Month: July 2013

MILF victory

very little reporting on this.

Did you know the US was at war in the Philippines? MILF, perhaps sensing doom in a continued struggle, pounced on the offer. The rebel group renounced its ties to Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah, sparking at least one gun battle between MILF and its former allies. In February this year Aquino visited the rebel stronghold in Mindanao to finalize a peace deal. The treaty promised to finally deprive terrorists of their safe haven in the Philippines.

With the signing of the peace deal, America could tentatively claim victory in its Philippines shadow war.

Memory Manipulation

a mild version of this would make for interesting entertainment: slip into someone else’s life for a few hours.

Neuroscientists have shown that they can plant false memories in the brains of mice. They also found that many of the neurological traces of these memories are identical in nature to those of authentic memories.

The opposite is also possible:

Chinese scientists were able to use a chemical – the protein alpha-CaM kinase II – to successfully erase memories from the minds of mice.

You Are Not an Artisan

loved the essay for the term conspicuous production alone.

The future of work looks bleaker than it needs to for one simple reason: we bring consumption sensibilities to production behavior choices. Even our language reflects this: we “shop around” for careers. We look for prestigious brands to work for. We look for “fulfillment” at work. Sometimes we even accept pay cuts to be associated with famous names. This is work as fashion accessory and conversation fodder.

We can think of this as conspicuous production, by analogy to conspicuous consumption. First-world artisan tendencies take this to a logical extreme.

Factor V fixes

“The data from 23andMe helped to rule out more worrisome diagnoses and stave off more invasive treatments”. Doctors ultimately removed the clot as they took out part of his liver, and the intervention cured the fevers.

interesting, the factor v mutation has been the most useful bit in my own 23andme data too.

Researchers have identified new genetic associations for blood clots, one of the leading causes of death worldwide. On top of finding these genetic associations, this new paper also offered a model for conducting future research into this difficult-to-study condition by using self-reported data from 23andMe research participants answering questions about their own history of blood clots.