Asimov Story on Computation

■ N 1958, American science fiction legend Isaac Asimov wrote a very short story called "The Feeling of Power." In it, lowly technician MyI ron Aub discovers that he is capable of duplicating the work of his computer by multiplying two numbers together on a piece of paper. Amazing! This miraculous discovery makes its way up the chain of command, where the generals and politicians are stunned by Aub's black magic. The top general is intrigued by the possibility that human calculations could g...

 Cosplay as Empowerment

"Cosplay is a form of empowerment for all children and adults," says Stanford Carpenter, president and cofounder of the Institute for Comics Studies, who says that he used to be dismissive of cosplay. But after attending dozens of ComicCons, he witnessed the dress-up affair changing masked heroes indefinitely. "It's about empowerment. It's about the possibility of what you can be or what you can do. And when you see people in underrepresented groups, it takes on the empowerment fantasy of not...

 Role of Mirror Neurons in Learning to Read

In terms of early diagnosis, one study of thousands of babies “gaze-following” found that the skill appears first at about 10 to 11 months, and that babies who weren’t proficient at gaze-following by the time they were 1 year old had much less advanced language skills at age 2 (Brooks & Meltzoff , 2005). Another possibility with regard to mirror neuron research is that early and systematic priming (stimulating) of mirror neurons engaged in speech could be a strategy for building th...

 Summary of "Sirius"

Fifty years ago, the philosopher Olaf Stapledon published a novel, Sirius, which explores some of the depths of loneliness and alienation to which genetic engineering might lead. Stapledon knew nothing of DNA and molecular biology, but he foresaw the possibility of genetic engineering and saw that it would give rise to severe dilemmas. His hero, Sirius, is a dog endowed with a brain of human capacity by doses of nerve-growth hormone given to him in utero. His creator raised him as a member of...

 Brains Must Feel Safe for Education

The brain’s main job is prioritizing information relevant to our survival. Anything that suggests the possibility of danger, whether real or imagined, becomes a higher priority than anything else that is going on at that moment. This data is processed first, shifting our attention from cognitive processes down to the faster-acting limbic system, while more complex cerebral operations shut down. Survival always overrides problem-solving, analyzing, remembering, pattern-detection and other ra...

 Sign-Function Linking

It is clear that if the phonic substance lost its privilege, it was not to the advantage of the graphic substance, which lends itself to the same substitutions. To the extent that it liberates and is irrefutable, glossematics still operates with a popular concept of writing. However original and irreducible it might be, the “form of expression” linked by correlation to the graphic “substance of expression” remains very determined. It is very dependent and very derivative with regard t...

 Children Are Naturally Skeptical of Santa Claus

First, researchers asked children between the ages of 3 and 9 about the possibility of various extraordinary events, some possible and some impossible. None of the events were related to Santa or to Christmas. (Shtulman used his own 4-year-old son as a “data point” in the study.) Next, the researchers asked children to help write a letter to Santa. Although children were free to include whatever they wanted, they were specifically encouraged to ask Santa some questions. “What we found...

 Nemisis

Piet Hut, another Dutch astronomer fifty years younger than Jan Oort, decided to take seriously the possibility that comet showers are periodic. If they are periodic, the theory that they are caused by the random passing-by of alien stars cannot be right. If showers are periodic, they must be explained by a different theory. Piet Hut and his friend Rich Muller found an alternative theory to explain the periodicity in case it turns out to be real. The alternative theory is called Nemesis. Neme...

 Ingress Operation Solstice

Enlightened believe in science, observation, and understanding of natural phenomenon. The word Solstice reflects that on this one day, the sun stands still How did the ancients explain this? With Fear or Celebration? They turned to astronomy and the observation of the heavenly bodies that dance in the depths of space. Just like our ancient fore-bearers, we believe that XM needs to be observed, understood, and celebrated, not feared and locked out of the portals that surround us. We celebr...

 Collective Mind from Olaf Stapledon

The designers of our species set out to produce a being that might be capable of an order of mentality higher than their own. The only possibility of doing so lay in planning a great increase in brain organisation. But they knew that the brain of an individual human being could not safely be allowed to exceed a certain weight. They therefore sought to produce the new order of mentality in a system of distinct and specialised brains held in "telepathic" unity by means of ethereal radiation. Ma...