Farmer versus Fox

I try to address issues on this blog (when I get round to them at all) with the enthusiasm of a political nebbish, and the coolness of a scientist-in-training. The first is heartfelt, but not totally delineated, without a full comprehensive system behind it – I often know what I feel is right, but sometimes the rationales can seem a bit post hoc. The latter is as doubting and cerebral as I can manage (a fair bit of gut is also involved). The two can sometimes be set against one another, or one sacrificed to allow the other fuller expression. Today I am going to post with all of my heart and all of my head. (And some guts.)

There is an election occurring tomorrow in the USA. This is firstly, an urge to all those who can, to use their vote. I can’t; I’m a UK citizen. It is secondly, a call to all who value science and reason, to vote the incumbent out of office. This current US administration has shown an attitude towards the scientific community that can at best be considered disinterest and at worst contempt. A former head of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment has this terse assessment of GW Bush’s position on stem cell research: “an attempt to throttle science, not to govern technology.” It rings true of this issue, but moreover the wider treatment of scientists by the administration.

The White House, with its eyes on religious conservatives, decided in 2001 that new stem-cell lines would not be funded federally: the President’s justification was that there were already “more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines.” However this claimed figure was twice that of the estimate the National Institute of Health had originally put forward, an estimate that presumably was not felt to gel with their case, as it was met with a directed search for all cell lines that might ‘conceivably exist’, however risky or unpromising, which threw up this 60 best case figure. Currently only 11 have been confirmed by NIH as being safe and viable.

This was a case of finessing the figures, and taking one’s own authority of what was the important measure of stem-cell technology (conceivable lines rather than viable lines) over that of the largest research organization at your disposal. If anyone doubts that stem-cell research represents one of the cutting edge technologies that will massively change medicine, then correct your thinking. This cavalier treatment of an important scientific issue throws a spyglass onto the wider treatment of the science. But why would Bush hit on science? After all, Republicanism is not ideologically opposed to science or reason.

Perhaps the most pro-science president of the last century was Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former West Point mathematics and engineering student, and later president of Columbia University. Eisenhower established the post of White House science adviser, allowed top researchers to wander in and out of the West Wing, and oversaw such critical scientific advances as the development of the U2 spy plane and federally funded programs to put more science teachers in public schools. At one point, he even said that he wanted to foster an attitude in America toward science that paralleled the country’s embrace of competitive sports. Scientists returned the affection, leaning slightly in favor of the GOP in the 1960 election.

But ideology comes second to pragmatics for many, and a game plan has been open, for those who would take it, for Republicans to hit Democrats in their core areas – and contrary to what some may push, science is a fairly Democrat-heavy enterprise. Couple this with the emergence of religious pressure groups as a political force to contend with, and a dedication to reason becomes to some an impediment to achieving political goals.

Cue Nixon (who abolished the entire White House science advisory team), Reagan (who revealingly stated the old canard: “Well, [evolution] is a theory–it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it was once believed.”) Gingrich (cutting budgets at research organizations like the US Geological Survey because it hit Democrat jobs, abolished the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment – believing, as one associate put it, that “Scientists tend to have an agenda, and it tends to be a liberal political agenda,”) Tom DeLay (evolution unproven again, best to ignore environment science because “God charges us to be good stewards of the Earth” anyway) leads us inexorably through the past to the incumbent, who “believes the jury is still out” on evolution – really?

The administration has repeatedly devalued scientific offices in the government – posting non-scientists to senior roles, downgrading positions, letting posts go unfilled. Occupational Health has got a battering, with individuals who are not on-message vis a vis the administrations ergonomics position getting rejected for posts they had been approved for. Doctors who recommend prayer to deal with PMS are promoted. And scientists who approach the FBI with information about bioterrorism are jailed. Even on the most lenient analysis this is ass-backward, clumsy and totally counterproductive. Would the same approach have been taken with church leaders who found evidence of terrorists meeting in their basement?

This has not been met with silence, however. The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a statement decrying how the “administration has undermined the quality of the scientific advisory system and the morale of the government’s outstanding scientific personnel”. You can find the Full report here – including no small number of concerns, of which I present a few (summarised from this source)

Then there are those examples the UCS does not mention: the Corn Refiners Association and Sugar Association successfully lobbied Bush to pressure the World Health Organization to de-emphasize the importance of cutting sweets and eating fruits and vegetables in their anti-obesity guidelines. Two scientists were ejected from a bioethics council due to what they believed to be their views favoring embryo research. Data on hydraulic fracturing were altered so benzene levels met government standards after “feedback” from an industry source. Another study (sponsored by Florida developers) claiming wetlands cause pollution, was used by the EPA to justify replacing protected marshes with golf courses to improve “water quality.”

Nothing is so trivial that it escapes top administration advisor Karl Rove’s insistence on staying “on message”—from forbidding NASA scientists to speak to the press about the global warming disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow, to letting National Park Service gift shops sell books with the “alternative view” that the Grand Canyon was formed in seven days.

One need look no further than the USDA to see how compromised the research and enforcement environment has become. Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman was a former food industry lawyer and lobbyist and her staff includes representatives of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and other industry groups. So it should be no surprise that shortly after a dairy cow from Canada tested positive for mad cow disease a senior scientist came forward alleging agency pressure to let Canadian beef into the U.S. before a study concluded it was safe. 18 Nor should it shock us that whistleblowers accused an Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service supervisor of insisting a cow exhibiting symptoms of the disease be sent to a rendering plant before a technician could perform the tests mandated by agency guidelines. 19 But even the most cynical among us might be baffled by the almost cultish devotion to industry pandering exhibited when the USDA refused to give Creekstone Farms Premium Beef the kits it requested to voluntarily test its cattle so it could export to Japan because it might “create the impression that untested beef was not safe.” Creekstone may very well go bankrupt as a result.

Foreign scientists who would make the leap to the US are argued to be more disposed to Europe in this climate, which would do it some good term, but will harm the scientific community in the long. And it should anger Americans that smart, technical minded, rational people – the embodiment of the immigrant ethic that the country was built around – could be turned off by what America has to offer.
Why are scientists treated in such a way? How can this big tent party get away with this? One argument is simple, and again, pragmatic:

They aren’t a big voting bloc. They are generally affluent, but not enough so to be major donors. They are capable of organizing under the auspices of a university to lobby for specific grants, but they aren’t organized politically in a general way. In short, scientists aren’t likely to cause the GOP problems if they are completely alienated. Scientists have almost never turned themselves into anything like a political force.

To spell it out: this administration, following the tone of previous Republican ones (with notable exceptions, including GH Bush) makes political capital out of weakening science bodies, and protects its policy decisions from rational criticism by shifting the facts or undermining their perceived legitimacy. This is damning stuff, and they get away with it, because there is no voice for the scientists.

Except. There is a voice for science, if the blogosphere has any half the political clout it claims to. Blogs and their readers skew technophile, and their format rewards and reinforces a deference to rationality. Being right, having evidence, these are things that liberals, libertarians, conservatives, socialists, gun control advocates, gun freedom advocates, pro-war camps, anti-war camps all prize. Blogs from all across the political spectrum are the scientists best line of defence. We should consider, despite our politics (and looking at it from a British perspective, Kerry does not present to me as a liberal alternative), what it would mean to continue to have an administration bent on eroding the resources, influence and legitimacy of scientific investigation. What it means to continue to have an administration that is not interested in the views of the “reality-based community”. The difference in having an administration that would at least attempt to marshal the full scientific facts, and regard science and rational information as an intrinsically useful and valuable thing. That would not be condemned by the Union of Concerned Scientists for suppressing, distorting and undermining science.

Many have raised this President’s confidence in his instinct, and commitment to faith. I’m not at all interested if these lie behind his slashing the tyres of science, or it is due instead to those pragmatic considerations raised above, or some combination thereof. Maybe it speaks volumes about his decision making style, maybe not. When it comes to this issue, it really doesn’t matter all that much – it’s self-evidently a bad thing, regardless of motive. The enlightenment, that remarkable little project that all of us thinking people are committed to in one form or other, must be defended.

Commentators from across the board, from the left to the right do seem to care about such things, recognizing that imbalance and lack of respect towards scientific viewpoints are deeply troubling. But now is the time to convert those concerns into action. Kerry may not be a man of science, but he appears to respect it. An unprecedented array of Nobel scientists back him, stating that their decision is because “Unlike previous administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, the Bush administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice in the policy-making that is so important to our collective welfare”, and he has placed himself against the stem-cell policy of his opponent
Of course, if you are already a “What good is science if we are all blown to bits by Al Quaida and John Kerry will ensure this will happen” kind of person, then this doesn’t make a jot of difference. [NB if you are, then continue through that link for an analysis of how a non-rational approach to the War on Terror may have already undermined it, then we can go back to the talking points] I know for many, this election is a single issue vote, and the idea that we can defend civilization and also champion those things that make it exceptional is no longer in fashion. But for those others – vote for science.

UPDATE: And there’s more. First, swing state Ohio is being hurt by the Bush approach to science. This isn’t just a floating, abstract issue – it affects people with real jobs.

Also, thanks to Meteor Blades at dKos I got hold of a vital link I was after. The Democrats care enough about this issue to be monitoring and documenting the treatment of science and scientists by the Bush Administration. There is too much on this site for me to begin to encompass, but when you try to tackle all these organisations:

Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research
Ambulatory Pediatric Association
American Academy of Nursing
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association of Medical Colleges
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
American Foundation for AIDS Research
American Medical Association
American Pediatric Society
American Psychiatric Association
American Psychological Association
American Psychological Society
American Public Health Association
American Sociological Association
Association of American Universities
Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs
Association of Population Centers
Association of Reproductive Health Professionals
Association of Schools of Public Health
Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine
Center for the Advancement of Health
Consortium of Social Science Associations
Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
HIV Medicine Association
Infectious Diseases Society of America
Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research
Population Association of America
Society for Adolescent Medicine
Society for Pediatric Research
Society for Research in Child Development
Society for Research on Adolescence
Society for Women’s Health Research
Society of Behavioral Medicine
University of California

then it’s safe to say you’re not on the side of science.

UPDATE 2: Well, it’s all said and done and the other guys won. Which is precisely why it is so important that these anti-scientific measures, together with this broad antipathy toward the scientific community, is recognised, vilified, and trumpeted to high heaven by anyone who is sympathetic to science per se, and the entire enlightenment project. If this stands it harms all of us.

We played ourselves into rock history. Ka-koo-ka-choo.

Now that’s done with, here is the scariest fucking thing I’ve ever read.

the band lives, after a lengthy cryogenic period and if you’re in the London area, you might want to check us out. Oh, you just might.

Last Man Alive as we have been provisionally remonikered will play The Old Blue Last (great Eastern Street) this Thursday (28th Oct) at around 8.45. If you want a flyer put something to that effect in the commnets box, and I will arrange it or more likely shrug helplessly.

We do rock, we do.

Just read a good, solid article by Julian Baggini in the online Guardian, on freedom and the role of government (here). I think he gets to the heart of how a social democratic viewpoint maintains its liberalism precisely by allowing the state to act rather than attempting to erode its influence. A tiny selection (it’s not very long, so go read the rest)

To maximise our freedom, therefore, we should be interested in creating a society in which we have the maximum power to make choices for ourselves. That may require us to limit the extent to which influences that are corrosive to freedom are allowed to operate.

…..

Of course, governments can go too far. Mill was right that no actions that harm only ourselves should be illegal. But there is a difference between regulation and banning outright. That is why there is no mixed message in calling for a lift on absolute prohibitions on illegal drugs, while at the same time legislating to encourage responsible drinking and coming down hard on those whose intoxication risks harm to others. Nor is the proposed increase in the number and size of casinos necessarily a bad thing, if it is matched by much stricter regulation of gambling, as promised.

I like Baggini – he contributes to B&W and there is a very nice article on their front page by him, on the fissure between postmodern thinkers and other intellectuals, where he sidesteps the cheap route of playing up the differences and grasps at their commonality – a fundamental shared notion of rationality (he argues this may be a thin one, but it is shared in this form by both these groups) that pits them against fundamentalists and other fanatics. His Guardian piece made me go back to a site I’ve relegated from ‘regular read’ to ‘rarely bother with’ – and confirm my preference shift. For if there were ever a peddler of the ‘intrusive state’ thesis, Spiked is it.

Spiked (“online, off-message”) pitches itself as the web-zine for rational people who didn’t care what other people thought. It took a different view, criticised the media as well as the government, was pro-science and critical of the anti-GM lobby, and in many senses suited well someone evacuating the Usenet atheism and evolution newsgroups where argumentative beatdowns were thrown at the lazy of thought and the deliberatively illogical.

And they had a view on everything! How impressive, I thought, to have an angle on every event that happened. Given time it became apparent that the angle was more or less the same angle every time – a libertarian none-of-your-business attitude. First disappointed (it’s a less impressive output when you discover it’s based around templates), I became disillusioned when it became clear that this limited the topics to get coverage, and promoted a bias as heavy as any I’d find in any print paper. If there is any government initiative, we are going to hear about how it is a bad thing, decided a priori to its actual content and aim. The environmental only gets covered from an impossibly skeptical perspective – either focused pieces from experts downplaying the threat or using new claims about the environment as an excuse to wheel out … the same experts and their same old arguments. Just another example of an institution committing itself to a position, and as a consequence removing itself from objective evaluation of the true situation. Despite its claims, it’s less rational than a novice beginning each issue with an “I’m not sure” and taking it from their.

If there is any doubt that Baggini’s article speaks to them (intentionally or otherwise), here are a few choice quotes from a few seconds of trawling their archives – first

in danger of handing the state that very right….busy-body coppers laying down the law (link)

and here, where they do their bit to finesse the issue

Though government intervention is more coercive and intrusive than in the past, it is mediated through a range of ‘caring’ professionals and its authoritarian character is obscured. Nanny is a straw person, the counsellor is the personification of the therapeutic state.(link)

And what’s all this? On reading this scolding article about the Tory party giving in to PC, it seems like even tolerance is a bridge too far:

Meanwhile, the Tory Party has bent over backwards to show respect to those diverse lifestyles that are deemed acceptable today. The party staged a gay and lesbian summit for young people on 28 March 2003 that discussed issues such as tackling homophobic bullying and promoting health…. [Michael Howard] gave his support to ‘sensible measures to combat race, disability and sex discrimination’, which were apparently not ‘political correctness’ but ‘plain common sense, decency, humanity’ ….This reinforces today’s censorious climate.

‘deemed acceptable’? combatting discrimination “apparently not” (with sarcasm clearly on) PC? Dear or dear. My search has convinced me that they have jumped the shark into a pool of genuine unpleasantness.

A curious thing is that they seem to concede that no-one feels the same way:

The most striking contrast between today’s therapeutic state and the nanny state of the past is the absence of popular opposition. On the contrary, opinion polls reveal substantial majorities in favour of measures currently under discussion, such as bans on smoking in public places and restrictions on advertising of ‘junk food’. Where is the campaign to uphold the rights of smokers in pubs and restaurants? Have we seen demonstrations demanding the right to eat junk food or indulge in binge drinking?

One must wonder where the issue is – we live in a society where people agree that the government is right to exercise its powers to protect us from the actions of others, including regulation of unwelcome behaviour. End of story, surely? Perhaps not – perhaps there is a layer of ‘false consciousness’ occluding the poor proletariat, that only Mick Hulme and his noble band can see through. Given that their position on the state is largely predicated on the notion that people know what is good for them and should be left alone, even this flimsy defence is self-defeating.

Even now, I readily concede the readability of Spiked – its articles go down like flat Coke. But the sheer tendentiousness of its writing makes it tiresome and utterly predictable. Seems to me that Spiked are less off-message than off-base.

UPDATE: A commentator draws attention to this story revealing the colourful and somewhat worrying ideological history of the Spiked, nee Living Marxism crowd, and just how many pies their tentacles have got into. One thing that resonates strongly with me is the assertion that

the scientific establishment, always politically naive, appears unwittingly to have permitted its interests to be represented to the public by the members of a bizarre and cultish political network.

I don’t know that science (as a human body) is always naive, but it could use better, more positive PR, and must have found it reassuring to discover organisations of hardline technophiliacs saying “it’s alright Jack, I’ve got your back”. But to me, this is the worst possible outcome, simply deepening fault lines between the factions and trying to isolate science as compatible only with an atomistic, individualistic world view. It’s akin to what Pinker is achieving with The Blank Slate – to push opposition onto a fork, where either they accept ‘the scientific case’ for womens inequality or are forced to reject the scientific worldview entirely. One way or another, trying to shrink the ranks and perceived weight of the rational, systematic left. It’s as smart as it is shitty, and they need to be sorted out.

with news that Lula writes off Mozambique’s debt – reportedly

determined to help other countries, that are poorer and facing greater needs than Brazil.

Which is pretty cool.

Info via the infinitely knowledgable Jonathan Edelstein.

I’ve just discovered it’s Arrival Day today in the US, the anniversary of the formation of the American Jewish community. 350 years old today! How cool. I’m totally permeated by American culture (oh! how unusual!) but when I pause to take account, a huge swathe of it is better characterised as Jewish-American culture, through comedy, music, musicals, films, comics and novels, and so this day is definitely one to celebrate in the same vein as Christmas, as a totem of an aggregation of culturally valuable things – I thank the festive season first and foremost for Phil Spector albums, Die Hard and It’s a Wonderful Life, christmas carols (musical and dickensian) and japanese toy crazes – as well as a recognition of the passage of a people. Di-as-pora is such a cool word; I think everyone should disaporise. Anyway, I’m supposed to come up with some thoughts on “the Jewish future”, but I don’t know if I’m up to the job (especially if the future concerned is that of Jews in America – I haven’t even visited the US for three or four years). How about my jewish future? As I seem destined to have Jewish kids, already have a jewish brother related by blood, a jewish stepfamily, play in a band with a Jewish mastermind, share my office with an Isreali (though I fear not for too much longer) and love and live with a Jewish honey, it looks like this lapsed catholic has a firmly semitic future. I can deal; I like fishballs.

One of the great things about travelling for a perennial student is the excuse to fling oneself into reading, consequences be damned. Truly an idiotic attitude, as getting to grips with a solid novel should carry far less guilt then the hundreds of email-checks and news updates that permeate my working week. Regardless, I really hit my pace while I was away, filling those fleeting spare minutes in between settling into camp and the onset of heavy darkness with as many pages as I could cram in. So much so that I will make the following claim: I was reading books faster than I could eat them.

This is not hyperbole. I have considered the conditions that constitute a fair swipe at this, and I feel I have met them. Forget the really thick, coarse, sugar-paper, hardback pompous pages that a real dodger might compare to. I’m confident in taking on the eminently chewable pages of your average paperback, and coming out the winner. Lets make it a challenge: I read, you eat. I’ll front you a glass of water, and won’t even use my glasses. I’ll take on the message while you tackle the medium, Marshall McLuhan be damned. And if you whinge over the paper cuts your gums and tongue accrue, reflect first on the wounds that a clumsily constructed sentence are apt to do to me. When you gag on the quasi-papier-mâché of your bolus, streaked with printer’s ink, marvel at my capacity to consume idea after breathtaking idea. And when your stomach burns and churns as it tries to expel this foreign visitor, perhaps you will concede that my achievement of housing its cousin within my brain is fearful.

Anyway, I only read two books, due to fading light. The one I finished most recently, Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote, by the late Ahmadou Kourouma. It’s the first African novel I have read – perhaps novel is the wrong word, as the form is quite distinctive, being the soronama, or oral elegy summing up the life of the ruler of a West African dictatorship. It’s filled with cruelty, senselessness and waves of despair; luckily it is also very funny, a dark and bloody satire about the history and current state of the dark continent. It’s a fairly long read and at times hard work to get through, especially as the central actor, the dictator Koyaga, is a fairly characterless soul, preoccupied with hunting and stature alone. By far the best part of the book was the section (or ‘vigil’) that the storyteller relates about Macledio, Koyagas right hand man, whose search for his ‘man of destiny’ leads him across Africa in a hugely colourful and imaginative exploration of powerful princesses, desert traders, possessed souls, magic bones and more. A sympathetic and somewhat tragic character who again and again loses all he values, the vigil wrings genuine pathos out of my world-weary nodes.

Another high point is Koyagas series of visits to other dictators, each grotesque in their own distinctive way, and providing an entertaining flight through the mad and bad. Koyoga is based on Gnassingbe Eyadema, ruler of Togo, and the other leaders referenced throughout the book have their origins in genuine nasty pieces of work. I figure I learned more through reading this than I would have been prepared to wade through in a non-fiction format, not least because the humour serves to make bearable the atrocities it depicts (and I wouldn’t be satisfied with an account that excised those aspects). Not for everyone, but it was for me.

The other book I read was Paul Broks’ Into The Silent Land, which in a funny kind of way is probably more for everyone than it was for me. At least, it’s a book I think everyone has to read, except I probably didn’t need to read it. Still, I’m glad I did.

To expand: Broks is a neuropsychologist, who has been studying, diagnosing and treating individuals whose neurological defects have made their own distinctive imprints on thought, emotion, memory, and behaviour. It’s a story of what really makes us tick, and if we’ve been here before with Oliver Sacks then we haven’t quite done it the Broks way – sardonic, stumbling at times, peppered with sexual incidents and above all informed by this sense of angst, which I find preferable to the recitations about the wonder understanding the mind gives us about the material world. Not that I have any problem with scientific wonder per se, as it is a sentiment which I obviously share; I just get tired of every meditation on the subject concluding in the very same way – we should be baffled but impressed, and then get back to chewing our cornflakes. Broks has dealt with these issues first hand for many years, but it still preoccupies him, and he tries to meet it head on at times – of course we’re all just neurons, of course there is no unifying seat of consciousness, and yet, and yet, and yet – whilst at other times he kind of shifts to stances you don’t often hear scientists espousing, such as his dream sequence where he gets taken to task at the eliminative materialism court of justice, for not believing that science will ever get a hold on consciousness. Its not didactic but massively playful, without ever being less than a scientific and personal meditation (i.e., its not just screwing with your head to try to be clever).

So what’s my gripe? For me, the problem is that a lot of the book is old news; beautifully rendered old news, admittedly, but when you spend your Wednesdays at a nueropsychology clinic and other days with your head buried in Dennett, affective and cognitive neuroscience, having someone describe frontal behaviour isn’t fresh, and begins to smell suspiciously like work. An account of confabulation is never as interesting as hearing it first hand (a bed-ridden patient warning me our session would be cut short as he had a meeting with the European Parliament later, or that he knows the doctor who waved hello to him because he worked under him at the bank), and to really get into the qualia issues you need the space to do it justice, so I’d rather take myself to the authorities.

But forget my gripes, because by the time I finished it I got my time back. As I said before, it’s beautifully and involvingly written, so giving me cause to imagine certain phenomena in different ways. And the last third of the book starts to cohere its thesis (we’re neurons, and that’s it, ok, so…so…) in a quite distinctive way, pulling together meditations on dream life * that are quite astounding with evidence from Robert Louis Stevenson’s writing habits, and really making me think again about this thing that I do, and sometimes presume to take for granted. So read it, I beg of you. Chapter here.

Why, finally a long post? Well, in accordance with the book theme, I’ve being writing bits of thesis, and did a count of how much thesis-worthy material I figure I have at this stage in the game, ¾ in. Counting everything that is at or close to first draft status (admittedly higgledy-piggledy – god, what a word – and needing touching up – some of it is written as complete papers and will need to be segmented and inserted into chapters, which may take as long as the original writing), double-spaced, I’ve broken ninety pages, which is surprising and rather heartening. Of course, there’s a lot more to do – I need to do at least 3 or 4 experiments this year…..

And a final book moment: if this is to be believed, the little baby I got involved in should be out by Christmas. So you all know what to get your nearest and dearest….

—————————–

* Like, how’s this for starters: accept that there is no Cartesian theatre, no single seat of consciousness that watches everything unfold before it, a viewer, that mental events must parade before for them to really happen. This is the view that much of Neuropsychology pushes you towards – you are the sum of a large quantity of mental operations that occur, with no central locus that is you – you can lesion parts of the brain and the person is changed. Is not not-you but not the same-you as it was before. Snip other parts and information is no longer accessible – but only for certain purposes; you may be able to read but not hear words, or see but be unaware of visual stimuli. The ‘you’ you think is leading the way is a construct. If you accept this, then what reason is there to believe that in some very real sense the mental world of dreams may not continue while you wake, just in an area of your neural faculties that is not accessible to your constructed consciousness? What is there to prohibit those ‘unconscious’ processes (which undoubtedly exist; no-one doubts that procedural memory is real) from being smart, in the same way that we consider ourselves (again, that conscious front end that deals with the outside world) to be smart? After all, who the hell is running that awesomely complicated, nuanced and vivid world we call our dreams?

Yes I am tent-blogging. OK not really, but I have been spending my days waking at six to roll up my mattress and fold down my canvass dwelling. Now I sit in a Namibian bakery, which is a less unconventional locus of the blog, granted, but still fun, especially with that cinammon smell wafting by.

Smell it?

mmm.

Very cool country, and ther wildlife of the savannah has a familiar yet-alien quality – their are recognisable components of many animals – the bull in the wildebeest, the fox in the jackal, the HGV in the elephant – yet twisted in unspeakably cool ways. I’ve got to see sprinbok stotting, and plenty of exciting carcasses, along with the obligatory bestial-copro moments. Nice. Perhaps I will paraglide tomorrow.

In essence, life is swell. Catch you in blighty, most likely.

No title, as I’m wholly contrite about my lack of action. I promised you neuromarketing! Sorry, folks, but tomorrow has been a Vitalstatistix kind of phenomena recently. Hiatus will no doubt continue, as I will be going away in a week: there are reasons, namely getting involved in this unspeaking cool project, trying to mutate the thoughts on evo-psych and politics into a coherent article, and busy workness.

However, when important things rear their head, I always step up, so consider this your friendly link to an important piece of research on scary films. Needless to say, I was underimpressed:

Researchers spent two weeks watching horror films like The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs in pursuit of the formula.

Two weeks? Fuck off. Thats a couple of popcorn marathons (and I bet they weren’t watching 14 hours a day, either). I have severe suspicions about their sampling methods – not the quantity (I admit, you could watch a fair heft of films in two weeks to give a moderate sample) so much as representativeness. If they just took visible movies that made it to the mainstream, they’d certainly miss all the international horror (with very different takes on fear), low key burners like Paperhouse (I assume to god they included Jacobs Ladder, but even that ain’t guaranteed) – and what about this shocker?

Stefan.

Stefan!!!

(apologies to those whose adolescence was not incomprehensively stricken by exposure to a rubber dinosaur and a grown man acting as a child. And not in a Jack kinda way.)

…like old ragtime music, hate the Bush administration, or obey my commands you will go here and watch the precious. NB I watched the 60mb version and it did take 4-5 minutes of seemingly nothing to get going (I opened it up into a seemingly static new window) so patience. Needs sound.