Derren Brown's Blog, page 7

The most astounding fact, indeed.

Thanks to the guys at Godvoordommen for bringing this to our attention.

[image error] Image credit; Zeitnews

The amazing science of electro-chemistry is showing us new ways to enhance our brains for learning. In an enthusiastic article about her experience with the technology of electrical brain stimulation, science journalist Sally Adee shows us a world without that nagging inner voice, constantly chipping away at our hard won confidence — a world of pure and intense focus. How can we achieve this enviable state? Either by deep meditation, or as scientists are now finding out, by wearing an electric thinking cap. Research shows that a band — or in the future a hat, for the fashion conscious — of electrodes, sending a weak current of only a few milliamps of electricity through your brain, improves learning, concentration and even increases our cognitive computation in tasks like mathematics.

Sally Adee's experienced her improved capacity on the shooting range. However, in the future this technology of neural enhancement may find common use outside of the military and enter normal society. Because of this, bio-ethicists are already having a field day with the implications of human enhancement, but the supporters of transhumanism – who want to 'transcend' our biological limits through technology – are of course elated with these results.

Who knows, in a few years time, our teenagers will be in school wearing all sorts of hip hats, bands and wigs with some tiny batteries and nearly invisible electrodes, living a neurosis-free life of easy learning and enhanced smarts. On the other hand, will those who are brilliantly evil now, be even more brilliant at being evil after wearing one of these thinking caps…? Cue dramatic music. Also, how would an overdose of this 'drug' look? A bit crisp?

Check out Sally's personal article on the experience on her blog and read her New Scientist article explaining more about the technology.

[image error]

If you're reading this and think you're a spineless weasel, you are technically wrong, although of course we wouldn't dare speculate about the metaphorical truth of your self-assessment. Regardless, you are a mammal like the rest of us, and you most certainly have a literal spinal chord.

Hmm, a spinal chord. Where does this feature we share with most of the other — reptiles, birds, fish, the other mammals, etc. — life on earth come from? Where did it originate? In their never-ending quest for explanations, scientists have long since discovered beautiful early fossils in the chordate family, finding tantalizing evidence of what the creatures from which we all descended looked like. The particular specimen you can see in the picture above lived around 505 million years ago, and although it had the beginnings of a spine — an elastic notochord — it did not even have a skull yet. You could say it had a faceless presence, but it could carry a box up a stairs with grace.

Carrying the charming name Pikaia, the 5 centimetre long creature — looking like the result of a rather successful date between worm and fish — featured a mouth, some tiny tentacles and rudimentary gills. But it was it's completely unique spinal chord that would eventually give Pikaia's descendants the power to rule the world. Maniacal laugh.

See a pretty animation of the creature below, read some more details on the New Scientist website.

[image error] Picture by Alubavin, licenced under Creative Commons License.

Former corporate lawyer and negotiations consultant Susan Caine has written an interesting take on introversion in her book Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking. She asks for more understanding and room for introverts in a world where extroverts get all the praise and attention. An introvert is simply a person who likes to spend a considerable amount of his or her time alone in quiet introspection, with a good book, listening to music while thinking things over or similarly solitary experience. It doesn't have to mean you don't like to have fun with friends or don't enjoy being loud every once in a while, just that often an introvert prefers a more intimate and quiet setting over a crowded party. Susan argues convincingly that introverts have certain advantages over the more extrovert of us. For example she cites statistics that show that introverts are better performers in school, despite the extroverts getting the limelight and applause. In out world introverts often get ostracised as eccentric or anti-social by those thinking all of us should be outgoing and socially hyperactive. She says;

"Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality trait, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard."

Take a look at a very good TED Talk  below summarizing some of the points from her book. We would live in a better world if introverts are given their place in society without being pressured to fit the an odd cultural norm;

[image error]

You may know the expression "herding cats" and how this is often applied to the difficulty of getting those of us who lack religious faith to agree on anything. So, in a world in which non-believers are generally as politically diverse as we humans get, it's interesting to look for the common denominators in the world views of the non-believers. In an interesting article found on Psychology Today they do just that, and we get to see some of the beliefs that the non-believers generally do share. According to the article they boil down to seven general tenants of common sense;

Everything since the Big Bang can be explained naturally

We can only speculate about what "caused" the Big Bang

Ethics do not require a God

Religion is man-made

The God of the Bible is especially implausible

The idea of prophecy is even less plausible than a God

Only humans can solve human challenges

To read more about each of these points the non-believers can agree on, find your way to Psychology Today where they are discussed in more detail. Or you can jump right into the nitty-gritty of a general non-religious world view by reading a good book about humanism.

With a thanks to writer Ken MacLeod for providing this great link. He has an excellent new dystopian thriller out called Intrusion, which you may want to check out. It's already been compared to Orwell's 1984, set in near-future English setting.

[image error] Picture by Manu San-Felix

You think your wrinkly Nan is old? Not even! There are organisms, mainly plants, who are thousands of years old, even tens- or hundreds of thousands. At The Guardian we can read that scientists have found a 15 kilometre long patch of Mediterranean Seagrass near a Spanish island, with the beautiful Latin name Posidonia oceanica, of an extraordinary age. This patch of underwater salad may be up to 200.000 years old! A grand old breaking of the previous record of seagrass lifespan, which was recorded in Tasmanian waters and sat at around a measly 40.000 years of age. Barely out of nappies that one!

You may wonder whether  a single blade of seagrass is really as old as the dawn of the homo sapiens? Well, rest assured, no single blade is. Seagrass clones itself over vast stretches of seabed, growing by a dazzling speed of around 13 centimetres a year and is constantly nibbled away at by predators, destroyed by changing environments or gone old and mushy, leaving no single blades to become as ancient as our entire race. Regardless, this same patch of seagrass has been cloning (or simply "regrowing") it's exact, identical DNA for over all that time.

Compare it to the human body. You may have heard the myth that human cells are completely replaced every 7 or 10 years. This is false, but it does give some insight in how we can claim that the seagrass is the exact same organism for that long a period of time, even though it's cells have been replaced many times over. In the case of human beings, our most important brain and heart cells don't ever see replacement, they just die off. We call that forgetting. However, other parts of our body see a replenishment of cells up to 10% a year (like fat cells), effectively recreating parts of our human body over time. Unfortunately for us, this copying is fraught with errors, and gives us the concept of ageing or even cancer. Now imagine you're all body, no brain, like the seagrass and you keep replicating over and over and over and over… Then yes, the seagrass is 200.000 years old.

As one scientist said in more detail;

"The finding of the ancient seagrass also illustrates the danger us humans pose to vulnerable ancient ecosystems. With our destructive fishing trawlers that needlessly destroy the ecosystems of the sea floor and the way we alter the climate with our rising CO2 emissions, of which most is stored in the oceans and seas, causing ocean acidification and uninhabitable dead-zones, we have caused a decline in seagrass development of 10% in the Mediterranean alone. And don't forget the warming of the oceans happens at the same time. No wonder we are causing the largest era of biodiversity loss in millions of years. One even this hardy old patch of seagrass will likely not survive."

Also check out this wondrous TED talk by artist Rachel Sussman, who is documenting the oldest living organisms and how they are under threat.

Magician Brian Brushwood recounts on his blog the tale of how Teller, the mute half of the magic duo Penn & Teller, sent him a lovely letter in reply to his own that changed his career for the better. It is so great that we have to share it with you, especially since we all know Derren has expressed his appreciation of Teller's magic often (for example in his book). You just know it's worth a read when the letter starts like this;

"My dear bastard son,

It is about time you wrote, my boy."

Read the whole story on this link and find Derren's own letter of advice to a young mentalist in the Svengali Brochure.

[image error]

Do take ten minutes out to watch the six video's on critical thinking below. A wonderfully soothing voice, combined with great graphics, teaches you the basics of logical thinking and the scientific method. May come in handy when talking with your intransigent science, logic and climate denying uncle. Just sit him down and make him watch. Also covers some of our innate brain-biases in the first episode.

[image error]

There are a few tickets still up for grabs at some of the venues for the final leg of the Svengali tour.

Derren's live shows are immensely popular and often sell out well in advance.

However, we have it on good authority that if you move with the swiftness of an oiled gazelle you stand a good chance of snatching up one of the last remaining tickets for Derren's mind-warping show.

We're telling you about it first because you're a blog reader and we do so love our blog readers.

So get cracking! Tickets are selling like hot cakes on a cold day and when they're gone; they're gone.

You can browse the list of venues over on the Svengali Tour page.

Best of luck!

[image error]

Remember when you were told to bow your head for prayers at the beginning/end of school assembly? Well, Bideford Town Council has just had a slap on the wrist for incorporating a similar ritual into their formal Coucil meetings:

A Devon town council acted unlawfully by allowing prayers to be said before meetings, the High Court has ruled.

Action was brought against Bideford Town Council by the National Secular Society (NSS) after atheist councillor Clive Bone complained.

Mr Justice Ouseley ruled the prayers were not lawful under section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972. However, he said prayers could be said as long as councillors were not formally summoned to attend.

The judgement was being seen as a test case which could affect local councils across England and Wales.

Mr Justice Ouseley ruled the prayers as practised by Bideford Town Council had been unlawful because there was no statutory power permitting them to continue.

The NSS, which said prayers had no place in "a secular environment concerned with civic business", argued the "inappropriate" ritual breached articles 9 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protect an individual's right to freedom of conscience and not to face discrimination.

The article goes on to include the reaction from the church-going members of the Council:

Anthony Inch, a Bideford town councillor and Torridge district councillor, said he hoped there would be an appeal leading to the ruling being overturned.

"I'm disgusted, surprised and saddened by the decision," he said.

Simon Calvert, of the Christian Institute, said: "We are pleased that the court has said the saying of prayers at meetings does not breach human rights laws.

"But it is bizarre that they should be declared unlawful because of the 1972 Local Government Act."

He added: "The judge's finding that the Local Government Act doesn't give local authorities power to include prayers as part of their formal meetings – we think that's extraordinary.

"I mean we're talking about a practice that goes back to the Elizabethan era"

Heaven knows, we could all do with a little more Elizabethan doctrine in our lives.

So what do you think; is the NSS just nitpicking and prayers should be part of the formalities of official Council business? Or should expressions of Faith be kept out of  official Government business?

Comment below…

You can read the full article over on BBC News