Random Notes from a Crank

One of my FB friends shared this article by RawStory the other day that I found interesting. It's written by a neuroscientist: "Link between Religious Fundamentalism and Brain Damage Established by Scientists." 

The gist is that in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that does critical thinking, religious fundamentalist don't have a propensity for "cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness." 

As the author states, "Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge." 

They're not open to change: "Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview."

Religious fundamentalism is one of the things wrong in this world. 

And this all reminds me that I need to reread Mencken's Treatise on the Gods. 

Wales made the World Cup for the first time since 1958. So the group the US is in includes England, Iran, and Wales. 

This fine article from The Onion hits a little close to home since I'm usually geeked up when blue jays and woodpeckers show up: "Area Bird Creeped Out by Bird Watcher.

I need this notebook.  

Random Notes from a Crank

If you're interested in how brains react to music, check out "Why Music Makes Our Brain Sing" in the New York Times. The bottom-line is that music we like releases dopamine in the reptilian part of our brains, and as the researchers relate, "Composers and performers intuitively understand this: they manipulate these prediction mechanisms to give us what we want — or to surprise us, perhaps even with something better." That point reminds me of why I like Todd Snider's "Big Finish" so much. 



I recently finished Kurt Spellmeyer's Buddha at the Apocalypse. It's a good book, but he covers ground I've gone over previously through other Buddhist texts, Deep Ecology thinkers, and various social critics, especially those discussing environmental issues. Here's a few quotations to consider though: 

• "We we call knowledge might actually be another example of the images of order we've mistaken for the real."
• "The future can't undo what we do here -- not even with the best technology. Our only hope is acting mindfully today."
• "From the polemical perspective of Zen, living for the future isn't living skillfully. In fact it's destructive in many ways that we ignore at our detriment." 

Below is a short video, a precis, of his book.



Now I'm on to Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow and various other books from my on-deck shelf.