Maggie's Farm

Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran does a great job explaining the mysteries of neuroscience to the general public. He's the author of A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness.

It's about mind and brain. If you have a few minutes to be enlightened, watch his video, Journey to the Center of Your Mind. 

(My only beef with him is that he sets up some very superficial and wrong straw-man Freudian notions to knock down, seemingly forgetting that Freud's career was in Neurology - he was a prominent one: his papers on aphasia are still read, plus he invented the use of cocaine for eye anesthesia. Used it a bit recreationally, too, I am told. He became curious about all of the hysterics he was seeing in the office, dumped on him by the other docs because he was a Jewish doctor and therefore not welcomed in the upper echelons of academic medicine in Vienna. Hence psychoanalytic theory. However, Freud was not a Psychiatrist.)

(h/t, Attack Machine)

Gateway, with video. Isn't totalitarian socialist revolution a beautiful thing? But where are Cindy and Sean and the rest of the American Chavistas today, when they could be helping to shoot freedom-seeking students to advance the cause? Maybe they are too busy today? Well, then call Warren Beatty.

And why, why, do potentially prosperous and happy South American countries keep falling for this dictator business, socialist or otherwise? It's a damn shame.

I am a democrat [believer in democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation. . . . The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

CS Lewis, 1943 (h/t, Dr. Bob)

With thanks to Chris Muir:

Still cannot find Abbott and Costello doing their immortal Susquehanna Hat Company routine on YouTube, but the Stooges originated the concept in the 1930s, called "Slowly I turned":

The apparent popularity of our recent philosophical post on Track Geometry Cars motivates us to post this photo of monitors from the rear window of a BNSF 80 car, from this fine foto Foamer site. Thanks, reader.

If you like Track Geometry and Inspection cars, here are tons of them.

Did I ever want to acquire the Sixties? No. But if I own the Sixties, I'll give 'em to you if you want 'em. You can have 'em.

Bob Dylan (h/t, K)

One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of close attention, and the world therefore swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.

Samuel Johnson, The Idler, #30, 1758, via a piece on reading real books from Vanderleun

I stand in awe of the people out there in the world who can design and make the real things that make the real world work, while the rest of us take it all for granted as we pursue other things.

There is an entirely unjustified arrogance, I think, often found in those of us who have more purely abstract work and interests, as if there were something lesser about building things that make trains run. There is surely some insecurity hiding behind that superiority - the insecurity of knowing eternal Shakespeare perhaps, but not having a clue about magnetic detection of invisible flaws in rails - or even about how trains really work.

Like me, many of us would be lost and helpless - thrown back into the stone age - if the everyday, underpaid and underappreciated practical  geniuses disappeared.

The Sperry Rail-flaw detector is my case in point today. You could not run a safe railroad without these funky yellow machines, which you can see around regularly, perched on sidings, if you ride rails. Nowadays, they use ultrasound probes. Photo of an older one below, and details of Dr. Elmer Sperry's remarkable career here. As you can see, his useful company - one of 8 manufacturing businesses he created - is still in business in good old Danbury, CT, once the hat-manufacturing capital of the US (and the home of Charles Ives). Thanks, C., for the inspiration.

MIT suing Frank Gehry for design flaws, flooding, leaking, and dangerous icicle formation in the Stata Center in Cambridge.

As Althouse comments,

Do you want a wild and crazy building dreamed up by an artist? Stop and think whether all the less strange buildings look the way they do for a reason.

It will not help the construction company, from whose site we borrow this photo, that they bragged about their teamwork with Gehry.

The design itself? Looks just like any ordinary building, after one has eaten a few shrooms. And don't blame MIT - no engineers there.

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.

Saint Augustine

Thanks to a loyal Yankee reader for this snap of a Great Black-Backed Gull on the blustery Connecticut coast this week with what I would identify as a small cold-water-loving Winter Flounder in his beak. A tasty sushi dinner for  either man or bird.

Our majestic Great Black-Backed is the largest gull in the world, and has been extending his range southward along the Atlantic coast for thirty years. Who knows why? But he competes effectively with our regular, abundant Yankee Herring Gull, a very fine, handsome, large and sturdy bird too, for whom Nor'easters and hurricanes are no big deal, and just an excuse for aerial acrobatics.

"How To" books and sites are great fun to read, even if you never actually do the thing. I have been perusing Home Depot's Home Improvement 1-2-3 with great enjoyment and edification. Since I do not ever plan to retire, I don't know when I will find the time to try most of these things, but it's fun to know how they are done.

And speaking of "How-To" books, one would have to place the Kama Sutra on top, as it were. It was written by the Hindu sage Vatsyayana between the 2nd and 4th centuries, for prosperous male urbanites, not for the masses. It was meant for spiritual connoisseurs, you might say.

Here's a good Kama Sutra ("Writings on Love") site. Study it carefully, boys and girls - and practice, practice, practice. Pop quiz later this week.

Image: Charunarikshita - "lovely lady in control."

Why the long hike from Grand Central Station to the platform for the 42nd St. shuttle to Times Square (the S Train)?

Here's the answer.

Blair:

The British government warns:

British Environment Minister Joan Ruddock has warned citizens that by not eating leftover food, they are effectively causing climate change.

As I munch dutifully on leftover Halloween candy, I am wondering what exactly she means by "effectively." I think she means "ineffectively."