1001
Has a nice ring to it. Thank you all: the phenomenal Philis, Abeo and all of you lovely mans and wofems. Thank you all very much indeed for making this a successful place. Line up please and receive your back-pats. X
1000 POSTS LATER!
Abeo, Phillis and Coops, Mr Brown and the rest of the Enigma crew say a big thanks to all the fans that have helped us make it here.
1000 posts, 20,000 comments and we’re well over half a million visits (that’s actual people coming here) a month – and we’re not even a year old. Special thanks to those who comment and submit material making sure that the articles we post are properly addressed – there’s too many to list now, but you know who you are – even those of you that post pointless rants, humorous anecdotes and dirty little puns – AHEM – Flapjack! 
Also thanks to those who have spotted glitches and boo-boo’s, typos and even mishaps that occur even at 3am. And to those who send in thanks, revealing pictures and kind messages.
Finally – big love to the religious nut jobs with their vitriolic death threats and excellent command of the Queen’s English – you see we love you too because Jesus said to. “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you” – oh yes – an extra big sloppy kiss from the Dorris to you – come to mummy and let me cradle you in my warm bosom.
Derren Brown – The Events – wanna see ‘em?
Anyone accusing Derren of taking drugs, or saying that he’s LOST his mind would be understood but dismissed immediately. So go ahead and reverse and mess about with this one but there’s a really “Straight Forward” instruction in this one. So if you want a chance to win tickets to a filming of The Events then – You know what to do Johnny, you know what to do.
The Origin of Hatred
If love is said to come from the heart, what about hate? Along with music, religion, irony and a host of other complex concepts, researchers are on the hunt for the neurological underpinnings of hatred. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has begun to reveal how the strong emotion starts to emerge in the brain
The brain appears to activate in some of the same areas when people look at photos of people they love as when they look at pictures of people they hate–but not people they feel neutrally toward. Coincidence?
Scientific American (Thanks Eliza)
Device Lets the Blind “See” with Their Tongues
Neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita hypothesized in the 1960s that “we see with our brains not our eyes.” Now, a new device trades on that thinking and aims to partially restore the experience of vision for the blind and visually impaired by relying on the nerves on the tongue’s surface to send light signals to the brain.
Legal blindness is defined by U.S. law as vision that is 20/200 or worse, or has a field of view that is less than 20 degrees in diameter. The condition afflicts more than one million Americans over the age of 40, according to the National Institutes of Health. Adult vision loss costs the country about $51.4 billion per year.
About two million optic nerves are required to transmit visual signals from the retina—the portion of the eye where light information is decoded or translated into nerve pulses—to the brain’s primary visual cortex. With BrainPort, the device being developed by neuroscientists at Middleton, Wisc.–based Wicab, Inc. (a company co-founded by the late Back-y-Rita), visual data are collected through a small digital video camera about 1.5 centimeters in diameter that sits in the center of a pair of sunglasses worn by the user. Bypassing the eyes, the data are transmitted to a handheld base unit, which is a little larger than a cell phone. This unit houses such features as zoom control, light settings and shock intensity levels as well as a central processing unit (CPU), which converts the digital signal into electrical pulses—replacing the function of the retina.
From the CPU, the signals are sent to the tongue via a “lollipop,” an electrode array about nine square centimeters that sits directly on the tongue. Each electrode corresponds to a set of pixels. White pixels yield a strong electrical pulse, whereas black pixels translate into no signal. Densely packed nerves at the tongue surface receive the incoming electrical signals, which feel a little like Pop Rocks or champagne bubbles to the user.
It remains unclear whether the information is then transferred to the brain’s visual cortex, where sight information is normally sent, or to its somatosensory cortex, where touch data from the tongue is interpreted, Wicab neuroscientist Aimee Arnoldussen says. “We don’t know with certainty,” she adds.
Scientific American (Thanks Berber)
Interview with Zack Lynch about The Neuro Revolution
The Neuro Revolution is a new book by Zack Lynch that looks at how our increasing knowledge about how the brain works will impact everything from economics and politics to religion and, of course, marketing. h+ magazine recently interviewed Lynch about how neuroscience may someday be applied to our daily lives.
h+: Supercomputers are now faster at leveraging trading positions than humans (this is creating a quite a controversy on Wall Street). What role do you see for human neurofinance and neuroeconomics in the financial markets as artificial intelligence continues to gain more sophistication?
Full article at Boing Boing
NFB: Mystical Brain
Mystical Brain reveals the exploratory work of a team from the University of Montreal who seek to understand the states of grace experienced by mystics and those who meditate. Filmmaker Isabelle Raynauld offers up scientific research, which proposes that mystical ecstasy is a transformative experience and could to contribute to people’s psychic and physical health, treat depression and speed up the healing process when combined with conventional medicine. In French with English subtitles.
Load more over at NFB
Bible reading: Perry Bible Fellowship Almanac
This was originally released in early March 09 as a hardback version of the original – however the thicker, harder version came out and contained a lot of the original work. Eventually I came across it in a book shop and noticed it contained extra content. Despite having read most of it – I bought it without question there and then.
The originality and humour contained in this glorious almanac is unquestionably funny and ranges from cheap crude sexual innuendo to surreal and sophisticated image-play.
It’s ideal for getting you in a truly silly mood and giggling away for ages. The artwork that varies from simple stick figure type drawing to superbly drafted illustration is always appropriate and is often overlooked. However the main thing I like about this is it’s re-readability.
Click on the image above to preview a small selection – if you don’t laugh it’s because your dead inside! 
That 3D thang
I have indeed been asked to introduce a 3D magic show (of magicians’ acts in 3D) as part of the C4 season, which I have no doubt will be terrific, but this isn’t a new special from me (which the Mail makes it seem a little like). Just so you know. I’ll be presenting, and bloody charmingly, but the brilliance will come from the acts I’m introducing. Mind-reading sadly doesn’t lend itself too well to 3D.
x
