Top Articles on AWEARNESS Blog for July 2008

Scientists have just unlocked one of life's great wonders: why we laugh. Maybe you don't want to know, but don't worry: knowing why you laugh isn't going to stop you from laughing.

It's quite simple, really, according to the study by Alistaire Clark (which as far as I can tell isn't funny at all): We laugh because our brains encounter patterns they don't recognize, and in the process of computing -- or understanding -- the pattern, the physiological response of laughter just happens, involuntarily.

Could this mean there's an evolutionary function to those guffaws, chortles, and tee-hees? After all, why else would we need to express to the world that our brains just encountered a new pattern? It could be a survival mechanism, or a means of coping with sudden confusion, allowing us a pleasurable sensation while we figure out how to negotiate this strange new information.

In any case, I have a few questions for Mr. Clark: First, if laughter is caused by encountering a new pattern, why do we laugh at the same joke -- or line quoted from a favorite comedy -- over and over again? Second, why don't all foreign patterns register as humorous? Some are outright terrifying, like when a monster in a horror movie has eyes on its knuckles and seventeen tentacles growing out of its chest. That's certainly a new pattern for an earthly lifeform -- but it ain't funny. Unless, of course, it's on The Simpsons. But why is it funny then, but not in a John Carpenter film?

And what about learning algebra? I don't remember doing a lot of laughing then. Or getting tickled... What kind of new pattern is that?

[Image Credit: David Alm]

What is it about China and dams?

First it was the earthquake, which may or may have not been caused by the creation of the largest river damn project in the world. Then it was the flooding that followed when earthquake lakes were formed by falling mountain rocks that dammed rivers.

Now we have a water shortage in the area around Beijing because most of the water needed for irrigation is being diverted to the capital due to the Olympics. Of course, the environmental and economic consequences are devastating.

Watch the clip.

This week PBS has a great schedule of programming featuring political topics current and historical. Highlights include a program on the crisis in Darfur and a look back at Election Day 2004.

Tonight at 9pm, the season premiere of Wide Angle's Heart of Darfur presents an account of what the U.N. Secretary-General has called "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world." Wide Angle examines "the desperation of daily life, from a sprawling Sudanese refugee camp to volatile rebel-held areas seldom reached by Western reporters."

Following Heart of Darfur at 10pm, PBS presents a new program entitled P.O.V Election Day. The program assembles 12 stories -- all of them shot simultaneously on Election Day, November 2, 2004 -- into "an entertaining, inspiring and sometimes unsettling tapestry of citizens determined to make their votes count."

Warning : This Amnesty International advertisement about torturing by waterboarding may be too upsetting for some of our readers.

Christopher Hitchens is the curmudgeonly self-described polemicist and intellectual that most recently has been stationed at Slate.com. From his cyber column, he's been known to throw atheist molotovs to the theocrats of the American right wing and verbal judo blows to two of his most detested foes, the Clintons.

Yet even though he's no friend of the extreme right, he's been a defender of George Bush's foreign policy and a rabid apologist for the invasion of Iraq. Not of Abu Ghraib or torture techniques, but certainly for the war.

Which is why I find it fascinating (although not shocking given his propensity for pulling self-promoting stunts) that when asked by Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter if he'd like to be tortured with waterboarding by former military Special Forces, he gladly accepted :

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it "simulates" the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning--or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The "board" is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and--as you might expect--inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don't want to tell you how little time I lasted.

The men and women who show them their techniques for resisting waterboarding were training in the art of SERE, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Their lessons they learned in waterboarding were for survival. The didn't learn waterboarding so they could torture enemy combatants. They were taught waterboarding so they could survive it in the event they became prisoners of war.

Hitchens may be fool to support the Iraq War but he is not an unethical fool. His article is an argument for respecting the Geneva Convention and for the most basic respect for human rights even in the middle of a terrible war.

I have a lot of problems with a lot of what Hitchens writes but it's when he writes articles like this one that he earns my respect.

We're in a classic catch 22, not unique in our history. The dilemma is that until we believe the economy has already gotten better, it can't get better.

Until enough of people are comfortable that all is stable and the worst is behind us, they won't feel comfortable relinquishing (spending or investing) their precious remaining dollars. However, until they do, the economy can't get better.

The inverse of this is also true. The economy will continue to get worse if people simply believe it isn't getting better.

There is only one other circumstance I can think of where perception similarly must precede reality, and while it potentially trivializes this message, it's fashion. Unless people who are cool decide to wear something they believe is cool, is it?

In regard to the realities of America's Great Depression (which was about the state of our economy, not our wardrobes) President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the perception issue when he said that "the only we have to fear is fear itself."

So, ironically, in looking to choose our new leaders, it does matter, because he who can most likely inspire us best to feel best about our realities (real realities or perceived ones) as well as about our potential, is the one who can most likely get the economy onto its feet.

We need to remember that the stakes are high, and that it's important to be conscious of for what we stand, as well as in what we stand.

[Image Credit: USA-satellite.jpg by U.S. Government from Wikipedia]

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it (for now).