Buddy Guy's Stratocaster

In honor of Buddy Guy's January shows at Legends here is his strat. I like the soft V neck, very comfortable to play. It has a little pre-amp, too, which means that it doesn't really solely on the power from the chord to power the awesome Lace sensor pickups. The switches are the usual, 5 positions, one for each pickup and then one for in between adjacent pickups for the weird strat twang. Hendrix used mostly the far left position for the middle pickup alone, but Mr. Guy moves his around a little more on the recordings. This guitar won't make you sound great, but it will make you sound better.

Paul Krugman Speaks at Google

Prof. Krugman tells us his take on the mortgage meltdown. It's over an hour long, but it's a good start for an understanding of what is hitting the markets now. Like this huge hit to Bear Stearns. Or Morgan Stanley selling themselves to the Chinese for $5 billion after a $9.4 billion loss. Unfortunately, that still leaves $4.4 billion after selling themselves to a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. Ouch.

H/T Calculated Risk.

Paul Krugman Hits Another One Out of the Park

I mean, this guy has Obama's number to the point that it's almost embarrassing. It should be clear by now that John Edwards has it right, no one is going to give their power away at the bargaining table. The people will need to take it from them. Here is a link to the article in the NYT, it is currently featuring a video of John Edwards.

IMHO, after 8 years of incompetence and malfeasance including outing a CIA operative working on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the politicization of the Justice Department the next president will not have it easy. All the entrenched political operatives from the Bush administration need to be removed since they will stand in the way of any change. They will not go quietly.

Updated: for link to Edwards article.

Aspirin Does Not Help to Prevent Cancer

Apparently medical research has found it of no real benefit in preventing cancer, except, surprisingly, lung cancer. Apparently no one doubts the real benefits against heart disease. Let's face it, the best way to prevent cancer is to eat right, exercise, and see you Dr. regularly, but taking a little pill is so much easier!

The Obama Dustup

Or I guess the English would say that it's a 'row'. Now, this 'oppo research' thing holds no real significance. I'm sure that every campaign looks into people who can have a harmful effect. Who cares if they did or didn't?

It seems that the real meat here, and what reveals more centers around the response that the Obama campaign directed towards Paul Krugman. They even have a little post on their website to check the facts for us about it. But if you click through to the original Krugman articles you will find that the fact checks don't give you all the facts. You can read the three Krugman articles here, here, and here.

If you read the original articles you will see that Krugman was never that taken with Obama's plan, but he thought it should be praised as a step in the right direction. The issue here is whether or not people will be required to sign up for the health insurance. Krugman argues the technocrat position that it would work better if they did, and Obama says that it would be more difficult to pass the legislation with that mandate. Yawn. Instead of responding to Krugman's claims about the best way to provide universal health insurance, the Obama campaign selectively quotes the good things that he says and then pretends that Krugman has suddenly changed his mind on Obama's plan. He hasn't, and saying so shows bad faith on their part.

Worse, the campaign remains strangely silent about the more damning issue of how Obama has run his campaign and attacked his Democratic opponents with the same right-wing straw men that will be used against his plan - if he ever gets the chance to put it into action. So for a short term advantage in the primary he sinks his own health care plan's future. Maybe Obama's plan really is a 'me too' plan and not his first priority. But if implementing policy is not the first priority, what is?

Shining Clouds

This is a pretty scary but cool new phenomenon. The money quote is

"It is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or what it means," stated AIM principal investigator James Russell III of Hampton University, Hampton, Va. "These observations suggest a connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could represent an early warning that our Earth environment is being changed."

Whoops, we broke the sky. Now who's going to fix it?

Home WiFi at Last

I finally, finally got WiFi at home, so now I will be able to post a little more often.

Movie Review: Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten

I remember the day that Joe Strummer got fired from The Clash 'because he wasn't political enough'. I was stunned, because I thought that Joe was The Clash. Sure, Train in Vain was a love song, but most of the time he was aggressively political.

I saw this film at the Music Box as part of a Sound Opinions evening (and BTW those two guys aren't as tall as they sound on the radio). The first 30 minutes or so really, really sucked. They kept cutting from picture to picture, but didn't stay long enough on any one picture for you to get a good idea of the image. I hated it and I swear I was about to walk out of a movie for about the third time in my life, but I really wanted to see what happened when he joined the Clash so I decided to stay. Thankfully, the movie got a lot better. They had some really interesting interviews, though there was a campfire motif that they didn't explain until much later. The film really humanized Joe, and though it presented him as a bit of a prick, he really seemed to redeem himself as he got older. I suppose that's the part that I really found more disappointing - they could have presented a little more depth on how he grew as a person and recovered after getting fired from The Clash. While I liked this movie, it was like watching two different films.

Why I Can't Support Barack Obama in the Democratic Primary

I am sure that his heart is in the right place and that his stand on the issues are solid, but the man seems more committed to playing nice with his Senate buddies like Joe Lieberman than standing up for core Democratic values. On this issue the Republicans are not interested in compromise, they are interested in sinking Social Security, the very core of the New Deal. Republicans understand power and discipline, and they won't give an inch that you don't drive them back. It makes no sense to compromise on an issue when there's no problem, political or fiscal. You would think that a Senator with such a healthy approval rating would take a few more risks.

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Why I Can't Support Hillary in the Democratic Primary

She equivocates too much, she doesn't step up and say 'this is my position and this is why'. On this particular issue she was for it before she was against it. Go ahead, parse this phraseology - it might not actually be a change in position, unless it is. This just reinforces the impression that she won't come clean on the issues before it's safe to do so. I understand the motivation, but whatever it is, it's not leadership.

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Kerik Indicted

Yes, I'm sure that if this man had become Director of Homeland Security justice would still have been done. What a fine judge of character all these powerful men turn out to be. Why, I remember this like it was yesterday.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I will answer the question. I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue.

Santana - Musician's Corner - Red Guitar

The man has been a great player a long time and at this point in his career has absolutely exquisite taste. Everything that he plays is just spot on, not too much and not too little and the rest of us can only hope to approack that level. While he could make anything sound good, here is a page on Carlos Santana'sRed Guitar. Sorry for the poor image quality.

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Environmental Actions?

This is my post to participate in Blog Action Day. I just wonder how it is that a position a vast majority of people accept can be completely sidelined? Future generations will not forgive us for what we've done so far and they won't understand why we who lived through these times didn't do more. Actually, they will understand because selfishness and shortsightedness are timeless and they will indict us for our flaws. Writing about this in a blog no one reads won't solve the problem, we must all work to do our part to decrease our carbon footprint and vote our consciences on this issue.

If the bus is headed in the wrong direction, it's the fault of the passengers

I guess leadership includes haranguing those who aren't following, which at this point is almost everyone. I think the first part I disagree with is the 'solid economy'. For most people this economy is built on sand, if anything happens and they lose their jobs or get sick they are looking at a very difficult future where they can't get back to where they started from. Sure, the yuppies in the major cities will find something even if it's not as good, but those people living in the small town Midwest don't have as many options. Jobs are moving towards the cities, and people are moving with them. Even for those of us who live in the city watching our coworkers get laid off and new projects getting outsourced to Viet Nam, Thailand, and China makes us think twice. Sometimes people cry xenophobia when you mention this, but it's not true. I have lived in these places and I am not afraid of these people or their culture. A lot uncertainty exists today for people who have to work for a living. But those people who live off their dividends benefit greatly from the decreased cost and in fact have never done better. So the economy is great for the top 1%, but for the rest of us, not so much. I guess W's idea of leadership is 'The rich are doing great, and if you're not happy for them you're a weenie who doesn't believe in free markets". Is it any wonder that people ignore him?

I, for one, welcome our new economic overlords

I guess that the Republicans thought that the Chinese would be our major competitors in the 21st century. Remember when they sent a spy plane to provoke an international incident? When they were forced to realign their priorities and started borrowing money like mad, who did they borrow it from? That's right, the Chinese. Now that they have a ton of our money they're going to start throwing it around. It's a little tough for us to throw our weight around diplomatically with our number one creditor. We cannot sustain a trade deficit forever. The deficit can be fixed or neutralized so it's not a problem, I just don't think the current powers that be capable of the finesse that requires.

gPhone Coming Soon?

It looks like Google is diligently doing it's part to change the cell phone business completely. Yes, Apple's iPhone has a ground breaking interface, but it's the same business model. Google might take things in an exciting and totally new direction.

Roger Ebert Blogging

This is a photo of Mr. Ebert and his wife Chaz while he was on stage accepting an award acknowledging his contributions to the film industry. I was sitting pretty far away, as you can see. Good thing they had him on the big screen or you wouldn't know it was him. We should acknowledge his courage dealing with his illness, too. It's not easy for anyone and he's really shown a lot of class. Thanks for showing us how it's done.

Film Review: Sankara

Last night a friend and I saw the film Sankara at the Chicago International Film Festival. I thought the description of the film opened up a lot of possibilities for intrigue and moral conflict. Especially a monk tempted by the pleasures of the flesh while restoring a Buddhist morality tale in a mural about the self destruction inherent in the ephemera of sensuality. It started off as you'd expect, and then became really sensual. The sound really highlighted the tactile senses through the pouring a water (a symbol of life, love, and regeneration), the sound of fingers on a rough wall, or an extreme close up of sweat on skin. I thought they could have thrown some food for the smell and some music, too, but in the beginning I had a lot of hope that we would see something rich and strange. Unfortunately, the movie went no further in sensuality, conflict, or in any direction at all. There was no plot and no intrigue.

For conflict to exist in some kind of interpersonal intrigue there must be dialog. No conversation took place in this film and no relationships unfolded; people just spoke off camera or said their piece to lecture us all. The lack of movement kept on and on and on and I got really bored. I did not hate this movie, but I wish I had instead taken a chance on a different film. Give this one a miss and try another one.

Unnecessary Roughness

What do you do with people who use abuse as a strategy in life? I encountered it often working in the financial markets and saw it again the other day when I was doing my errands and I was surprised to get treated that way by someone who I had never met. I was trying to have a phone conversation about business and he edged up to an inch away from dropping the F-bomb before I had said a word to him. From my perspective it was totally uncalled for and inappropriate. It's hard to talk to people like that and bring them back from the brink. Usually people train staff to handle customers, but that requires some loss of control, and some find it impossible to give up any control at all.

Self righteous indignation and self aggrandizement poses an attractive nuisance to us all, me included. But while everyone is susceptible, I have found that people who are in fields where they make a lot of money particularly so. Some of those outwardly successful people did it to salve their ego by making a lot of money. Some people just can't get along with others, others like to boss people around.

As a teenager dreams of being a star after walking out of a room of people who just weren't impressed enough, people want people to value them according to their need even if that means grabbing them by the collar, shaking them up, and taking from them the respect they did not give. One way is stunning people by being famous, beautiful, or rich. That's not going to work all the time, but it will work enough that you won't care when it fails.

From my experience with very, very wealthy people I have found that even after some of them made a lot of money it didn't help. After you pay your bills having lots of money is just an idea in your head but that doesn't change how small you feel. For that you need people around you to change their behavior, and not everyone is impressed by a lot of money. You can either stun them with your flash (which unfortunately requires spending) or take control of something they need. "I own it. I am the boss. I am in charge."

I don't mean to insult people who go out and make a living on their own or start a business. Lots of very talented people work very hard to build their business from scratch. There are jerks everywhere, but a certain kind needs to run their own business.

Housing Numbers Not Looking Good

It seems that August was not a good month for new home sales, and sales usually drop off around the holidays, anyway. Sure, Wall Street rallies because they think that the Fed will ease, make credit cheap, and everyone will be happy. I'm not sure that will help on Main Street where people can't pay their new ARM adjusted mortgages. Worse, if the Fed lets inflation get out of control it will make long term rates go up and mortgages more expensive. That won't be good for housing. I'm not pessimistic, but when walking a fine line you need to keep your eyes on the risks.

L'Ecole Number 41 Merlot, 2004

I have to recommend this wine. It's not really cheap, but Merlot has been suffereing from the Sideways effect where Miles screamed how much he hated it. these are my tasting notes:

Dark red with an orange edge. Creamy scent of cherries and cream. Taste of cherries and ripe blackberries with good tannins and structure.

This bottle is worth your $25 - $30.

Gibson J-45 Rosewood

The Gibson J-45 is considered the workhorse acoustic guitar. It's reputation is as a good, solid instrument for professionals. The Rosewood back and sides in this model adds a darker sound. Brazilian rosewood for the back and sides is considered the premier wood for guitar construction. It costs about $2400, so it's probably made from Indian rosewood. It doesn't really look all that spectacular, but it sure sounds nice.

More gPhone Blogging

How did I miss this? Google seems to have purchased a pretty cool cell phone company back in July. It looks like it has some pretty cool features just like the iPhone. Check it out.

Gibson Flying V

In honor of my buddy Dan here is the Gibson Flying V. It is named for obvious reasons and was first issued in 1957. In spite of the killer tone and light weight it didn't sell well at first because it's shape just freaked people out. They just weren't used to seeing something so unusual. Albert King was one of the first people to play one and after the British Invasion guys started using them to copy him it became cool. It was reissued in the late 60's and has been in production ever since. It's a great candidate for a larger size guitar because the body doesn't have much material. Check this one out! Gibson has not stopped the unusual shapes, check out the reverse Flying V!

How Can Swarm Intelligence Turn Into Mass Stupidity?

Here is a cool article on Swarm Intelligence in National Geographic Magazine. In a nutshell, swarm intelligence is a process for making decisions that doesn't have a centralized control mechanism. The effect from these mass actions are called emergent; they arise out of the sum total of the interactions of the agents as a side effect of the individual agents independent actions. The emergent consequences are not the goal of those individual actions but rather the individuals collectively cause an unintended side effect.

It is extremely important for the system that these actions are taken without centralized control or even centralized information. Of course there must be communication, but it can't be centrally controlled. Ants, bees and other social insects use it to a large extent in their decision making process.

I covered swarm intelligence in markets here. A good example is the stock market. At any time, the collective intelligence of the world has processed all the given information and determined a price for the stock. The stock could be going up today so today's seller is wrong from your perspective, but the seller could be hedging or rebalancing their portfolio; each individual must make their own determination of the stock's value through the price. The problem that can occur is that the market may lose the swarm characteristics that ensure correct pricing and cause a bubble or other imbalance.

There is one very crucial part of the definition that I don't think gets enough notice. For the swarm magic to happen

the system has to reach a combined threshold of diversity, organization, and connectivity before emergent behavior appears.

It the tension between connectivity, organization and independence of individual actors that causes the great benefits, but if that balance is thrown off, the market no longer prices correctly. Lots of things can disrupt the works. It's obvious that if the world is in a state of chaos there can be no market and that the ordering of society in general has to allow people to come together and buy and sell safely. Bad actors must be punished to protect the market from fraud. Connectivity can be face to face or over the internet. People have known this for ages but have long missed the hidden role diversity plays in supporting the whole structure. By diversity I mean independent individuals making decisions for their own reasons. During bubbles in particular this mechanism can break down.

Benefits of Swarm Intelligence

1. great algorithm for decision making using many simple nodes. Simple nodes are easier to make and organizing those nodes is easier than creating more complicated nodes.
2. on average extremely effective - makes reasonable decisions most of the time.
3. If you are the individual whose risk pays off then you benefit greatly from the risk.

Drawbacks

1. Local Minima. If the coverage of the swarm is too small, it can be deceived by what looks like the correct answer locally, but is not the correct answer overall.
2. Sucks for wrong individuals. If you are the individual who has to pay the price of failure then the system did not work for you. The system falls apart when nodes go along with the swarm instead of doing the hard work of determining their individual path.

There are many reasons why people might not pull their weight.

1. Fear of taking responsibility - scared to take a risk and pay the price.
2. Lazy. 'Nuff said.
3. Deference to perceived authority
4. Going along with the crowd
5. The Bigger Idiot theory. The idea that someone else will come along and make the same mistake you did, except worse, and so save you from your own stupidity. So if, for example, you pay too much for a big house you and figure that can sell it to to the next sucker that walks down the street. Of course, only the biggest idiot actually believes in this theory.

This is the bubble mentality that we've seen lately in the Tech stocks and now the housing market. People acting like they couldn't lose money and just buying stuff without thinking about it or even knowing anything. The swarm turned into a crowd, and we all know how stupid crowds can be.

Updated to add the Bigger Idiot theory.

Housing Crash Goes Mainstream

This whole crash has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and it's gotten to the point now where it's in a major publication like Newsweek. What will that do to consumer confidence as the magnitude of the problem seeps into public consciousness?

If you have some schadenfreude you can click through and see that in LA the hit might eventually be in 6 figures. Who's going to jump in front of that freight train? Most places don't have incredibly wealthy residents and geographical limitations that the "superstar cities like New York and San Francisco" have. Manhattan isn't getting any bigger. It remains to be seen how badly this will hurt the rest of the economy, but the real trick is where to invest while everything is hitting the fan. In the worst case scenario, we have to unwind not only the housing bubble, but the dot com bubble, too, and nothing will be a safe haven.

Gazing Into the Abyss

This article is a very interesting look into the economic thinking behind the Fascism of the Nazis. Scary and fascinating, and that's just the review. Perhaps I should add the book to the reading pile when I spend my B&N gift card. Via Brad DeLong.

Emergent Properties of Markets

I have been meaning to write a post on emergent properties of free markets, but haven't had the time. This is an article by Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society: Library of Economics and Liberty, and it is an excellent explanation of what we all probably know already. In brief, the emergent properties of markets are the fancypants name of the 'invisible hand' of Adam Smith. The term 'emergent' and the related math formulas have since been discovered to describe the phenomenon more clearly.

One of the key paragraphs is H22:

The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement.

The emergent property of a market is price, and through price we individually determine usefulness. The trick is that we are the only ones who know how useful things are to us. In paragraph H30:

The problem is thus in no way solved if we can show that all the facts, if they were known to a single mind (as we hypothetically assume them to be given to the observing economist), would uniquely determine the solution; instead we must show how a solution is produced by the interactions of people each of whom possesses only partial knowledge. To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind in the same manner in which we assume it to be given to us as the explaining economists is to assume the problem away and to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world.

That determination is made through a 'feeling' or some other simplified heuristic device. What we almost never do is think through the math of how much value this purchase will add versus it's cost. It's remarkable that anyone ever thought doing these calculations through a central intelligence would be possible, or even desirable.

The more rigorous definitions of how the market mechanism actually works delineates more clearly when markets fail.

Grove Street Cabernet 2001

Here is a fairly priced bottle of decent cabernet. Here are my tasting notes:

Grove Street, Alexander Valley, Cabernet Sauvignon, 2001 $17 Deep dark purple. Taste of plums and black currant with a nice oakiness. Tannins are smooth and not overpowering. 90

It's already better than it was when I first got it a few months ago. It night not stand up for the next 20 years, but who wants to cellar a wine for that long, anyway? I bought a case because I think that as the tannins smooth out over time the fruit will just get better. If you can find some, you might want to pick some up.

Allman Brothers!

No further introduction needed I'm sure. Sorry for the sucky picture, but we didn't have front row seats by any stretch. It was a cool concert last night at the Rosemont Theater near O'Hare. It was really a very jam oriented set, I guess Greg's voice got tired. They sell recordings of the concert that you can pick up after the show if you want to wait it line. For an extra 3 bucks you can just have them send it to you, which is what I did. You can see the set list here The main surprise for me was Into the Mystic by Van Morrison. I would never have guessed that was on tap.

National Guitar Style O

What most people think about is the Style O that Mark Knopfler had on the album cover of "Brothers in Arms". Mark says "it's like an old movie, cheesy but cool". As far as playing it is concerned he says "since you can't bend the strings you have to think of other things to do, so the beauty actually comes from the guitars limitations". Well, that and the engraving of Hawaii sand blasted onto it.

These instruments were resonator guitars with a metal alloy amplifier inside that looks like a tin pie dish. They and were not cheap when they were new. $65 was a lot of money in 1930, equivalent to about $775! Production standards were quite loose in the factory, so quality varied extremely widely between individuals. Here especially you have to play it before buying it to know what it's worth. They were originally used in the Hawaian music craze (and I'm not just trying to justify the engraving) but they were loud enough for Jazz guys to fight off those crazy horn players. Standard acoustic guitars were not audible in a big band concert and of course electric guitars hadn't been invented yet, so these gave them a fighting chance. Sounds great with acoustic blues, though. They were played by some successful Blues guys like Son House and Tampa Red, but were just too expensive to be a realistic alternative for most musicians living in the Delta.

They're back in Production here at National. I don't know anything about how the new guitars sound. Here are more details on the old ones.

Pushing on the String

Professor DeLong thinks that the Fed is doing the right thing by cutting interest rates. I think that it's a good idea to provide a little liquidity in a tight time and it will certainly help out the financial markets. But this is just more of the same and it's why some people accuse the Fed of creating bubbles in the first place.

After the dot com bubble burst interest rates remained at all time lows. This helped push up the price of housing because what people care about is the size of their payment, not the price they're paying for the house. With long term rates all the way down at 5.0% you can afford a lot more house than you can at 8.1%. Everyone started making money hand over fist - brokers, owners, bankers, furniture salesmen - everyone. Some people started to speculate and flip and others built more houses to sell to people. These people borrowed money for the house and all the stuff in it.

2/3 of the economy is consumer spending. But if consumer debt is at an all time high (as the article states "Household spending grew considerably faster than incomes from the early 1990s to 2006" ) and people's housing ATM has run dry, how are we going to continue spending? If we all already had to borrow to spend previously, where will the money come from now? Sooner or later the party is over and the credit card bills have to get paid, and we all know that Monday morning is not fun. If we're lucky we will escape recession, but the Fed might be powerless to stop it.

I believe the Keynesian solution to a lack of sufficient spending by consumers and businesses is to run deficits. But we've already got huge deficits and we're borrowing the money from foreign central banks. Will we run deficits even bigger?

iPhone vs. gPhone

It seems that the iPhone isn't the world beater that people thought it would be. Though it did change the paradigm, the sales have been underwhelming. The interface is cutting edge, but it doesn't have a lot of the functionality that my 7 year old phone had like auto-answer or voice dialing. For use in the car it really needs an auto-answer capability. The coverage from AT&T is spotty; it will tell you that you've got a good signal - but you can't make a call. Worse your calls go to voice mail with no warning. The email interface is pretty bare bones, and emails sent from the iPhone show up as new emails. It's a hassle getting all the stuff you don't want out of your way.

So now the rumors have started about the gPhone. I love GMail because tagging emails is a great idea because you can get them out of your way and then save them forever. All Google's applications like Maps are already networked. Frankly they can probably give the iPhone a real run for their money if they concentrate on phone functionality. If the gPhone can use a faster network than AT&T is using it would be that much better. Could they be using VOIP? gPhone with Skype would be awesome.

Gibson ES-335

Here is another great Gibson guitar. This is a classic that has been in continuous production since 1958, when it was introduced. Everyone has played it, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Warren Haynes, Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown. Hendrix had one, and so did Duane Allman.

But it's not just jazz and blues guys; the great thing about this guitar is the versatility. People have used it for all kinds of styles because they can make it sound like what they want. the secret of this guitar is the fact that while it has tone like a hollow body, the sustain lasts like a solid body because there is a chunk of wood underneath the strings and that keeps the energy from dissipating into the body. It's distinguished by its smooth sound no matter what style you're playing. You can listen to samples on the Gibson web site. You can go from a jazzy sound to something a little rougher.

What's more surprising is that they can be had for less than $2,000.

Exercise Helps More Than You Think

Everyone knows that exercise is crucial for physical health. The benefits that can accrue after only 30 minutes, 3 times a week are so large that there is no excuse not to do something - anything. Except, of course, for my favorite excuse of laziness. In this New York Times article It seems that the evidence is mounting that exercise contributes directly to beneficial physical changes in our brains.

This theory emerged from those mouse studies at the Salk Institute. After conducting maze tests, the neuroscientist Fred H. Gage and his colleagues examined brain samples from the mice. Conventional wisdom had long held that animal (and human) brains weren’t malleable: after a brief window early in life, the brain could no longer grow or renew itself. The supply of neurons — the brain cells that enable us to think — was believed to be fixed almost from birth. As the cells died through aging, mental function declined. The damage couldn’t be staved off or repaired.

All of the mice showed this vivid proof of what’s known as “neurogenesis,” or the creation of new neurons. But the brains of the athletic mice in particular showed many more. These mice, the ones that scampered on running wheels, were producing two to three times as many new neurons as the mice that didn’t exercise.

Gage’s discovery hit the world of neurological research like a thunderclap. Since then, scientists have been finding more evidence that the human brain is not only capable of renewing itself but that exercise speeds the process.

“We’ve always known that our brains control our behavior,” Gage says, “but not that our behavior could control and change the structure of our brains.”

It's interesting to read the whole article.

Blog Post of the Year So Far...

Over at the Huffington Post David Reese puts down the first rate snark on Cormac Ignatieff's "The Road". "bong-poster koans". Bwa ha ha.

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Mind Hacks Points to More Ways to Program Your Wetware

Excellent BBC Brain Story series available online:

I've just noticed that probably one of the best TV series on psychology and neuroscience ever produced, the BBC's Brain Story, is available on public bittorrent servers for download.

It is a six part series covering virtually every area of contemporary neuropsychology, including the major researchers, discoveries, techniques and even many of the patients who have been the subjects of classic case studies that have helped us understand the curious effects of brain injury.

You can click on the blog's links if you have Bit Torrent installed.

Mavis Staples Live in Chicago Sunday, Aug. 12

An icon of the Soul and R&B world has released a really good new album. She has a web site here: MavisStaples.com with a video of her song Eyes On The Prize. She has earned some serious cred over the years, and surprisingly enough we need her now more than ever. She will be playing for free in Millenium Park. I paid to see her at Ravinia last year, definitely a great show for free!

Blonde Redhead

I just wanted to recommend the new Blonde Redhead album 23. It's so rare that you hit upon an album where you like almost every single song and of the 10 songs on this CD I really like the first 9. Think about how convenient that is when in the CD Player! I don't know if these are the kinds of song that you find yourself singing in the shower the next day, but when you play them and then do something else you find yourself stopping and saying, 'hey, that's pretty good'. It slowly pulls you in to its web, and then you're hooked. You can see Videos by Mike Mills online. Check it out!

Gibson Custom Shop 57 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue

Ah yes, here it is, the first thing that I buy with my lottery winnings. For $3,500 it is really only for lottery winners since I can't believe that anyone is going to use this thing to play out in a bar. The great thing about the reissues is that you know that the 50 idiots who owned it before you didn't trash it. You can, of course, buy them pre-aged, but why you would pay extra to have someone grind down your frets I have no idea. Some people swear by guitars that have been aged but that is because they think the pickups sound better, not because the frets are shot. The one thing that I am not sure about in these reissues is the neck profile. The neck seems to be a lot thicker than modern Gibsons and I'm not sure if I like that or not. I will have to play one for a few hours straight to find out. Once that happens I'll tell you just as soon as I get the silly grin off my face. Here is the marketing blurb. Anyone who buys an instrument without actually playing it deserves what they get. As usual, any use of a web site does not constitute an endorsement of that site.

Custom Shop quality in a classic reissue!

The '57 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue Electric Guitar is the quintessential Les Paul at its finest. It's Custom Shop crafted to be accurate to '57 specifications in every detail including the CTS pots and bumblebee capacitors. It was the first Paul to feature humbucking pickups, and this one comes equipped with BurstBuckers. Carved maple top, mahogany back, and one-piece mahogany neck with the '57 profile and the original extended tenon joint. It features binding on body and neck, nickel hardware, an original ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge, and the trademark antique gold finish. Includes Gibson Custom Shop hardshell case.

Gibson Custom Shop 57 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue Electric Guitar Features:

• Accurate to '57 specifications in every detail
• CTS pots and bumblebee capacitors
• BurstBucker humbuckers
• Carved maple top
• Mahogany back
• One-piece mahogany neck with the '57 profile and the original extended tenon joint
• Binding on body and neck
• Nickel hardware
• Original ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge
• Trademark antique gold finish
• Includes Gibson Custom Shop hardshell case

Gibson Custom Shop 57 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue Electric Guitar Includes:

• Gibson hardshell case

First Post!

Hi, thanks for reading my blog. I just wanted to get this started by explaining what I'm doing this for and a few of the things that I am planning to write about. Who I am will become evident through the posts, so I will spare you any exposition. I am writing for my own pleasure about things that interest me and maybe interest you, too. I want to use overall tags for the topic and add more specific tags for the subject. I like Wine, Women, and Song. I want to alert people to any good wines that I encounter, especially red wines since that's what I drink most of tagged Wine. There are other places on the web you can look at women, so I don't think I'll spend a lot of time on that. I plan a feature of Guitar of the Week, where I will write about something that catches my guitar lust and will be tagged Guitars. I also plan to post on Music I like, tagged Music with a sub-genre like concerts, Rock, Blues, and so forth. We live in interesting times, partly I think because as the falcon cannot hear the falconer he spins more out of control. I will try to keep discussion of larger problems to a minimum, and I will tag those Politics. Mostly, though, I will stick with lighter fare. Please let give me feedback in comments, but all obscene or abusive comments will be deleted. Any use of a web site does not constitute an endorsement of that site. Caveat emptor! No Spam!