Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Where They Talking About Liberals?

When I heard the Dead's (1970) do Ship Of Fools this morning it took on a new meaning for me.

The first two stanza's:
Went to see the captain, strangest I could find,
Laid my proposition down, laid it on the line.
I won't slave for beggar's pay, likewise gold and jewels,
But I would slave to learn the way to sink your ship of fools.

Ship of fools on a cruel sea, ship of fools sail away from me.
It was later than I thought when I first believed you,
Now I cannot share your laughter, ship of fools.

PiersonShipOfFools

From Wikipedia: The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction. This concept makes up the framework of the 15th century book Ship of Fools (1494) by Sebastian Brant.

Well they are laughing at me right now. I would slave to learn the way to sink their ship.

Friday, February 15, 2013

The Making Of A Liberal - I

What can brain scans reveal about a person’s political beliefs?

If you want to know people’s politics, tradition said to study their parents. In fact, the party affiliation of someone’s parents can predict the child’s political leanings about around 70 percent of the time.

But new research, published yesterday in the journal PLOS ONE, suggests what mom and dad think isn’t the endgame when it comes to shaping a person’s political identity. Ideological differences between partisans may reflect distinct neural processes, and they can predict who’s right and who’s left of center with 82.9 percent accuracy, outperforming the “your parents pick your party” model.

The study matched publicly available party registration records with the names of 82 American participants whose risk-taking behavior during a gambling experiment was monitored by brain scans. The researchers found that liberals and conservatives don’t differ in the risks they do or don’t take, but their brain activity does vary while they’re making decisions.

Previous research has shown that during MRI scans, areas linked to broad social connectedness, which involves friends and the world at large, light up in Democrats’ brains. Republicans, on the other hand, show more neural activity in parts of the brain associated with tight social connectedness, which focuses on family and country.

Other scans have shown that brain regions associated with risk and uncertainty, such as the fear-processing amygdala, differ in structure in liberals and conservatives. And different architecture means different behavior. Liberals tend to seek out novelty and uncertainty, while conservatives exhibit strong changes in attitude to threatening situations. The former are more willing to accept risk, while the latter tends to have more intense physical reactions to threatening stimuli.

Building on this, the new research shows that Democrats exhibited significantly greater activity in the left insula, a region associated with social and self-awareness, during the task. Republicans, however, showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala, a region involved in our fight-or flight response system.

 

Friday, February 1, 2013

Gun Control

From the World Health Organization: The 2012 murder rate per 100,000 citizens. Skim down to the bottom of the list.

Honduras 91.6

El Salvador 69.2

Cote d'lvoire 56.9

Jamaica 52.2

Venezuela 45.1

Belize 41.4

US Virgin Islands 39.2

Guatemala 38.5

Saint Kits and Nevis 38.2

Zambia 38.0

Uganda 36.3

Malawi 36.0

Lesotho 35.2

Trinidad and Tobago 35.2

Colombia 33.4

South Africa 31.8

Congo 30.8

Central African Republic 29.3

Bahamas 27.4

Puerto Rico 26.2

Saint Lucia 25.2

Dominican Republic 25.0

Tanzania 24.5

Sudan 24.2

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 22.9

Ethiopia 22.5

Guinea 22.5

Dominica 22.1

Burundi 21.7

Democratic Republic of the Congo 21.7

Panama 21.6

Brazil 21.0

Equatorial Guinea 20.7

Guinea-Bissau 20.2

Kenya 20.1

Kyrgyzstan 20.1

Cameroon 19.7

Montserrat 19.7

Greenland 19.2

Angola 19.0

Guyana 18.6

Burkina Faso 18.0

Eritrea 17.8

Namibia 17.2

Rwanda 17.1

Mexico 16.9

Chad 15.8

Ghana 15.7

Ecuador 15.2

North Korea 15.2

Benin 15.1

Sierra Leone 14.9

Mauritania 14.7

Botswana 14.5

Zimbabwe 14.3

Gabon 13.8

Nicaragua 13.6

French Guiana 13.3

Papua New Guinea 13.0

Swaziland 12.9

Bermuda 12.3

Comoros 12.2

Nigeria 12.2

Cape Verde 11.6

Grenada 11.5

Paraguay 11.5

Barbados 11.3

Togo 10.9

Gambia 10.8

Peru 10.8

Myanmar 10.2

Russia 10.2

Liberia 10.1

Costa Rica 10.0

Nauru 9.8

Bolivia 8.9

Mozambique 8.8

Kazakhstan 8.8

Senegal 8.7

Turks and Caicos Islands 8.7

Mongolia 8.7

British Virgin Islands 8.6

Cayman Islands 8.4

Seychelles 8.3

Madagascar 8.1

Indonesia 8.1

Mali 8.0

Pakistan 7.8

Moldova 7.5

Kiribati 7.3

Guadeloupe 7.0

Haiti 6.9

Timor-Leste 6.9

Anguilla 6.8

Antigua and Barbuda 6.8

Lithuania 6.6

Uruguay 5.9

Philippines 5.4

Ukraine 5.2

Estonia 5.2

Cuba 5.0

Belarus 4.9

Thailand 4.8

Suriname 4.6

Laos 4.6

Georgia 4.3

Martinique 4.2

The United States 4.2 (down from 5.6 in 2001)

ALL the countries above America have 100% gun bans

Contradicts what some politicians & the media would have us believe, doesn't it?