The Psych Student

WTO protests in Seattle, November 30, 1999. Photo by djbones via flickr.

I decided to go with a somewhat smug and overbearing headline for this post on purpose since I think a lot of people tend to look at activists as sort of self-righteous, arrogant pricks. I like to sprinkle a modest amount self deprecating humor here and there. After all, aside from being a dad, a hubby, a full-time wage slave, a borderline obsessive technophile, bookworm and caffeine junky, I’m also an activist, usually interested in the human rights end of things. I coordinate The Committee to Protect Bloggers, am working on a crisis map in Farsi for the Iranian reform movement and run with folks in the International Solidarity Movement among other pursuits. Why would anyone engage in all this stuff instead of just getting a good night’s rest or playing more video games?

A while back I came across news about a study by by Tim Kasser and Malte Klar, entitled “Some Benefits of Being an Activist: Measuring Activism and Its Role in Psychological Well-Being.” I bookmarked the item and several related articles as potential fodder for this blog, but I was also particularly interested in getting some insight into possibly my own motivations for “getting involved.” Read the rest of this entry »

Before discussing it, I offer you the chance to watch From Science to God by Peter Russell. (and apologies to Sarah Silverman for alluding to her film Jesus is Magic in the post title)

Peter Russell is an author and filmmaker who seems ever eager to bridge what many see as a gap between science and religion, however, it seems like he’s trying to make a bad relationship work. Not that one can be both scientific and religious, but that the two things must somehow be shackeled in ways that don’t really work for the purposes of shaping a new worldview.

This post actually started off as a response to a friend who had shared the video with me (that’ll learn ya). The basic notion here, that science can now be dismissed as a means of answering certain questions on the basis that the questions are really quite old and science hasn’t fully solved them yet, is what I’d classify as a sort of a new mutation of Neo-Luddism. I have a different piece of writing on Modern Luddites in general that seems to be taking quite a bit of time, but for now, and in this post I’d like to focus just a bit on the spiritual strain. Spiritualists take a lot of things for granted about science that often seems more like an analysis of what they are seeing in the mirror rather than an objective assessment, and this film is a perfect example. Read the rest of this entry »

Wired reports: The visual and audio feedback presented to Erik Ramsey, a locked-in man who uses an experimental wireless brain-computer interface to produce vowel sounds. As the system expands, he could eventually form consonants as well.

Zombie girl image source from io9. I'll give anyone who can name the movie it's from a Skinner Box food pellet as a reward.

The blog io9 has a a funny/facsinating post on  the explanation of zombie (the film variety as opposed to the voodoo folktale sort) brain functions as offered by Dr. Steven C. Schlozman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a lecturer at the Harvard School of Education.

“Absent a properly functioning frontal lobe, a zombie is driven entirely by base emotions – such as rage – that are housed in the primitive parts of our brain, notably the amygdala. There’s precedence for this in nature. A crocodile brain, for instance, is mostly driven by the amygdala. Researchers have confirmed this by introducing lesions into the amygdala of animal specimens: the result is a drop in the attack and retreat response that correlates significantly with the amount of damage that’s done to that region of the brain. A crocodile without an amygdala isn’t really a crocodile. As such, Schlozman argues, ‘you can’t really be mad at zombies, because that’s like being mad at a crocodile,” adding that it’s the delicate balance between frontal lobe and amygdala ‘that makes us human.’ ” - Schlozman

Schlozman’d explanation is laid out in a phony medical journal article in which he identifies the disorder seen in films such as Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later as “Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome.”

One question in the article that remains unsolved, but is seemingly somewhere outside of brain function is “If zombies are constantly eating, then how come they never poop?”

Read: A Harvard Psychiatrist Explains Zombie Neurobiology