Remember the quote from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape- descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

We have clearly moved on. The new version should read:

...they still think mobile phones are a pretty neat idea.

Either that or the internet. But I do believe that the end of the 90s will be remembered as the age of mobile phones.
And yes - I DO think mobile phones are a neat idea :-)

Pinserin Suomen Blogilista. Näemmä pääsin mukaan ihan automaagisesti :). Kiva.

I've been reading the special edition of Scientific American titled "The Hidden Mind" (2002). It has some great articles about consciousness, the brain, sleep, emotions, etc. Here are some thoughts I'd like to share.

Movie-in-the-brain deals with the concept of consciousness and awareness. (The movie being the composite of sensory input and "self" being the ability to make sense of that input.). The evolutionary edge is or course the ability and incentive to react to alarm signals. "Evolution of self rewards awareness, which is clearly a survival advantage.". But what is the relation of the movie and "self":

Self-awareness is actually part of the movie and thus creates, within the same frame, the "seen" and the "seer", the "thought" and the "thinker". There is no separate spectator for the movie-in-the-brain.
SciAm: The Hidden Mind, pg 9

So our self-awareness is an illusion... But fear not, it only means that our self is coded as information, which should be considered just as "real" as our surroundings... which - based on quantum theory - is "only" information too (quantum bits).
Helsingin sanomat had a small article about this too, referring to the work of Daniel C. Dennett. (Thanks for the link, hoito.org.)

Dreams. Great article about the history of dream research of the current understanding of their meaning.

...dreams reflect an individual's strategy for survival. The subjects of dreams are broad-ranging and complex, incorporating self-image, fears, insecurities, strengths, grandiose ideas, sexual orietation, desire, jealousy and love.
SciAm: The Hidden Mind, pg 60

The unconscious (~= dreaming) works during REM sleep and is an old evolutionary feature. It's like an automated strategy planner dealing with any issues that are related to survival, including sosiological strategies.
Tightly related to this is the processing of memory, which is of course needed for strategy planning. RAM sleep also strenghtens the memory images stored during the day. I suppose sleep focuses on survival memories, but for humans "survival" includes day-to-day life issues. (What kind of a mobile phone to buy?)

I still have a few articles to read... I'll be back.

Hehee. Pinseri löysi hauskan jutun klassisesta huijauskirjeestä, jossa Afrikkalainen hemmo yritää siirtää rahaa tilille. Jutussa yritetään naruttaa huijaria oikein olan takaa.
Lisää huijareiden narutuksia.

Part 3a of Matt's Particle Physics Column. Great stuff.

In this part we'll discuss the history of the electroweak interaction, from Chadwick's discovery of the neutron to the unified electroweak force as it stood in the pivotal year of 1968. The second part will deal with developments since 1968, the discovery of the W and Z bosons, and the era of precision electroweak physics at the Large Electron Positron Collider.

Amazon Light. Love it.

Pretty neat that Neil Gaiman has a Weblog. I like his stuff. Sandman series is just great stuff and his stories/novels reflect a great joy of storytelling. I heard great things about his latest Coraline, which I'll be buying next.

Scary stuff about the process of evaluating school books in California - 38 years ago: Judging Books by Their Covers. Written by Richard Feynman. (Yes, THAT Feynman). And it would seem the same thing is still going on (in the U.S.). I sure hope the books here in Finland are reviewed more reliably. The books I read since the 7th grade were - if I remember correctly - pretty decent, but I can't remember the books before that.

Pinseri kertoo Villeistä Kirjoista. Eli pistetään kirja jonnekin esille, josta sen voi löytää, lukea, ja jättää jonnekin muualle. Bookcrossing kirjoille, Eurobilltracker seteleille ja Cameo valokuville.

Ensimmäinen MMS-kuva, jonka olen (tavallaan) nähnyt. Nokialaisesta Erkkiin. MMS on kova juttu, JOS hinta on halpa. SMS on melko sopivan hintainen, eikä MMS saa kovin montaa prosenttia kalliimpi olla.