stray bullets

Crick was right about 'vision filter' in the brain As you read this sentence, your mind hones in on each word and blots out the rest of the page. This roving spot of attention tames the flood of visual information that hundreds of thousand of nerves attached to the back of your eye's retina stream into the brain. So far, most scientists held that the brain's outermost layer and main site of consciousness, the cortex, is responsible for housing the attention steering mechanisms that sort out all this sensory input. But back in 1984, the co-discoverer of DNA Francis Crick suggested that a simpler structure called the thalamus may also play a part in this process. Once thought to be only a highway that connects the eyes to the cortex, it could contain a mental searchlight that filters what we pay attention to, Crick proposed.

Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers Increasingly, authors, teachers, librarians and publishers are embracing this fast-paced, image-laden world in the hope that the games will draw children to reading.

Welcome to the official site for the BBC Prison Study The BBC Prison Study explores the social and psychological consequences of putting people in groups of unequal power. It examines when people accept inequality and when they challenge it. Based on the Stanford Prison Experiment. (via)

also:
King Wenceslas of Bohemia
American Revolution 101
Louis Prima and Space Junk "Wanting connections, we found connections -- always, everywhere, and between everything." Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum. (wink)
Top 10 Everyday Things People Do To Ruin Their Cars (via)

viddy:
Generation Tehran (roughly 70% of Iran's population is under 30 and they're hungry for change) (via)
Elvis is not dead And he's hacking RFID passport scanners.
Sinatra and Jobim (nice)
Cziffra playing Liszt's Transcendental Etude no.10 (smokin')