GANDIGIRI=SATYAGRAHA=YPU HAVE TO BE THE CHANGE

////////////////////////FSTIVAL TRROR

/////////////////////Today is Oct 12, 2007.Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.~Unknown~

/////////////////Some like it hot
How boomers' failing taste buds are shaping the future of American food
By Sacha Pfeiffer October 7, 2007
ANYONE WHO HAS browsed a supermarket in the last few years can't help but notice the shelves are practically bursting into flames. Spicy Guacamole Pringles. Tyson Hot 'n' Spicy Buffalo Style Chicken Chunks. Mo Hotta Mo Betta Cayenne Garlic Hot Sauce.
Article Tools
Printer friendly
Single page
E-mail to a friend
Ideas RSS feed
Available RSS feeds
Most e-mailed
Reprints & Licensing
Share on Digg
Share on Facebook
Save this article
powered by Del.icio.us
More:
Ideas section
Globe front page
Boston.com
Sign up for:
Globe Headlines e-mail
Breaking News Alerts
Restaurants are no different. McDonald's has its Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap; Friday's has its Wicked Wings. The spice-driven cooking of India, Thailand, and Sichuan China is responsible for a growing percentage of American takeout dollars every year. It's clear that Americans have developed an addiction to food with sinus-clearing pizzazz.
Why is hot so hot? The conventional explanation is that the nation has an increasingly adventurous palate. Immigration and prosperity have made Americans more sophisticated eaters, pushing wasabi peas into the mainstream, along with chili-Thai lime cashews, cayenne chocolate bars, and other high-octane combinations.
But some food scientists and market researchers think there is a more surprising reason for the broad nationwide shift toward bolder flavors: The baby boomers, that huge, youth-chasing, all-important demographic, are getting old. As they age, they are losing their ability to taste - and turning to spicier, higher-flavor foods to overcome their dulled senses.
Chiefly because of degenerating olfactory nerves, most aging people experience a diminished sense of taste, whether they realize it or not. But unlike previous generations, the nation's 80 million boomers have broad appetites, a full set of teeth, and the spending power to shape the entire food market.

///////////////////Review - The Lucifer EffectUnderstanding How Good People Turn Evilby Philip ZimbardoRandom House, 2007Review by J. Jeremy Wisnewski, Ph.D.Oct 9th 2007 (Volume 11, Issue 41)
Philip Zimbardo, unlike so many people in the world, has a fame that he deserves. He is the mind behind the famous Stanford Prison Experiment--a prison simulation that provides a good deal of evidence for the view that action depends more on situational variables than it does on individual dispositions. In this fascinating experiment, we learn that the individual characteristics of a person will not help us much in predicting their actions. You might think that a self-described 'pacifist' would never think of force-feeding someone. You might think that someone who is intelligent, and generally perceived to be a nice guy, would not engage in systematic acts of degradation and cruelty. On both counts (and many more), as the Stanford Prison Experiment famously shows, you'd be wrong. What makes nice, normal, and intelligent young adults become depressed, violent, self-loathing, or cruel? All it takes is a simulated prison, where everyone knows they are merely acting, and a little over a day.
This, in a nutshell, is the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE)--and it is the starting point of Zimbardo's new book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. The book begins as a memoir of the experiment, and leads us through a compelling account of the fragility of character in the face of situations. What happens when you randomly assign 19 normal college students to roles as guards and prisoners? We all know the answer: our brightest angels fall from grace. Lucifer is born of the heavens.
Zimbardo presents the riveting tale of this famous experiment--one that took place over 35 years ago, and which has had an immense influence both inside and outside the academy. The Lucifer Effect begins by spelling out, in wonderful and gripping detail, the 6 days of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). This is reader-friendly material of the highest order. Zimbardo writes in the first-person present as he recounts the excitement, surprise, and horror that was created by a simulated prison in the basement of an academic building on the Stanford University campus. Zimbardo is careful to bring out the deep drama and tensions of those days in 1971, ensuring that the reader is surprised by what happens--by the deindividuation and dehumanization that seems to overpower those involved (I have long been familiar with this study, and I couldn't help but find myself in awe at the details. This alone attests to Zimbardo's powerful story-telling abilities). In reading this material, we see full well why Zimbardo is as known as he is: he deserves it. The book is beautifully written, fully engaging, and accessible to anyone who wants a better insight into the SPE and its implications for our understanding of the human condition.
If Zimbardo's book stopped here, simply providing the detailed descriptions of the SPE so vividly, The Lucifer Effect would certainly deserve a place on your shelf. But Zimbardo does not stop here. In the remainder of the book, Zimbardo shows what the significance of the SPE is, and how this can help us understand some of the more deplorable events of our times. In particular, the events that have recently transpired at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air Force base, and other sites of detention and abuse at the hands of agents of the US.
The great service of the latter half of Zimbardo's book, however, is not that it will effectively elucidate the relevance of social psychology to Abu Ghraib to those who are already familiar with the research. The book will not accomplish this. It will, however, enable persons unfamiliar with Milgram, the SPE, and other well-known research to come to possess a much greater understanding of how US soldiers might find themselves doing horrible things--indeed, how anyone might find themselves doing horrible things.
Zimbardo's role in the trial of one of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib (Ivan "Chip" Frederick, II), and his access to data about the abuse (torture) and the situational and systemic factors surrounding it, however, put him in a unique position to show his readers what is outrageous about the "bad apples" view of detainee abuse that is the official story of the Bush Administration. For those familiar with the documents surrounding the Abu Ghraib incident, this will come as no surprise (these documents are widely available, most notably and extensively in Greenberg and Dratel, The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib, but also elsewhere). For those who have read the memos and the reports, there seems to be little doubt that detainee abuse (torture) was (at least tacitly) condoned, if not outright encouraged, by the administration. But Zimbardo's ability to present this information from his position of social psychological expertise makes the case all the more compelling. Succinctly and plausibly, Zimbardo brings together two widely known phenomena (his earlier SPE work, along with the involvement of the administration in the Abu Ghraib scandal) in a prosecutorial style that will make the best lawyers proud. Going beyond the accusatory reports on Abu Ghraib, Zimbardo convincingly argues that the military system itself created the conditions in which unsupervised cruelty could flourish. Far from offering an excuse for those soldiers on the ground level who had a direct hand in torture, Zimbardo emphasizes the responsibility of those who created the situation at Abu Ghraib itself, as well as for those in the administration who created larger systemic conditions that made situationally-induced torture all the more likely. (Unlike many other indictments, Zimbardo's includes President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney). This is not a way of excusing torturers. It is a way of insuring that all responsible are made to be so.
Despite the vast amount of information in the book that encourages pessimism about the human animal--information that will undoubtedly worry the reader about what he or she is capable of--Zimbardo ends with a chapter that simply refuses to permit us our pessimism. If we are the creatures of situations and systems, we are not the slaves of these things. The banality of evil--the very thing so illuminatingly revealed by the SPE and by Abu Ghraib--is justified by the same arguments that lead us to justify the view of heroism as an equally banal phenomenon.
most people who become perpetrators of evil deeds are directly comparable to those who become perpetrators of heroic deeds, alike in being just ordinary, average people. Neither attribute is the direct consequence of unique dispositional tendencies...any of us could as easily become heroes as perpetrators of evil depending on how we are influenced by situational forces. The imperative becomes discovering how to limit, constrain, and prevent the situational and systemic forces that propel some of us to social pathology. (485-486).
To this end, Zimbardo offers some considerations regarding how we, as individuals immersed in incredibly complex situations, can attempt to navigate through them without becoming lost in anonymous roles, swept up into a de-individuated present that makes us strangers even to ourselves.
This, I would like to point out, is one way in which Zimbardo himself borders on the heroic. He is an ordinary human being that has found himself in a rather particular circumstance: that of an innovative social scientist--and one that has seen the darker sides of human nature. Always cognizant of the evil that emerged even in himself as he allowed the SPE to continue past the point at which it should have been terminated, Zimbardo recognizes that work with human subjects must be repaid with high dividends--dividends that are not guaranteed by the research results alone. One must be an active citizen, on Zimbardo's view, to insure that the pain and cruelty created by one's work is made up for in spades. Zimbardo has spent a good deal of his life doing just this, and The Lucifer Effect ought to be read as an ongoing part of this endeavor. It teaches us that we are weaker than we think, but strong enough to try to make a difference.
© 2007 J. Jeremy Wisnewski
J. Jeremy Wisnewski, PhD, Department of Philosophy, Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY, 13820, USA

///////////////////////Other universes may be detectable, published study claims
Oct. 11, 2007Special to World Science
If there are oth­er un­iverses out there—as some sci­en­tists pro­pose—then one or more of them might be de­tect­a­ble, a new study sug­gests.Such a find­ing, “while cur­rently spec­u­la­tive even in prin­ci­ple, and probably far-off in prac­tice, would surely con­sti­tute an ep­och­al dis­cov­ery,” re­search­ers wrote in a pa­per de­tail­ing their stu­dy. The work ap­pears in the Sep­tem­ber is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Phys­i­cal Re­view D.Cos­mol­o­gists gen­er­ally hold that even if oth­er un­iverses ex­ist, a con­tro­ver­sial idea it­self, they would­n’t be vis­i­ble, and that test­ing for their ex­istence would be hard at best.
A half-sky map of slight tem­per­a­ture vari­a­tions in the cos­mic mi­cro­wave back­ground ra­di­a­tion, thought to map struc­tures in the very ear­ly uni­verse. Blue stands for colder ar­eas; red for hot­ter re­gions, where it's be­lieved mat­ter was dens­er. These dense re­gions are thought to have lat­er be­come ga­laxy-rich zones. The boxed ar­ea marks an un­u­su­al "cold spot" as­tro­no­mers rec­og­nize in the da­ta. An un­ex­plained gi­ant cos­mic void has also been found in the di­rec­tion of that spot. In a new stu­dy, the­o­ret­i­cal phys­i­cists ar­gue that some sort of ir­reg­u­lar­ity in the mi­cro­wave back­ground, and in mat­ter dis­tri­bu­tion, might in­di­cate where our uni­verse once knocked in­to an­oth­er one. But the re­search­ers take no po­si­tion on wheth­er this cold spot could be the anom­a­ly they're look­ing for. Much more work is needed, they say. (Im­age cour­te­sy WMAP Sci­ence Team, NA­SA)
But the new stu­dy, by three sci­en­tists at the Un­ivers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz, pro­poses that neigh­bor­ing un­iverses might leave a vis­i­ble mark on our own—if, per­chance, they have knocked in­to it. For such a scar to be de­tect­a­ble, they add, the col­li­sion might have had to take place when our un­iverse was very young. Just how the bruise might look re­mains to be clar­i­fied, they say.“The ques­tion of what the af­ter­math of a col­li­sion might be is still quite open,” wrote Mat­thew C. John­son, one of the re­search­ers, in an e­mail. One the­o­ry even holds that a clash be­tween un­iverses could de­stroy the cos­mos we know. But John­son, now at the Cal­i­for­nia In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Pas­a­de­na, Calif., and col­leagues are ex­am­in­ing quite a dif­fer­ent sort of sce­nar­i­o.Sev­er­al lines of rea­son­ing in mod­ern phys­ics have led to pro­pos­als that there are oth­er un­iverses. It’s a rath­er dodgy con­cept on its face, be­cause strictly speak­ing, “the un­iverse” means ev­er­ything that ex­ists. But in prac­tice, cos­mol­o­gists of­ten loos­en the def­i­ni­tion and just speak of “a un­iverse” as some sort of self-en­closed whole with its own phys­i­cal laws.Such a pic­ture, in con­cept, al­lows for oth­er un­iverses with dif­fer­ent laws. These realms are of­ten called “bub­ble un­ivers­es” or “pock­et un­ivers­es”—partly to side­step the awk­ward def­i­ni­tional is­sue, and partly be­cause many the­o­rists do in­deed por­tray them as bub­ble-like.A key thread of rea­son­ing be­hind the idea of bub­ble un­iverses, which are some­times col­lec­tively called a “mul­ti­verse,” is the find­ing that seem­ingly emp­ty space con­tains en­er­gy, known as vac­u­um en­er­gy. Some the­o­rize that un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances this en­er­gy can be con­vert­ed in­to an ex­plo­sively grow­ing, new un­iverse—the same pro­cess be­lieved to have giv­en rise to ours. The­o­ret­i­cal phys­i­cists in­clud­ing Mi­chio Kaku of ­city Col­lege of New York ar­gue that this might go on con­stant­ly—he has called it a “con­tin­ual gen­e­sis”—cre­at­ing many un­iverses, coex­isting not un­like bub­bles in a foamy bath.How might one de­tect anoth­er un­iverse? John­son and his col­leagues rea­son that any col­li­sion be­tween bub­bles would, like all col­li­sions, pro­duce af­ter­ef­fects that prop­a­gate in­to both cham­bers. These ef­fects would probably take the form of some ma­te­ri­al ejected in­to both sides, John­son said, al­though just what is un­known. This would in turn af­fect the dis­tri­bu­tion of mat­ter in each pock­et un­iverse.If such col­li­sions hap­pened re­cent­ly, they might be un­de­tect­a­ble be­cause our un­iverse might be too huge to be markedly af­fected; but not so if the events took place long enough ago, ac­cord­ing to the Un­ivers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia team, whose pa­per is al­so posted on­line. If a knock oc­curred when our ex­pand­ing un­iverse was still very small, they ar­gue, then the af­ter­math might still be vis­i­ble, blown up in size along with ev­er­ything else since then.When the un­iverse was less than a thou­sandth its pre­s­ent size, it’s thought to have un­der­gone a trans­forma­t­ion. As it ex­pand­ed, it be­came cool enough for atoms to form. It then al­so be­came trans­par­ent. Be­fore that, ev­er­ything had been a thick fog, but with ti­ny varia­t­ions in its dens­ity at dif­fer­ent points; dens­er parts would eventually grow and co­a­lesce in­to ga­lax­ies.This fog is still vis­i­ble, be­cause many of the light waves it gave off are just now reach­ing us: this is how as­tro­no­mers ex­plain a faint glow that per­me­ates space, called the cos­mic mi­cro­wave back­ground. It repre­s­ents the edge of our vis­i­ble un­iverse and is de­tected in all di­rec­tions of the sky.A col­li­sion would lead to a re­ar­ranged pat­tern of dens­ity fluctua­t­ions in this back­ground, ac­cord­ing to the Un­ivers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia team. It’s un­clear just how this re­ar­range­ment would look, but it would probably ap­pear as some sort of ar­ea of ir­reg­u­lar­ity cen­tered on a patch of the sky—s­ince “each col­li­sion will af­fect a disc on our sky,” John­son wrote in an e­mail. An anal­o­gy: if you lived in a beach ball and it bounced off anoth­er beach ball, you’d see a change in a cir­cu­lar ar­ea of your wall.“Noth­ing like this has pre­s­ently been ob­served, al­though no one has ev­er looked for this par­tic­u­lar sig­nal,” John­son added. On the oth­er hand, re­search­ers have found at least one strik­ing ir­reg­u­lar­ity in the back­ground glow—a “cold spot,” thought to be re­lat­ed to a vast and anom­a­lous void in the cos­mos. Could that be the mark of a sep­a­rate un­iverse? “I’m go­ing to re­main com­pletely non­com­mit­tal” on that, John­son said. “I can’t even tell you if it would be a hot spot or a cold spot.” Tem­per­a­ture varia­t­ions in the cos­mic mi­cro­wave back­ground are be­lieved to re­flect dens­ity varia­t­ions in the early un­iverse.John­son and col­leagues stressed that their pro­pos­al may be only the be­gin­ning of a long, pains­tak­ing re­search pro­gram. “Con­nect­ing this pre­dic­tion to real ob­serva­t­ional sig­na­tures will en­tail both dif­fi­cult and com­pre­hen­sive fu­ture work (and probably no small meas­ure of good luck­),” they wrote. But “it ap­pears worth pur­su­ing.”

////////////////////ANTR CINGULATE GYRUS-CENTRE OF SELF-CONTROL

When our vices get the better of usWhat happens in the brain when we just can’t say no?
Oct. 11, 2007Courtesy Association for Psychological Scienceand World Science staff
Drug abuse, crime and obes­ity are but a few of the prob­lems mod­ern so­ci­e­ty faces, but they all have one thing in com­mon: peo­ple’s fail­ure to con­trol them­selves in the face of tempta­t­ion. While the abil­ity to re­strain our im­pulses is a de­fin­ing fea­ture of the hu­man an­i­mal, its fail­ure is one of so­ci­e­ty’s cen­tral prob­lems. So why do we so of­ten lack this cru­cial abil­ity?
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), marked in red. This brain area is crucial to self-control, researchers say.
As hu­mans, we have lim­it­ed re­sources to con­trol our­selves, re­search­ers say; all acts of con­trol draw from one source. So when us­ing this re­source in one do­main, such as di­et­ing, we’re more likely to run out of it in an­oth­er do­main, like stu­dy­ing hard. Once these re­sources run out, our self-con­trol abil­ity is di­min­ished, ac­cord­ing to sci­ent­ists. The di­et­er is more likely to eat choc­o­late, the stu­dent to watch TV, and the pol­i­ti­cian to ac­cept a bribe.In a re­cent stu­dy, Mi­chael In­zlicht of the Un­ivers­ity of To­ron­to Scar­bor­ough and col­league Jen­ni­fer N. Gut­sell of­fer an ac­count of what’s hap­pen­ing in the brain when our vices get the bet­ter of us.In­zlicht and Gut­sell asked par­ti­ci­pants to sup­press their emo­tions while watch­ing an up­set­ting mov­ie. The idea was to de­plete their re­sources for self-con­trol. The par­ti­ci­pants re­ported their abil­ity to sup­press their feel­ings on a scale from one to nine. Then, they com­plet­ed a Stroop task, which in­volves nam­ing the col­or of printed words (i.e. say­ing red when read­ing the word “green” writ­ten in red), yet an­oth­er task that re­quires self-con­trol.The re­search­ers found that those who sup­pressed their emo­tions per­formed worse on the task, in­di­cat­ing that they had used up their self-con­trol re­sources while hold­ing back their tears dur­ing the film. An electroencephalogram (EEG), a recording of electrical activity in the brain, con­firmed the re­sults, they said. Nor­mal­ly, when a per­son de­vi­ates from their goals (in this case, want­ing to read the word, not the col­or of the font), in­creased ac­ti­vity oc­curs in a part of the brain called the an­te­ri­or cin­gu­late cor­tex, which alerts the per­son that they are off-track. The re­search­ers found weaker ac­ti­vity in this brain re­gion dur­ing the Stroop task in those who had sup­pressed their feel­ings. In oth­er words, af­ter en­gag­ing in one act of self-con­trol this brain sys­tem seems to fail dur­ing the next act, they said. The find­ings, which ap­pear in the No­vem­ber is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, have im­plica­t­ions for fu­ture in­ter­ven­tions aim­ing to help peo­ple change their be­hav­ior, the re­search­ers ar­gued. Most no­ta­bly, they said, the results sug­gest that if peo­ple even tem­po­rarily don’t real­ize they have lost con­trol, they will be un­able to stop or change their be­hav­ior on their own.