Category Archives: Mind control

Smoothing wrinkles blunts emotions

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If you treasure your very soul, but are tempted to buy a new(er) face, here’s my advice: Run, run like an outlaw Sandman, from the plastic surgeon. (The iconic, Farah Fawcett-plastic surgery scene from Logan’s Run, appears, below.)

Because so much of our human emotions are tied to our bodies’ abilities to express them, it makes sense that docs are reporting a measurable, soul-sucking effect of cosmetic procedures:

“For at least some emotions, if you take away some part of the facial expression, you take away some of the emotional experience,” says study researcher Joshua Ian Davis, PhD, a term assistant professor in the department of psychology at Barnard College in New York City.

via Botox May Affect Ability to Feel Emotions. Thanks to the Secret Sun for continuing inspiration, and to River Bottom Video, for putting Logan’s Run back in my brain.

No kidding: punks school others to be punks

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152316__bad_lStudy describes the failed interventions that bring bad boys together:

“For boys who had been through the juvenile justice system, compared to boys with similar histories without judicial involvement, the odds of adult judicial interventions increased almost seven-fold,” says study co-author Richard E. Tremblay, a professor of psychology, pediatrics and psychiatry at the Université de Montréal and a researcher at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center.

via Delinquent Behavior Among Boys ‘Contagious,’ Study Finds.

Dull threads for budding cultists

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The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints reports a “flood of interest” in its Plain Jane threads. I’ve got my eye on the lucky Mormon underwear (right). I imagine there will be a few orders from those with a pervy interest (role-players) in the product. But the FLDS clothes for sale are for kids only. — mb

FLDS Dress
And they did impart of their substance, every man according to that
which he had, to the poor, and the needy, and the sick, and the
afflicted; and they did not wear costly apparel,
yet they were neat and comely. Alma 1:27

OHSU psychiatrist to highlight warning signs for school shootings

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Some teens are having troubling distinguishing between real and virtual realities, making them more likely to turn on the public with real guns blazing.

That’s what Oregon Health and Sciences University psychiatrist Jerald Block was scheduled to tell a conference in Washington earlier today. He cites the Columbine shooting case as an example of what is yet to come.

The Columbine shooters, Harris and Klebold, Block say, were addicted to first person shooters (video games). The two took their aggressions into RL (real life) after having the plug pulled on their digital worlds.

OHSU psychiatrist to highlight warning signs for school shootings
“Virtual realities, like the ones that Harris and Klebold experienced, are a double-edged sword,” explained Block, a clinical faculty member in the OHSU Department of Psychiatry. “On one hand, virtual worlds allow people to feel connected and empowered. They also allow participants to escape stress and have an outlet for aggression. On the other hand, when a heavy user must eliminate or cut back on the virtual, as was the case with these two killers at times, the user can feel lonely, anxious, or angry.

SL + 3D – hardware = total inworld immersion (TIA)

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Linden Lab chairman Mitch Kapor and developer Philippe Bossut today demonstrated a camera-based motion recog system that controls your avatar’s movements in Second Life. Looks good on the video, below…

With a 3D viewing headset (such as the augmented reality headset imagined here), you would have your own at-home 3DVR “cave” for exploring the metaverse.

Incredibly, we are just years, perhaps only months, away from very discreet (i.e., they won’t take over your livingroom), immersive experiences, at home.

And it will cost a fraction of what 3DVR caves, such as the one at Brown University (an elaborate mix of multiple projectors, hand and head tracking devices, and a stack of Linux servers).

Of course, the more seamless metaversal interfaces become, the more likely people will start forgetting where they really are.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t52gkAwJq8&eurl=http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2008/04/11/mitch-kapor-unveils-sl-navigation-via-3d-camera/]

[digg=http://digg.com/hardware/SL_3D_hardware_near_complete_immersion]

"Hoax" prompts cops to terrorize straphangers

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T rider makes false tip, prompting cops to bully a Cambridge man and his visiting friend. Commuters are put on hold.

istock_000005043107xsmall.jpg
(“Terrorist”: In the mass transportation system, everyone is a suspect.)

A hoaxer told police last week that two men wearing fatigues, and talking about drugs and guns, were headed for Logan Airport, according to one of the men targeted by the search.

State police, including one apparent smart-ass, detained the men for half an hour, after surrounding a train with bomb-sniffing dogs.

It took a while to find the men, who were not wearing fatigues, and had not been discussing illegal activity after all.

Almost unbelievably, the Boston transit police chief said he is grateful for the “tip,” because the department prides itself on erring on the side of caution.

A tip from a passenger and a manhunt that followed disrupted the Ts Red Line for about 13 minutes during rush hour Thursday morning, as police surrounded a train with bomb-sniffing dogs. It also forced Watchorn to miss a business trip to Buffalo while he was being questioned by State Police.

“The most disturbing thing about it was the apparent randomness of it,” Watchorn, 50, said. He said he wonders how easy it would be to subject others to what he considers hoaxes and to disrupt the transit system, based on an unsubstantiated tip.

Massachusetts police have repeatedly thrown the city into turmoil over science projects and ad campaigns in recent years.

The Boston Globe wanted to reach the hoaxer, but police would not reveal her identity.

Cheerleader tryouts bumping hard news?

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UniversalHub blogger Brett knocks the Globe’s coverage of a local firefighter’s bust for weed possession, and says newsworthy images, such as mugshots, are taking a backseat to prettier pictures at Boston.com.

I’m not sure the stakes at so high on this particular story (the pot one), but I plan to share Brett’s observations with my journalism students on the other side of spring break.

Like Brett, I’ve been marveling (in a purely detached, analytical way) at the sexed-up photo galleries at Boston.com, from the cheerleader tryouts, below, to party shots like this.

Pats hold cheerleader auditions – Boston.com
Alanna Hicks, of Weymouth, stretched her arms and legs along with the other 300 aspirants. Judges will pare the field to 75 for a final tryout.
Essdras M Suarez / Globe Staff

Docs to fight stress in Second Life

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I learned this while researching this Boston Globe piece (link, excerpt, below): Dr. Joe Kvedar, director of the Center for Connected Health in Boston, says cognitive-behavioral therapy is “the next logical step” for clinical testing in-world. (In-world is where Second Lifers say they are, when they are logged-in.) Kvedar, below, addresses a conference, in-world.panel-shot-3.jpg
MD to fight stress in Second Life – The Boston Globe
In another sign that Second Life is beginning to resemble the first, doctors are stepping into the virtual world to reach patients they might otherwise miss.

A Massachusetts General Hospital neurologist, Dr. Daniel Hoch, wants to learn whether therapy administered in Second Life, the virtual world created by Linden Lab, can have benefits in the world that we share with our spouses, kids, death, and taxes.

In coming months, an instructor from Mass. General will lead 20 to 40 Second Life recruits through guided meditations designed to reduce their stress levels.

Note: They are teaching their subjects the Relaxation Response, which I believe is based on Transcendental Meditation. — mb

For good or ill, robots set to kill

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U.S. engineers are building unreliable, autonomous killing machines, a U.K. computer scientist said today. Terrorists will be making their own.

robart3e.jpgToo cute? Watch the DoD’s 12-year-old Robart III (left) knock down some Coke cans, here. The Army’ s more recent SWORDS robot (below, right) has made the rounds at auto and robotics shows. (Images: U.S. Department of Defense)

While Japanese researchers are building humanoid robots that will care for their aging population, the U.S. Department of Defense is developing autonomous weapons that will decide which humans to cut down.swords22004-12-03.jpg

But there’s a problem: Robots make lousy decision makers, said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey, in a speech at the Royal United Services Institute in Whitehall.

“Current robots are dumb machines with very limited sensing capability,” said Sharkey, in a statement released yesterday. “What this means is that it is not possible to guarantee discrimination between combatants and innocents or a proportional use of force as required by the current Laws of War.”

Sharkey also predicted that terrorists are likely to replace suicide bombers with killer robots, which they can produce for only a few hundred pounds with off-the-shelf parts.

Some military officers argue that without any messy emotions to get in the way, autonomous weapons (AW) will make more efficient killers.

“AW can better discriminate targets and calculate the impacts of an engagement in real time to insure the impact is proportional to the military advantage gained,” writes U.S. Air Force Major Michael A. Guetlein, in a 2005 research paper (click here to download the PDF). “Emotions and adrenaline cease to affect the decision to engage. Instead, the decision becomes one of probabilities.”

Guetlein also predicts that “social conditioning” (his words) will eventually any public objections to giving robots a license to kill.

“Society is likely to welcome some aspects of AW,” Guetlein writes.

–mb

Notes: See my 2004 Wired article, “Robots May Fight for the Army.”

The DoD has been trying for years to turn soldiers into flesh-and-blood-based killing machines. See “The guilt-free soldier,” about emotion-deadening drugs, which my brother, Erik, wrote in 2003.