Red Enhances Men's Attraction To Women, Psychological Study Reveals


Looking at the picture included in this article, the girl in the photos is wearing either red or blue. Both these colours are 'offensive' to wear in the temple so no matchmaking there.

this is quite useful research. now if they can figure out why some men get off on womens shoes more than their bodies we can make further progress as a species

Actually I do know the neuropsychological reason behind foot fetishes. But you're right, we need to find better things to do with our time, like investigate the phenomenon by which individuals in the process of falling generally move in a downward direction, and to what extent this is mediated by body weight.

Oh... I thougth the girth of Gurus was relative like that of Filipino policemen in Manila... the bigger the girth the longer they have been in the profession....

Now I wonder if the concomitant observation also applies, that is the longer in the profession the fatter the more corrupt the policeman....

I wonder....

Read more at BBC News.

Human Brain Tissue Made From Stem Cells. (!!!!!!!!)


Read more at Discovery News.

That is pretty amazing, but have the Japanese researchers worked out the kinks on the new brain tissue, that once implanted, one can only cognitively recognize the Japanese language while all belief in God falls away, though there is a strong attraction to the Tao and anyone called emperor.

Intelligent 'have better sperm'


Read more at BBC News.

Full story at BBC News.

Science has now explained how advanced devotees are able to bore their captive audience to tears day after day with their verbal waffle:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4BI0VQ20081219

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some things never change. Scientists said on Friday they had replicated an experiment in which people obediently delivered painful shocks to others if encouraged to do so by authority figures.

Seventy percent of volunteers continued to administer electrical shocks -- or at least they believed they were doing so -- even after an actor claimed they were painful, Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University in California found.

"What we found is validation of the same argument -- if you put people into certain situations, they will act in surprising, and maybe often even disturbing, ways," Burger said in a telephone interview. "This research is still relevant."

That is so true it almost hurts. I also agree with you, Homer, about how the advanced devotees are able to bore their captive audiences to tears with their verbal waffles. Some days ago I happened to test listen a lecture given by an expert wafflerist. Man, was it boring! It was basically one simple point that was explained again and again from slightly different angles, and it seemingly went on ad infinitum and especially ad nauseum. Honestly, I do not know if there was ending to the torture or did the tape simply run out, or the listeners fell in coma. I had to stop and do some self preservation and watch Lucky Louie. http://www.hbo.com/luckylouie/

I see, listening to the nectar, are we? You only found it torture due to listening with materialistic ears, prabhu.

But, yeah, no joke is it?

There was one temple president I knew who insisted on giving all the Sunday Love Feast lectures (beautiful how we used to call them that - Love Feast). They would go on for over an hour or even more, they seemed endless. Everyone would fidget and stand to relieve bums and legs that had long-ago fallen asleep, but he never seemed to get the hint. Some guests complained to me about the boring lectures so I had a confidential talk with the guy and boy, did he get angry. I swear it was as though he thought every word he spoke contained a cornucopia of spiritual wisdom.

Wow, they replicated the famous Milgram experiment? This is great news!

What I wonder is where they found subjects not likely to have heard of Milgram.

Can you imagine the screams of outrage if anybody tried to replicate Zimbardo's experiment?

Wouldn't Abu Ghraib have been something of an equivalent?

Nope, no randomness in assigning people to groups.

In 1945 intensive research was carried out, especally in the USA and the Soviet Union, into guiding and controlling consciousness by means of electric impulses. This demonic type (one cannot call it otherwise) of brainwashing and rape and/or deprivation of the free will, is frequently called Mind Control.

Causing a sensation, these experiments came to public notice when, at the end of the sixties, the neurologist Dr. José M.R. Delgado of the Centro Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid and the Yale University School of Medicine published his findings in the book 'Physical Control of the Mind: Towards a Psychocivilized Society'.

We know of ESB's potential for mind control largely through the work of José Delgado. One signal provoked a cat to lick its fur, then continue compulsively licking the floor and bars of its cage. A signal designed to stimulate a portion of a monkey's thalamus, a major midbrain center for integrating muscle movements, triggered a complex reaction: The monkey walked to one side of the cage, then the other, then climbed to the rear ceiling, then back down. The animal performed this same activity as many times as it was stimulated with the signal, up to sixty times an hour, but not blindly -- the creature still was able to avoid obstacles and threats from the dominant male while carrying out the electrical imperative. Another type of signal has made monkeys turn their heads, or smile, no matter what else they were doing, up to twenty thousand times in two weeks. As Delgado concluded, "The animals looked like electronic toys."

Delgado stimulated brain activity in his patients with electronic stimulation (ESB = Electronic Stimulation of the Brain) in the ELF domain, especially in the amygdala und hyppocampus. Funding for the project came predominantly from the American Office of Naval Intelligence, a CIA cover agency, the CIA being especially interested in this form of warfare, after it became known that in the years 1960-1965, the US Embassy in Moscow was exposed to radiation from electromagnetic fields and microwaves created by the Soviets — with the result that various physical and mental disorders occured among the staff.

In his conclusion Delgado summarized his findings by saying that

"movement, emotion and behaviour can be controlled by electrical forces, and human beings can be controlled like robots with the touch of a button."

The patients reported that their behaviour had changed against their will because they lacked the strength (will forces!) to resist against the electrical signal.

"Since the brain controls the entire body and all mental processes, electrical stimulation of the brain could be developed into an important method of planned manipulation of human behaviour."

Delgado eleborated his point of view in sentences like the following:

"We need a programme of psychosurgery for political control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated. (...) The individual may think that the most important reality is his point of view. This lacks historical perspective. (...) Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. (...). We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electrical stimulation of the brain."

In Spanish Cordoba Delgado demonstrated his theory by way of popular entertainment; he implanted hair-like electrodes into the interbrain of a bull, that were to control the behaviour of the bull by acting as receivers of electrical stimulations:

"Afternoon sunlight poured over the high wooden barrier into the ring, as the brave bull bore down on the unarmed matador, a scientist who had never faced a bull. But the charging animal's horns never reached the man behind the heavy red cape. Moments before that could happen, Dr. Delgado pressed a button on a small radio transmitter in his hand and the bull braked to a halt. Then he pressed another button on the transmitter, and the bull obediently turned to the right and trotted away. The bull was obeying commands in his brain that were being called forth by the radio signals acting as electrical stimulation to certain regions in which fine wires had been painlessly planted the day before."

Delgado's research has long since found adherents. Experiments are carried out with implants capable of achieving a great variety of results; also with direct radiation from microwaves, ELF and other high-pulsating electromagnetic rays or fields designed to manipulate the memory, control behaviour, or simply temporarily incapacitate. The victims suffer long-lasting damage to the health of the organ affected, are driven to insanity by 'voices', develop compulsive behaviour, carry out certain tasks against their inclination etc. The latest experiments point in the direction of filtering the 'imprint' of concrete emotions in the brain with the aid of electroencephalograms (EEG) and specific computer software, to synthesize the relevant frequencies and amplitudes as emotion signature clusters, to store them on computer and, if needed, to clone them into other brains by stimulus transfer.

The Watcher blog, which you copied this from, appears to be of the paranoid conspiratorial type with links to Michael Moore, David Icke, and other controversial figures, as well as the insinuations and allusions about "Jews running everything". The original article, where the "watcher" copied it from, has clear spiritual undercurrents and it turns out that the author is something of a Grail enthusiast. Pity I can't understand advanced German. Other than that, Delgado's work isn't as doomsday as it is made out to be, although it may have sounded like that at the time. Physical Control of the Mind, or even The Forgotten Era of Brain (Scientific American article, pdf file) are a couple of articles that provide a more balanced view.

I have never heard of The Watcher blog. You start immediately with your old fault of an ad hominem spiel and glossing over what your CIA psychiatrist and his Dr. Mengele-type friends do. Your opinions are only Establishment platitudes, your text books are only Establishment text books and that what falls outside that belongs of course to "conspiracy theories".
So discussing anything with you is for me a waste of time. I have more important things to do; I want to stare out of the window for a while longer. See you in the Elvis department

This reminds me of Tom Bearden, who took a number of (crack-)pot shots at what he perceived to be Soviet Threats to the US Home Land. He argued that scalar-waves, produced by powerful Tesla generators in the former Soviet Union, were influencing the weather in the US and making people sick and mad. There are many delightful pages on the World Wide Web dealing with these truths. Here a few for starters:

Lt. Col. Thomas E. Bearden (this is in English from no less than http://www.akasha.de )

Star Wars Now!
The Bohm Aharanov Effect, Scalar Interferometry, and Soviet Weaponization, 1984

Bearden did not know that just by circumambulating the Tulasi Plant one produces a force field so strong it could absorb the scalar radiation of each and every evil Soviet Tesla generator in the universe.

maybe we can send tom a btg to save him from his mental strife

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/slprm.html

put your tin foil cap back on history ends in 2012

The following is a listing of early major CIA mind control experimentation, as documented in the Congressional record in 1977, by the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources:

MKDELTA: This was apparently the first project established by the CIA in October, 1952, for the use of biochemicals in clandestine operations. It may never have been implemented operationally.
MKULTRA: This was a successor project to MKDELTA established in April, 1953, and terminating some time in the late 1960s, probably after 1966. This program considered various means of controlling human behavior. Drugs were only one aspect of this activity.
Among the areas investigated during MKULTRA were: brain surgery including lobotomy; the use of electrical and chemical shock; the effects of stress on human beings, including hunger, fear, fatigue, duress, and torture; narcoanalysis; handwriting analysis; ultrasonic, subsonic, and vibrational disorientation and control; interrogation techniques; drugs that induced speech and amnesia, sensory deprivation and "electrosleep"; radiation; genetic research including gene splicing and the creation of mutations; ESP; various forms of brainwashing; personality assessment; concussions produced by remote control; brain implants and electrodes; the use of prostitutes as agents; hormonal and glandular products; gases; poisons; drug agents that could be sprayed; and drugs, including LSD, amphetamines, morphine, nicotine, ether, psychedelic mushrooms, barbiturates, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. At least four of the MKULTRA programs were specifically conducted on children.
MKNAOMI: This project began in the 1950s and was terminated in 1969. This may have been a successor to MKDELTA. Its purpose was to stockpile severely incapacitating and lethal materials, and to develop gadgetry for the dissemination of these materials.
MKSEARCH: This was apparently a successor project to MKULTRA, which began in 1965 and was terminated in 1973. The objective of the project was to develop a capability to manipulate human behavior in a predictable manner through the use of drugs.
MKCHICKWIT: This was apparently a part of the MKSEARCH program. Its objective was to identify new drug developments in Europe and Asia and to obtain information and samples.
MKOFTEN: This was also apparently a part of the MKSEARCH project. Its objective was to test the behavioral and toxicological effects of certain drugs on animals and humans.
In the Top Secret "Memorandum for Chief, Medical Staff, PROJECT ARTICHOKE [deleted in original document], Evaluation of I & S Role, January 25, 1952," the question was posed, "Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature such as self-preservation?

This is not so strange if you realize that the CIA was started by Donovan with thousands of ex-Gestapo members who were 'emigrated' from Germany to America in 1945.

How did I just know that MK-ULTRA was going to be mentioned?

Yes, I don't think a tinfoil hat will suffice for these ones. Perhaps a tinfoil bodysuit.

edit!

Hey, I happen to think tinfoil fashion is the height of grooviness!

But then again, my opinions are "Establishment" opinions and my fashions are "Establishment" fashions. And me and my Dr Mengele-like friends wish to subvert the population to our evil agenda so that everyone ends up wearing what we wear.

Click to view attachment

i think the tin man is an undercover bhakti devotee he was all about getting heart.

Pah, that's nothing! What about when devotees circumambulate the temple while doing japa? Such virtuous acts of sadhana, the force field created by this one reinforces the spin-cycle of the earth's orbit and ensures that the planet orbits correctly so that Krishna can set his watch by us! His incarnations needing to arrive on schedule and all that.. Also, the washing-machines in the temple laundry work much more efficiently at washing the kaupins.

I start to envy you and Epitau a little by now because of my Zen past. We also tried to achieve No-mind but we failed.

Good one, Softbrain
Merry Christmas and a Happy Mindful New Year!

there is a film about this sort of work- "das experiment" - it has english sub-titles and is very gruesome....

Ok, in all seriousness. Nobody is "humiliating" anybody and this isn't "my" thread. Of course everyone has the right to their own opinion and also to disagree with mine. Or Epitau's. Also, my opinions are my own; I may be in the profession but I do not profess to know everything nor do I mindlessly defend anything, I have my own opinions too. Therefore I resent pompous and ill-informed suggestions that my views are "Establishment" when everyone and their dog knows that scientific learning requires the development of critical thinking. Also, I find being compared to the Nazis not only highly offensive, but crass and vulgar. Just remember, I got viciously attacked just for pointing out that Softbrain's information originated from a non-scientific article. This is just simple basic research, pointing out that sensationalist and panicky allegations are being made by a non-scientist who in all probability doesn't know what he's talking about. But to merely point this out is much more boring because the information itself is hot gossip? Ah, such is the way of the world.. a sore lack of critical thinking. Anyway let's give the benefit of the doubt and these CIA-conspiracy theories are all true. So what? If it is true, it was highly unethical and shouldn't have been done. Did anybody discover the law of gravity through "scientific" means? No, an apple just fell on Newton's head. Shall we all laugh at this guy for sitting under a tree and getting a knock on the head from a fruit? Or shall we celebrate it since it has given us a much better understanding of how the world works and futhered knowledge into how the planets remain in their orbits?

For all this stuff about using electric currents to achieve "mind control", again so what? There is electricity in the brain already, neurons are being fired all the time, so it is "common sense" that expertise in manipulating the 'natural' electric currents with 'artificial' electric currents will lead to people becoming "mindless slaves" if they hit the right frequency. Is this a good thing? Of course not. This is all discussed in the article I posted from Scientific American, which acknowledged the controversy and provided a balanced view of it unlike the sensationalist slop. And it is a controversy, because any technology can be open to abuse, fear and criticism as we have seen in recent years with issues like Dolly the sheep, genetics, stem cells etc. Just recently I posted a story about a British couple due to give birth to a "genetically modified" baby expected not to develop breast cancer.

But zapping brain cells with electricity can have some very good applications. Like what, I hear you say? I say, ever heard of Parkinson's Disease? Michael J. Fox has it. Terry Thomas died of it. Many more have it and have also died of it. It's main features consist of tremors, rigidity, bradykinesia (slow movement) and unstable posture, which all get worse with time. There is no cure for it, and bad news from neurogenetics research says that PD is inheritable. Not always, but having it in the family increases the possibility of it being inherited just like with breast cancer. And yet a procedure has been developed called Deep Brain Stimulation that has resulted in the surprising reduction of all these effects. Not quite a cure, but the closest thing to it and the quality of life has immensely improved for many PD sufferers who have undergone this treatment. What does DBS involve? Funnily enough, it involves zapping the brain with electricity. A "brain pacemaker" is implanted in the brain where regular low-voltage shocks are administered to the targeted areas of the brain that moderate the PD-symptoms. How It Works (TIME Magazine).

Oh, but these are all "Establishment" views from "Establishment" websites, me and my Mengele-like friends just gloss over the dangers with screams of conspiracy theories. I guess it's much more fun and exciting to believe that the government secretly hate their citizens and love to use them as guinea pigs for their clone-drone top-secret classified operations. People have a choice to make: they can either evaluate the evidence for themselves, or they can get carried away screaming "mind control" and hole up in their nuclear bunker shelters wearing tinfoil bodysuits bought from Ebay. That they have the freedom to make this choice is a wonder in itself. Make the choice and reap the consequences. There's karma in action right there.

Now I'm off for dinner.

I erased totally that post an hour ago because I can sense the lack of possibilities of where this forum chat can go, but since it was somehow miraculously saved and recycled,

this discussion is such a hop-scotch, hop from any half-associated phrase someone said to scotch on a liturgy of introductory science display - and lines from posts of others can easily be cut and quoted as an excuse to go on sprees of soapboxes with obvious assertions the sounds of which flush with the endearing earnestness of as if just discovering some enormous new world view armour in textbook studies and aphorisms (I also had to study and incorporate as what I believe to be true).

that I am just going to focus on the cloned sheep Dolly, how she was named to make fun of Dolly Parton, and post this video as a tribute to both Dolly and to that mutant sheep:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIqevEFSzrU
most notably, the 'you would know that Dolly' part

Anyway, my only point in posting that short popular article is that yes such experiments undeniably happened, yes in all their gory gruesomeness, some of those subjects are still alive but mostly sick inside hospitals, you will learn that not on tin foil websites but at the very universities affiliated to the hospital where they took place

it is false to denigrate this and the sufferings of those people like it can only be the ravings of a crackpot

and if tinfoil people had decided to vigorously promote darwin would that make darwin the butt of dismissive humour or untrue

I agree, and it is deplorable. I wasn't denigrating it, it is pretty shocking. Some months ago in the UK there was an outbreak of near-lethal disease/injuries among a group who had volunteered for drug-testing. They were hospitalised because their conditions were so severe. It was pretty frightening. I don't know if anyone died.

science is now having itself spun on its head with incontrovertible evidence of the loch ness monster

Thank you, and the same to you and Dhyana.

How is Michael Moore a conspiratorial type of person? He actually seems to report and film social and political wrongs a few years before they become mainstream and have to be dealt with, like the War in Iraq and how there were no weapons of mass destruction, the bad management of the auto industry, decrepit health care in the USA and reasons why kids go ballistic and kill others in mass school shootings.

This is bloody excellent:


(From New Scientist)

i like michael moore but consider that he's a bit of a hypocrite as it is estimated that his farts account for 25% of the greenhouse causing gasses

As part of my early study into Islam I discovered that Islamics (Arabs) were behind many of the scientific, technological and cultural findings and innovations of the Renaissance (and even pre-Renaissance) era. For example, they invented the guitar. But I wouldn't have thought an Arab would be considered the world's first 'true' scientist. So this was an interesting article:


Full article about his life and achievements at BBC News.

For UK members (and everywhere else at a later date I suppose): Professor Jim Al-Khalili presents Science and Islam on BBC Four at 2100GMT on Monday 5, 12 & 19 January. Prof. Al-Khalili wrote the foreword to Ibn Warraq's Why I Am Not A Muslim. This programme is preceded by An Islamic History of Europe, a series presented by Rageh Omaar.

I shall be enjoying both these programmes!

Dalai Lama to fund 'neuroscience of compassion'

The Dalai Lama is teaming up with Stanford University and a multi-millionaire professor to launch a new research centre dedicated to compassion and altruism.

"His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, provided $150,000 in seed money for the center -- the largest sum he has ever given for a scientific venture -- and has agreed to return to Stanford for a future visit," reads a Stanford press release.

The Dalai Lama's contribution is small change compared to the $2 million raised so far to fund the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, but other Buddhist and Catholic groups have opened their pocketbooks. Centre director Jim Doty, a Stanford neurosurgeon who amassed a $75 million fortune working in business, knows a thing or two about altruism. He's already pledged $25 million of that to charities, including a $5.4 million gift to Stanford.

It seems the centre's goals involve not only investigating how the brain deals with compassion and altruism, but also leveraging those findings to improve people's lives.

Doty hopes the centre's research will help understand and combat childhood bullying and recidivism among prisoners. He also wonders whether the benefits of intense mediation can be more easily achieved by healthcare and corporate workers to prevent burnout, depression and anxiety.

These are all great aims, but I wonder if the centre will run into opposition from other scientists for its connection to a religious figure like the Dalai Lama.

Several years ago, the Dalai Lama gave a keynote address at the Society for Neuorscience's annual meeting, amid criticism from some members of the society. More than 1000 people signed an on-line petition questioning his credentials, though some of the opposition was probably tied to his political views on Tibetan independence.

In New Scientist, Chris Frith, a neuroscientist at University College London, expressed support - and scepticism -- for crosstalk between scientists and Buddhists.

"Why would Buddhists be attracted to neuroscience, a more down-to-earth field? Should neuroscientists return their interest? As a practising neuroscientist, my answer is: yes, up to point, but don't expect too much."

(See article for links)

Immortality discovered in the here and now:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24970100-23109,00.html

Scientists claim being fat is contagious:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24969...5017817,00.html

I don't think there is anything to worry about but..

From The Physics arXiv blog:

January 23rd, 2009


Black Holes From LHC Could Survive For Minutes


There is absolutely, positively, definitely no chance of the LHC destroying the planet when it eventually switches on some time later this year. Right?

Err, yep. And yet a few niggling doubts are persuading some scientists to run through their figures again. And the new calculations are throwing up some surprises.

One potential method of destruction is that the LHC will create tiny black holes that could swallow everything in their path including the planet. In 2002, Roberto Casadio at the Universita di Bologna in Italy and a few pals reassured the world that this was not possible because the black holes would decay before they got the chance to do any damage.

Now they’re not so sure. The question is not simply how quickly a mini-black hole decays but whether this decay always outpaces any growth.

Casadio have reworked the figures and now say that: ” the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible.”

Does not seem possible? That’s not the unequivocal reassurance that particle physicists have been giving us up till now.

What’s more, the new calculations throw up a tricky new prediction. In the past, it had always been assumed that black holes would decay in the blink of an eye.

Not any more. Casadio and co say: “the expected decay times are much longer (and possibly ≫ 1 sec) than is typically predicted by other models”

Whoa, let’s have that again: these mini black holes will be hanging around for seconds, possibly minutes?

That doesn’t sound good. Anybody at CERN care to clarify?

In the (missing in action) Entertainment subforum, I posted a news item about the passing of Michael Crichton. It is an interesting observation how he passed away the day after Obama's winning the November 2008 election, and the day after his passing scientists announced that they now have the technology with which to reconstruct extinct animals using recovered DNA. This was more or less the plot of Crichton's most famous novel, Jurassic Park.

New Scientist ran a (cover) piece on which species could be thus recovered: Ten extinct beasts that could walk the Earth again.

By the way did anyone catch the story about Titanoboa?

Brain scans replace job interviews within five years

24 february 2009 by Adriana Stuijt




Prof. Verbeke heads the department of neuro-economics, (NSIM), at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He predicts in an interview with Good Morning Netherlands radio station that employers demanding compulsory brain scans from their job applicants will soon become the most normal thing in the world -- in fact within five years' time', he believes.

Financial chaos by psychopathic behaviour:
Especially after the economic fiascos which are plunging the world into recession, a great deal of interest is being shown by the economic sector in their neuro-testing job application scheme, which is now being developed and tested, he said. Neuro-economics is a new research field, combining economics, psychology, genetics and neuro-science.

One of the most important developments in this field are the use of EEGs and MRI-scans to determine the suitability of candidates for specific jobs, he said. It's been known for the past thirty years that one can determine human psychological disabilities such as autism and psychopathic tendencies in brain-scans, he said. However exact guidelines are only now being developed for practical applications in industry and the economic field by his department.

While brain-scanning their volunteers, the Erasmus University researchers can identify exactly to which extent people react 'spontaneously', i.e. subconsciously, to specific social interactions - such as financial trading on the stock market or shop personnel interacting with customers.

Thus they could also test job applicants for important posts such as bank directors and financial institutions to determine whether they are even suitable -- or whether they have psychopathic tendencies which would exclude them from such jobs.

"If I wanted someone to become a company director, I would most certainly first want a brain-scan to make sure he wasn't harbouring psychopathic or autistic tendencies', Verbeke said.

Dutch legal expert Guus van Vos however said that at the moment it was still not allowed under Dutch privacy laws to demand brainscans as part of job applications..


Full article: Digital Journal

Jesus Christ on the rubber raft!!! You do not need to brain scan this professor to know something is wrong with him if he is seriously proposing this! I would definitely not want him as my boss.

First, what he proposes amounts to a grave invasion of privacy. Second, what about the ethical questions related to what to do with any other findings that might pop up in the course of the scan. Third, the ambiguity, and thus the scope for errors and misinterpretations, is huge. (Will neuroeconomics practicioners abide by any equivalent of Primum non nocere?)

But over and above all, the proposal betrays assumptions about the human nature that would be charming in their innocence, if they weren't potentially so abusive. This person seems to believe that the human population consists of the normal and the damaged. Flowers and weeds. You are either - or, from cradle to grave. And that if we give the jobs -- certain important jobs, at least -- to the normal guys, it will ensure good performance. He believes in a perfect world if only we weed out the damaged specimens. And he probably believes he himself and those around him are perfectly normal.

For crying out loud! Is there such a thing as a quantifiably normal human being? The professor might be surprised to find out how much fantastic work has been done by people in the autism spectrum, provided the task and the setting drew on their strengths and not taxed their weaknesses. Just like with all of us. If a person has difficulty interacting socially and reading social cues, there should be enough evidence of it in their track record from previous jobs and even in how they interact with you (provided you give the interaction some time), to obliterate the need for brain scans. I frankly wonder about this professor's ability to relate to other people, if he finds brain scans superior as a source of information. But I guess he is trying to streamline the process, so that the person with the power to hire need not waste time on meeting the candidates, reading their CVs or contacting former employers.

I also wonder how much social sciences he has studied. To draw a direct link between economic fiascos and the brain functioning of the individual in charge, is to believe in a world without social interactions, influences, interdependencies, checks and balances. Gasp.