Chris Thile! The Punch Brothers! Confusion at the Opry!

How much do I love Chris Thile? I know not everybody shares my passion for Bluegrass, but with young bands coming up and writing songs that expand the heartbreak and yodeling genre to include tunes about getting dumped via text message and the occasional Strokes cover, its getting easier to understand, right?



Ok ok, heres the Strokes cover.

Frightening, and Inspiring at the same time...

This Here is a fantastic analysis of the tech bubble, mortgage crisis, and the new American Economy.

He was 102 years old!

I've just received news, via the internet grape vine, that Albert Hofmann passed away today.

I'm looking forward to a time when psychoactive chemicals can be used as tools for research and exploration, and are controlled in a responsible way.

In the meantime, I'm grateful for the pioneers who have risked careers and reputations on their study.

China in 2008

My thoughts on the Chinese Olympics are thus:

Yes, the government of the People's Republic of China is brutal. But nobody suffers more from its brutality than the people under its jurisdiction.

They have endured so much. Crushing poverty, isolation, gory revolutions, disappearances, the destruction of their own beautiful culture from the outside in.

Now, finally, people are getting a taste of wealth and commerce and increased communication with the rest of the world. Hosting the Olympics in Beijing is an honor and a privilege for the entire nation. It implies a sense of participation and belonging and goodwill in the greater community of Planet Earth.

The people of China deserve it.

Ai Wei Wei, the architect of the new Olymipc stadium in Beijing, has denounced the games. He is saddened that the scale of civic renovation is for the sake of the games only, so as not to lose face on the world stage. Watch an Al Jazeera interview with him here.

This is damning, coming from someone so intimately involved. At the same time, greater scrutiny from the international community may chasten the government of the PRC into making the very changes he suggests.

To boycott the games would send a very sad message to the Chinese citizens. It would be an insult to the Government, but also to the people. As though we were saying we do not want the finest gifts they have to offer:

Aside from the obvious irony of America taking anyone to task on human rights these days, I think the best thing we can do is lead by example. China is an important partner, and I hope we can evolve together.

The Luke Arm

This is a thing of beauty:



One way to control an upper limb prosthetic is to make clever use of spared nerves. These can be surgically re-embedded in, say, healthy pectoral muscle. Although the signals sent by the nerves are small indeed, the electrical activity of the muscles is sufficient to control a device such as the Luke Arm. In a sense, the re-enervated muscles act as an amplifier!

I wonder if anyone has considered remapping of the sensory cortex after amputation as a potential means of generating realistic sensation in a person with a prosthetic.

For example, some people who have lost their arm and/or hand experience phantom hand sensations when touched on their face or chest. These phantoms are so refined that the palm, fingers and thumb are somatotopically represented on the skin - you can draw a map of the phantom hand on a person's face and chest (V.S. Ramachandran did).

One reasonable explanation for this effect lies in the somatotopy of sensory cortex. If you look at a sensory homunculus:

You can see the area of the cortex that represents input from the hand and arm is adjacent to the area that represent the face (laterally) and trunk (medially). After a loss of input from the arm, neighboring areas may encroach upon the now-dormant cortical real estate, recruiting neurons to subserve face or trunk sensation that were formerly representing the hand. This theory is supported by lower-limb amputees, who sometimes feel phantom foot sensation coincident with genital stimulation - no foolin'! (Why the patient continues to perceive a missing limb at all is a more subtle question.)

In the video, the individual wearing the Luke Arm has a small motor attached to his side, which receives input from a thumb sensor. The more pressure on his prosthetic thumb, the higher the frequency of vibration in the motor. In this way, he has some feedback and can adjust his grip accordingly.

However, a patient experiences sensation in a phantom hand when touched on the chest, would it be effective to deliver sensation to his reconfigured representation of his hand, so he could perceive it in his prosthetic hand? I know that phantoms fade with time and can even change in shape. But if the interface between the prosthetic and the "phantom map" on the chest is used daily and creates a reasonable representation of the arm and hand, perhaps the phantom would not dwindle to nothing but would remain part of the patient's internal map of his body.

I keep it like this and like that and I:

lately have been basking in Dr. Dre's 1992 opus, The Chronic.

If you grew up in LA in the 90's -white, black, latino, whatever - you probably have this album memorized.

I understand why people may find its content objectionably misogynistic and violent. But isn't The Godfather? Isn't Scarface?

I am sometimes embarrased to cop to this, since I scarcely listen to enough politically "conscious" hip hop to excuse the filthy pleasure I take in Dre and his proteges. But, what can I say? To a certain extent, I am the product of my environment.

Besides... he ain't talking about me.

Surprisingly Intelligible.

Keith Richards vs. Hunter S. Thompson