Geek Friendly

I was lucky last night to be able to attend a fantastic lecture panel on the Science of Morality at the 92stY as part of the World Science Festival. Philosophers Daniel Dennett and Patricia Churchland, and neuroscientists Antonio Damasio and Marc Hauser discussed the philosophy, psychology, and biology of a fundamental aspect of human nature. Below are some of the more interesting ideas discussed.

Reduced D2 receptor densities lead to difficulty in learning from error and negative reinforcement:
Genetically Determined Differences in Learning from Errors (Science)
“Go” and “NoGo”: Learning and the Basal Ganglia (DANA)
This is of particular interest to me due to its implications for ADHD.

Breakdown of Theory of Mind in social, emotional, and moral decision-making:
Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind (Google Scholar, book)

PFC damage inhibits normal social/moral behavior:
On the neurology of morals (Nature Neuroscience)

Fundamental neurochemical differences effect social behavior:
The effects of oxytocin and vasopressin on partner preferences in male and female prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) (PubMed)

Most of these articles are behind pay-walls, so let me know if you need access to one of them and I’ll use my school account.

A few months ago, my buddy Chris and I were “shootin’ the shit,” as one is want to do, and he mentioned that he just found a jump-drive that he had accidentally sent through the washing machine. Unsurprisingly for those of us who know their way around electronic circuits, after drying the thing out, it worked. Despite this, we thought it might be fun to see what else could survive a trip to the laundromat, and decided to build Through the Wash.

With video reviews featuring the comedy talent of the Geek Comedy Tour 3000 team, we think Through the Wash has the potential to be a hit– but we need your help, so check it out and spread the word!

One of the things I’ve been sorely missing since I switched from my old Sidekick II to my iPhone is the ability to hop on IRC and kill some time. On the Sidekick, I took advantage of the downloadable shell client and a remote server with a command-line IRC client installed, but on the iPhone, no such luck.

I was expecting to have to wait until June of this year when Apple starts allowing third-party applications on the device, but out the woodwork has come Mibbit, an iPhone compatible AJAX web application which provides the full IRC experience– arguably better even than that which I had with my Sidekick. Mibbit even manages to provide pre-join scrollback to help users catch up on conversation they may have missed– something I’d like to see in my desktop client as well.

While there are certainly some flaws with the Mibbit+iPhone union– its hard to type and read chat at the same time– it’s certainly a site I’ll be adding to my home screen.

While its great living in the big city, it’s certainly nice to get out of town every now and then– away from all the hustle and bustle. As such, I’m spending the last full week of April relaxing back home in Denver. It would be great to see the Denver geek crowd again, so hit me up if you’d like to catch-up.

More importantly however, I’ll be making a slight detour to Cambridge for ROFLcon before heading back to NYC. ROFLcon, if you haven’t heard, is a gathering of everything awesome and fantastic about the internets. Tron guy, Group X, and Leeroy Jenkins are just a few of the internet celebrities attending, and panels will include “Pwning for the Good of Mankind” and “Incubating the Mind Virus.”

Silliness aside, this looks like its going to be an amazing gathering of minds to discuss just what makes the internet such a special place.

Finally, Gotham Books has contacted Kevin and I about having Shcrodinger’s LOLcat included in the upcoming I Can Haz Cheezburger book. More details as soon as we get them.

I recently started posting things that would normally go on Geek Friendly as Asides to a new Tumblelog. Though I eventually plan to incorporate my tumblr posts into Geek Friendly, for the foreseeable future, you can find my short-form postings at geekfriendly.tumblr.com

Typographic dream-team Erik Spiekermann, Christian Schwartz, and Kris Sowersby unleash the stunningly-beautiful FF Meta Serif.

Songza, a new interactive music search engine from Aza Raskin and Humanized. Very sexy.

A few months ago, Radio Lab– one of my very favorite public radio shows– aired an episode about the neuroscience of Love. The show, in two acts, served as an informative and entertaining primer to a mind-bogglingly complex subject, and did so with all the flair, panache, and quirky musical bumpers that make shows like Radio Lab the easily stereotyped gems they are.

While I found the piece interesting enough, I wasn’t moved to do much more than contemplate the subject a bit and put it on my ever-growing list of things to research. Mostly unmoved, that is, until this weekend, when I met a girl who really turned my head upside-down.

After the waves of intrusive thinking and tummy-knotting anxiety which exemplify Limerence wore off, I came to a now unsurprising realization: Love isn’t mere emotion, it’s a fundamental change in the way we think; a change we have almost no control over. A temporary all-controlling animalistic psychosis that effects us all at one time or anther, driven by three simple, seemingly innocent enough, neurotransmitters. To take a page from the Radio Lab show, lets take a quick look at them:

Dopamine – Real true deeply passionate Love. That amazing ecstatic feeling that comes from seeing and interacting with that special someone. You get the same rush of Dopamine from crack cocaine that you do from Love.

Norepinephrine – Intense infatuation. Norepinephrine focuses the good feelings of dopamine on that one object of your desire.

Oxytocin – Peace and happy contentment that comes with long-term commitment.

The problem here is that Dopamine and Norepinephrine create such powerful emotion that if we were to keep getting squirts of them over a long period of time, we’d literally go insane. It has long been accepted that excessive levels of Dopamine play a large role in Schizophrenia, and anyone who’s ever had a crush can understand why.

As I’m stuck here with too much Norepinephrine floating around the folds of meat inside my skull, I’ll end our quick overview of the subject here, but if you’re interested in learning more, I highly recommend you check out the bit of audio magic that inspired this post, which I linked to in the first paragraph. In addition to a recorded podcast of the show, Radio Lab has provided a number of interesting articles and links on the subject for your further nerdy perusal.

Almost two months without a real post? I know, I’m a horrible person. I don’t really even have an excuse, other than that I’ve been taking most aspects of my life pretty easy for the past few months– sleeping in, working late, and zonking out in front of the TV. I figure this is the last time I’ll really be able to live such a laid-back existence– at least until I retire. In a little under two weeks, I’ll be packing up my things and moving out into the ‘real world’ to continue my studies in New York City. If you know anyone in the city looking for a roommate, let me know.

I recently started writing regularly for one of my very favorite blogs, UNEASYsilence. I’m super excited to be on the team with Dan and Derek, and I’m really enjoying the increased freedom I have in terms of what topics I can post on relative to at Weblogs, Inc. That being said, I have decided that from now on, Geek Friendly will be reserved for niche topics, and that things of general geeky interest will be posted on UES.

Not that I promise to update more often– I’d just be kidding myself.

Time Warner has begun implementing packet shaping for all users.