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Researchers have identified two neuron populations in the brain that work together to control fear impulses.(How Fear Flows Through The Mind, Science Daily). Oh yeah, we all know they are only using this stuff to do good deeds, not to manipulate and control the population. Wink. Wink.
The findings, published this week in a pair of complementary papers in Nature, may someday facilitate the development of better therapeutic interventions for psychiatric illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder and phobias.
One would think — nay, hope — that Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano's assurances that her department is working "364 days a year" to combat terrorism would be the most embarrassing part of Diane Sawyer's three-way interview with Napolitano, Chief Counterterrorism Advisor John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, which was taped Monday but aired on ABC World News last night. But look, that was just a slip of the tongue. Nap(Director of National Intelligence Forgets To Fear). We all know that the Keystone Kops take themselves seriously, even though they are not as smart as a fifth grader:olitano briefly forgot how many days are in a year. Sometimes we forget how old we are. It happens.
Much worse though was when Sawyer asked Clapper about the arrests of twelve terror suspects in London (and, she didn't mention, other British cities) earlier that morning — the country's largest terror sweep since April of 2009. His answer consisted of a confused side-glance and a few uncomfortable moments of silence before being bailed out by Brennan. Later in the interview, Clapper offers no explanation for how he could have been unaware of such a significant and widely reported development.
The amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the brain involved in emotional memory and learning, has historically been considered key in processing fear impulses, but researchers at the California Institute of Technology wanted to understand the process at the level of cells. "Ultimately, we'd like a mechanistic understanding of how specific circuits, not only regions, generate brain functions like fear," said Wulf Haubensak, a postdoc and first author on the first paper.
(ibid, Science Daily). Dredd Blog has focused on the amygdala too, in Etiology of Social Dementia - 3 and Jabber The Whut? - 4.
Check it out.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
For the first time in history of telecommunications law the FCC has given its stamp of approval to online discrimination.(Obama FCC Caves On Net Neutrality, Huffington Post). This is the first shot fired across the bow of "the blogosphere" which challenges the propaganda flow from MOMCOM.
Instead of a rule to protect Internet users' freedom to choose, the Commission has opened the door for broadband payola - letting phone and cable companies charge steep tolls to favor the content and services of a select group of corporate partners, relegating everyone else to the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road.
Instead of protecting openness on wireless Internet devices like the iPhone and Droid, the Commission has exempted the mobile Internet from Net Neutrality protections. This move enshrines Verizon and AT&T as gatekeepers to the expanding world of mobile Internet access, allowing them to favor their own applications while blocking, degrading or de-prioritizing others.
"... the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.(Top Secret America, Washington Post, emphasis added). First of all, congratulations to the Washington Post for a wonderful piece of journalism, yes, a wonderful piece of American Journalism!
The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI ...
[this spy system is ] one that has grown so large, unwieldy and secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it."