A scheduled Harperectomy . . .

SOCIAL MEDICINE:
People like the Koch brothers, Stevie and Rob Ford are actually mentally-ill from the POV of rational humanist social norms.

By their lights, though, their greed is 100% rational and desirable, regardless of cost to others. The sad truth of history is that other people who think like that have managed to do a lot of damage before they were stopped.

THE POLITICAL SCALPEL:
Unfortunately, the Koch brothers stubbornly persist, but Canada is scheduled for a Harperectomy in 21 months or so, may the patient survive.

For pre-op conditioning, we've got to think nationally but act locally. Your vote is your blade.

Foil hat time . . .

BOOGITY-BOOGITY. “Adolf Hitler -- Agent of Zionism and Freemasonry”. Yup. Really. Must be true, it's on the web. 

Think about it . . .

Toxoplasma gondii

THE ATLANTIC has a fascinating article on how parasites can change how you think and react. No foolin’, they have found that infected people have more car accidents, for example. “How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy”, by Kathleen McAuliffe looks at the research of a Czech scientist, Jaroslav Flegr whose research on a single-cell parasite called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short) is now being validated, after years of obscurity, which is not surprising.

Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.

Take five, and give the article an appraisal, because it's not just Toxo doin’ it:

But T. gondii is just one of an untold number of infectious agents that prey on us. And if the rest of the animal kingdom is anything to go by, says Colorado State University’s Janice Moore, plenty of them may be capable of tinkering with our minds.

You can't get there, from here . . .

THE NEW YORKER has a fine article for you to ponder: Jonah Lehrer posted "Why Smart People Are Stupid" in the Frontal Cortex blog, in which it is noted that research shows that the smarter people are, the more susceptible they are to cognitive bias. Good ol' h.sapiens may at times be a rational animal, but he is always a rationalizing animal, with a capacity for self-deception and wishful thinking that is unique on Earth.

The key to memory . . .

FOR THE FIRST TIME, science is getting a clear picture of how your memories are stored. According to Ed Yong's article in DISCOVER, "Exposing the memory engine: the story of PKMzeta", your memories are stored through a protein called PKMzeta, which you see above.

In the last decade, scientists have found that it takes active and unrelenting effort to keep our memories intact. Even long-term memories are constantly on the verge of being erased. To keep them stable, we need to continually recreate a protein called PKMzeta. This molecule is the engine of memory, constantly whirring to store information in our brains. Give the engine a boost, and old memories gain a new lease on life. Switch it off, and we forget things…. permanently.

When we learn new things, PKMzeta shows up at the gaps between neurons (synapses) and boosts the signals that go across them. This strengthens the connections between the neurons on either side, and this network of bolstered connections is the physical embodiment of our memories.

Why should you care? They can erase memories permanently. There are very important implications in this research, for medicine, and new, truly effective treatment for mental problems — but it could bring about a method for mass mind-control, if you are paranoid.