buster benson's rules to live by

1. You must not dilly-dally. 2. You must be your word. 3. You must
have good intentions. 4. You must admit to being the maker of meaning.
5. You must not feel sorry for yourself. 6. You must have a vision
that you are striving for. 7. You must tie creativity and
experimentation with survival. 8. You must be the change you want to
see. 9. You must rally others with your vision. 10. You must stake
your reputation on your better self. 11. You must be comfortable with
the consequences of being who you are. 12. You must share. 13. You
must make your own advice and take it. 14. You must manage your
stress, health, and clarity. 15. You must study your mistakes. 16. You
must retry things you don't like every once in a while. 17. You must
make time to enjoy things. -- http://busterbenson.com/

focus, leonardo

"Inhibition may have an opposite impact on two aspects of creativity:
convergent thinking and divergent thinking. [...] Thus, poor
inhibitory control may present a disadvantage for individuals with
ADHD on convergent thinking tasks, such as the Remote Associates Task,
that benefit from strong inhibitory control. In contrast, given the
positive relationship between poor inhibitory control and divergent
thinking, individuals with ADHD may show above average divergent
thinking. [...] On the other hand, some models of creativity suggest
that both the ability to diffuse attention and generate ideas, and the
ability to focus attention and work within certain constraints, may be
important for actual creative production." --
http://proadhd.nl/White_Shah_ADHDCreativity_PAID.pdf

Circumstantial evidence: a friend of mine who is more towards the ADHD
end of the spectrum has told me on several occasions that he thinks I
am very good at relating otherwise unrelated things (convergent
thinking). Am I comparatively bad at coming up with alternatives? I
must admit that although I like to think all over the place, I often
do so through the use of textual aids (e.g. using Gathatoulie posts to
record weird ideas -- which I then later draw connections between).

My guess is that I think more towards the high anxiety ("inhibited")
end of the spectrum (cf.
http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2011/11/old-mail-amy-g.html,
http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2011/10/self-agency-reward-and-anxiety.html)
-- which makes my own issues with focus and attention somewhat
curious.

Perhaps instead of what would be called divergent thinking (generating
ideas), I sensitively search and observe the world I'm in. Hm... it's
also curious that at the same time as having a fairly strong ability
to put up with things and deal with problems by self-soothing (not
always the best way, I might add), I also seem to have fairly bad
impulse control when it comes to things like budgeting money or
playing cards or whatever. Maybe being creative isn't always the best
blend for dealing with normal day to day life? In fact I'm pretty
sure it isn't. To put it another way, creativity and adaptivity are
vastly different things.

old mail: amy g

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/22/depressed-mothers-have-children-with-enlarged-amygdalas-says-study.html
Awesome article, fucked up but interesting neurological effect!   On
the positive side, such persons would be well qualified for careers as
super-detectives! :)

"If you grow up in an environment in which you don't have all the
support you would need, maybe you become a super-detector of threats."

On the down-side, somewhat subject to stress...

"a larger amygdala might be the equivalent of having not one fire
alarm but many go off at the slightest whiff of smoke."

My friend who's a psychologist by training had a different view: "I
think the actual effect of amygdale size is very small... a person's
education probably has much more to with how well they cope in real
world situations than the size of any particular area of their brain."

Cf. http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2011/08/comic-book-psychology.html

apomorphine reconsidered

The classic D1/D2 receptor agonist apomorphine has been
used as a centrally acting emetic in Parkinson treatment
and to treat erectile dysfunction. A new sublingual form
of apomorphine has recently been developed, which produces
fewer side effects, such as nausea and vomiting. It has
been assumed that apomorphine would primarily influence
erectile function by acting on oxytocinergic neurons
located in the paraventricular nucleus of the
hypothalamus. However, animal studies as well as
observations in humans have shown that motivational
aspects of sexual behavior are influenced by apomorphine
administration as well. Summarizing a series of animal
studies, we may conclude that dopamine is involved in the
appetitive phase of sexual behavior, which is primarily
processed by the nucleus accumbens, whereas consummatory
aspects of sexual performance are controlled in the dorsal
striatum. -- http://66.199.228.237/boundary/Sexual_Addiction/orgasm_dopamine.pdf

linklater

"Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are
actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social
hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as
people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion
would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and
not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do
with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for." --
Richard Linklater, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker_(film)

the ethical parent

The following are five basic elements of how caregivers can foster a
secure attachment in the children under their care:

Collaboration [...] Reflective Dialogue [...] Repair [...] Coherent
Narratives [...] Emotional Communication.

-- http://www.robsilvermancounseling.com/images/siegel-interpersonal-neurobiology.pdf

Leigh Brasington's tentative hypothesis

First, from Emily Yoffe in Slate Magazine:

Mammals stimulating the lateral hypothalamus seem to be caught in a
loop, Panksepp writes, "where each stimulation evoked a reinvigorated
search strategy". [...] 'Wanting' is Berridge's equivalent for
Panksepp's 'seeking' system.

[However,] it is the 'liking' system that Berridge believes is the brain's
reward center. When we experience pleasure, it is our own opioid
system, rather than our dopamine system, that is being stimulated.
This is why the opiate drugs induce a kind of blissful stupor so
different from the animating effect of cocaine and amphetamines.

[In short,] wanting and liking are complementary. The former
catalyzes us to action; the latter brings us to a satisfied pause.
Seeking needs to be turned off, if even for a little while, so that
the system does not run in an endless loop. When we get the object of
our desire (be it a Twinkie or a sexual partner), we engage in
consummatory acts that Panksepp says reduce arousal in the brain and
temporarily, at least, inhibit our urge to seek.

Now, from http://www.leighb.com/jhananeuro.htm:

Quite secluded from the dopamine-based wanting system (substantia
nigra), secluded from any other disturbing mental activity -- one
enters & remains in the first jhana: dopamine-based liking system
(ventral tegmental area) activation [...] accompanied by background mental
activity.

With the stilling of background mental activity, one enters & remains
in the second jhana: dopamine-based liking system activation &
opioid-based liking system activation born of concentration,
unification of awareness free from background mental activity --
internal tranquility due to opioids flooding the nervous system.

With the fading of dopamine-based liking system activation, remaining
equanimous, mindful & clearly aware -- with continued opioid-based
liking system activation, one is physically sensitive of pleasure. One
enters & remains in the third jhana, of which the Noble Ones declare,
'Equanimous & mindful due to opioid system activation, one has a
pleasurable abiding.'

With the abandoning of liking generated by opioid system activation --
as with the earlier disappearance of liking generated by dopamine
system activation -- one enters & remains in the fourth jhana:
mindfulness fully purified by the equanimity remaining from the prior
opioid activation, a neutral state now that the liking systems have
calmed down.

(N.B.: both dopamine-based liking and opioid-based liking are housed
in the Nucleus Accumbens, cf. this recent post on Gathatoulie,
http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2011/10/self-agency-reward-and-anxiety.html)

judeo-buddhist

I noticed some fascinating parallels between the instructions for
Buddhist meditation in the Anapanasati Sutra
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anapanasati_Sutta#Preparatory_instructions)
and the layout of the Kabbalistic tree of life.

Let me run through the "steps" in that Sutra with parallels to some
tarot cards that seem to make sense. (These can certainly be switched
around considerably for other interpretations.)  What's interesting to
me is how these steps map onto the "male" and "female" attributes of
the tree of life.

The parallels can serve as a mnemonic for remembering the various
components of a meditation practice, and for better understanding what
some mystical Kabbalistic things might "really" be about.

Contemplation of the Body / Malkuth
1. Discerning long breaths: 10 of wands, Oppression, as in a sigh
2. Discerning short breaths: 10 of coins, Wealth, as with speech or laughter
3. Experiencing the whole body: 10 of swords, Ruin, as in bodily pain and decay
4. Calming bodily formations: 10 of cups, Satiety, as in calmness

Contemplation of the Feeling / Netzach
5. Being sensitive to rapture: 7 of wands, Valour, as in being in love with an idea
6. Being sensitive to pleasure: 7 of cups, Debauch, as in taking it a bit far

Contemplation of the Feeling / Hod
7. Being sensitive to mental fabrication: 8 of swords, Interference, as in this stuff is messing with me
8. Calming mental fabrication: 8 of coins, Prudence, as in, hey, what's really going on

Contemplation of the Mind / Chesed
9. Being sensitive to the mind: 4 of cups, Luxury, as in what we cook up in fantasy
10. Satisfying the mind: 4 of coins, Completion, as in getting what you're after
(at least in fantasy)

Contemplation of the Mind / Geburah
11. Steadying the mind: 5 of wands, Strife, as in how we must be prepared for a struggle
12. Releasing the mind: 5 of swords, Defeat, as in moving on when we see that the
fantasy level doesn't really "work"

Contemplation of the Mental Objects / Chokmah
13. Focusing on impermanence: 2 of coins, Change, as in things are always changing
14. Focusing on dispassion: 2 of wands, Dominion, as in 'truth will make you free'

Contemplation of the Mental Objects / Binah
15. Focusing on cessation: 3 of swords, Sorrow, as in the the sadness of giving something up
16. Focusing on relinquishment: 3 of cups, Abundance, as in, actually there's plenty so don't worry

london psychogeographical association?

You get a shiver in the dark
It's raining in the park but meantime
South of the river you stop and you hold everything
A band is blowing Dixie double four time
You feel all right when you hear that music ring

Well now you step inside but you don't see too many faces
Coming in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down
Competition in other places
But the horns, they blowing that sound
Way on down south
Way on down south in London town^*

[...]

*: I looked this up after listening to the Kiosk version of "Green
Grass", which is to Tom Waits what "Sultans of Swing" is to swing (as
I remarked on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlv_KejUI_k#t=1m6s); anyway, it seems
like the two songs use a similar metre. I like the spooky original
addition to the cover by Kiosk frontman Arash Sobhani:

The grass grows by every stream
Like smiles faintly gleam
step gently cause it not to scream
For it has grown from a lover's dream

hamming

"Now, how did I come to do this study? At Los Alamos I was brought in to run the computing machines which other people had got going, so those scientists and physicists could get back to business. I saw I was a stooge. I saw that although physically I was the same, they were different. And to put the thing bluntly, I was envious. I wanted to know why they were so different from me. I saw Feynman up close. I saw Fermi and Teller. I saw Oppenheimer. I saw Hans Bethe; he was my boss. I saw quite a few very capable people. I became very interested in the difference between those who do and those who
might have done." --http://www.newschooljournal.com/files/NSER03/05-26.pdf

maladaptive and progressive schemata

Emacs Lisp mode for fontification of "maladaptive" schemas:
https://raw.github.com/holtzermann17/rid-mode.el/master/mal-mode.el

Working on this was rather tedious. What I'd like better than what
I've made here would be a "progressive" word-list generating tool that
would not only extract an initial list of keywords from a given
document, but flesh that list out over time to make a better
representation of the key ideas, based on keywords found in the
documents. For example, if a known keyword A appears many times in a
given document, some new word B that also appears frequently in that
document should be added to the list of words that A is a part of.

Also, the maladaptive schema stuff is tedious because it is
depressing! "Maladaptive Schemas are self-defeating, core themes or
patterns that we keep repeating throughout our lives." Things like
"The perceived instability or unreliability of those available for
support and connection", or "The expectation that others will hurt,
abuse, humiliate, cheat, lie, manipulate, or take advantage."

It's also not entirely clear to me that working on this tool was
itself "adaptive", but I wanted to make another analytic module I
could share on the GNU Emacs mailing list (because rid-mode.el was
copyright encumbered).

Some other details about maladaptive schemas:

Definitions: http://www.schematherapy.com/id73.htm

Questionnaire: http://www.schematherapy.com/id53.htm

Scoring: http://www.schematherapy.com/id111.htm