Cubeworks - Falling Apart (2012) - 420 Rubik’s cubes
“Defragmenting the Brain”
Horrible memories next to good means the two often commingle.
You wish to remember a nice moment, but get that uneasy tingle.
Pleasant nostalgia ruined by things you wish you could erase.
Forgetting is usually impossible, but brains have a lot of open space.Simply defragment your brain, store the dark memories to the side,
In the empty unused portions of the mind, you put them to hide.
There they can’t bug you, or infest what you wish to recall,
No more pausing on past regrets, slowing your brain to a crawl.You’ll live happier not remembering anything that made you sad.
Filled with confidence knowing that you never did anything bad.
While over time that data may leak out, and flashes break through,
Just defragment your brain again, and you’ll never have to be you.(A Golden Oldie originally posted 10/24/2011)
Wanna appear in your very own Daily Doodle? CLICK HERE!
FAQ TWITTER FACEBOOK SOCIETY6
(via damnafricawhathappened)
Tonight is a good wikipedia night. Studying for an environmental studies exam, and there are a few sections that I need to broadly supplement because the teacher is really big on attendance and thus has provided an intentionally vague study guide. Just bouncing around.
Enclosure - fun fact: I never realized that there was a time in which the majority of land was free / commonly owned until I took a class called Black Marxism at UCSB. Professor was really good (Dr. McAuley; I have striking memories of this class because he was one of the most successful employers of the socratic method that I have ever seen - as far as actually getting the class engaged and still steering discussion to provide detailed, relevant info, and LOTS of it); sounds cliche but the class literally changed the way I view the interactions I watch people partake in broadly, everyday (it was also the last fucking straw on the camel’s back for my academic career, at least in Santa Barbara, as it confirmed that all of my worst suspicions about academia and my own background were true).
Bounded Rationality (has me thinking, about Game Theory and how identifying “optimal” scenarios relies on our ability to predict the behavior of others; also about God, because I finished Ghostwritten the other day and one of the stories examines choice / predetermination).
(Source: crematorie, via lushburg)
“The First Memory”
While the colour of the kite will change, and so will how he recalls the weather (he wants to remember it as sunny and warm but other times it seems like it had to be windy and cold), the feelings of the moment are clear and not subject to the fuzzy mistiness of time.
He can still vividly recall the moment where the string on his kite breaks and the wind carries it away out of reach… he remembers running after it halfheartedly, knowing he couldn’t catch up, and watching it sail out of sight on the rocky Oregon coast, everything from the small perspective of himself as a two year old.
The little details always vary (and each time he remembers the event, he knows he is likely remembering it incorrectly and projecting new memories into it to fill in the gaps), but that confusing sensation of sadness is still crystal clear, wondering what he did to cause the string to break.
The next thing he recalls is hugging his mom’s knee as she tells him it’s okay, and then his first memory fades away.
Wanna appear in your very own Daily Doodle? CLICK HERE!
FAQ TWITTER FACEBOOK SOCIETY6
(via khyaal)
Optogenetics
Optogenetics is the amazing field that combines optics and genetics in order to control events in living cells. First predicted by Francis Crick (yes, THAT Crick) in 1999, a breakthrough came in 2005 when researchers found that mammalian neurons could be targeted and manipulated through this process (Fancy!). Optogenetics depends on manipulating channelrhodopsin, a type of chemical pathway in cells that has the unique ability of being controllable with light. It allows for them to be activated or suppressed when differently colored lights are directed at points on the membrane, changing their chemical balance. One of the most significant results of this is that scientists can selectively fire individual or groups of neurons in the brain with a high degree of accuracy. Sparking a mini-revolution in neurosciences, optogenetics allows the study of specific brain functions, including behavior. Since exploding in 2006, researchers have discovered methods to control the ability for mice to awake from a nap, the speed of eye movements in nonhuman primates, changing of social behaviors (such as angry to friendly) and possibly to teach new cells in the eye to see. The latter is one of the first movements towards therapeutic uses, aiming to improve or return sight to those whose primary sight cells (cones and rods) are dead. Tests on rodents seem to indicate that optogenetics will allow for possible therapies for human brain disorders, but it is unknown if some practices will scale to the complexity of the human brain.
Guest article written by Andrew Kays (ThePublicScience.tumblr.com)
do you ever get that feeling when you remember really bad memories and you just
I have at least one horrible memory associated with every person that I care about.
Whenever I get sentimental I squash the feeling with the bad memory.
It’s something I started doing when I became a teenager, and feeling really fond of my parents/family and still attached to them made me really uncomfortable (like physically uncomfortable; I stopped letting any of them touch me, and I started noticing and becoming really conscious of the bodily reactions that come with all sorts of emotions).
But then I tried to form meaningful relationships with my peers and found that I’d gotten very good at shutting down that “warm/safe” feeling and couldn’t stop.
(via hmura)
