There is nothing funny, or entertaining about trolls…
All who have to deal with them?
Wish for them a heavy dose of comeuppance.
Sometimes?
Karma…
[Source]
She obliges?
In the sweetest of ways!
Daily Archives: December 9, 2011
The hours, the years, the course of one’s life? Fleeting. So will you still love me tomorrow?
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“Every day has been so short, every hour so fleeting, every minute so filled with the life I love that time for me has fled on too swift a wing.” ~Aga Khan III
Ever experienced adversity? Turn it into a moment for growth, not frustration!
Sure…
It’s more than annoying when someone tries to take that which, by GAWD, you know is yours!
So in a way?
I can sympathize with this guy.
However?
The too precious Teddy Bear should intellectually use such trying moments as springboards for personal growth.
[via PsychCentral] Growth by adversity
Think back on a time when you experienced adversity. How did you handle this? Did you shrivel up and wilt away, or did you persevere and come away an even stronger person than before?
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Adversity can come in many domains, such as interpersonal, professional, financial, or spiritual, though regardless of what area in life we encounter adversity; it offers us a chance for personal growth.
For example, conflict in relationships can help us build a stronger bond, and growing pains in our professional life provide us the means to cope with stress and be a better leader in the long-run.
Ultimately, working through setbacks, trauma, or failure teaches us many lessons and we learn how resilient we really are. [Read More - Three Ways To Expand Growth As A Person]
After all, because he is so cute when people jack with his food?
Because it is a reality in which he lives, I honestly do not see Teddy Bear getting any moments peaceful eating moments in the near future.
Poor little guy…
But no reason he shouldn’t use these moments to his advantage.
After all?
All of US are reaping the rewards!
So too, should he.
“Emotional” associative fear learning happens & has long term effects!
Just as positive reinforcements is conditioning…
In the more classical sense?
So too are negative reinforcements:
[via Medical Xpress] In the first functional MRI brain scan study to investigate the impact of physical abuse and domestic violence on children, scientists at UCL in collaboration with the Anna Freud Centre, found that exposure to family violence was associated with increased brain activity in two specific brain areas (the anterior insula and the amygdala) when children viewed pictures of angry faces.
Previous fMRI studies that scanned the brains of soldiers exposed to violent combat situations have shown the same pattern of heightened activation in these two areas of the brain, which are associated with threat detection. The authors suggest that both maltreated children and soldiers may have adapted to be ‘hyper-aware’ of danger in their environment.
However, the anterior insula and amygdala are also areas of the brain implicated in anxiety disorders. Neural adaptation in these regions may help explain why children exposed to family violence are at greater risk of developing anxiety problems later in life. [Read More]
Negative reinforcements which do NOT only have an impact on the brain by increasing brain activity in certain regions…
But such negative reinforcements also triggers dis-inhibition through “emotional” associative fear learning.
[via Medical Xpress] A team of neurobiologists around Andreas Lüthi at the Friedrich Miescher Institute of Biomedical Research has shown for the first time that cortex, the largest area of the brain that is typically associated with higher functions such as perception and cognition, is also a prominent site of emotional learning. Letzkus and colleagues used a set of recently developed methods to observe through which neuronal circuits activity is conveyed during learning. This study, published in Nature, demonstrates a causal link between neuronal activity patterns and animal behavior, and provides pioneering work exploring emotions in the brain.
Anxiety disorders are a family of complex diseases, which affect around 10% of adults. One of the hallmarks of these disorders is that patients have “learned” to fear situations or objects to a degree that is not proportional to the real danger. The amygdala, a structure deep in the brain, is central to the processing of fear and anxiety, and its function may be disrupted in anxiety disorders. But, there is no fear without a sensory input: We hear, see, smell, taste or feel something that then triggers fear. These sensory signals are processed in the cortex, the region of the brain typically associated with higher functions such as perception and cognition. However, how this brain region is involved in emotional learning has hardly ever been addressed.
For the first time, scientists in the team of Andreas Lüthi, group leader at the FMI and professor at the University of Basel, have been able to follow a sensory stimulus during learning on its cellular path through the brain. Their results, describing a circuit in cortex critical for associative fear learning, have been published today in the distinguished scientific journal Nature.
Lüthi then went on to show that this dis-inhibitory microcircuit is also present in other areas of cortex, like the one processing visual input. “A really interesting aspect of our observations is that dis-inhibition appears to be necessary for learning, but does not cause learning on its own. Rather, what we perceive during a state of heightened arousal will determine what we actually learn” explains Lüthi. [Read More]
All of this amazing, fantastic science?
Helps me to safely draw one very obvious conclusion….
This kid?
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Gonna have all sorts of issues with magic tricks when he grows up.
Rats are capable of altruism…Unlike most of the people I know!
Rats.
Have been getting short-changed by man since the late 16th century, by our use of the term “rats”in often the most derogatory of meanings as a result of what we perceive as their mannerisms and behaviors.
[via Slate] In the first half of the 19th century. We’ve been denigrating each other for behaving like rats since the 16th century or before, but the usage of rat to mean informer is more recent. Perhaps the first appearance of the word as a reference to a tattletale comes from Thomas Moore’s 1819 satire The Fudge Family in Paris, in which the father Phil Fudge praises the “peaching Rat … false enough to shirk [his] friends” (to peach here means to snitch). By 1859 John Camden Hotten’s Slang Dictionary would define a rat as “a sneak, an informer, a turncoat,” and by the 1950s this meaning of rat was firmly entrenched in pop culture. In one LIFE magazine story from 1958, a gang member named Gus turns to a gang member named Rat and says, “Cause you a rat, is all. All you guys in the Fifth is rats. You ratted on us.”
It’s unclear exactly why people started to use rat in this way, but there are some possible explanations. Rat, as an epithet, has long referred to many different kinds of dishonorable people.
Rat has since taken on even more meanings. Around the time that rat could first be employed in place of tattletale, it was also used by unions, especially in the U.S. printing industry, to describe those who refused to strike with the union. Americans started to “not give a rat’s ass” in the 1950s. In other cultures, rats conjure up similar associations. For example, in Spanish, a selfish miser can be called a rata, and to skip school is “hacerse la rata.” [Read More]
Only now?
We are beginning to understand that their behaviors and mannerisms…
Aren’t near as bad as we have always falsely perceived.
Because in truth…
When it comes to rats?
Heck, their moral behavior is better than most of the people I know.
[via io9]Is altruism something that’s unique to primates? Neuroscientists Peggy Mason and Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal decided to find out, using rats. What they discovered is these rodents will help each other escape from locked cages. They will even share their favorite food with rats.
According to Scientific American:
Mason and Bartal placed pairs of rats in Plexiglass pens. One rat was trapped in a cage in the middle of the pen, whereas the other rat was free to run around. Most free rats circled their imprisoned peer, gnawing at the cage and sticking their paws, noses and whiskers through any openings. After a week of trial and error, 23 of the 30 rats in the experiment learned to open the cage and free their peers by head-butting the cage door or leaning their full weight against the door until it tipped over. (The door could only be opened from the outside.) At first the rats were startled by the noise of the toppling door. Eventually, however, they stopped showing surprise, which suggests that they fully intended to push the door aside. Further, the rodents showed no interest in opening empty cages or in those containing toy rats, indicating that a break out was their genuine goal.
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In this first set of experiments, most rats seemed quite willing to help their peers, but Mason wanted to give them a tougher test. She placed rats in a Plexiglass pen with two cages: in one was another rat, in the other was a pile of five milk chocolate chips-a favorite snack of these particular rodents. The unrestricted rats could easily have eaten the chocolate themselves before freeing their peers or been so distracted by the sweets that they would neglect their imprisoned friends. Instead, most of the rats opened both cages and shared in the chocolate chip feast.
Other studies have shown that rats will spend more time with cagemates who are ill or distressed. This behavior is an echo of what humans do when they comfort an ill friend. These studies, and several others, suggest that altruism goes beyond the hominid world. And Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH may be closer than you think. [Read More]
A fact which either speaks in an elevated way regarding the rats themselves…
Or one which speaks in just really bad manner about most of the people I know.
Take your pic.
But if you ask me?
I’m leaning towards the latter.
What would thought-speak regarding personal morality (or lack thereof) sound like?
Was just talking to The Fam the other day about this exact concept/understanding.
Thoughts have their own language?
Yeah…
Interesting stuff like this?
Is why Science should be loved and adored!
According to one school of philosophy, our thoughts have a language-like structure that is independent of natural language: this is what students of language call the language of thought (LOT) hypothesis. According to the LOT hypothesis, it is because human thoughts already have a linguistic structure that the emergence of common, natural languages was possible in the first place. [Read More]
Fascinating!
So lets take this concept a tad bit forward, shall we.
Operating under the premise that thoughts have their own language…
If we take the below, extremely difficult circumstance under consideration?
[via io9]If you had to choose between one person getting killed or five people getting killed, you’d pick the one with the lower death toll, right? Ah, but there’s a catch. The five people were going to get killed without your intervention. They were hiking along train tracks in a cut through a narrow canyon and a runaway train came through and killed them.
Clearly, that’s not your fault. The one person, however, was going to be fine, hiking along another fork of the track in a parallel canyon. You can switch the train from one track to another, but if you do, the single hiker’s death will be directly, and consciously, the result of your actions, not just the cruel hand of fate. You will have saved five people, which is arguably the greater good, but personally killed one innocent person. What do you do? [Read More]
If our thoughts actually had its own specific language…
What would the language be for the ethical situation where one might see the benefits of ending a life?
Oddly enough…
I think I found just the type of language that would fit the situation.
The vampire language…
Fitting for such a thought process, wouldn’t you agree?
I know I do.
Carol of the Bells: The magic of music is made perfect by Christmas & Christmas lights!
Music moves us.
But what is it about holiday music…
That moves us to do the most amazing things this time of year?
[via Santas]At midnight on Christmas Eve 1914 firing from the German trenches suddenly stopped. A German brass band began playing Christmas carols. Early, Christmas morning, the German soldiers came out of their trenches, approaching the allied lines, calling “Merry Christmas”. At first the allied soldiers thought it was a trick, but they soon climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the German soldiers. The truce lasted a few days, and the men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings, sang carols and songs. They even played a game of Soccer.[Read More]
I don’t know, but its hard not to respect it.
And?
Stand in awe…
The tiniest bit?
At the magical wonder!
…
Merry Christmas to ALL!
Poetic Celebrity Parody – Entitled Celebrities Behave Badly, Edition!
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I used to be young,
I used to be hot!
I used to be liked…
Now that I’m not?
I will rage & vent,
At anyone, anything,
Until I get kicked off?
My stupid airplane!
Don’t they know who I am,
I’m a freaking celebrity!
One, unsurprisingly so?
Brought down by his own stupidity!
Boss Gif – Swim Like A Dolphin In The Sea, Edition!
Watching this?
Is to envy…
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What dolphins are…
To the smartest-creature-EVER!
Now THIS is how you swim, baby…
Like a BOSS!
Animated Animal Haiku – Ow, I Hit My Face, Edition!
See how fast I run
As fast as the wind I race
Until forced to stop
Dangit!
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