UC Berkeley scientists have recorded the first images ever generated by a human brain. Amazing. They exposed subjects to video images while recording visual activity in their brains. When they played the recorded data back they got images corresponding closely to what the subjects had just seen. What I notice about the images in the video is that faces seem to work the best. That is interesting on many levels. Perhaps facial recognition is so hard-wired into humans that we are able to generate those images more clearly than all others.  This work opens the door to the ability to reconstruct imagery from dreams and memories. It’s a staggering achievement.  Magnificent.  I simply cannot wait to try this sometime.

Thank you to Rob Smart on Facebook.

Derek Salvatore made this short animation about fuzzy bits of things trying to illustrate some ideas on matter by Bertrand Russel. That narrator is Derek Jacobi. Simple, effective beauty.

An informative and lovely little film by Ben Hillman for all the nitwits out there who think the earth is only around 5,000 years old.

Salman Khan teaches math and science via YouTube video lessons.  It’s called Khan Academy.  He teaches a wide variety of subjects including algebra, calculus, biology, physics, chemistry and statistics.  He thinks everyone should be able to get an education for free and he does not think universities are doing it properly.  The education model needs to be rethought and rebuilt.  Many people think so and that’s why Kahn Academy has so many students and is attracting venture capital money.  He’s getting more viewers than most university web sites.  Here’s a PBS NewsHour piece about him:

Here’s a lesson on adding and subtracting fractions:

This is a good demonstration of an idea for helping in the Gulf BP disaster. I don’t know if the blowout preventer could withstand the downward force exerted upon it by the plug however. But there are certainly adaptations of this idea that might work if the blowout preventer were removed from the equation. The main point though is that kids are engaging in logical thinking about the problem. At this very moment, I would be willing to bet that the complete solution to the BP oil disaster is already available. It has been thought of and put somewhere. For sure. It simply needs to be found now.

Scientists announced today that they have created the first artificial life form in human history.

The J. Craig Venter Institute has informed the White House of the incredible achievement and the possible environmental and military repercussions are already being debated.

Researchers used computers to create an artificial sequence of DNA.  Then they inserted that DNA into hollowed-out cells which began to grow and replicate.

That’s a new form of life created by human beings.  This may be a far more important development than going to the moon.

Popular Science magazine has put its entire 137-year history of issues online for free.  In partnership with Google, the magazine is offering a search tool that will allow you to read anything it ever published.  Here’s an example of a publisher who actually knows what it is doing in the 21st century.  There are very few magazines staffed by people who understand which century they are playing in.  Popular Science is apparently staffed by people who can read, write and tell time.

I am impervious to the persuasions of all clubs, organizations and religions.  I’ve read the entire Old Testament and know that god has never spoken a single word to any living human being in history.  I’ve been in terribly close proximity to Catholic priests for extended periods of time, argued with them and sat gritting my teeth through their best attempts at mass.  You can burn all the bushes in my backyard and come down the hill with as many tablets as you like and I’ll know you’re a damned fake.  So I can watch L. Ron Hubbard speak through all six parts of the interview above and have not the slightest fear of showing up in a Scientology storefront with my wallet out.  However, I don’t really see anything terribly wrong with what Hubbard says in the interview.  What’s all the Scientology warfare really about?

I can’t speak for what the organization may have become following the death of its founder, but I can certainly see that Hubbard was enthusiastic and was culling ideas from different religions and disciplines to formulate his attempt to offer people some kind of road to improvement.  It does seem that improvement was on his mind.  In fact, his discussion of waking people up from a deep sleep, detaching one’s self from all the pressures of the mind and past experience, and the finding of the one true self or spirit is very much in keeping with the tenets of Buddhism.  I’ve read a lot of Buddhist material over the years and there still I am immune to the siren song of the ‘ism.’  But I can certainly engage Buddhist thought and read the texts without fear and with great interest.  I consider it my obligation to approach Scientology in exactly the same way.  I’ve read some of the anti-Scientology tracts available on the Web and find them somewhat unintelligent and frantic.  One must be cautious about people who constantly accuse others of brainwashing.  Brainwashing can come from unexpected directions.  Brainwashing is very overrated actually.  It’s not easy to brainwash someone.  Very few people are brainwashed.  Most people who you think are brainwashed are really only pretending.  Religious people who seem brainwashed because they utter all the catchphrases are not brainwashed at all.  They’re just faking it to get along with a particular group of people.  This is a universal truth and if you don’t understand it you are misreading most of human history.

Starting a religion is like starting a club.  It’s a natural impulse.  I often entertain daydreams of starting a club or my own little religion.  It’s fun.  A bit childish but sometimes a good mental exercise.  Hubbard seems to be having fun with his club, with his big idea.  I can’t help but admire him for it.  He seems ferociously intelligent and quick on his feet.  His answers in the interview may be carefully worked out but they are good answers.  Honest answers.

One must of course never forget that he was science fiction writer.  His science of Scientology may in fact be one of his best science fictions.

If you’re planning on heading to the moon any time soon, you’ll at least be able to get a drink.  NASA announced today that the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite has discovered water on the moon.  The mission intentionally crashed a rocket stage onto the moon’s surface, creating an enormous plume of ejecta.  When the plume was analyzed by spectrometers on board the satellite, the evidence of water became clear.  In the photograph, you can see the debris plume showing up as the little gray fuzzy area inside the black boxes.

There are many ways the water could have gotten there.  It could have come via solar winds, comets, giant molecular clouds or some kind of internal activity.  Scientists say that it could even have come from Earth.

Two French photographers, Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier, spent weeks in the desert highlands of Chile, and a week in the Canary Islands, taking photos of the stars. Using a Nikon D3 digital camera, they took thousands of photos of the night sky and then stitched the photos together to make a panoramic view of the Milky Way Galaxy as seen from Earth. The pictures are extremely high-resolution because the photographers took them from some of the darkest spots on Earth, giving unsurpassed clarity of view.

You can see an excellent interactive zoomable version of the image at photographer Serge Brunier’s web site.

You can also see a zoomable version of the image at Gigagalaxyzoom.