Last week I was browsing the goodies available in the GMail Labs and came across Web Clips. It seems to display a highlighted line of text above your mailbox taken from RSS headlines. They list a number of popular sites (CNN, Engadget, etc.) or you can add a custom feed.

I noticed its fatal flaw instantly: 75%+ of the clips it displayed were Sponsored Links. You can skip by them and browse real headlines (as well as additional Sponsored ones) via little left/right arrows, but the value of this is in effortless headlines that may or may not be something useful. If I wanted to browse through RSS feeds, I'd use a real RSS reader. Before disabling, however, I did a quick search to see why anyone would be using this (or if my experience was atypical). I abandoned that curiosity when I found this: Gmail Disable Sponsored Links.

It's a GreaseMonkey script (a great add-on for FireFox that allows you to run bits of JavaScript on user-defined URLs) that seems like it just looks for "sponsored" and, when found, executes the code that simulates clicking the right arrow, effectively skipping by all the ads.

Now I'm a Web Clips fan.

This morning Haiti was hit by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

I found out about while watching CNN--the first time my TV has been on in months--and thought to myself something like "it seems like there's been a lot of disasters lately." But why? Intellectually I think if I did the research I wouldn't find support in historical data, but it does feel that way. I'm going to go ahead and credit two things for that feeling: my parents and technology.

As a child, I think I was largely shielded from most catastrophic news and so, with the exception of Desert Storm, have a relatively clean recollection of the world climate for the first 13ish years of my life.

In terms of technology, I think that the increased amount and quality of images and video that saturates every aspect of modern society, in combination with broadband Internet, has created a more palpable sense of reality beyond our familiar geography. Even reading about an earthquake, tsunami, or explosion now comes with a greater sense of immediacy and is more personal than it was to previous generations because we can connect it to real images we've seen instead of being forced to conceptualized unfathomable horror (and usually just avoiding the task).

There are aspects of TV and the Internet that have been said to desensitize those that consume them because of the volume of violent (et al) images contained therein. I don't know enough about the psychological studies to comment knowledgably, but my gut tells me there's something to it. However, I think the blame is placed wrongly. The problem is not violent images, television, news, etc. The problem is the exploitation of the very sorts of personal connections enabled by multimedia: sensationalism instead of reporting, fear mongering, melodramatic coverage of non-stories, and getting every American to ask "how does it impact me?" Violence exists in reality. Reporting reality will include violence. When the news ceases to accurately reflect reality, teasing things like "WILL IPODS KILL YOUR CHILDREN??...We'll tell ya, at 11!" or prioritizing local home invasions to get ratings is when there's a problem.

When searching for "earthquake haiti" on Google News, sorting by date, then going back and looking for the first headlines of the earthquake, the very first is a quick news flash from MarketWatch. The second is from laist.com, titled "Earthquakes in Northern California & Haiti a Good Reminder for L.A. to Get Prepared." There are absolutely no details of the event, just that it happened, followed by what Californians should do to prepare.

What I never hear pointed out (and this just might be my ignorance), is the opposite effect. Not only does watching video of the aftermath of a disaster taken by someone in the thick of the situation bring us closer to it, but I think that the media--raw citizen media in particular--can now, to a certain degree, actually sensitize us to world events and the conditions of others. These aren't plastic news anchors sitting at a desk with an image superimposed over their suit-clad shoulder, these are real people whose eyes we're looking through.

Good news coverage of events like this, because technology will bring us closer to them, will always elicit very essential human emotions. Just stop it with the "how will it affect you?!" nonsense already. ...Unfortunately, as living things are inherently self-centered to some degree (or else would have gone extinct), scare tactics get ratings.

So how to fix it? The only things I can think of are the Internet and better media literacy. Learn how to identify spin and sensationalism and read the facts with a skeptical eye for accompanying analysis. Dismiss television news altogether unless you're looking for entertainment. That includes CNN and MSNBC. Avoid being a captive audience. Even better, down with passive consumerism! Rah rah Web 2.0! All hail citizen media! The Internet rules! Wait...I don't remember what were we talking about.

Yeah yeah, I know people have been preaching this stuff for years (media literacy, citizen media, and the woes of sensationalism), but it's important so here it is again.

It's interesting that for me--and I'm probably not alone--a change in the appearance of the Google.com landing site is a minor event along the lines of seeing a handwritten envelope behind a bunch of junkmail. Today's unveiling (quite literally given Google's new JavaScript fade-in) was the equivalent of getting a card with money in it.

It's been a couple months since I last heard rumors of a G-phone and at the time I had written it off as gossip. Well, the Nexus One is here. Google is selling phones.

FIRST TAKE

After reading the pre-release Engadget review and taking a quick look at the specs and marketing material, this really seems like a misstep to me. It just isn't special enough for the long-speculated foray into hardware by theInternet company. Granted, it's miles ahead than Apple's first phone (do we remember the get-rich-quick abomination, the ROKR?) but while it's good--and better than its competition in many regards--it's still just an incremental step forward in a predictable trajectory that Motorola, Samsung, RIM, etc. have under control. Don't get me wrong, if it had a physical keyboard instead of a somewhat below-par virtual one, it'd be ordered already, but it shouldn't have been Google's big event. How about a service plan paid for by advertising? Or a new design to focus on browser maximization?

Needing something special for an initial release isn't the only reason I think that Google may have erred. What happens now with the Open Handset Alliance? When Android was released, it was presented like a gift unto the world. That is, after all, what most of Google's services feel like ("here, have free email, have a decent web browser, have a search engine, have some maps and a calendar...it's all good software that you can use as long as you put up with these ads we'll conspicuously place on the sidelines"). By giving away an open source, cross-platform operating system, Android not only makes things better for manufacturers, software developers, and users, it also standardizes compatibility with Google's applications and brings more people towards the little ads. Doesn't getting in the ring and competing with those it gave Android to seem to run contrary to those initial intentions? Also, Google is just now starting to be the target of public murmurings of Big Brotherness. Control of the Internet, the software used to access it, AND the hardware housing the software could even make a Googroupie like me uncomfortable.

SECOND TAKE:

But LO! I see now that the event isn't the Nexus One. The event is a revolution in the cell phone marketplace!

Google doesn't seem to have been any more involved in the development of this device than it has been in past Android endeavors (the G1 in particular). It's manufactured by HTC, just like the G1 and several other Android-based phones. The big difference is where and how it's sold. Google.com/phone should really have a more prominent link to the post on its Official Blog titled "Our new approach to buying a mobile phone."

The first phone.

Cell phone carriers would like to lock you into phones and contracts and create a giant cost to exit. By selling an unlocked phone (as unlocked as possible at the moment) while simultaneously lobbying for greater FTC and FCC protections for openness and creating an alternative market through which to buy the hardware, you place the power in the hands of the consumers in the same (exact) way you can pull up and compare plane tickets, APRs, and car rental rates.
(Sidebar: Maybe if phone carriers were run by Steve Jobs, honed their cutsy and colorful design aesthetic, and ran condescending ad campaigns that portray anyone who likes Google as stupid and less attractive they would be able to somehow convince THEIR customers to welcome higher prices and tethering technologies....oh nevermind).

So Google gets points for using its brawn to muscle power away from carriers and into the hands of users. ...and Nexus One is a pretty good phone. That's my take anyway.

Since my master's project will take the form of a video game, I've been playing with pixels a lot lately, and writing the last post about zombie neurobiology made me revisit the idea for an existential zombie game I had a few months ago. Unfortunately time didn't permit me to continue it into the summer, but I hope to get back to it someday.

So, for a little indulgent fun here are a couple pixels (I'm not claiming anything here is stellar work, by the way :) ).

Zombies

Me

Girl named Lyric and cat named Pi

Post-It Pixel Cupcake

Decided to put together some coherent sentences from the notes I took at the Coolidge Corner Theater's Science on Screen event back in April. Before a screening of Night of the Living Dead, Dr. Steven Schlozman, psychiatrist and educator at Harvard Medical School, gave a truly enlightening talk on zombie neurobiology. As it turns out, zombies are just humans suffering from Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome. Read on.

Armed with a great PowerPoint presentation filled with pop culture references, he covered many areas of the human brain and their functions in order to point to specific neurological causes for several zombie traits.

But first let's be specific: we're talking about George Romero zombies, not the running, hyper, super-strong creatures from newer movies like 28 Days Later. This debate over which can officially be called "zombie" rages all over the Internet and I'm not going to weigh in with my opinion; just setting the parameters for what we're discussing here.

The frontal lobe, for starters, is responsible for planning, "executive functioning," abstract problem solving, staying on task, paying attention, and, most importantly controlling impulsivity. Schlozman describes impulsivity as something where "if you had a few more seconds, you might not have done it."

As a relevant example, he points to Phineas Gage, the guy who survived a big metal rod going through his head back in the mid-1800s. It's an interesting case, not just because he survived, but because the massive frontal lobe damage he sustained in the accident significantly changed his personality. He was, to relevantly summarize the changes, more impulsive.1

The amygdala is the source of our base emotions: fear, rage, and so on. Taking the impulses of the amygdala and processing them through other parts of the brain is, according to Schlozman, "what makes us human." We have animal instincts, but intellect to moderate them. A crocodile is, he says, "all amygdala." Getting mad at a zombie doing what zombies do is, thus, sort of like getting mad a crocodile for being a crocodile.

When the amygdala does go a little crazy, there's another part of the brain that gets involved in addition to the frontal lobe: the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). It acts as a sort of emotional speed bump. It slows down impulses so the frontal lobe can swoop in and moderate the situation. People who suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder, he points out, have more amygdala activity and less anterior cingulate cortex activity (more base emotion with less slowing).2

The cerrebellum and basal ganglia are the parts of the brain responsible for balance and coordinated movement, respectively. Cerebellar atrophy and basal ganglia dysfunction can result in a poor coordination, severe tremors, and a wide-legged, unsteady lurching walk that looks an awful lot like the zombie gait. There are a number of YouTube videos showing this, but I don't really feel great about linking directly to people's personal recovery videos in this context.

The hunger can be explained by lesions to the ventromedial hypothalamus, which can cause obesity and hyperphagia (eating and eating because you never feel satiated).

So. To be a zombie may be to have an overactive amygdala, decreased frontal lobe and anterior cingulate cortex functioning, and damage to the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and ventromedia hypothalamus.

1. The skull and offending metal rod are both on display at the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard Medical School.

2. As a bit of trivia having nothing to do with zombies, the connection between the amygdala and ACC gets stronger with age, which is one reason why we're less likely to do something dumb on a dare when we're older.