all that I was afraid of a.k.a city life is killing us

aaaargh aaargh aaargh

the above is a cracked.com link. I agree with most of cracked.com stories. one of these days I'll collect all the 'i told you so' cracked links and put them up somewhere.

cracked martial arts
plus : steven seagal is trained in aikido. ha. thought so

new tech

william gibson's 'trodes

inception

Chuang Tsu's butterfly is, of course, the base premise of the matrix, shutter island, almost all of Philip K Dick's works ...

Dreams are, I suppose , a different matter.

The 'extraction' brings fond memories of William Gibson's Count Zero

new music

Listening to Planewalker - Psychic evolution - First Light on the free label Ektoplazm. is awesome.

gold rat heart jewel

Skinner, automatons, free will

There is Pavlov's classical conditioning, thenthere is Skinner's operant condition.

In this course, as a rat, you will learn to press levers and follow signals and identify symbols on small cardboard squares. You will be rewarded with food and punished with hunger and electric shocks as may be deemed necessary.
As a result of this course you will become a master-lever-operator-light-reader

Operant conditioning
levers and buttons you'll operate
with rewards and punishments
your actions we'll moderate
soon you'll learn to do
what we want you to do
and you'll never want anything else again

Skinner claimed that we humans do things only because we have been conditioned to behave as we do in previous situations. Conditioning is at the level of dopamine secretion, and not at the level of consciousness. Skinner's conclusion was that humans do not have free will, but only have conditioned responses.


I think, what the "Buddha's Brain" people say is that :
behaviours & thinking learned through punishments in operant conditioning are difficult to lose and man suffers much by carrying them around.

new stuff come to light :
kahneman talk on experience vs memory
There is an 'experiencing self' and a 'remembering self'....
hmmm... WAAAOOW !!!

Japan's companies

Japan : Choosing a company

Japan for me represents the most stratified of societies. Hence I'm always interested in studies/commentary on company culture. The linked article has a chart which compares and contrasts various practices and the companies involved.

this is what we all should do

grow your own food ...
http://nymag.com/print/?/restaurants/features/37273/

humor

funny stuff

thomas friedman

Milton Friedman was a respected economist, with credentials.

Thomas Friedman is wrong .

Philip Greenspun and Andy Grove have said so

See also for much fun reading this

a condition

I got no more game. I guess it's time to retract roots and set out to forage ...