Looks like a team of researchers has discovered evidence supporting the notion of general fluid intelligence, called g, in the first "large-sample imaging study" ever conducted using brain scans of subjects engaged in problem-solving activities.

The research team, headed by psychologist Dr. Jeremy Gray at St. Louis's Washington University, used MRI scanning to determine what parts of the brain are activated by complex reasoning tasks. The test they used to get the subjects thinking hard in this case was the "Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices," which pleases us to no end. An example of the Raven test is shown at right, where you can see it's one of those "guess-the-next-shape-in-the sequence" deals.

Dr. Gray said the findings indicated that the variations in test performances were mirrored by differences in brain activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in working memory, planning and goal-directed activity. The subjects who did well on the intelligence tests also showed greater activity in several other brain areas, including the anterior cingulate cortex and the cerebellum.

Negative G

You get that performing certain aerobatic maneuvers in airplanes. You also get a lot of it in Washington: Bush May Deny Some Overseas AIDS Money. This example of compassionate conservatism targets organizations that promote or perform abortions overseas.

Under the policy, such organizations' family planning operations would be prohibited from involvement in anti-AIDS work.

The Herd Mentality

It's hard to believe how much coverage that Chicago nightclub story is getting today. Why do you think that is? Could it be that there's something compelling about death by stampede? I'd say it's a call to refresh our minds with the fact that an orderly, civilized people are characterized by their reaction to danger.

Hi G, Low G

For the high g angle, try this article marking the tenth issue celebration of Dave Eggers's McSweeney's. We don't have that many literary magazines around these days.

The low g story would be me, who botched the new link to Emphasis Added. Corrected and offered here again for convenience. Have a smart day.

3:45:58 PM       

You'd think that being on top of an exploding volcano of information would give you a an excellent vantage point from which to survey the landscape of meaning. It doesn't seem to work that way. For that, you need to dive below the surface and swim with the big pelagics, the dark ruminating carnivores who only visit the surface rarely and, when doing so, are blinded by the sun.

When millions of people take their hearts to the pavement, it must mean something, and we refuse to concur with Sullivan and Reynolds that the marching was a spontaneous expression of naivete and adolescent pique. For that, we had the speeches, in most cases a litany of self-excoriation ending with all eyes turned in reddened rage toward a cowboy's whose underwear are three-sizes too tight.

Still, nobody likes a "peace" parade that ends in violence—that always confuses things—and the lessons of Seattle seem to have taken hold: Don't let the balacava bunch hijack the hijinx.

Nevertheless, a group in San Francisco, mostly young Black Bloc anarchists, went ahead and gave it a go anyway because a mass protest is a dangerous thing. If you haven't been in one, try to imagine it: You're enswarmed by thousands upon thousands, outnumbering the authorities by ridiculous odds. There's a sense that for this brief moment, the rules have faded away and this brings on an adrenaline rush spurred by the realization that now you are in control. The agenda is yours, the room is silent, and it's your turn at the microphone. By god, after all the insanity and abuse and meaningless shock-stick headlines that have you freaked and fractured, you've finally got a chance to scream back at them to just back off and leave us the hell alone!. And if you can make some kind of point along the way, well, that couldn't hurt either. San Francisco Deputy Police Chief Greg Suhr applauded the earlier, peaceful demonstrations, but didn't have much to say about the vandalism that erupted later:

"It's anti-war," Suhr said. "It's kind of like anti-everything."

We've been hearing a lot about "Anti-Americanism" in Europe, but interviews with Contintental protesters are reassuringly consistent with their assessment that the underlying cause of unrest is actually Anti-Bushism. "They regard him as an idiot; a lot of people in this country do," says political editor Andrew Marr in Britain. And while Harold Pinter is overly harsh in his condemnation of all things American, there is a feeling captured in the following poem he wrote that explains better than anything else I can find precisely why the protesters carried signs denouncing Bush—not—Saddam as the source of dread:

Here they go again
The Yanks in their armored parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.
All the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

Lastly, consider the views of Barbara Amiel, who writes for the London Telegraph. She also notes the lack of denounciations targeted at Saddam, and also wonders why America and Israel were lambasted by speaker after speaker, when we aren't the ones who who've turned Iraq into a Stalinist hell run by soldiers, whose people are sent to torture chambers, whose citizenry is terrorized and being crushed worse every day.

Laying out the world's changing attitudes to Israel and America so barely, makes it sound like a conscious decision - which is absurd. But changes in the spirit of the times are as difficult to explain as those immense flocks of birds you see sitting on some great African lake, hundreds of thousands of them at a time, till all of a sudden, successively, they fly up and turn in a specific direction. One can never analyse which bird started it and how it became this incredible rush. All you see is the result.

10:32:33 AM