Yep, they are tops:
Texas has retained the dubious distinction of having the highest proportion of people without health insurance coverage, according to figures released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
In a comparison of states using a three-year average for 2002-2004, 25.1 percent of Texans didn
Susan Crawford already has a copy of Ray Kurzweil’s new book The Singularity is Near. I’m a bit jealous.
Readers of science fiction and tech geeks are already familiar with the concept of the singularity. The rest of you may want to catch up a bit by taking a quick read of this Wikipedia article.
Luckily, it looks like Crawford will be posting a bit as she reads and it looks like there will be plenty to contemplate and discuss:
Kurzweil focuses on complexity, noting that evolution produces increasing order, and that technology can extend evolution by building ever-more-efficiently on this order. Very quick feedback loops are all around us, pushing the rate of technological change along and producing faster and smaller devices. Meanwhile, biological evolution continues, but at such a slow rate that it hardly matters.
He boldly predicts that computers as we know them will disappear by the end of this decade, to be replaced by virtual reality environments. No more offices by 2020. He suggests it’s time to invest in tiny sensors and natural language search engines that can topple Google.
As with all such futuristic discussions things are never quite as predicted however as Crawford notes:
Even if he’s only half right (or even less than half right), Kurzweil’s work suggests that it’s a good time to be alive and interested in the effect of technology on human beings.
Which is one good reason I’d like to see this program be dramatically successful. It really is fun to be alive!
Sadly, those of us not getting review copies will not get to see this book until after it’s September 22 release date.
Click on through Jaquandor’s post to see how one man incorporated one of life’s large misfortunes into his daily routine.
Is that really the muscle you’d want to build up?
Does too much daydreaming or, if you will, too much unfocused time contribute to Alzheimer’s?
The researchers compared PET scans, MRI images, and other data from 764 participants with dementia, mild dementia, or no dementia. The images revealed that posterior cortical regions of the brain, including the posterior cingulated, retrosplenial, and lateral parietal cortex, were active in the “default state” of young adults without dementia. They were also the regions attacked by amyloid plaques in older adults with Alzheimer’s.
The “default state” is the term Dr. Buckner and colleagues use to describe the brain’s activity when it is not concentrating on a particular task but musing, daydreaming, or retrieving pleasant memories.
The study also found that metabolic abnormalities and atrophy emerged in these daydreaming areas of the brain during the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
Even the brain’s relatively inactive daydreaming mode requires considerable energy, and the researchers speculated that an accumulated lifetime of metabolic activity might lead to wear and tear that disposes default areas of the brain of the brain to amyloid deposition, metabolic disruption, and atrophy.
Let me, then, suggest an alternate hypothesis: amyloid plaque invasion represents an atrophy of the posterior cortical regions. In other words it is an underuse phenomena that has as its proximal cause radio, television, stereos, mp3 players, etc. Time folks once spent in the default state has been preempted by the always on sounds of these devices. It should be fairly easy to determine whether default state activity is turned off when listening/watching these devices.
Another unintended consequence of the always on society may be an overall reduction in creativity, even overall cultural intelligence. Test this yourself. If you always have something on, even just for background when you are cooking, doing the dishes, jogging, etc., turn it off for 30 minutes a day. Over the course of a week observe the difference in the quality of your mental activity during the off time. Some of you may not be able to handle the intensity of the change. But that’s part of the point.
Update 8/26: Lindsay Beyerstein comments on this as do her commentors.
This may work but it sure doesn’t seem right:
In their battle against the bulge, desperate dieters have tried drugs, surgery, exercise, counseling, creams and even electrical fat-burning belts. Now some psychologists have a new idea: Lying.
Hell, this is no new idea. Cheaters, thieves and politicians lie all the time. It still does not make it acceptable.
Via Morford.