The Way Out: A Reflection Upon The New Year

To be (a nebish) or not to be (a nebish)... That is the underlying issue for a conscience that makes cowards of us all. Thus we are brought via an internal dialogue of disparate voices, whether it be in the course of our currency or rather in the vast reaches of imagination of upheaval into which history has molded our assumptions toward a pathway out of this crisis.

For it is as evident now as ever that proceeding to pay homage to a failed monetary system leads humanity nowhere but to death and the limitless woes of  a new new dark age. If we assume that the world can not accommodate the creation of an alternative to the diseased outlook of an imperial control by technocratic enablers of austerity then we assume that our own existence is a species indistinct from dumb biology. That is indeed what the bilge that is being daily delivered and indoctrinated as if by a wink into the acceptable public newspeak and so-called education system.

If this mentality is not uprooted then we are mere spectators to the unfolding tragedy upon the stage of this world. So it is either the demise of an unofficial oligarchy wielded most notably as financial control that now has a death grip upon futurity or the way out by taking up arms (though they be but words) and putting an end to the tyranny that usurps our true and immortal mission.

Look upward, oh child of creation and the answer is there...We were made to move off this isolated watery rock upon mental pinions that make us in the likeness of evolution's Creator. America used to be that mission as a flank against the baleful dark age on Europe's demise. Now the flank is the frontier beyond the old new world. It is only in the movement and endeavor forever out in space that we can once more to our own selves be true.

Even More Lunatic Than I Might Have Imagined

Following up on my previous post, I find this computer game never never land of scientific fakery exceeds my wildest expectations. In the Pensees of Blaise Pascal (who was the true forerunner of Leibniz' development of calculus) there is a trenchant and provoking analysis of why the reigning "king" requires to fill his days up with idle (or should one rather say idol) pastimes. It is to lull and numb his senses such that the king is never forced to deal with his own mortality. This is the essence of what an oligarchical system seeks to do with the the inventions of mankind--turn them into the baubles of escapism of an entertainment "industry." This kind of "thinking" need not be plotted out conspiratorially; it is merely axiomatic for any society ruled by the principle that would degrade humanity into the equivalent of dumb bestial behavior:

Cheating Spreads Like Infections In Online Mulitplayer Games

If you have friends who cheat, you are more likely to become a cheater, according to computer scientists who say this can be used to label you as a potential cheater

KFC 12/23/2011

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Online gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry that serves millions of gamers around the world. But it suffers from a problem: cheating. Some players give themselves an unfair advantage by using 'cheat software' to see through walls or to automatically shoot moving characters.

Cheat software is banned but in the sophisticated economies that have evolved in these worlds, cheaters can generate a significant income by using it. The developers of multiplayer game APB Reloaded, estimate that cheatmakers can make up to $50,000 per month.

The trouble, of course, is that cheats poison the experience for legitimate players. The temptation is then for all players to cheat which leads to an uncontrolled escalation of illegal activities and the eventually destruction of the gaming environment.

So gaming communities invest significant resources into finding and stopping cheaters. In the Steam Community, for instance, which has some 30 million users, cheats are clearly labelled so that other users can see them and so that servers can prevent them playing games from which they are banned (although they can play other games).

Cheaters cannot easily start new accounts because the games they buy are linked to their old accounts and access is non-transferable.

So an interesting question is how cheaters behave in this social network.

Today, Jeremy Blackburn at the University of South Florida in Tampa and a few buddies study a social network of about 12 million gamers on the Steam Community of which some 700,000 are cheaters.

What they find is interesting. First up, cheats stick together. The data shows that cheaters are much more likely to be friends with other cheaters.

Cheating also appears to be infectious. The likelihood of a fair player becoming labelled as a cheater in future is directly correlated with this person's number of friends who are cheaters. So if you know cheaters you are more likely to become one yourself. Cheating spreads like flu through this community.

Finally, being labelled as a cheat seems to significantly affect social standing. Once a person is labelled as a cheat, they tend to lose friends. Some even cut themselves off from friends by increasing their privacy settings

Blackburn and co say they've even seen newly labelled cheaters commit 'social suicide' by cutting themselves off from all their friends.

While this work gives a unique insight into the social behaviour of cheats, Blackburn and co say it also points to a new angle of attack for gaming communities hoping to stamp out cheating.

Their idea is to use the structure of the network to predict the likelihood that a given player will become a cheat in future. In other words, the number of friends who are cheats determine how likely this player is to becoming infected with the 'cheating virus' in future, so to speak. They say they expect to do more work on this in future.

Nobody knows exactly how the Steam Community developers detect and label cheats now. The details are strictly guarded, as would be expected in this kind of cat and mouse game.

But however it is done, the new method is a kind of pre-crime detection rather like the movie Minority Report. That's a dangerous avenue to tread. The labelling of individuals as potential cheats itself has significant moral, philosophical and legal implications that will need to be teased apart and examined before it can be employed in the real or virtual worlds.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1112.4915: Cheaters in the Steam Community Gaming Social Network

The pathway out of this nightmarish quagmire has already been developed in the writings of Friedrich Schiller in his aesthetics. In great art the love of beauty and freedom from such an oligarchy can be instilled via drama and poetry of what Shelley called great and passionate conceptions regarding man and nature. This is what shines through in the works of Plato and Aeschylus, for instance. And with Shakespeare we aver that the play truly is the thing to capture the imagination and subdue the machinations of the would be kings. The current wizards of the "City" and Wall Street are but the latest flareup of  diseased state of mind otherwise denominated as an empire.

The Bad Guys, Ripping Up the Constitution, and Video Games

Something seemed more than a little off kilter during the first Gulf War when I first heard talking head ex-military and the head of the joint chiefs talk to the camera about "killing the bad guys." "Oh, oh," a voice inside me seemed to be warning, "this reminds me of hyper-active post puberty children playing some fantasy war games far after they should have been past that stage." Today, we have millions of overgrown children engrossed in similar delusions through video games role playing these "fantasy games" the Internet.  The very same Internet created under the auspices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Now the "all volunteer" army is training using special versions of these games. We "fight" the bad guys using "drones."   Hmm...

But now it seems the bad guys are us. This is the meaning of a new law called NADA that would give our illustrious leaders the power to kidnap and "render" American citizens (in name only) to a "friendly" third country in order to get them to "talk." Of course, Americans, if they have even paid attention are likely to console themselves inwardly by the mantra that this would "never happen" to them. Dear citizen, tell that to the death row inmates reprieved at the twelfth hour by DNA evidence...And so with nary a feeble whimper from the vast majority of us the Constitution is thus shredded. We were too busy playing games online to bother. Hmm...

More Fish Tales for Christmas

Another Miraculous Fish Story : Masaccio's Version of Peter's Catch

Garbage in = garbage out! Need I say more?

A group of three researchers from KEK, Shizuoka University and Osaka University has for the first time revealed the way our universe was born with 3 spatial dimensions from 10-dimensional superstring theory in which spacetime has 9 spatial directions and 1 temporal direction. This result was obtained by numerical simulation on a supercomputer.

Anyone not scarfing down the fish oil may be at risk!

In Thingumbob's rather fishy crusade this just in:

Fish oil may hold key to leukemia cure

		IMAGE: The compound shown above is D12-PGJ2, which closely resembles delta-12-protaglandin J3, or D12-PGJ3, a compound that targeted and killed the stem cells of chronic myelogenous leukemia, or CML, in mice... Click here for more information.

A compound produced from fish oil that appears to target leukemia stem cells could lead to a cure for the disease, according to Penn State researchers. The compound -- delta-12-protaglandin J3, or D12-PGJ3 -- targeted and killed the stem cells of chronic myelogenous leukemia, or CML, in mice, said Sandeep Prabhu, associate professor of immunology and molecular toxicology in the Department of Veterinary and Medical Sciences. The compound is produced from EPA -- Eicosapentaenoic Acid -- an Omega-3 fatty acid found in fish and in fish oil, he said.

"Research in the past on fatty acids has shown the health benefits of fatty acids on cardiovascular system and brain development, particularly in infants, but we have shown that some metabolites of Omega-3 have the ability to selectively kill the leukemia-causing stem cells in mice," said Prabhu. "The important thing is that the mice were completely cured of leukemia with no relapse."

The researchers, who released their findings in the current issue of Blood, said the compound kills cancer-causing stem cells in the mice's spleen and bone marrow. Specifically, it activates a gene -- p53 -- in the leukemia stem cell that programs the cell's own death. "p53 is a tumor suppressor gene that regulates the response to DNA damage and maintains genomic stability," Prabhu said.

		IMAGE: Penn State researchers initially tested a compound produced from fish oil on a type of leukemia found in mice called the Friend Virus. This slide shows a Friend Virus Leukemia... Click here for more information.

Killing the stem cells in leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells, is important because stem cells can divide and produce more cancer cells, as well as create more stem cells, Prabhu said.

The current therapy for CML extends the patient's life by keeping the number of leukemia cells low, but the drugs fail to completely cure the disease because they do not target leukemia stem cells, said Robert Paulson, associate professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences, who co-directed this research with Prabhu.

"The patients must take the drugs continuously," said Paulson. "If they stop, the disease relapses because the leukemia stem cells are resistant to the drugs."

Current treatments are unable to kill the leukemia stem cells, Paulson noted. "These stem cells can hide from the treatment, and a small population of stem cells give rise to more leukemia cells," said Paulson. "So, targeting the stem cells is essential if you want to cure leukemia."

		IMAGE: Penn State researchers Sandeep Prahbu (right) and Robert Paulson (left) sketch out a delta-12-protaglandin J3, or D12-PGJ3. The compound, derived from fish oil, targeted and killed the stem cells of... Click here for more information.

During the experiments, the researchers injected each mouse with about 600 nanograms of D12-PGJ3 each day for a week. Tests showed that the mice were completely cured of the disease. The blood count was normal, and the spleen returned to normal size. The disease did not relapse.

In previous experiments, the compound also killed the stem cells of Friend Virus-induced leukemia, an experimental model for human leukemia.

The researchers focused on D12-PGJ3 because it killed the leukemia stem cells, but had the least number of side effects. The researchers currently are working to determine whether the compound can be used to treat the terminal stage of CML, referred to as Blast Crisis. There are currently no drugs available that can treat the disease when it progresses to this stage.

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The researchers, who applied for a patent, are also preparing to test the compound in human trials.