Why Behaviorists by Definition Are Incapable of Comprehending Human Creativity

This points out, albeit only through its striking omission from these models, the fundamental differentia specifica between all animal consciousness and the truly human creative mind. Humans are uniquely capable of creating a mission to change their practices to obtain a new plateau of capability in increasing available resources by redefining and expanding them through technological innovation. Thus breaking the fixity inherent in proceeding merely deductively from past experiences like dumb beasts. In the language of mathematical physics new singularities are envisioned in the purview of distinctly human sovereign noetic mental processes.

Why Yes, President Obama, Let's Change the Subject to Economics

The following dialogue may be thought of as mere fiction. But, in essence, it is very much the undeniable truth.

Question: Do you agree that the American people have a right to expect that our government should promote the form of economic prosperity that will ensure their children'd long term well being?

Answer: Of course. That is why I was elected by them.

Question: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt enacted legislation that prevented depository institutions from engaging in financial speculation. President Bill Clinton stated that his worst mistake was signing the law that repealed that very same Glass Steagall act. The repeal effected the ability of banks to engage in extremely dangerous forms of speculation in exotic financial instruments known as derivative securities. The collapse of this market enabled these gargantuan too big to fail institutions to obtain a massive multi-billion dollar bailout by the Treasury and Federal Reserve. The current policy continues to prop up these otherwise failed institutions. At the same time the lobbyists for these financiers are calling for ever increasing levels of austerity and bailouts. Will you Mr. President support the reintroduction of Glass Steagall as the first step in reversing the control of these interests that are causing such impoverishment and suffering of the American people?

Answer: Right now the economy is healing and we are on the road to prosperity with the policies that my administration is already pursuing. Next question.

Wound Healing Research and Implications

This excellent research described below should remind us of two great pioneers in scientific epistemology. Leibniz and Riemann. To wit: Leibniz' system of pre established harmony of lesser (biological) monads that do not have a window on the world, but may have that function for higher monads and Riemann's functional concept of a multiply connected manifold (in this case a biophysical one.)

Further reflection leads one to consider on a sort of built in quality of restorative principle that hold across and among Vernadsky's doctrine of three domains of lithosphere, biosphere and noosphere. One intriguing application of restorative in the noetic manifold, for instance, is the Gestalt concept of the human mind as a sovereign evolving creative process.

Vascular endothelial cell healing a transcellular wound. Credit: Christopher Carman (Medical Xpress)—


Endothelium, heal thyself: A fresh look at this resilient, adaptable tissue

May 16, 2013 by Bonnie Prescott in Medical research


The endothelium, the cellular layer lining the body's blood vessels, is extremely resilient. Measuring just a few hundred nanometers in thickness, this super-tenuous structure routinely withstands blood flow, hydrostatic pressure, stretch and tissue compression to create a unique and highly dynamic barrier that maintains the organization necessary to partition tissues from the body's circulatory system. In instances when the barrier must be physically breached to enable immune cells to reach various regions of the body to fight infection, the endothelium cooperates with leukocytes to create openings to provide the infection-fighting cells ready access to their targets.


By and large, these ensuing "micro-wounds" are short-lived; as soon as the cells have crossed the endothelium, these pores and gaps quickly heal, restoring the system's efficient barrier function. In cases when these gaps fail to close—and leakage occurs—the results can be devastating, leading to dramatic pathologies including sepsis and acute lung injury.


The mechanism underlying this highly intuitive capability has not been well understood. Now, a research team led by Christopher Carman, HMS assistant professor of medicine in the Center for Vascular Biology Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, using a combination of advanced fluorescence imaging and electron microscopy to monitor intracellular signaling dynamics, has amassed real-time information that shows that biomechanical signals are what sets this healing process in motion.


Described in The Journal of Cell Biology, the new findings suggest that rather than structural robustness per se, the barrier function of the endothelium relies on an enormous self-restorative capacity.


"When people talk about biomechanics, they're saying that cells are able to sense and respond to changes in force," said Carman. "In other words, it's not only hormones and chemical signals that influence cell behaviors. Cells can actually sense physical cues and thereby modulate their function."


Specifically, the new findings demonstrate that the endothelium senses an acute loss of preexisting isometric tension, and that downstream of this biomechanical signal, the ensuing recovery response generates reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are responsible for coordinating the micro-wound closure process.


Carman's previous work explored precisely how leukocytes generate vascular micro-wounds in the first place, uncovering a novel endothelial piercing activity—"invasive podosomes"—that are generated by the leukocytes. In this new paper, he hypothesized an equally active role for the endothelium in closing the pores and gaps made by the leukocytes.


To test this hypothesis, Carman's laboratory set up experimental models that mimicked acute, intense inflammation. Using dynamic time-lapse and high-resolution confocal microscopy, the investigators could see the process by which leukocytes were breaching the endothelial cell.


In the course of a 10-minute span, they observed that a single endothelial cell tolerated the passage of at least seven leukocytes directly through its body, and that within this brief period, the gaps closed, leaving no sign of the pores.


"The cell's restorative capacity was just so striking," said Carman. "But these early investigations were still inadequate to tell us how the breaches were being closed. We had to dig down to the subcellular level to understand the underlying activities and the molecular signaling mechanisms that were orchestrating these activities."


Subsequent experiments, led by co-first author Roberta Martinelli, HMS research fellow in medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess and senior scientist in the Carman laboratory, revealed that in response to micrometer-scale disruptions caused by the transmigrating leukocytes, the endothelial cells were generating unique ventral lamellipodia structures, which were then migrating to the sites of the micro-wounds to close them up.


"The ventral lamellipodia were responding to the sensation of an acute loss of preexisting isometric tension," explained Martinelli, who compares the cell to a circus tent tethered in place by strategically placed ropes and stakes.


"If you cut one of the ropes holding up the tent, two things will happen," she added. "First the part of the tent that was under tension will undergo a recoil which will lead to a relaxation, leaving one part of the tent untethered and flapping in the breeze. At the same time, the remaining sets of ropes and stakes will have to bear the extra load. In the case of the endothelial cells, this translates to a force-loading event."


Existing studies have focused almost exclusively on force loading (physical pulling or tugging on cells) as response triggers. But by using new devices, the team was able to push, prod, stretch and unstretch cells in very specific ways.


"Our experiments told us that endothelial micro-wounding is actually a tension-loss, or force-unloading, signal and that this signal cued the recovery response," added Carman. This response, he said, is fundamentally dependent on proteins, the NADPH oxidases, that can generate ROS, specifically hydrogen peroxide.


ROS are widely implicated in causing cellular, tissue and organ damage when present at excessive levels in the body. But these findings show that low levels of these molecules—when produced in discrete locations within the cell—are highly protective. "It's tempting to speculate that excess ROS causes vascular breakdown by short-circuiting the recuperative response process and creating 'white noise' that dis-coordinates and disrupts micro-wound healing," said Carman. "It appears that we've got an essential homeostatic self-repair mechanism that is completely dependent on the generation of intracellular ROS, which is the opposite of our typical thinking about ROS in cardiovascular health and disease."


"These findings suggest a new way of thinking about how to deal with pathologic breakdown of the endothelial barrier," said William Aird, HMS professor of medicine and Director of the Center for Vascular Biology Research at Beth Israel Deaconess.


"We know that a 'leaky endothelium' is a central part of the pathogenesis of a number of serious diseases, including sepsis, acute lung injury and ischemic cardiovascular diseases, as well as chronic inflammatory conditions such as diabetes and arthritis. In addition to the presence of excessive barrier insults, it now appears that leakage can result when the endothelium loses its self-restorative capacity and its dynamic reserve to heal micro-wounds," Aird said.


More information: jcb.rupress.org/co… 449.abstract Journal reference: Journal of Cell Biology Provided by Harvard Medical School

Leonardo DaVinci and Solar Flares: A Pictorial Demonstration of Creative Thought Process

Solar Flare May 12, 2013 Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA

Is It Any Wonder that the IRS is Carrying Out a Witch Hunt?

One of my ancestors fell befoul of the mass hysteria in Salem many years ago. She was not among the most unfortunate but she was incarcerated for engaging in "mischief." Now, I am not one to dismiss the use of Cabalistic magic masquerading as acceptable Euclidian mathematics in the creation and promotion of Empire by the likes of John Dee, et al. However, when citizens are directed to look under their beds, so to speak,  for "Teabagger" scoundrels and report them online as spreading "fishy" misinformation about "Obamacare" back in 2009 by the White House director of "New Media" (!), Macon Phillips, is it any wonder that supposedly "rogue" IRS agents might believe that they were only doing their civic duty by blocking "fishy" outfits from tax exemption? Indeed, when they asked for donor lists, etc. weren't they perhaps merely attempting to lure those mischievous fishy extremists so they might be enlightened by right thinking "folk"?

Remember this?--

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov. "

Well, perhaps the stink of scandal coming from the nether realms of the White House these days is somewhat redolent of dead fish.

Oligarchic Bastardizations of Greatness Are Putrid: a Pre Mother's Day Jeremiad

Edgar Allan Poe rightly took up the cudgels against that execrable "barking dog" excuse for a human being Thomas Carlyle. The same Carlyle that took the great Friedrich Schiller and so vilely desecrated his greatness. And Baudelaire who is the epitome of putrefaction when it came to misrepresenting that very same Poe, a follower of the Schiller acolyte Alexander von Humboldt.

But do not forget that the very worst of this miserable tradition, if you can call it that, was the abortion known as Neoplatonism. A shameful concoction of superstitious phony intellectual vipers, hod carriers for all the evil cabals befouling human history. Truly, these belong in the nether reaches of the inferno.

The Indomitable Urge to Search for Life Among The Reaches of Space

It would seem that this urge to discover life forms on other planetoids parallels the one appetite we humans as a species have that is unquenchable: the intellectual. Now we are approaching a stage in our development of biophysical technology where we could envision a capability of deliberately seeding, in a manner of speaking, the cosmos with life.  The pessimistic and oligarchic Manichaen worldview shudders in abhorrence at the prospect. Yet somehow there is an ineluctable fascination that captures the imagination that spreading life throughout this universe might just so happen to be written in the very composition of the stars.

Oh, and By the Way, Designer Drugs and Bitcoin

Yes, dear readers, it seems that drug funny money isn't the sole province of the HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation) too big to jail defenders like Attorney General Eric Holder. Now we have the tale of Bitcoin and designer drugs...How very quaint the wonderful zombie world of the empire of the mind is! Maybe helicopter Ben can start issuing Bitcoins now. He is, after all, just another bozo on the magic City of London bus.

Why Were Russian Warnings About Tsarnaev Dismissed?

Well now, something is very rotten in Chechnya Jamestown fund neocon land. There seems to be a Gordian knot of very strange bedfellows behind the extended Tsarnaev family. Remember how Al Qaeda starred as Afghanistan anti Soviet allies in the Hollywood expose Charlie Wilson played by Tom Hanks? The Tsarnaev  uncles being protected assets of anti Soviet cold war Chechen Zbigniew Brzezinski/Michael Ledeen networks certainly poses the question that the Russian warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev would have been given the cold shoulder. Likewise since both Obama his former Republican opponent John McCain are protecting associated Saudi Salafist Al Qaeda networks as "Syrian rebels" shouldn't this be something "investigative journalists" at Fox and NBC would be told to keep away from as a wacko conspiracy theory? And what of William Plotnick? My, my, so many dots here, it's like seeing spots before your eyes...