Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Vasily Kandinsky

I woke up this morning to find the not uncommon mountain phenomenon of being inside a cloud. Virginia’s Blue Ridge can have pretty dramatic weather changes. So instead of the vibrant Fall colors outside my study window, there’s the opportunity to think about painters–and Vasily Kandinsky is my favorite. A retrospective of his work just opened at the Guggenheim in New York. Here’s a preview at Newsweek.

Enjoy. I hope to make it up to NYC to see the real deal very soon.
Jim

Faculty meeting and then headed for the mountains

I’ve been invited today to deliver some comments and do a Q&A by the Institute faculty. After that, I’m headed off to our mountain house for the weekend. While I’m there, I’m going to continue working on a course for next semester on hippocampal function. Interestingly, while much has been written over the years about the mammalian hippocampus, the evidence for what its current function is (in humans) remains somewhat unclear. It most certainly isn’t the “memory” center of the brain, although it pretty clearly plays some important role in mnemonic neurobiology. But it certainly is an aesthetically striking structure, so much so, that it practically pleaded for a functional explanation as soon as it was examined and described histologically by Cajal and his contemporaries. It is also extraordinarily well-embedded in the brain’s system of network connections. So well-embedded in fact that one might devise many “just-so” stories for hippocampal function and seem to be quite reasonable.

Jim

Game theory on steroids

Nicholas Thompson’s article in Wired Magazine on a legacy Soviet-era doomsday machine called Perimeter.

Money quote:

The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn’t matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.



Lunch with Tyler

I had lunch with my colleague (also famous blogger) Tyler Cowen today at a new Indian place in Fairfax. Our conversation drifted all over the map –from the economic crisis to health care to what higher education might actually look like 10-15 years from now.

We also talked about what other countries might be reasonable to live in for academic types such as ourselves if, as seems perhaps less likely now, economic Armageddon ensues. Tyler liked both Mexico and Thailand (the assumptions here are perhaps $40K/year–not the $10M that Tyler was talking about a while ago in his blog–i.e. reality). I mentioned the Netherlands because of their superb and stable social welfare system, but Tyler was quick to disabuse me of that idea–if the US goes, Western Europe will most assuredly go also. Forget “decoupling”.
But, if you consider decoupling, well then Brazil begins to look pretty good according to Tyler (and I agree with him). They make all their own food. They are essentially energy independent, and they don’t do a lot of trade with either the U.S. or China. So they would probably be able to continue, although they would be much poorer.
Well, in that case, I’d definitely chose Sao Paolo, the Los Angeles of Brazil. The only problem with that pointed out Tyler, is that the housing costs would pretty much be the same as here in DC–not really possible on $40K a year.
So I ask you, dear reader–what country would you chose, in case the U.S. goes broke?
Jim

Beyond the NIH Payline….

Many loyal readers know that as an NIH alum, I’m always interested in the latest from my former agency. Here’s a very interesting report on grants that are funded in spite not quite making the mark at peer-review.

Money quote:

The bottom line–at least 19% of NIH’s basic research portfolio is funded for reasons that go beyond quality–may stoke simmering concerns about the agency’s policy that favors young investigators.

Back from Berlin


I’m back from a very exciting Decade of the Mind meeting in Berlin Germany. The overall quality of the talks was really excellent and I believe we have the beginnings of a real significant European effort to compliment the Projects here in the US and the nascent one in Asia (more on Asia soon).

In the meantime, I’m getting ready to give the introduction to the first seminar of the Institute’s 19th year and preparing for my own seminar on the state of the Institute next week.
Jim

Where’s the Change We Can Believe In?

ScienceInsider slams the Obama Administration here for not releasing science policy reviews such as the NASA manned space flight review headed by Norman Augustine.

Money quote:

The so-called Augustine report is the latest in a series of analyses of pressing issues affecting the research community—scientific integrity and biosecurity being the others—that the Obama Administration has chosen to keep under wraps. The pattern of asking experts to study an issue and then not disclosing their recommendations seems at odds with the repeated promises of President Barack Obama to maintain a culture of openness in government.