Tim Penn › Comments

Quote: "Others think that IT has played an even more fundamental role in the crisis. Because things are so interconnected, largely thanks to technology, a problem in one part of the system can quickly lead to problems elsewhere. The global financial markets have evolved over the years into an inherently unstable network, says Till Guldimann, a strategist at SunGard, a software and IT services firm. The rapid unwinding of positions by ultra-fast quantitative-trading programs at the start of the credit crunch in August 2007 is one example of this cascading effect. " - Tim Penn

Quote: "For most people time proves at least a partial healer. But about 10 per cent of bereaved people are still debilitated by their loss more than six months later - and they can remain locked into this loop of grief for many years. Acknowledging their plight, the proposals for DSM-V are expected to include a new diagnosis of "complicated grief" or "prolonged grief syndrome"." - Tim Penn

Quote: "The articles are usually accompanied by a picture of a brain scan in pixel-busting Technicolor and are frequently connected to references to new disciplines with the prefix “neuro-”. Neuro-jurisprudence, neuro-economics, neuro-aesthetics, neuro-theology are encroaching on what was previously the preserve of the humanities. Even philosophers – who should know better, being trained one hopes, in scepticism – have entered the field with the discipline of “Exp-phi” or experimental philosophy. Starry-eyed sages have embraced “neuro-ethics”, in which ethical principles are examined by using brain scans to determine people’s moral intuitions when they are asked to deliberate on the classic dilemmas. " - Tim Penn

Quote: "You'd end up seeing the wisdom in paranoia, the logic in superstition, the existential threat in the everyday. He'd do all of this with a low-key but unstoppable mania, telling tales as if his life depended on it. " - Tim Penn

According to Mr. Grocer, the evolution of news will be a slow process. "I've met a lot of smart people in my life, and they're the ones who are eventually always right and they always know where things are going [and] they always underestimate friction in the world and how long it takes to get there." - Tim Penn

Quote: "Crucially, Gray considers that one of the signals of incipient pathology is the advent of hubris. Hubris, he points out, entered the Thatcher project when communism collapsed. It was then that it came widely to be dubbed as "Thatcherism" and then that Gray judged it to have disconnected from reality. He recalls seeing Thatcher on television saying, "We are a grandmother," and thinking: "That's it, then..." " - Tim Penn

"Ken, I'll try and do better. It's a lack of discipline, don't you see? ;-) Tim" - Tim Penn

Quote "Ms. Webb said in 2002 that most people thought she was tough, but that she was “a real softie.” She explained, “Hard people shatter.”" - Tim Penn

Quote: "The figures also show a 313% increase to 818 cases in frauds by company directors." - Tim Penn

Movie, a la Al Gore, on shortcomings of modern UK education. Check out demeaning comments on manual/unskilled labour, cod use of 1950s imagery of boring academic lessons/textbooks, a bit of modern dance troupe, contradictory suggestion that busdriver could have cured cancer (presumably without studying pure mathematics), or that waiting tables is work without career prospects, only for those with blighted educational experiences. - Tim Penn

A free service where you can view maps, download photographs and other information. Use OpenGeoscience material free-of-charge for non-commercial private study, research and educational activities. Explore OpenGeoscience Explore the six OpenGeoscience sections: Data, Education, Maps, Pictures, Reports and Software. via @madgestar - Tim Penn

UPI EDITORS NOTE: UPI correspondent Alvin B. Webb Jr. suffered shrapnel wounds while helping rescue a wounded Marine shortly after filing the following dispatch. - Tim Penn

Quote: "Galloway was the only civilian to receive a medal for valor in combat awarded by the U.S. Army during the Vietnam war. Three other civilian journalists -the late Charles Mohr of the New York Times, Alvin B. Webb of United Press International and David Greenway of Time magazine - receive Bronze Stars with V devices for received the same medal from the U.S. Marines for rescuing wounded Marines in 1968." - Tim Penn

Quote:"These findings help explain why supernatural religious agents are often attributed a physical form and issue edicts that resemble the social practices of the culture from which they emerge," says Jordan Grafman of the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, whose team earlier this year linked emergence of religion with the development of "theory of mind", the capacity to recognise that other living things have independent thought and intentions. - Tim Penn

Quote "The plan, called the “Break the Glass” Bank Recapitalization Plan, was written by Treasury staffers Neel T. Kashkari and Phillip Swagel. The plan was the basis for the TARP proposal made in September 2008 after the financial panic began." Me: surprising Sorkin is surprised a war plan was being prepared in 2008 when the financial crisis started in Feb/mar 2007, escalated in Aug 2007, not Sep 2008. - Tim Penn

Quote: "Susan is also relinquishing her gym membership and chauffeur driven BMW. She won't need a housekeeper any more, and she doesn't care that much for her expensively decorated flat, with its granite kitchen surfaces and cream walls." - Tim Penn

In 1810 a black South African woman, Sara Baartman, was put on show in Piccadilly. The “Hottentot Venus”, as she became known, was an instant attraction. Crowds paid large sums of money to gawp at her scantily clad body and at the large buttocks and apparently “distended” genitals characteristic of her Khoisan tribe. She was an exhibit in a human zoo — the more adventurous visitors daring to pinch her, or poke her with their walking canes. - Tim Penn

The concept of homeostasis, the maintenance of the internal physiological environment of an organism within tolerable limits, is well established in medicine and physiology. In contrast, allostasis is a relatively new idea of ‘viability through change’. With allostatic regulation by cephalic involvement, the body adapts to potentially diverse and dangerous situations through the activation of neural, hormonal, or immunological mechanisms. Allostasis explains how regulatory events maintain organismic viability, or not, in diverse contexts with varying set points of bodily needs and competing motivations. This book introduces the concept of allostasis and sets it alongside traditional views of homeostasis. It addresses basic regulatory systems and examines the behavior of bodily regulation under duress. The basic concepts of physiological homeostasis are integrated with disorders like depression, stress, anxiety and addiction. - Tim Penn

Quote: "Researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York have confirmed that Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans." - Tim Penn

Quote: "The legendary singer and poet Gil Scott-Heron is releasing a new album. He has been so long out of the limelight that rumours had circulated that he was dead. As Newsnight's Stephen Smith discovered, he is very much alive and still kicking" Includes good quotes about non-linear/environmental triggers of substance abuse - Tim Penn

Quote: "writing makes us free" - Tim Penn

Quote: "writing makes us free" - Tim Penn

Quote: "Network stars have social capital — a stockpile of personal relationships with many people whom they regularly connect to one another. Though technology tools are increasingly common to help people find connections, from LinkedIn to Facebook, I find that even the most technology-savvy leaders rely on their own personal networks to find the best resources quickly. The technology is so democratic that the information is considered less reliable. The human networks are what count. " - Tim Penn

Quote: "I also hope that when the Basel regulators finally produce their new liquidity rules, the banks will have to build in a significant margin of error to reflect a potential fall in government bonds. This would underline the point to both banks and investors that government bonds are not automatically “risk-free”. Most important of all, though, I hope that the current calm in sovereign debt markets does not lull politicians into thinking that they can indefinitely avoid the need to take difficult fiscal choices. For if they do, those “safe” government bonds might start to look considerably less secure – not just to bankers, but to everybody." - Tim Penn

Quote: "the listener consigned to the passive role of technology jockey." - Tim Penn

When he was 13, a teacher told his mother to “stop wasting her money” and discontinue his musical studies. He had to fund his own 70 player Dean Dixon Symphony in 1932 to give him (literally) a platform for his talents. Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged him to pursue his conducting career, he went on to be the first African-American to conduct the New York Philharmonic, and his repertoire included the Afro-American Symphony of William Grant Still. - Tim Penn

Quote: "When I was a committed and unquestioning believer I would have said that in great music one was experiencing God but not calling it so; now feel that it is undoubtedly the case that many have these feelings with music and poetry, now I am not sure what to call it; one of the great mysteries for me is how do you explain the effect that the music of Bach has on you; in recent years I have read and come to know Don Cupitt but he has the idea that God is in and around, and I quite like that, and I have got much keener on the Holy Spirit than God the Father and God the Son; I have tried to develop this idea when challenged; an undergraduate interviewed me this year for 'Varsity'; he thought the services in King's Chapel were not especially valid as they were basically concert performances; I simply don't accept that;" - Tim Penn

Quote: "Their growth in earnings should mimic the U.S. economy as they always have, and most importantly they yield 5-6% not .01%! In a low growth environment, it seems to me that a company’s stock should yield more than its less risky debt, and many utilities provide just that opportunity. Utilities and even quasi-utility telecommunication companies now yield between 5 and 6%, whereas their 10- and 30-year bond yield less and at a higher tax rate to you the investor." - Tim Penn

To approach this tractably Wade divides religion at its joints into its distinctive parts. He distinguishes between the horizontal function of religious faiths in cementing group identities and reflecting group will, as well as the individual level psychological predispositions and biases which lead many to supernatural intuitions. The former is the reality of behavior operating visibly, rituals. Rites, communal revivals, and symbolic markers. The latter is the more subtle aspect of the interface between one's inner world, one's mental representation of the universe, and the sensory cues and inputs one receives from the outside world. Many specific behaviors obviously operate at the intersection of the two categories. - Tim Penn

Quote: "We can't "manage" the "brand" of science by throwing journalism under a bus, because we need it: for better or worse, the mass media define the public face of science. And Jared Diamond, popular science writer, should know that better than most." - Tim Penn

Quote: "As an example, let's go back to his article in the Washington Post in January, in which in addition to Dr. Weil, Dr. Ornish teamed up with, of all people, Deepak Chopra and Rustum Roy. Let's get one thing straight. Deepak Chopra is a booster of pseudoscience. There's no other scientifically accurate way to describe him. Indeed, he is so full of pseudoscience that I can take credit for coining a term that has spread through the blogosphere for the nonsense that he regularly that he regularly lays down: Choprawoo." - Tim Penn