brainrow

I’m a Macintosh bigot, so I really enjoyed this. Via Discovering Biology in a Digital World, a hilarious demonstration of speech recognition in Microsoft Windows Vista:

We’re gonna do a little perl script using the Windows Vista software recognition to show you how easy it is.

(Warning: strong language.)

In fairness, the speech recognition seems to work really well. Programming may not be the best use of this technology, and this guy probably needs to learn a few new techniques to meet the computer half way… well, two-thirds of the way.

Have you ever had a creepy feeling that you were being watched? From Living the Scientific Life: the Helix Nebula.

And, from the New York Times, this completely unrelated article:

Why do we see faces everywhere we look: in the Moon, in Rorschach inkblots, in the interference patterns on the surface of oil spills? Why are some Lay’s chips the spitting image of Fidel Castro, and why was a cinnamon bun with a striking likeness to Mother Teresa kept for years under glass in a coffee shop in Nashville, where it was nicknamed the Nun Bun?

Compelling answers are beginning to emerge from biologists and computer scientists who are gaining new insights into how the brain recognizes and processes facial data.

Long before she had heard of Diana Duyser’s grilled-cheese sandwich, Doris Tsao, a neuroscientist at the University of Bremen in Germany, had an inkling that people might process faces differently from other objects. Her suspicion was that a particular area of the brain gives faces priority, like an airline offering first-class passengers expedited boarding.

“Some patients have strokes and are then able to recognize everything perfectly well except for faces,” Dr. Tsao said. “So we started questioning whether there really might be an area in the brain that is dedicated to face recognition.”

More here.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, by carefully inspecting every bite of food in order to make sure it wasn’t Jesus or somebody, I was eating a lot less and finally losing some weight. On the other hand, I feel more relaxed now without that creepy eye spying on me all the time.

Via The Frontal Cortex: Randy Newman defends America. (Warning: Randy is not worried much about being politically correct.)

Now, the leaders we have
While they’re the worst that we’ve had
Are hardly the worst this poor world has seen

…

The end of an empire
Is messy at best
And this empire’s ending
Like all the rest

I don’t think Abraham Lincoln would recognize today’s Republican Party. Today’s “Party of Lincoln” would reject Abe as a bleeding-heart. That doesn’t mean they don’t have use for him. Take Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney:

Frank Gaffney, Jr. opened his latest column with this: “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.” — President Abraham Lincoln.

He continues: “It is, of course, unimaginable that the penalties proposed by one of our most admired presidents for the crime of dividing America in the face of the enemy would be contemplated — let alone applied — today. Still, as the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate engage in interminable debate about resolutions whose effects can only be to ‘damage morale and undermine the military’ while emboldening our enemies, it is time to reflect on what constitutes inappropriate behavior in time of war.”

One problem: Lincoln never said it.

Gaffney didn’t make it up. No, that was the work of another conservative writer, J. Michael Waller, writing in Insight magazine — a sister publication of the Washington Times.

Once the truth gets its boots on, it’s nice to know that so many of the pants that need a swift kick are gathered together in just a few convenient places.

Updates from Editor & Publisher: As of Thursday night, The Washington Times had neither removed the quote from the Gaffney column nor run a correction.

On Thursday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) cited the quote on the floor of the House during the debate on the Iraq war “surge.”

A small New Mexico radio station opts for higher standards of journalistic integrity than the big boys:

After the latest widely-publicized stories in national newspapers about weapons from Iran allegedly killing Americans in Iraq — based completely on unnamed sources — at least one smaller news outlet has had enough of it.

The news director of the public radio station in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has directed his staff to “ignore national stories quoting unnamed sources.” He also called on other news outlets to join this policy.

From Bill Dupuy’s memo:

Effectively immediately and until further notice, it is the policy of KSFR’s news department to ignore and not repeat any wire service or nationally published story about Iran, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia or any other foreign power that quotes an “unnamed” U.S. official.

…

This is a small news department with a small reach. We cannot research these stories ourselves. But we can take steps not to compromise our integrity. We should not dutifully parrot whatever comes out of Washington, on the wire or by whatever means, no matter how intriguing and urgent it sounds, when the source is unnamed.

It is said, “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.” Eventually, however, the truth gets its boots on, and the liars are due a sharp kick in the pants. For starters.

It’s official: Al Franken is running for U.S. Senate:

I grew up in a hard-working middle class family just like many of yours. And as a middle-class kid growing up in Minnesota back then, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. And I was.

My wife, Franni, whom I met our freshman year of college, wasn’t quite as lucky. When she was seventeen months old, her dad — a decorated veteran of World War II — died in a car accident, leaving her mother, my mother-in-law, widowed with five kids.

My mother-in-law worked in the produce department of a grocery store, but that family made it because of Social Security survivor benefits. Sometimes there wasn’t enough food on the table, sometimes they turned off the heat in the winter — this was in Portland, Maine, almost as cold as Minnesota — but they made it.

Every single one of the four girls in Franni’s family went to college, thanks to Pell Grants and other scholarships. My brother-in-law, Neil, went into the Coast Guard, where he became an electrical engineer.

And my mother-in-law got herself a $300 GI loan to fix her roof, and used the money instead to go to the University of Maine. She became a grade school teacher, teaching Title One kids — poor kids — and so her loan was forgiven.

My mother-in-law and every single one of those five kids became a productive member of society. Conservatives like to say that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps — and that’s a great idea. But first, you’ve got to have the boots. And the government gave my wife’s family the boots.

That’s what progressives like me believe the government is there for. To provide security for middle-class families like the one I grew up in, and opportunity for working poor families like the one Franni grew up in.

By the way, I stole that boots line from Tim Walz, our great new congressman from Southern Minnesota. Tim’s father died when he was a kid, and he and his brother and his mom made it because of Social Security.   

…

Your government should have your back. That should be our mission in Washington, the one FDR gave us during another challenging time: freedom from fear.