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Mirroring the 'Other' The next time someone is laughing or smiling while talking with you, observe how similarly you react to them. We always tend to laugh or smile as well, often without realising it. Even more subtle is the way our behaviour and social interactions change depending on who we are interacting with. If one tries to conciously control it, it can be very difficult to stop doing without constant self-monitoring. This has "recently been tested,":http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2349981.stm by asking people see photos of others faces and to make their own facial expressions while their face muscles were monitored. The subjects were asked to conciously try to make specific faces even if the photo they saw was of an opposite emotion. There was a clear distinction between making 'same-emotion' responses (smiling at a smiling man) than 'reverse-emotion' (smiling at a frowning man) ones. This suggests we subconciously imitate the 'other' in some way. Although it is quite weird to think of, this is a kind of 'auto-empathy'. What I wonder is if we have the reverse mechanism (I assume we must), to subconciously process when people are not following along with how we are expressing ourselves. See individual entry…

Stereotypes !(right)http://nontroppo.org/blog/images/mixface.jpg! It always amazes me when I take the tube or the bus and when observing people, see how diverse human face and body pattern can be. I love to see the stream of that diversity flooding in and out with every stop, and I sometimes play a game of mixing up people - putting hair-styles of the punk on the old man, or a floral dress on the business executive. I also imagine people with different eye-colour or face structure, using my imagination to reconstruct someones visual appearance. The image you see here is a "web version":http://www.ericmyer.com/stereotypes.htm of just such a game. Of course, as a visual neuroscientist, I know how exquisitely sensitive our face perception is. We are also very fast at telling racial face differences. This link is interesting because it plays on such neural mechanisms to create very striking facial montages (although the original portraits are also striking, doubling the effect). p(spacer).   See individual entry…

Bush and his Lies A "fairly interesting article":http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61903-2002Oct21.html deconstructing some of Bush's seemingly perpetual lying: bq. "On Sept. 7, meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David, Bush told reporters: "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied, finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA -- that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need." The IAEA did issue a report in 1998, around the time weapons inspectors were denied access to Iraq for the final time, but the report made no such assertion. It declared: bq. "Based on all credible information to date, the IAEA has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material." The report said Iraq had been six to 24 months away from nuclear capability before the 1991 Gulf War." They break-down a whole other group of his recent lies. Now, I accept politicians are very fluid with facts, but such colossal reversals of meaning denote either Bush is so stupid he doesn't know what he is talking about, or that he is so stupid because he can't lie properly without getting uncovered. How can Americans genuinely take him seriously???? See individual entry…

Al-Qaida and Reality To follow-up on a previous post, where I "pour some cold water":http://nontroppo.org/blog/archives/2002/10/16/predictable.html#000029 on the simplistic notion that there is only one closely knit terrorist organisation in the world, "here is an article":http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1020-02.htm giving a similar perspective on Al-Qaida. Here are some quotes: bq. "So, too, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's chief operating officer, the real power behind the organization. Zawahiri was a doctor in Egypt until wrongfully arrested, jailed and savagely tortured. After being released, Zawahiri formed Islamic Jihad, a murderous underground organization that battled to overthrow the U.S.-backed regime of Gen. Hosni Mubarak." "During the 1980s, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia organized and financed 100,000 young Muslims from across the Islamic world to go fight in the Great Jihad in Afghanistan. I came to know many of these mujahedin, or holy warriors, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 1986, Sheik Abdullah Azzam, the spiritual and political mentor of Osama bin Laden, told me, 'Once we have driven the Soviet imperialists from Afghanistan, we will go and liberate Saudi Arabia, and then Palestine, from western imperialism.'"
"After the Soviet defeat, the mujahedin scattered. They became known as "Afghani," and were held in high esteem for their valor and faith. But when some of these veterans decided to try to overthrow the dictatorial regimes of the Muslim world, the U.S. and its regional allies branded them as "terrorists." Most of these "Afghani" kept in touch, creating an informal network of like-minded militants. While there is no formal linkage between al-Qaida and militant Islamic groups in Asia and Africa, an old-boys' network of war veterans allows for secure and effective communication, as well as occasional co-operation. " See individual entry…

New World order... I found it very interesting to see the following letter written to President Clinton in 1998 "(see here).":http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm Co-signed by several of Bush's current cabinet members (most notably Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz), it clearly states a pre-emptive attack on Iraq for 'our interests' was highly desired. I was, of course, aware of the long-standing positions of Wolfowitz and the other Hawks, but it reads so amazingly 'transparently': "It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard." I don't know why Saddam's 'weapons-of-mass-destruction' leave me feeling somewhat cold - maybe I should believe the media frenzy. I know that his Nuclear weapons capability is clearly over-propagandised. I also don't buy into the caricature of Saddam as a foaming-at-the-mouth psychopath. He is a brutal dictator just as many other leaders in the middle-east. Why does he pose any more threat to 'us', unless, as the CIA themselves suggested, we back him into a corner. This whole thing makes me so very disappointed. What makes me truly scared, however, "is the organisation":http://www.newamericancentury.org/ this letter is written by. They are clearly concerned in maintaining total American world dominance through raising the already vastly inflated levels of military spending of the US, and an aggressive, arrogant and wholly ignorant preemptive foreign policy. See individual entry…

Getting the War On... p(centre). !http://nontroppo.org/blog/images/waron.gif! If the content of these comics weren't so true, they may even be funny. They capture the absurdity and surreal nature of this awful situation. Subtle they are not, but they capture the latent driving force that nestles beneath the phoney talk of good vs. evil. Click on the picture to link to the site. See individual entry…

Predictable... As I felt would happen, two largely unrelated causes - the bomb in Bali and the War against Iraq, are being inextricably linked together by desperate political forces. Bush, in his usual spectacular leaps of reasoning without substance, has claimed Al-Qaida is being used by Saddam Hussein as his front-line army against the West. Now, it is not altogether inconcievable that it IS the case, but it is equally far from certain, especially considering the criticism thrown on Saddam Hussein (and many other Arab leaders) by many members of these Islamic groups. They have repeatedly condemned current Arab leaders for corruption and being far from Islamic ideals. Any other collection of tin-pot leaders could equally well be linked to Al-Qaida. Al Qaida has automatically been assigned blame for the Indonesian bomb, without any evidence. Again, they could be likely candidates, but there are many other groups equally prepared to use such tactics. Al-Qaida has become the bogeyman for small-brained people (and journalists) who need bite-sized parcels of their news to make it easy to digest. They also therefore find it difficult to distinguish between Al-Qaida and Iraq (small-brains dislike complexity), and thus popularity to bomb Iraq has shot up in the last couple of days. I normally dislike insulting people who don't share my point-of-view, but I am tired of giving pro-war supporters the benefit of the doubt. If they don't have the ability to try to deconstruct the situation somewhat, and recognise that at best, any link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and BogeyMan#1 is complex, then I simply dispair. That doesn't even begin to deal with the moral argument about whether bombing Iraq is justified EVEN if Saddam is in some way related to this latest atrocity. I have yet to be convinced by any evidence showing how much better Afghanistan is now, and how safe the world is. I see that the reverse has happened, but I am willing to argue on that one. Sorry to be cynical, but this latest bomb attack has played right into the hands of the hawks, it has given Bush & Blair a new emotional kludgeon to use in battering down any dissent on this issue? See individual entry…

Brain There is a very "interesting article in the Guardian":http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,811998,00.html today, on a subjective report on remaining conscious while undergoing brain surgery. I have always wanted to do something similar (obviously not because I had Parkinsons though, or epilepsy etc.), after reading on the pioneering work by Penfield where he stimulated the cortex to determine epileptic foci and got subjective reports from patients, I was curious how it feels. Although more of the article is on the build-up to the operation, it is nevertheless thought-provoking... See individual entry…

UN Resolutions Here is an "partial list of unfulfilled UN resoutions":http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0210unres.html from countries other than Iraq. This list does not include many other resolutions, and test-resolutions that were blocked by a council member (normally the U.S.) Interesting to see that many of the worst offending countries (Isreal of course, but also e.g. Indonesia) are considered 'allies' of the U.S., and thus the Bush rhetoric of non-compliance by Iraq sounds even more hollow than it already is. See individual entry…

Arrogant Western Academics p. I was outraged by reading an "article by the American Psychological Association":http://www.apa.org/monitor/brain.html on work carried out over neural mechanisms to detect social cheating. In the last three paragraphs it describes work in which a nonliterate group in Ecuador were tested for their ability to detect social cheating. Leda Cosmides, a co-author mentioned: bq. "They were just as good as detecting cheating as highly educated students in the developed world"
"...people have developed an evolutionary strategy for determining when somebody has violated a tit-for-tat agreement. It appears to be buffered against cultural variation." p. I'll not question the evolutionary slant absolutely unjustified by the type of study, but focus my outrage on the implicit suggestion that 'dumb natives' can perform as well as 'us'. Why the fuck do you even have to study that? Isn't it obvious; all humans live in social groups, why should studying renissance art theory make you smarter in dealing with other humans???!!! Maybe it's just me, but there is an underlying cultural arrogance in the logic behind authoring such research that i find really offensive. See individual entry…

Are you really jealous??? See individual entry…

Need an Axis to Attack? !(right)http://nontroppo.org/blog/images/map.png! Is the thought of North Korea and Iran belonging to the same axis of evil getting you down? Then worry no more, because the "automatic axis generator":http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/codedoc/Levin/axis.html will give you new and dastardly foes to worry about. Just click on any three countries, and it will give you some common thread to dislike about them. Hold on, the original axis of evil HAD NO common thread, so this thing is even better... p(spacer).   See individual entry…