The Null Device
2000/9/8
The Scunthorpe Problem revisited: A bunch of subversive ratbags calling themselves the Digital Freedom Network are having a contest to find the most benign phrases blocked by censorware. (via The Register)
Neurohacking news: Researchers in the UK have found that musicians can greatly improve their performance with neurofeedback training:
To learn to control their brain rhythms, the musicians were shown a picture of a boat and asked to make it sail towards the horizon. This only happened when they achieved the desired brain state. "First you try as hard as you can to make the boat move, and it just goes backwards," John Gruzelier, professor of psychology at Imperial College Medical School, told the British Association's Festival of Science. "Soon you learn to go with the flow, and let your brain do all the work for you."
(I'm going to have to get myself one of those neurofeedback rigs...)
An essay on the history and nature of the weblog phenomenon, by Rebecca Blood; well worth reading:
The blogger, by virtue of simply writing down whatever is on his mind, will be confronted with his own thoughts and opinions. Blogging every day, he will become a more confident writer. A community of 100 or 20 or 3 people may spring up around the public record of his thoughts. Being met with friendly voices, he may gain more confidence in his view of the world; he may begin to experiment with longer forms of writing, to play with haiku, or to begin a creative project--one that he would have dismissed as being inconsequential or doubted he could complete only a few months before.
Re: Tanya's music and drugs poll: My vote would be natural neuropeptides. By sheer volume, endorphins, serotonin and the like have inspired orders of magnitude more bad music than all the other drugs put together; case in point: all the insipid "love songs" out there, for one.