Neuoscientist as novelist, at MSNBC, via 3QD.

"In some sense, I use my literary fiction as a channel to explore ideas that I come up with during the day," he told me.

For example, consider how the data in your brain determines your identity. "For a long time, there's been this open question of what it would be like to be someone else - or to be something else," he said. "Once you're John Malkovich, you wouldn't remember what it's like not to be John Malkovich."

That spawned Eagleman's little story about cross-species reincarnation, titled "Descent of Species": Suppose you admired the strength and beauty of horses, and you got the chance to become a horse in your next life. Once you become a horse, would you have enough wits to appreciate that life, or even enough wits to choose the life after that? And if that's the case, what unwitting demigods might we humans have been in our past lives?

Other stories play off the fact that existential meaning doesn't scale well. "What would happen if we showed Shakespeare to a dog or a bacterium?" Eagleman asked. "It's pointless, because what's meaningful to you changes by spatial scale."

For example, a microbial God might reserve the afterlife strictly for microbes, with humans merely serving as part of the scenery. Or the universe might be ruled by a cosmic Giantess who is as indifferent to our fate as we are to the fate of an amoeba.

Closing a few tabs.

* Scientific American considers the cognitive advantages of depression.

* Marginal Revolution has a nature/nuture post on educational outcomes in adoptees.

* Dark Stores of the American recession. More at MeFi, including the British counterpart.

* The Beatles, remastered in mono. Reviews are positive.

* ...last fall, for the first time in 15 years, Ms. McNeill, 42, did not assign “Mockingbird” — or any novel. Instead she turned over all the decisions about which books to read to the students in her seventh- and eighth-grade English classes at Jonesboro Middle School in this south Atlanta suburb.

Among their choices: James Patterson‘s adrenaline-fueled “Maximum Ride” books, plenty of young-adult chick-lit novels and even the “Captain Underpants” series of comic-book-style novels. You had me until "Captain Underpants." (via Vu)

* Smells of New York.

The neurology of swearing: a study recently published in NeuroReport suggest curse words may have pain-relieving effects.

Headlines to build my dissertation around: "Remembering the Past Is Like Imagining the Future."

Getting everything together for the big roundtable this Friday is keeping me fairly busy, so it's just links tonight.

* Sad news: Eve Sedgwick has died.

* Matt Yglesias luxuriates in the deliciousness of Richard Burr's low approval ratings. So say we all.

* 'Pentagon Prioritizes Pursuit Of Alternative Fuel Sources.' With the military-industrial complex at our back, we can't fail!

* St. Augustine vs. the pirates.

In the "City of God," St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great. The Emperor angrily demanded of him, "How dare you molest the seas?" To which the pirate replied, "How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the world and are called an emperor." St. Augustine thought the pirate's answer was "elegant and excellent."

* The mutants walk among us: 'Woman has developed an imaginary, but useful, third arm.'

* New fiction on the way from the late, great Kurt Vonnegut.

* 7 (Crazy) Civilian Uses for Nuclear Bombs. What could possibly go wrong?

* Can poetry save the Earth?

Super Happy Insomnia Linkdump.

* Here come your Simpsons stamps.

* Thomas Lennon says The State DVD is finally coming out this July. Meanwhile, State alums Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter have a new show and a new blog.

* Only 53% of Americans think capitalism is better than socialism. What happens when we cross 50%? Does it mean over-educated literary theory PhDs suddenly get to be in charge? I certainly hope it means that.

* The dark side of Dubai. Ugly, ugly stuff.

* On the neuropsychology of zombies. Via Pharyngula.

* A good post I forgot to link to a few days ago from FiveThirtyEight.com: Nate Silver predicts when various states will legalize gay marriage. My expectation is that a federal court ruling will make gay marriage a nationwide reality via the full faith and credit clause long before Mississippi—a state sweltering with the heat of injustice—gets its chance in 2024.

* And Part 4 of Matt Zoller Seitz's Wes Anderson documentary is up. This part's on J.D. Salinger.

Tuesday night linkdump #3.

* Here comes the Dollhouse? 'Scientists Erase Painful Memories Without Drugs.'

* Both Inside Higher Ed and Barack Obama himself can declare victory alongside UNC.

* Even the National Review says it's time for Coleman to concede.

* Environmental reporters at The Washington Post hit back at George Will over the many inaccuracies in his climate change columns.

* More on the Morristown UFO hoax.

Last one for awhile.

* The UFO-themed art of Esther Pearl Wilson. Via io9.

* Bruce Sterling on geo-engineering: We are (lousy) climate engineers, so we might as well get good at it.

* Three years undercover with identity thieves.

* Critical Studies in Television: Essays on Dr. Horrible. Via Whedonesque.

* Neuroscience on how we read. Via Boing Boing.

* And the National Science Foundation is not quite as Utopian as Kim Stanley Robinson led me to believe.

H.M., the famous amnesiac who had lived since 1953 without the ability to form new memories, has died.

Hope for the Locked-In: Amazing story from Esquire about new technology that offers hope to those suffering from Locked-In Syndrome that they may one day be able to communicate again. Just gut-wrenching. Via MeFi.

It's been six weeks since I first watched Erik do his speech exercises in Dr. Kennedy's lab, and in that short time he's become much more adept at making the computer obey his commands. Back in early April, he was having trouble producing a single vowel sound consistently. Now he's stringing together chains of two, even three vowels at a time, and he's making far fewer errors. Kennedy asks a research aide to reconfigure the software so Erik can roam around the "vowel space" with total freedom.

"Try uh-ah," Kennedy says. The cursor jumps around the screen from hut to hat, and the deep computer voice echoes the trembling sound that Erik's brain is trying to produce.

Next he tries uh-oh and then uh-oo, and makes them both perfectly.

Kennedy puts his face right in front of Erik's. "You can really do it when you want to," he says ecstatically. "This time I want you to go from oe to oo and then up to ee." The hard ee sound is the vowel Erik has been having the most trouble with. To make it, he has to think about spreading the edges of his lips and stretching his cheeks. The part of the premotor cortex that controls the cheeks is right next to the region that controls the lips, tongue, and jaw, where Erik's implant sits, but Kennedy suspects the cheek neurons may still be too far away for the implant to catch their firing signals. Nevertheless, when Erik practices tying together an oe-oo-ee nine times in a row, he nails it on six, only failing on the other three tests because of a cough or a spasm. It's hardly speech, but Kennedy and Guenther are now on the verge of introducing their new computational model designed to allow Erik to produce consonants as well, and eventually real, meaningful sentences. But even with just vowels, there is a lot he should soon be able to say. In the 1950s, a Swedish linguist named Gunnar Fant demonstrated that you can string together the sorts of vowellike sounds that Erik can already make to form slurred but comprehensible speech.

Kennedy pulls up a program on his computer screen to show me. It's the same vowel map Erik has been navigating with his mind, only Kennedy can now control it with his mouse. As he loops his cursor around the screen, a sound comes out of the speaker: "Ow-uuuuuuh-oo. Ai-uuuuuh-oo." He makes it again, and this time I hear it: "How are you? I love you." And again:

"How are you? I love you."

"How are you? I love you."

"How are you? I love you."

Dr. Kennedy turns to Erik, who has been watching us the whole time. "I'd like him to be able to say that to his father."

Erik's body shivers in one of his regular, and painful, muscle spasms, and then sinks back into his wheelchair. The session is over, but Eddie hasn't yet returned from his walk. Kennedy plays some Ozzy Osbourne, and the two of us sit in the corner making small talk about the Atlanta traffic. There's nothing for Erik to do but stare at the wall and listen and wait.

The key to all optical illusions discovered, and it's simple: Humans can see into the future.

Changizi now says it's our visual system that has evolved to compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. That foresight keeps our view of the world in the present. It gives you enough heads up to catch a fly ball (instead of getting socked in the face) and maneuver smoothly through a crowd. His research on this topic is detailed in the May/June issue of the journal Cognitive Science.

Brain science Thursday!

* The neurological roots of genius.

* How magicians control your mind, as explained by Penn and Teller.

* Scientists acknowledge another kind of synaesthesia: a perception of sound caused by flickering images.

A new drug appears to halt the progress of Alzheimer's disease. More here.

Friday leftovers.

* The director of a leading US cancer research institute has sent a memo to thousands of staff telling them to listen to Ze Frank and use a cell-phone headset (even if Salon is right and it won't really make you a safer driver).

* Hometown heroes Hurwitz and Hayden are writing another Harold & Kumar—which is a good thing, because it was always conceived as a trilogy. (I'm told they actually have nine H&K movies planned out, including the three prequels.)

I regret to admit I missed the second in theaters, but I plan to make up for that error when the DVD is released in just four days.

* Now that its competing Facebook application is up and running, Hasbro has renewed its lawsuit against the makers of Scrabulous. More at Slashdot, which notes: "EA's version has netted fewer than ten thousand players, versus Scrabulous' estimated 2.3 million." I still say they ought to just buy Scrabulous and be done with it.

* Math may be hard, but there's no gender difference in math performance, according to a new study in Science. Via MeFi, where the poster adds: "Bite me, Larry Summers."

* And the Edge of the American West continues to impress: here's a look back at the decision in United States of America v. Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, handed down 24 years ago today.

* The minimum wage: a disgrace and a scandal.

Here is how the political and economic system has been ripping off workers. Once upon a time, if you worked hard and were productive, that translated directly into your paycheck. Not anymore. From 2000 to roughly 2007, productivity went up 20 percent -- while the median hourly wage was up 3 percent. My friend Joel Rogers,director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, made a stunning calculation not too long ago: Had wages tracked productivity as they have over the past 30 years, "median family income in the U.S. would be about $20,000 higher today than it is." Check this out: Taking into account productivity, the minimum wage should be $19.12 -- which would make it almost 50 percent above today's median wage (not to mention the pathetic $6.55).

That's right. The minimum wage should be more three times what it is today. At that level, you would make almost $40,000 a year. Not an outstanding amount given all the other costs and the likelihood that you would not be in a job with health care and a pension (that's another issue). But, beginning to be in the realm of respectable.

How Prozac sent the science of depression in the wrong direction, with commentary and pushback at MetaFilter.

Things I hate to read in the New York Times: What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t? Later portions of the article are by turns more comforting and more frightening:

According to the Food and Drug Administration, three large epidemiology studies since 2000 have shown no harmful effects. CTIA — the Wireless Association, the leading industry trade group, said in a statement, “The overwhelming majority of studies that have been published in scientific journals around the globe show that wireless phones do not pose a health risk.”

The F.D.A. notes, however, that the average period of phone use in the studies it cites was about three years, so the research doesn’t answer questions about long-term exposures. Critics say many studies are flawed for that reason, and also because they do not distinguish between casual and heavy use.

Cellphones emit non-ionizing radiation, waves of energy that are too weak to break chemical bonds or to set off the DNA damage known to cause cancer. There is no known biological mechanism to explain how non-ionizing radiation might lead to cancer.

But researchers who have raised concerns say that just because science can’t explain the mechanism doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. Concerns have focused on the heat generated by cellphones and the fact that the radio frequencies are absorbed mostly by the head and neck. In recent studies that suggest a risk, the tumors tend to occur on the same side of the head where the patient typically holds the phone.

I'm still flipping through the last six months of magazines after a long and trying semester. A few highlights from New Yorkers past:

* "Numbers Guy": Exploring the way our brains process math.

One morning in September, 1989, a former sales representative in his mid-forties entered an examination room with Stanislas Dehaene, a young neuroscientist based in Paris. Three years earlier, the man, whom researchers came to refer to as Mr. N, had sustained a brain hemorrhage that left him with an enormous lesion in the rear half of his left hemisphere...

Dehaene also noticed that although Mr. N could no longer read, he sometimes had an approximate sense of words that were flashed in front of him; when he was shown the word “ham,” he said, “It’s some kind of meat.” Dehaene decided to see if Mr. N still had a similar sense of number. He showed him the numerals 7 and 8. Mr. N was able to answer quickly that 8 was the larger number—far more quickly than if he had had to identify them by counting up to the right quantities. He could also judge whether various numbers were bigger or smaller than 55, slipping up only when they were very close to 55. Dehaene dubbed Mr. N “the Approximate Man.” The Approximate Man lived in a world where a year comprised “about 350 days” and an hour “about fifty minutes,” where there were five seasons, and where a dozen eggs amounted to “six or ten.” Dehaene asked him to add 2 and 2 several times and received answers ranging from three to five. But, he noted, “he never offers a result as absurd as 9.”

* "Friend Game": Life in the wake of the famous Megan Meier MySpace suicide.

Shortly after Steve Pokin’s story broke in the Suburban Journals, Tina Meier ran into Lori Drew at a shopping center. Tina followed Lori to a pizzeria. When Lori walked out, Tina entered the store and spoke to the owner.

“Do you advertise with The Drew Advantage?” Tina asked. “If so, I advise you to take a look at the Journals. The girl involved was my daughter.” She did the same thing when Lori went to Divine Nails, several doors down.

“Tina, just please stop this,” Lori said, in the parking lot.

“Stop this? Lori, I will never stop this.”

* They're horrid and useless. Why do pennies exist?

* Understanding the Coen Brothers.

* Fixing the planet ain't easy.

n 1977, Jimmy Carter told the American people that they would have to balance the nation’s demand for energy with its “rapidly shrinking resources” or the result “may be a national catastrophe.” It was a problem, the President said, “that we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.” Carter referred to the difficult effort as the “moral equivalent of war,” a phrase that was widely ridiculed (along with Carter himself, who wore a cardigan while delivering his speech, to underscore the need to turn down the thermostat).

Carter was prescient. We are going to have to reduce our carbon footprint rapidly, and we can do that only by limiting the amount of fossil fuels released into the atmosphere. But what is the most effective—and least painful—way to achieve that goal? Each time we drive a car, use electricity generated by a coal-fired plant, or heat our homes with gas or oil, carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases escape into the air. We can use longer-lasting light bulbs, lower the thermostat (and the air-conditioning), drive less, and buy more fuel-efficient cars. That will help, and so will switching to cleaner sources of energy. Flying has also emerged as a major carbon don’t—with some reason, since airplanes at high altitudes release at least ten times as many greenhouse gases per mile as trains do. Yet neither transportation—which accounts for fifteen per cent of greenhouse gases—nor industrial activity (another fifteen per cent) presents the most efficient way to shrink the carbon footprint of the globe.

It's Friday, and I've been saving some special links to mark the occasion.

* A 3-D exploration of Picasso's Guernica. Via MeFi.

* 7 reasons why sci-fi book series outstay their welcome.

* The top twenty-five Batman stories of all time. That Dark Knight Returns only clocked in at #25 may surprise you, but once you know that it's no real shock that Alan Moore takes the #1 slot for The Killing Joke, the story that saw Batgirl shot in the back by the Joker and confined to a wheelchair for life.

* The L.A. Times has an interview with Joss Whedon about Dollhouse. There's been a lot of hype about this show lately—the news that it's been given the post-24 timeslot, the news that there will only be five minutes of commercials per hour, a teaser clip at io9.com—so much hype, in fact, that I almost believe Fox isn't planning to air the episodes out of order and then cancel it after 7 episodes. Almost.

* The physics of anime.

#12 - Law of Phlogistatic Emission

Nearly all things emit light from fatal wounds.

#18 - Law of Hemoglobin Capacity

The human body contains over 12 gallons of blood, sometimes more, under high pressure.

#41 - Law of Xylolaceration

Wooden or bamboo swords are just as sharp as metal swords, if not sharper.

* Here's part of the reason Americans have gotten and are getting so much fatter: portion sizes keep increasing and unit bias induces us to eat everything we're given.

* Of course, the obesity epidemic affects more than just a single person's quality of life.

* And via Matt Yglesias, David Brooks explores our Buddhist future. And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development. Matt makes the smart point the increased concentration of capital (economic, cultural, and otherwise) in China and India will likely accelerate this process greatly.

A new study shows that once our brains make a decision it takes ten seconds for our conscious minds to become aware of it.

We're in the Spring Break stretch now; I have an hour of class tomorrow and then at last we're all free. Let's celebrate with a few sci-fi links.

* Holy shit: Scientists have developed a computerised mind-reading technique which lets them accurately predict the images that people are looking at by using scanners to study brain activity.

* One year till midnight: character stills from the upcoming Watchmen movie.

* Three seasons of Battlestar Galactica in eight minutes.

* How to repopulate a world without men.