We feel your pain: Extreme empaths

"Evidence from pain synaesthetes would seem to lend some weight to the idea that the brain mirrors the physical aspects of pain, since it would make sense that their physical sensations would arise through some malfunctioning of this mirror system. "It is highly plausible that [sensitivity] for pain is common in all of us, and varies in response to seeing or thinking about another in pain, from tingling through to the actual perception of pain," says Bernadette Fitzgibbon at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.<br />
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There is, however, one key difference between pain synaesthesia and other types of hyper-empathy. Besides having a heightened sensitivity to another's pain, all the documented pain synaesthetes shared one other characteristic – they had all suffered traumatic pain before developing the condition. Many are amputees, and their phantom limb is the site of the pain they feel when faced with another's distress… "

Tagged with: neoroscience • empathy • mind • brain • pain • synaesthesia •

Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read – China Mieville

"This is not a list of the “best” fantasy or SF. There are huge numbers of superb works not on the list. Those below are chosen not just because of their quality—which though mostly good, is variable—but because the politics they embed (deliberately or not) are of particular interest to socialists. Of course, other works—by the same or other writers—could have been chosen: disagreement and alternative suggestions are welcomed. I change my own mind hour to hour on this anyway."

Tagged with: anarchism • philosophy • politics • socialism • sf • scifi • fantasy • literature • recommendations •

Entering The Wonderful World of Geo Location – Smashing Magazine

why is it important to consider physical location on this planet (at this moment) when we develop Web products? There are a few answers to this.<br />
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The first answer is mobility. The days of people sitting in front of desktop machines at home are over. Sales of mobile devices, laptops and netbooks have overtaken those of bulky stationary computers in the last few years. The power of processors now allows us to use smaller, more mobile hardware to perform the same tasks. So, if people use their hardware on the go, we should bring our systems to them. Which brings us to the second—very important—point: relevance.

Tagged with: geolocation • javascript • webdev • code • tutorial • locational • functionality •

The Blood-Red Pencil: Building Character

Fiction tips on building well-rounded characters.

Tagged with: writing • fiction • character • development • narrative • plot •

How Conceptual Metaphors are Stunting Web Innovation

"Central to all these programs of metaphor re-engineering is a recognition that the hyperlink is the basic building block of the web. Our conceptualization of the web still does not truly reflect its non-sequential, branching texture, created by hyperlinks.<br />
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We still haven’t truly understood that click and link are as fundamental today as read and write.<br />
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All in all, throwing off that burden is an immensely difficult task. It is much easier to create technology that conforms to dominant metaphors. What we need to do as we enter the third decade of the web, however, is consider what we want the web to be rather than awkwardly fitting that vision into older descriptive paradigms."

Tagged with: cyberspace • metaphor • conceptual • design • interface • language • technology •

Creating a Layar layer: a step by step tutorial

Alarmingly simple. As Chairman Bruce pointed out, this demystifies AR as a technology, as a method; that demystification emphasises the potentially massive social impact of this stuff becoming as ubiquitous and entry-level as running a CMS-based website.

Tagged with: AR • augmented-reality • Layar • tutorial • Android •

Free will is an illusion, biologist says

"Today, as researchers gain a better understanding of the molecular details underlying consciousness, some people think that we may discover a molecular mechanism responsible for free will – but Cashmore doesn’t think so. Such a discovery, he says, would require a new physical law that breaks the causal laws of nature. As it is, the only “wild card” that allows any room for maneuvering outside of genetics and one’s environment is the inherent uncertainty of the physical properties of matter, and even this stochastic element is beyond our conscious control. (However, it can help explain why identical twins growing up in the same environment are unique individuals.)"

Tagged with: biology • cognition • consciousness • ethics • free-will • philosophy • science • neuroscience •