Thank you,Chet!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_viy_MGQtI&feature=related
Monday, May 21, 2012
Hundreds Mourn Fallen Soldier in Alameda
Brigadier General (P) Paul La Camera (right) presents a flag to Vanessa Fogarty (left), wife of Staff Sgt. Thomas K. Fogarty, as Caden Fogarty (second from right), 3, son of Staff Sgt. Thomas K. Fogarty watches during Military Honors at a public memorial for Army Staff Sgt. Thomas K. Fogarty at Kofman auditorium on Monday, May 21, 2012 in Alameda, Calif.
Photo: Lea Suzuki
by Henry K. Lee
Monday, May 21, 2012
(05-21) 13:52 PDT ALAMEDA -- Army Staff Sgt. Thomas Fogarty knew he wanted to be a soldier ever since he was a little boy growing up in Alameda. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks cemented his resolve, and in 2004 he enlisted.
On Monday, several hundred friends and family gathered to mourn the loss of Fogarty, a married father of two sons who was killed May 6 in a bomb blast in Afghanistan.
Fogarty's death is "so crushing and so unbearable, that the only appropriate response is silence," his uncle, John Fogarty, told mourners before leading them in a moment of silence at a funeral at Alameda High School, the soldier's alma mater.
Fogarty, 30, was commanding a vehicle when enemy forces attacked his unit. Three other soldiers were wounded. Rory Fogarty said his brother, who "valued freedom above everything else," would "rest easier knowing they survived."
Thomas Fogarty joined the Army in January 2004 and deployed to Afghanistan in April. Before his deployment, he had been a recruiter for the military, the Pentagon said.
Even as a child, Fogarty knew he wanted to serve in the Army. He had a penchant for wearing camouflage shirts and flight jackets and liked to turn his room into a fort, his uncle said.
Thomas Fogarty, "Tommy" to his friends, had a "disarming and mischievous grin" and wanted to adopt every stray dog he saw, his uncle said. He enjoyed snowboarding, mountain biking and fast cars and motorcycles, friends said.
His love for his family included allowing himself to be dragged to shopping trips and swap meets by his wife of six years, Vanessa Fogarty, Deacon David Young of St. Joseph Basilica of Alameda said to laughter.
Fogarty's flag-draped casket sat at the front of the auditorium at what was billed as a "celebration of life."
Military officials posthumously awarded him the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star Medal, which recognizes heroic or meritorious achievement or service.
Outside the high school, he was honored with a 21-gun salute. A bugler played "Taps," and a bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" and "America the Beautiful."
Alameda police motorcycle officers led a contingent of "Warriors Watch Riders," a troop-support group consisting of mostly military veterans on motorcycles, and hearses away from the school. Fogarty will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
Besides his wife and brother, Thomas Fogarty leaves behind his sons, Kellan, 5, and Caden, 3; parents Thomas Fogarty and Stephanie Fisher; and stepfather Mike Fisher, a former interim chief of the Alameda Fire Department.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Consciousness: Eight questions Science must answer
The brain mechanisms of consciousness are being unravelled at a startling pace, with researchers focusing on eight key areas
Anil Seth will take part in a debate about the nature of consciousness at the Royal Institution on Wednesday 7 March
Anil Seth
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 March 2012 07.27 EST
Common octopus
Are smart animals with complex brains, like this common octopus, conscious? Illustration: Dave King/Getty Images
Consciousness is at once the most familiar and the most mysterious feature of our existence. A new science of consciousness is now revealing its biological basis.
Once considered beyond the reach of science, the neural mechanisms of human consciousness are now being unravelled at a startling pace by neuroscientists and their colleagues. I've always been fascinated by the possibility of understanding consciousness, so it is tremendously exciting to witness – and take part in – this grand challenge for 21st century science.
Here are eight key questions that neuroscientists are now addressing:
1. What are the critical brain regions for consciousness?
The brain contains about 90 billion neurons, and about a thousand times more connections between them.
But consciousness isn't just about having a large number of neurons. For instance, the cerebellum, which contains over half the neurons in the brain, doesn't seem much involved. We now think that consciousness depends primarily on a specific network of regions in the cortex (the wrinkled surface of the brain) and the thalamus (a walnut-sized structure buried deep in the interior). Some of these regions are important for determining the level of consciousness (the difference between waking and dreamless sleep) while others are involved in shaping conscious content (the specific qualities of any given experience).
Current hot topics include the role of the brain's densely connected frontal lobes, and the importance of information flow between regions rather than their activity per se.
2. What are the mechanisms of general anaesthesia?Consciousness: Eight questions Science must answer
A good way to study a phenomenon is to see what happens when it disappears. General anaesthesia can be induced by many different substances (including propofol, one of the drugs that contributed to Michael Jackson's death) but the outcome is the same: total loss of consciousness.
There is now increasing evidence that anaesthesia involves a disintegration of how different parts of the brain work together, a sort of "cognitive unbinding" rather than a general shutting-down.
A key question now is how similar general anaesthesia is to other states of unconsciousness, such as dreamless sleep.
3. What is the self?
All our experiences seem tied to an experiencing self, the 'I' behind our eyes. But selfhood is a complex phenomenon, encompassing a first-person perspective on the world, a sense of ownership of our body, actions, and thoughts, perceptions of our internal physiological condition, and of course the narrative we tell ourselves about our past experiences and imagined futures.
We now know that these different features depend on different brain mechanisms, and can even be manipulated experimentally (for example, it's possible to generate "out of body" experiences in the lab). Understanding how the brain constructs the conscious self will help us better understand and treat psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, which involve a disintegration of selfhood.
4. What determines experiences of volition and 'will'?
The question of whether "free will" exists is guaranteed to raise philosophical hackles. But what's not in doubt is that the experience of intending and causing our actions exists and is very common. Neuroscientists have studied this issue since the 1980s by looking for neural signatures of volition (the experience of intending to do something) and agency (the experience of causing an action). A growing consensus now rejects the idea of volition as explicitly causing actions, instead seeing it as involving a particular brain network mediating complex, open decisions between different actions.
5. What is the function of consciousness? What are experiences for?
Researchers have now discovered that many cognitive functions can take place in the absence of consciousness. We can perceive objects, make decisions, and even perform apparently voluntary actions without consciousness intervening. One possibility stands out: consciousness integrates information. According to this view, each of our experiences rules out an enormous number of alternative possibilities, and in doing so generates an incredibly large amount of information.
6. How rich is consciousness?
The vast majority of evidence about consciousness depends on subjective reports, for example when we say what we (consciously) see. A long-running debate has asked whether we are missing something by this method, if what we experience can outstrip our ability to report on it. Intriguingly, evidence is emerging that this may indeed be the case. This evidence may provide a basis for tackling one of the thorniest problems in consciousness science: distinguishing the brain mechanisms of consciousness itself from those involved in being able to relate what we experience.
7. Are other animals conscious?
Mammals share much of the neural machinery important for human consciousness, so it seems a safe bet to assume they are conscious as well, even if they can't tell us that they are. Despite this similarity, animal consciousness is unlikely to involve conscious selfhood in the same sense that humans enjoy. Beyond mammals the case is much harder to decide. However, birds and cephalopods (such as the octopus) are particularly intriguing, being extremely smart and having surprisingly complex brains.
8. Are vegetative patients conscious?
In the US alone, about 15,000 patients are in a "vegetative state", having suffered massive brain injury. The key feature of this state is that patients' behaviour suggests that they are awake but not aware. Brain imaging has revealed, however, that at least some of these patients are conscious, and has even facilitated communication between these patients and their families and doctors.
We now need to improve the sensitivity of these methods and use them to guide not only diagnosis but also treatment.
These are just a few of the active research areas in the neuroscience of consciousness. What's important is that we can make rapid progress on these and other key questions without getting hamstrung by some of the grand mysteries that still remain, most obviously: Why is consciousness part of the universe at all? But it's this question that still keeps me awake at night.
Anil Seth is co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex and chair of the 16th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, which will take place in Brighton, 2-6 July
He will take part in a debate about the nature of consciousness at the Royal Institution on Wednesday 7 March
Anil Seth will take part in a debate about the nature of consciousness at the Royal Institution on Wednesday 7 March
Anil Seth
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 March 2012 07.27 EST
Are smart animals with complex brains, like this common octopus, conscious? Illustration: Dave King/Getty Images
Consciousness is at once the most familiar and the most mysterious feature of our existence. A new science of consciousness is now revealing its biological basis.
Once considered beyond the reach of science, the neural mechanisms of human consciousness are now being unravelled at a startling pace by neuroscientists and their colleagues. I've always been fascinated by the possibility of understanding consciousness, so it is tremendously exciting to witness – and take part in – this grand challenge for 21st century science.
Here are eight key questions that neuroscientists are now addressing:
1. What are the critical brain regions for consciousness?
The brain contains about 90 billion neurons, and about a thousand times more connections between them.
But consciousness isn't just about having a large number of neurons. For instance, the cerebellum, which contains over half the neurons in the brain, doesn't seem much involved. We now think that consciousness depends primarily on a specific network of regions in the cortex (the wrinkled surface of the brain) and the thalamus (a walnut-sized structure buried deep in the interior). Some of these regions are important for determining the level of consciousness (the difference between waking and dreamless sleep) while others are involved in shaping conscious content (the specific qualities of any given experience).
Current hot topics include the role of the brain's densely connected frontal lobes, and the importance of information flow between regions rather than their activity per se.
2. What are the mechanisms of general anaesthesia?Consciousness: Eight questions Science must answer
A good way to study a phenomenon is to see what happens when it disappears. General anaesthesia can be induced by many different substances (including propofol, one of the drugs that contributed to Michael Jackson's death) but the outcome is the same: total loss of consciousness.
There is now increasing evidence that anaesthesia involves a disintegration of how different parts of the brain work together, a sort of "cognitive unbinding" rather than a general shutting-down.
A key question now is how similar general anaesthesia is to other states of unconsciousness, such as dreamless sleep.
3. What is the self?
All our experiences seem tied to an experiencing self, the 'I' behind our eyes. But selfhood is a complex phenomenon, encompassing a first-person perspective on the world, a sense of ownership of our body, actions, and thoughts, perceptions of our internal physiological condition, and of course the narrative we tell ourselves about our past experiences and imagined futures.
We now know that these different features depend on different brain mechanisms, and can even be manipulated experimentally (for example, it's possible to generate "out of body" experiences in the lab). Understanding how the brain constructs the conscious self will help us better understand and treat psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, which involve a disintegration of selfhood.
4. What determines experiences of volition and 'will'?
The question of whether "free will" exists is guaranteed to raise philosophical hackles. But what's not in doubt is that the experience of intending and causing our actions exists and is very common. Neuroscientists have studied this issue since the 1980s by looking for neural signatures of volition (the experience of intending to do something) and agency (the experience of causing an action). A growing consensus now rejects the idea of volition as explicitly causing actions, instead seeing it as involving a particular brain network mediating complex, open decisions between different actions.
5. What is the function of consciousness? What are experiences for?
Researchers have now discovered that many cognitive functions can take place in the absence of consciousness. We can perceive objects, make decisions, and even perform apparently voluntary actions without consciousness intervening. One possibility stands out: consciousness integrates information. According to this view, each of our experiences rules out an enormous number of alternative possibilities, and in doing so generates an incredibly large amount of information.
6. How rich is consciousness?
The vast majority of evidence about consciousness depends on subjective reports, for example when we say what we (consciously) see. A long-running debate has asked whether we are missing something by this method, if what we experience can outstrip our ability to report on it. Intriguingly, evidence is emerging that this may indeed be the case. This evidence may provide a basis for tackling one of the thorniest problems in consciousness science: distinguishing the brain mechanisms of consciousness itself from those involved in being able to relate what we experience.
7. Are other animals conscious?
Mammals share much of the neural machinery important for human consciousness, so it seems a safe bet to assume they are conscious as well, even if they can't tell us that they are. Despite this similarity, animal consciousness is unlikely to involve conscious selfhood in the same sense that humans enjoy. Beyond mammals the case is much harder to decide. However, birds and cephalopods (such as the octopus) are particularly intriguing, being extremely smart and having surprisingly complex brains.
8. Are vegetative patients conscious?
In the US alone, about 15,000 patients are in a "vegetative state", having suffered massive brain injury. The key feature of this state is that patients' behaviour suggests that they are awake but not aware. Brain imaging has revealed, however, that at least some of these patients are conscious, and has even facilitated communication between these patients and their families and doctors.
We now need to improve the sensitivity of these methods and use them to guide not only diagnosis but also treatment.
These are just a few of the active research areas in the neuroscience of consciousness. What's important is that we can make rapid progress on these and other key questions without getting hamstrung by some of the grand mysteries that still remain, most obviously: Why is consciousness part of the universe at all? But it's this question that still keeps me awake at night.
Anil Seth is co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex and chair of the 16th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, which will take place in Brighton, 2-6 July
He will take part in a debate about the nature of consciousness at the Royal Institution on Wednesday 7 March
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Harry Smith's Heaven and Earth Magic
By Chris ZieglerHarry Smith was a visionary in the truest sense, exploring questions of humanity and philosophy through fantastically diverse means. Weekly Music section readers will know his culture-changing Anthology of American Folk Music, but Smith had kaleidoscopic talents and taste in music, art, film and more. As many have said, his life itself was a work of art. In 2010, L.A.'s electronic producer Flying Lotus, a similarly ravenous philosopher and polymath, first performed a new live score for one of Smith's hallmark films, the hand-painted, symbolic collages animated into life in the '60s as Heaven and Earth Magic. The result was something between revelation and resurrection: two seekers united in conversation, the years between dissolved away. The word "cosmic" can be used one rightful last time to describe this night, and then it must be happily retired forever.
Price: $10-$12
Broken Trust in God’s Country
He concluded: “I have made a confession to God and the church and feel I have been forgiven. I hope you can forgive me too.”
For the Amish plan to be put into action, the bankruptcy court would have had to dismiss Mr. Beachy’s case and turn back the clock to the moment before his filing. Only then could his dealings with creditors follow a different path.
The committee’s vigorous campaign to have the Beachy case dismissed, based on the First Amendment’s religious freedom protections and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, won wide support. More than 2,300 creditors filed form letters with the court endorsing the plan.
THERE may have been some practical reasons for that. The public’s fascination with the charm of the Amish is the bedrock of the tourist economy here, and the Sugarcreek scandal was an ugly scar on that landscape. A solution emphasizing fundamental Amish values might well neutralize any damage that the Beachy case inflicted on the Amish image.
But the campaign’s intensity left some non-Amish creditors feeling uncomfortable. One grandmother recalled attending a meeting at which supporters insisted on a “standing vote,” not a secret ballot. She opposed the plan, she said, but she remained seated because she felt intimidated at having her position exposed publicly.
No such qualms afflicted the S.E.C. legal staff, the United States Trustee’s office and the bankruptcy trustee. In court, they all stood firmly against the alternative plan. It would lack judicial oversight and protections against mismanagement or unequal treatment, they argued. And it could well be unconstitutionally unfair to a small minority of non-Amish creditors, who would be steered out of court and into a religious forum tacitly endorsed by the government.
Last March, Federal Bankruptcy Judge Russ Kendig in Canton, in the federal courthouse closest to Sugarcreek, ruled that “delegating insolvency proceedings to a religious body” would be unconstitutional.
Given the high constitutional hurdle, the judge said, Mr. Beachy simply had not “met his burden” for showing why his case should be dismissed after it had started moving through the court. Once “the rock begins to roll,” he concluded, something much stronger than a change of mind is required to stop it.
No part of this story contrasts as sharply with the real Bernie Madoff case as what happened next.
In the Madoff bankruptcy, virtually every adverse ruling has been appealed by the losing side, as have disputed decisions in countless other high-profile bankruptcy cases. But when the Amish leaders lost their passionate plea, rooted in their deeply held religious beliefs, they simply sent the judge a letter.
“We are agreed among ourselves to accept your ruling as the will of Almighty God in this matter,” they wrote, after thanking him for considering their point of view so carefully. “If there is anything which we can do as members of the Amish-Mennonite community to facilitate the bankruptcy process and help bring it to a speedy conclusion please do not hesitate to contact any member” of the committee.
On Sept. 15, 2011, more than a year after Monroe Beachy closed his office and made his fateful trip to bankruptcy court, federal prosecutors held a press conference in Cleveland to announce that he had been indicted on mail fraud charges arising from a “scheme to defraud” that they said dated back to 1990.
He is scheduled to go to trial next month in Youngstown. If convicted, he faces a possible jail term of up to 20 years. His court-appointed defender, a prominent Youngstown criminal defense lawyer, J. Gerald Ingram, did not respond to messages seeking comment on the case.
The bankruptcy case in Canton, meanwhile, is moving forward. The trustee, Ms. Silagy, is optimistic that up to 50 cents on the dollar ultimately can be returned to investors, according to her lawyer, Bruce R. Schrader. Some creditors have filed letters with the court expressing frustration with the delay, but he said that only about 400 creditor claims, out of 2,600, have not been pursued in court.
The criminal trial, scheduled to open on March 19, will no doubt generate new headlines in Sugarcreek — which would much rather tell the world the sort of news it had last month: the village will soon install one of the world’s largest cuckoo clocks.
Mayor Clayton Weller of Sugarcreek says he hopes the trial will not cause renewed rancor. “I personally feel that the people are accepting what has happened,” he said. “They are understanding, and most of them are forgiving.”
But as the church fathers see it, something of lasting importance was tried in Sugarcreek.
“A hundred years from now, what will be the difference about how much money we had here?” asked Emery E. Miller, a village resident and a proponent of the alternative plan, at the first creditors meeting. “But a hundred years from now, there will be a difference in how we responded to this from our moral being, from a moral level — the choices we made to forgive or not to forgive.”
The Most Awesomest Winter thing ever: Rocket, Laser and Northern lights(auroa borealis)!
OK, that’s awesome. All it needs is a rampaging T-Rex to be the greatest single picture ever taken.
So what you’re seeing here is a wide-angle lens time exposure of a rocket launch on February 18, 2012, from Fairbanks Alaska at the Poker Flat The Auroa obvious enough; they’re the green glow in the sky. The bright streak is the rocket going up, and the pink hook halfway up is the first stage dropping away — note how the streak dims from the ground up to that point, then brightens again when the second stage ignited.
The green streak on the left is a laser being shot into the sky. Lasers excite (give energy to) atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, and that can be used to measure what’s going on up there. The beam appears to curve because this is a wide angle lens which distorts the geometry of the image.
So why the launch? On board the rocket was the Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling in the Alfvén resonator ...
Send Photos of your House
Casa Sugar is asking you to send them photos of your house.
For us, our house is our refuge from everything we deal with on a physical basis outside of our home. For us it is a calm safe refuge for our animals, from our jobs and our city energy.
Don't get us wrong, we are grateful to have jobs and we love the city. (Ha! We have a long way to go with consciousness training!)
Our home is our sanctuary. It is a literal "safe base" nothing can touch you when you are in your home even if your home is in your heart rather than a true abode;
same-same.
For us, our house is our refuge from everything we deal with on a physical basis outside of our home. For us it is a calm safe refuge for our animals, from our jobs and our city energy.
Don't get us wrong, we are grateful to have jobs and we love the city. (Ha! We have a long way to go with consciousness training!)
Our home is our sanctuary. It is a literal "safe base" nothing can touch you when you are in your home even if your home is in your heart rather than a true abode;
same-same.
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