, Foresight Institute, and those of many other institutions. Although we cannot possibly follow them all as closely as we would like, with the magic of high speed internet and hyperlinked multimedia, we can at least scan across the tip of the iceberg. I do recommend making personal connections with people who at least are dipping their toes in the current. Check out some of the links on the Al Fin sidebar.

Prodigies vs. Psychological Neoteny

The definition that we offered for the prodigy was a child (typically younger than 10 years old) who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding field of endeavor.Genius Denied
Child prodigies generally have IQs between 120 and 180, depending on the area of high performance. A child prodigy is different from a generally gifted child in focusing on one area of performance with a high level of motivation--far beyond its years.

This kid is special. He was practically born on a tennis court - his mother, tennis instructor Mari, was in the middle of a lesson when her waters broke. Jan started hitting balls at the age of one and now, a veteran of five, is beating kids twice his age, courtesy of his incredible all-round game.

If you thought the footage of Woods hitting golf balls as a tiny tot was impressive, wait till you see Silva's forehand volley on YouTube.

Source

Child prodigies are rarely understood, but they shine a light on a possible human future where high achievement in an adult area of expertise will not be unusual for children under the age of 14. One reason it is so rare today is the general attitude of "babying" children into lifelong psychological neoteny--often in the name of protecting them from the "harsh world."

Parents of gifted children typically have high expectations, and also model hard work and high achievement themselves (Bloom, 1985; Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993;Gardner, 1993a). But it is logically possible that gifted children have simply inherited their gift from their parents, who also happen to be hard working achievers. Parents of children in performance domains like music and athletics are the most directive; parents of children in visual arts are the least directive; and parents of children gifted in an academic domain fall somewhere in between (Bloom, 1985). To achieve in a performance domain, one must submit to rigorous and early training; even the most gifted children might not stick to such a rigorous schedule without a directive parent, one who insists that time be spent on practice.

Source

Generally gifted children may lack the level of achievement of child prodigies, despite having the same IQ levels and enriched home environment. The prodigy displays a "single-minded" devotion to his area of high performance that acts in concert with intelligence to achieve expert level performance.

Motivation and single-mindedness incorporate the mysterious "executive functions" of the human brain/mind. Executive function may be as much as 99% heritable as opposed to the 50% to 80% heritability of IQ. Given the need to possess both at high levels for "optimal achievement", it is extremely likely that heritability plays a strong role in life success.

What if the prodigy or gifted child is not recognised as such. What if the parents are largely absent, and the school system serves as more of a prison or torture chamber than a place to learn basics and to learn to live one's dreams? Much human capital is wasted in this way. Gifted children and prodigies could make huge contributions to a better future, if they are recognised, nurtured, and gently guided.

Humans are riding a centuries-long wave of achievement--begun in Europe, but now incorporating contributions from East and South Asia, the middle east, the Americas, and the South Pacific. Given the immense challenges and dangers humans face, they cannot afford to waste human capital. It is time to say goodbye to child raising that creates lifelong "cute puppies" or psychological neotenates. It is time to treat children and teens to as much expertise and competence as they care to take up.

What Good is it Knowing About Differences in Population Average IQ?

One relevant missing curve in the graphic above is the IQ distribution for Ashkenazi Jews. A recent afternoon event at AEI [see video] looked at the topic of Jewish IQ. Slate magazine covers that event here.

It is becoming clearer that population differences in average IQ exist, and may play an important role in differences in achievement. Recently, esteemed genetics Nobelist James Watson was forced to resign his post at Cold Spring Harbor, and had many public appearances canceled, as a result of his public statement expressing pessimism about the future of Africa as a result of low population average IQ there.

Many sensitive people fear the scientific study of population IQ differences, and try to discourage others from taking the idea seriously. Whether or not they believe it, they declare: "IQ tests are worthless" "intelligence is undefinable" "there is no such thing as 'race'" "this whole topic is racist" etc etc. Other persons perhaps less sensitive and more thoughtful ask: "what good is knowing that one group has higher average IQ than another group?"

The latter question is worth looking at. The reason scientists and others take the trouble to distinguish (discriminate) between one thing and another--to determine differences between things, classes, groups, people etc--is to explain things that are not explicable otherwise, and to more effectively plan future action. If society is ruled by liberal ideas such as "equality before the law" "equality of opportunity" etc. and is populated by people who generally wish to alleviate widespread hardship and suffering, the society will be better able to make policy to alleviate hardship and suffering with the benefit of better knowledge of reality.

Imagine a global government, based on the above liberal ideals, that is disturbed by the perpetual suffering and poverty in the nation of Haiti. For the government to institute a sustainable and effective policy of reducing poverty and suffering in Haiti, the global entity would require the very best information as to the reasons for the very long term poverty within Haiti. Clearly basing a policy on incorrect causes of Haiti's condition would almost certainly result in no sustained improvement in Haiti's condition, while at the same time wasting substantial global resources that might have gone toward solving problems.

Intentionally not studying a problem to understand its foundations, is a clear invitation to erroneous explanations, and wasteful faux "solutions." When science is manacled by political correctness and research censorship, nonsense explanations run rampant.

Wise administrators need the best information available to plan the optimal policies for their institutions and bureaucracies. While humane societies institute means to assure equal opportunities under the law, they also understand the importance of meritocracy in preserving the relative competitiveness and prosperity of their society. Humaneness is not a suicide pact. If well-meaning policies are later found to be based upon false premises, they should be discontinued in favour of policies based upon the best available scientific knowledge. Simply replacing societal policies of racial discrimination with other societal policies of discrimination--merely shuffling the favoured and disfavoured a bit--is an absurdist approach to achieving justice.

Trying to achieve proportional representation of a population group within a profession that is generally acknowledged to require an intellectual aptitude that eliminates almost all members of that population group from consideration, is obviously a futile project. Far better to allow each person to discover his/her own niche--independent of population/ethnic/gender grouping.

Understanding the aptitude distribution curves for each population group does not give any group an unfair advantage. But it does provide explanations for discrepancies in representation that are based upon falsifiable science, rather than ideological cant.

People who prefer to base policy upon ideological cant will obviously prefer not to look at these questions scientifically. They will use whatever rhetorical mechanisms within reach to close debate and declare their point of view the only possible POV worth considering. This type of person has controlled much of the academy, the media, and many government bureaucracies for decades now. How long these professional ideologues can maintain their disproportionate control of public discourse remains to be seen.

It is worth knowing about population mean aptitude differences to help explain differences in achievement of different population groups. There is no one metric that determines superiority or inferiority of groups--except in terms of that one metric. Different population groups excel at different things. Perhaps when society finally takes an honest look at population differences, it can at the same time look at the strengths of every population group.

Even children understand that most people have strengths and weaknesses. It is time that society acknowledged the same--taking account of statistical spread--about population groups.

The Lure of the Sea, the Beyond

Catamarans provide faster speed, more usable space, and are more stable at sea than mono-hulls. The Nahema luxury catamaran series is one approach to cat design.

Using a catamaran design lets you more than triple the interior and deck space of the vessel compared to the same length monohull yacht...To be available in 120-foot and 150-foot versions, or 35 and 45 metres in the new money, the Nahema series of catamarans is the brainchild of H2X’s Gilles Vatan...

...Both versions will also operate as sailboats – and what the catamaran design might lack in sporty handling in the turns, it will make up for in good speed and an increased stability that will be appreciated by guests without the sea-legs for a more tumultuous ride.

Each yacht will be constructed according to customer specifications, leaving open all sorts of possibilities including helipads, on-deck spas, and other little luxuries...

gizmag

The catamaran design can be modified for many specific tasks besides luxury cruising. The "spider boat" cat in this article can be outfitted for trans-oceanic voyages, for military missions, for exploration, or for sport and racing. The design universe for catamarans has barely been explored.

Beyond the catamaran is the trimaran, tetramaran, and more complex multi-hull designs leading up to large floating islands (Aquarius) or floating seasteads. Most early seasteads will take advantage of more protected bays and waters. But as seasteads move out onto the high seas they will need to be built to withstand the steady pounding of sea swells, and occasional large storms and rogue waves.

Creating the ability to constructively dissipate massive amounts of wave energy will be a challenge for seastead designers for this millenium. Underwater mechanical designs that absorb and transform wave energy into electrical and other usable forms of energy, are needed. Turning the potential problem of destructive wave energy into an asset, will require intelligence and creativity--and a lot of serendipitous luck, no doubt. The same can be said for the problems of corrosion and accretion of sea life to hulls. Preventing seabirds from turning your seastead into a floating guano depot is another problem that might be turned to profit.

As humans move from forgiving land masses to the sea's surface, below the surface, and outside the Earth's atmosphere, human habitat design will require a lot more thought and ingenuity than is currently applied to the problem.

With an average global human IQ of 90, it is clear that the upward tail of the curve will be worked to the limit, on problems such as these--just a few of the design problems of human survival that will require high intelligence. Humans need to learn to live on, below, and above the surfaces of Earth's land and sea. The ability to do so safely will depend on significant improvements in human decision making and problem solving. If you are interested in seasteads, you may want to take a look at this video.

Augmentation of human intelligence through pharmaceuticals, genetic mods, technological prostheses and interfaces, will all be necessary, and more. Development and evolution of intelligent machines to assist human decision making and problem solving will also help in bridging the gap to the next level of human survival and prosperity.

Somewhere out there, is an asteroid or comet in an orbit bound to intersect Earth. Whether such a catastrophe will hit Earth before the next Ice Age, or whether a geological upheaval such as a massive series of volcanoes and quakes will first occur, is orthogonal to the obvious need to develop habitats and locales for human existence that broaden the likelihood for long term human survival and growth.

Around the Web

Jason Malloy posted an excellent synopsis of the James Watson brouhaha over at GNXP.

An intriguing look at the effect of the west on Islam at American Thinker. Islam may be in for a reformation--like it or not!

The new Carnival of Space is out.

Here is the latest Encephalon

More carnivals later.

Prime Time: When Your Unconscious is Thinking You

Unconscious priming--or subliminal priming--is a fascinating topic of cognitive science that is receiving more attention lately.

In a study that appeared in the journal Science in May, a team of English and French neuroscientists performed brain imaging on 18 men and women who were playing a computer game for money. The players held a handgrip and were told that the tighter they squeezed when an image of money flashed on the screen, the more of the loot they could keep.

As expected, the players squeezed harder when the image of a British pound flashed by than when the image of a penny did — regardless of whether they consciously perceived the pictures, many of which flew by subliminally. But the circuits activated in their brains were similar as well: an area called the ventral pallidum was particularly active whenever the participants responded.

“This area is located in what used to be called the reptilian brain, well below the conscious areas of the brain,” said the study’s senior author, Chris Frith, a professor in neuropsychology at University College London who wrote the book “Making Up The Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World.”

The results suggest a “bottom-up” decision-making process, in which the ventral pallidum is part of a circuit that first weighs the reward and decides, then interacts with the higher-level, conscious regions later, if at all, Dr. Frith said.

NYTimes

In "bottom-up" decision-making, subliminal cues "prime" the sub-conscious mind toward a particular response set. Curiously, the effect of sub-conscious priming can last for many years.

Black and white drawings were shown to people during an experiment in 1982. Seventeen years later, the same people (and some more used as a control) have been asked by mail to answer questions about drawings, some of them identical to the ones they had seen 17 years ago, and some different. The people who had participated in the first experiment were primed: they answered more easily to the questions related to the drawings they had seen 17 years ago, whereas the control participants showed no such difference. A funny thing is that some of the participants were unable to consciously remember the first study! They vaguely remembered having participated in psychology experiments, but nothing about this one in particular.Source

Some research has suggested that "priming God" may increase altruistic behaviour. An interesting discussion of this research can be found here.

Combining the bottom-up, subliminal decision making involved in "priming", with the long time duration of priming effects, and possible behavioural effects of "priming God," it is easy to see that many "character traits" of long term and habitual behaviours, might be influenced by early childhood "priming." In other words, decision making that you may feel reflects conscious higher-brain decision-making, may actually come from the lower reptilian brain unconscious--controlling-ghosts from the past.

Combatants in cultural and ideological wars are exquisitely aware of the "mental programming" effects of subliminal priming, and use various techniques in attempts to eradicate past programming to allow present and future programming. Certainly the modern academic lobotomy practised in most university liberal arts and social science programs--heavy slanting of the presentation in favour of one particular point of view, while preventing a balanced presentation of alternative POVs--suggests an attempt at eradicating old programming to clear the way for new programming. Other terms for this re-education process include "consciousness-raising" and "brainwashing."

Early childhood priming can be extremely powerful and long-lasting, resistant to most attempts to change. New methods of studying priming will inevitably be accompanied by new methods of changing "dysfunctional" priming. Crude psychiatric treatments such as electro-convulsive therapy persist in the treatment of intractable depression--even expand into treatment for other conditions such as schizophrenia--because they appear to get results. But less potentially damaging treatments such as targeted low-amplitude electromagnetic brain stimulation offer a more finessed approach to both research and treatment.

While pathologies such as PTSD, Panic, Phobias, etc. represent "priming effects," it is also likely that less well defined counter-productive behaviours that obstruct a person's happiness and success are also a result of priming.

Certainly the "hyper-judgmental" attitudes observed in assembled crowds (see almost any "Oprah" or similar show), reflect a more ominous phenomenon seen in "lynch mobs." The public physical and verbal attacks made on E.O. Wilson, and other intellectual messengers bringing unpopular and non-PC messages reveal similar dysfunctional primings within the attackers. The same priming pathology is seen in violent abortion clinic attackers, muslim suicide bombers, and college professors who verbally assault and grade-discriminate against students who may diverge from the professor's particular prejudices.


It is not that some people are guilty of being influenced by priming prejudice while others are not. It is that some have never confronted their priming prejudices at all. They were indoctrinated, but never worked and fought their way through and beyond the indoctrination. Whether Islamist fanatics, eco-terrorists, clinic bombers, campus PC Thought Police, or members of seemingly benign ideological movements to "shape the minds" of entire generations toward more "correct" ideologies, these practitioners of censorship, destruction, and mental stunting are "true believers" who are still functioning on their subliminal priming, unexamined.

We have the popular mental image of the "zombie," stalking stiffly across the landscape, unconsciously seeking its targets. It is not such a stretch to overlay the zombie image onto the eager ideologue, seeking minds to program.

Automatic Learning--It Came to Me in a Dream

Jeff Lieberman had a dream about ways of learning skillful physical movements without verbal coaching--pure tactile feedback. He went on to help develop a "haptics feedback suit" to study tactile learning. It is an intriguing idea.

MIT researchers Jeff Lieberman and Cynthia Breazeal have published the results of the study in a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Robotics. The study presents a proof-of-concept wearable robotic system that provides real-time tactile feedback over every joint simultaneously.

“Oddly enough, the idea for the robot suit initially came from a dream,” Lieberman told PhysOrg.com. “The dream involved people who weren't physically able to express themselves, but who were mentally normal, who used a machine that aided them to get their inner feelings out. This ranged from people with muscular difficulties to even toddlers and 'untrained' people who do not know how to wield a paintbrush. Upon waking and thinking about that idea for about an hour, the idea for this project was born, and I started doing research that day; the overall project was about six months for software and hardware development.”

In experiments with arm motions, the researchers found that the suit increased students’ learning rates by up to 23%, and reduced errors by up to 27%, as well as enabling students to learn movements “more deeply” by affecting their subconscious learning of motor skills. The latter can be especially important for patients with neurological injuries who have lost the ability to form new long-term memories, but can still build new motor skills.

The suit works by optically tracking body markers for the teacher’s movement (or a pre-recorded ideal movement) and the student’s movement with a Vicon motion capture system, which has millimeter accuracy. The tracking data is fed to software that compares the teacher’s and student’s movements, and generates feedback signals to the suit.

Physorg

Imaginative persons can easily think of many uses for such a tactile feedback learning system. A large part of the widespread incompetence in society comes from the lack of practical skills with the hands and body. A sedentary society--forced to sit inactive for one third of the day from childhood to young adulthood, spending countless hours sitting watching television, texting, chatting, playing video games, etc--learns inactivity early, and neglects the body and the skills the body is capable of exhibiting.

The part of the mind that deals with banal, everyday things, or with abstract ideas, is well exercised by most children, teenagers, and adults. The parts of the mind that guide the body in skilled activities that make life more enjoyable, more workable, or more prosperous, are generally neglected.

Traditionally, fathers taught sons physical/tactile skills, as mothers taught tactile skills to daughters. Modern parents often do not have the time or spend the time to teach children practical skills. Such teaching requires patience and energy that may be lacking--not to mention the required skills that parents may never have been taught themselves. Now, these skills can be taught from tutorials online or on disk.

But the learning opportunities from such tactile feedback suits extends far beyond practical skills of modern life's technologies. Surgeons in training could learn from the deft, precise movements of the best surgeons. Pilots would learn firm, timely responses to unexpected emergencies in simulators.

It is one thing to teach the mind a skill. It is quite another to teach the body. Modern education neglects the body. (it also neglects the mind, but that is another story)

A deeper meaning behind such training is the fact that much of the cognitive strength of the mind derives from being "embodied." Our verbal and pre-verbal conceptual languages rest upon metaphors of embodiment. The sensory feedback from the body, as interpreted through embodiment metaphors, drives much of our thinking. More on this later.

The MIT research discussed in the Physorg article above promises important advances in a field of research that is not exactly brand new. But qualitative improvements in a pre-existing field can make the field seem new again.

Tactile feedback may just hold the conceptual key that has been missing from stonewalled efforts in machine intelligence, cognitive enhancement, and ultimately brain emulation and downloading. Stay tuned.