Open Thread

6 Comments

1. 

   BooMan on April 6, 2009 at 3:59 pm

   Michele Bachmann never disappoints.

   • 

     sjct on April 6, 2009 at 4:35 pm

     She reminds me of those old SNL news segments wherein Emily Patella/Gilda Radner would rant and rave until Chevy or Jane patiently explained her error. Unfortunately, no one is correcting Bachmann and she doesn’t say, “Never mind.” Instead she goes on for days and, when challenged, falls back on the classic wingnut defense, “I didn’t mean ‘armed and dangerous’ literally.“

   • 

     Guthman on April 6, 2009 at 6:25 pm

     Well, ahem, while I would never use her grotesque language and am generally somewhat mortified to find myself in the same quadrant as Michelle Bachman for once, I have to say I am no fan of Rahm Emmanuel’s mandatory national service ideas either.

2. 

   maryb2004 on April 6, 2009 at 4:01 pm

   The Eternal Sunshine of a non-Bush Mind.

3. 

   Real History Lisa on April 6, 2009 at 4:38 pm

   Now neuroscience, a field that barely existed a generation ago, is racing ahead, attracting billions of dollars in new financing and throngs of researchers.

   “a field that barely existed a generation ago”?? How do they define generation?

   The CIA was experimenting with neuroscience from the early 1950s. One researcher at Tulane even implanted electrodes in the brain to determine which parts of the brain received and reacted to which kind of stimuli, the long-term goal being the ultimate electronic control of an individual.

   To that end, Jose Delgado planted electrodes in a bull, and then made him charge and stop at will by manipulating a radio device that sent signals to the bull’s implants. Footage from this aired on the Discovery channel program I was on back in 2006.

   This may be the first time the technology has been ‘white worlded,’ as spooks would say. But people have been looking into the brain quite diligently, from chemical/mechanical and other angles for nearly 60 years. It’s hard to believe the writer could be so naive.

   • 

     Real History Lisa on April 6, 2009 at 4:44 pm

     …because the technologies for that already exist:

     Airport security screeners may soon try to read the minds of travelers to identify terrorists.

     Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have told Northwest Airlines security specialists that the agency is developing brain-monitoring devices in cooperation with a commercial firm, which it did not identify.

     Space technology would be adapted to receive and analyze brain-wave and heartbeat patterns, then feed that data into computerized programs “to detect passengers who potentially might pose a threat,” according to briefing documents obtained by The Washington Times.

     NASA wants to use “noninvasive neuro-electric sensors,” imbedded in gates, to collect tiny electric signals that all brains and hearts transmit. Computers would apply statistical algorithms to correlate physiologic patterns with computerized data on travel routines, criminal background and credit information from “hundreds to thousands of data sources,” NASA documents say. …

     “We’re getting closer to reading minds than you might suppose,” says Robert Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland and spokesman for the American Physical Society. “It does make me uncomfortable. That’s the limit of privacy invasion. You can’t go further than that.”

     In another article, linked from the same link above, we find this:

     Mapping human brain functions is now routine. By viewing a brain scan recorded by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, scientists can tell what the person was doing at the time of the recording – say, reading or writing. Emotions from love to hate can be recognized from the brain’s electrical activity.

     …

     “If this research pans out”, says Norseen, “you can begin to manipulate what someone is thinking even before they know it.” But Norseen says he is “agnostic” on the moral ramifications, that he’s not a “mad” scientist – just a dedicated one. “The ethics don’t concern me,” he says, “but they should concern someone else.”