Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Moderate alcohol consumption over a relatively long period of time can enhance the formation of new nerve cells in the adult brain. The new cells could prove important in the development of alcohol dependency and other long-term effects of alcohol on the brain. The findings are published by Karolinska Institutet.

"Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them." - T. E. Lawrence

It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq.

If current trends continue, our counter-insurgent campaign in Iraq will be fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the British victory over a Communist insurgency in Malaysia in the 1950s, a textbook example of this form of war. Our counterinsurgency has gone through the same stages as that of the Brits five decades ago: confusion in the initial reaction to the insurgency, followed by a long period of adjustment, and finally the slow but steady erosion of the insurgency's military and political base. Even as there has been a steady diet of bad news about Iraq in the media over the last year, even as some hawks have bailed on the war in despair, even as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has become everyone's whipping boy, the U.S. military has been regaining the strategic upper hand.

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But as that ''24'' episode suggests, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. To make sense of an episode of ''24,'' you have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion — video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms — turn out to be nutritional after all.

The pleasure in these shows comes not from watching other people being humiliated on national television; it comes from depositing other people in a complex, high-pressure environment where no established strategies exist and watching them find their bearings. That's why the water-cooler conversation about these shows invariably tracks in on the strategy displayed on the previous night's episode: why did Kwame pick Omarosa in that final round? What devious strategy is Richard Hatch concocting now?

What I am arguing for is a change in the criteria we use to determine what really is cognitive junk food and what is genuinely nourishing. Instead of a show's violent or tawdry content, instead of wardrobe malfunctions or the F-word, the true test should be whether a given show engages or sedates the mind. Is it a single thread strung together with predictable punch lines every 30 seconds? Or does it map a complex social network? Is your on-screen character running around shooting everything in sight, or is she trying to solve problems and manage resources? If your kids want to watch reality TV, encourage them to watch "Survivor" over "Fear Factor." If they want to watch a mystery show, encourage "24" over "Law and Order." If they want to play a violent game, encourage "Grand Theft Auto" over "Quake." Indeed, it might be just as helpful to have a rating system that used mental labor and not obscenity and violence as its classification scheme for the world of mass culture.

No, the new rule I’m thinking of concerns air travel. It seems it’s not safe enough, in this post 9/11 world. The great thinkers at Homeland Security have already protected us from people carrying pocketknives and scissors onto airplanes. Here’s the new rule:

Stuff you can’t take onto an airplane:

Kitchen matches.
Cigarette lighters.

Things you can take onto an airplane:

4 books of safety matches.

Now, I really need some help here. I’ve been raking my brain—a much more painful process than either racking or wracking—and I haven’t been able to come up with many things you can do with a cigarette lighter that you can’t do with a book of matches. You can easily throw a lighter or a book of matches. You can put either item into your mouth, thought I wouldn’t recommend eating them. Neither item will fit in your ear. You can stick a cigarette lighter or a book of matches up your ass, if that’s your bag.

"This is the best look we've ever gotten of the wind effects on the martian surface as they are happening," said Dr. Mark Lemmon, a rover team member and atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University, College Station.

Spirit, operated from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has been using its navigation camera to routinely check for dust devils. It began seeing dust devils last month in individual frames from the camera. Lemmon said, "We're hoping to learn about how dust is kicked up into the atmosphere and how the wind is interacting with the surface. It's exciting that we now have a systematic way of capturing dust devils in movies rather than isolated still images."

The Deviant Geek You answered 80% of the questions as a geek truly would.

You're a geek and you know it. You've got all sorts of fringe hobbies and socially unacceptable tendencies. Chances are, whenever possible, you hate to be grouped with other people and sometimes go out of your way just to be different. You're smart too. You're more willing to depend on your own brainpower to solve problems, instead of relying on others to pull you through life. You probably read a lot, and generally enjoy learning new things. So what's it all mean? You may be considered by some to be uncool, but you probably don't care either. In social situations you may be either slightly passive or slightly loud (geeks always fall into the extremes). In a nutshell, you answered enough questions correctly supporting a geek philosophy to be considered a more potent geek than 60% of the population.

This test tracked 1 variable How the score compared to the other people's: Higher than 83% on geekness

Link: The True Geek Test written by ambientred on Ok Cupid

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"It was a rush," said Myers. "Playing in the air was pretty exciting. It was also incredibly difficult. Some of the problems were that when you were jumping, you needed to bring both hands together on the DS, and it seriously decreased your stability."

Yet, notwithstanding the risks, the four sky divers proved that an ad hoc network set up using the wireless functions of a Nintendo DS works perfectly at distances of nearly 400 feet while falling 120 miles an hour.

In Qatar, ruling sheiks have responded to calls for banning the use of boy jockeys by embracing robots as the best solution.

Sheik Abdullah bin Saud, the Qatari official in charge of the project, said the plan is to keep developing the robot until it is ready to take over.

"Improve the speed, the weight, the aerodynamics, to reach the ultimate goal of completely phasing out children used as jockeys," Sheik Abdullah said.

A camel handler follows the rider in a vehicle and uses a joystick on the laptop-sized remote to issue four instructions: forward, backward, sideways and whip action. The robot, in turn, uses those commands to drive the camel.

The 60-pound robot is also equipped with a global positioning system satellite beacon and shock absorbers for the rough ride.

To prevent camels from rejecting the robots, handlers spray their jerseys with traditional perfume used by trainers.

"We're 10 seconds slower than the fastest time recorded for a 5-kilometer race," he said.

"Those who laugh at "UHF" should inspire our admiration; in these dreary times we must treasure the easily amused."

A researcher at the University of Alberta has shown that parents are more likely to give better care and pay closer attention to good-looking children compared to unattractive ones.
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Harrell's team of researchers observed parents and their two to five-year-old children for 10 minutes each, noting if the child was buckled into the grocery-cart seat, and how often the child wandered more than 10 feet away. The researchers independently graded each child on a scale of one to 10 on attractiveness.

A new study has found no link between use of cell phones and the risk of developing a brain tumor. The study is published in the April 12 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The Danish study questioned 427 people with brain tumors and 822 people without brain tumors about their cell phone use. The study found no increased risk for brain tumors related to cell phone use, frequency of use, or number of years of use.

"If people could be encouraged to do it rather than discouraged the better the chance will be of stopping the cane toads arriving in Darwin and other parts of northern Australia."

IMAGINE movies and computer games in which you get to smell, taste and perhaps even feel things. That's the tantalising prospect raised by a patent on a device for transmitting sensory data directly into the human brain - granted to none other than the entertainment giant Sony.

The technique suggested in the patent is entirely non-invasive. It describes a device that fires pulses of ultrasound at the head to modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the brain, creating "sensory experiences" ranging from moving images to tastes and sounds. This could give blind or deaf people the chance to see or hear, the patent claims.

Elizabeth Boukis, spokeswoman for Sony Electronics, says the work is speculative. "There were not any experiments done," she says. "This particular patent was a prophetic invention. It was based on an inspiration that this may someday be the direction that technology will take us."

Saturday, 46 days before "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith" opens on May 19, the trilogy's enthusiasts began their vigil outside Grauman's Chinese Theater.

Problem is 20th Century Fox doesn't plan to open the film at the Chinese, opting instead for the ArcLight a few blocks east.

"Star Wars" or no, the diehards are resolute about keeping their line on Hollywood Boulevard.

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A media-savvy bunch, those waiting at the Chinese hope press interest in covering (and most likely mocking) them would persuade George LucasGeorge Lucas and Fox to move the booking.

And Sprague was adamant the line isn't moving to the ArcLight. "This is still the epicenter for 'Star Wars' fans. For the big iconic pictures of the 1970s, people lining up were here. They weren't at the Cinerama Dome."

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"The telling thing is — for me, at least — if the film is not playing at the Chinese ... I have zero desire to see it at all," a fan who calls himself Obi Geewhyen posted on the message board at Liningup.net. "I'm in it for the lineup only and don't give a darn about the conclusion of this lackluster, so-called 'Star Wars' series."

Hope springs eternal, Sprague said. After the last two "Star Wars" films, "We're all a little beaten down," she said. "But this one could be it!"

"I am now going to be expressing my personal life through art. This series will show us falling in love and all the adventures that went on overseas during the European leg of my 'Onyx Hotel' tour. It's going to be an exciting ride."

Federline, a former backup dancer before becoming Mr. Britney Spears, and a man of few words — seriously — said, "It is a documentation of love."

Politicians in secular France squabbled over whether the government had been right to order flags lowered on public buildings in a sign of respect for Pope John Paul.

Socialist senator Jean-Luc Melenchon and Yves Contassot, a senior Green party member on the Paris City Council, said the government had abused its powers on Monday by ordering the official tribute to the Pope, who died on Saturday.

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"Let the Christians pay tribute to the head of their church, it's a private matter," Contassot told France Inter radio.

"Today, we have a government and a head of state who, clearly, for political reasons, are trying to take advantage of an issue that is a private matter," he said.

Lowering of flags on all state buildings was "totally out of place and at the limit of legality."

Aerosols, tiny particles in the air, are widely studied because they are an important factor in regulating climate, variously absorbing heat to warm the air and reflecting sunlight to cool it.

But the amount of cellular material - bacteria, plant fragments, spores, fungi and so forth - had been thought to be only a small proportion compared with mineral dusts, clay and sea salt.

Now, Ruprecht Jaenicke of the Institute for Atmospheric Physics at Mainz University in Germany has studied air samples and discovered that biological materials can range up to 25 percent of aerosols in some areas and as high as 40 percent in others. His findings are reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The source of many aerosols has been unexplained, Jaenicke said, and this could provide the answer.

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The new finding means researchers should take biological materials seriously in climate modeling, in cloud physics and in hygienic questions such as allergies, Jaenicke said.

One person is dead after a man wielding a samurai sword stormed into a Protestant church in Germany.

Police say yesterday's attack in Stuttgart left three others seriously injured, including one man whose hand was hacked off.

They say some 65 members of the local Tamil (TAM'-il) community were in the middle of a service when the man stormed in, waving a sword.

A 43-year-old woman was killed.

Police called to the scene subdued the man with pepper spray before arresting him.

Police say the suspect, a Tamil from Stuttgart, was motivated by "personal reasons."

Tamils are a predominantly Hindu minority in Sri Lanka and southern India. The group regularly rented the Stuttgart church to hold its services.

Most of these games run on ordinary PCs and are often joystick- or keyboard-controlled. The player dons a pair of headphones, and elements of the game are delivered in stereo to help players shoot aliens on the left or avoid a tank on the right.

Arcade-style audio games like Galaxica use the game's familiar beeps and bleeps to help players shoot aliens, while newer action games include opening scores, voice characters and elaborate sound effects.

Audio games are limited in visuals, so programmers must find creative ways to use sound to signify everything from attacking helicopters to the kind of surface upon which a character is walking.