Links for June 15, 2007

(this post was written by Kyle on June 15, 2007, and it concerns & & & & & & & )

Updated 1:45 p.m.

  • 20 Ways to Get and Stay Happy:
    “As experts gather for the International Conference on Happiness, TIME looks at proven ways to find more joy in life.”
  • The Unspeakable: Buried Alive in Your Own Skull
    “Science published a report on a young woman devastated by a car crash in England. For five months after the accident, tests showed no signs of awareness. Doctors declared her vegetative. Then, scientists put her in a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner, which tracks blood flow to different parts of the brain. They asked her to imagine playing tennis and walking through her home. The scan lit up with telltale patterns of language, movement, and navigation indistinguishable from the brains of healthy people. Something was awake inside that woman’s skull. Without the scanner, no one but her would have known.”
  • Americans Unready to Revolt, Despite Revolting Conditions:
    “Part of the genius of our contemporary ruling class elites is that they have engineering a state of political and economic oppression that paradoxically is still embraced by the Lower Class. The rational way to understand this is that ordinary, oppressed Americans are in a deep psychological state of self-delusion. Despite all the empirical, objective evidence of a failed government, they fail to see rebellion opportunities. Many still believe they live in the world’s best democracy. But across all elections considerably less than half the citizens even bother to vote anymore. Yet, as the new NBC/Journal poll results show, people are cognitively aware of just how awful the political-economic system is. Yet they are not feeling enough pain to seriously consider rebellion. And it is visceral pain that must drive people to the daring act of rebellion.”
  • Pentagon: Iraqi violence still rising:
    “Violence in Iraq, as measured by casualties among troops and civilians, has edged higher despite the U.S.-led security push in Baghdad, the Pentagon told Congress on Wednesday…Overall, however, the report said it was too soon to judge whether the security crackdown was working.”
  • Details & Screenshots of SimCity Societies:
    “While building your potential hub of the next global superpower, you’ll have the new factor of “social energies” to consider, and how you set up your city to manipulate these will dictate the sort of place it is to live in. Depending on how you juggle social factors such as industry, wealth, obediance, knowledge, devotion and creativity within your building schemes, you will have the ability to generate or consume social energy as you see fit, ensuring that your citizens either skip merrily along with the sparkly-eyed, optimistic gait of 1950s sitcom characters, or trudge meaninglessly through a miserable Orwellian nightmare, existing only to serve the state….There’s definitely something in the idea of a SimCity game forcing the player to find new ways of making money, once the legion of stoner hippies they’ve created decides to sit around eating cookies intead of going to work.”