Hey guys, I’m going to be posting some password protected entries from time to time for different reasons. Sometimes it will be because it’s personal stuff, other times because I don’t want the things I say searchable on the net for whatever reasons.

If you want access just shoot me an e-mail and if I think it’s appropriate then I’ll fire you the password back.  Please do not take it personally if I don’t reply though.

It’ll be a rarity anyways but thought I’d give the heads up!

MOMENTOS from Nuno Rocha on Vimeo.

Love this…

Turning Into Gods – ‘Concept Teaser’ from jason silva on Vimeo.

Taken from this original post that has a good write up on the producer.

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And I enjoyed this article on how researchers in Germany have genetically modified fruitfly larvae so that they can smell light, seemed appropriate to toss in the same post as the above video hahah

Wanted to share this great lecture by Bill Mckinben on the environment that took place April, 2009. It’s a great overview of the latest scientific research and neatly summarizes a lot of the information out there.  I follow a lot of this stuff online and still found this lecture to be enlightening and very informative.

What’s also amazing is that his organization, 350.org, has such a global presence and that there are millions of people out there that are supporting this cause!

Watch the video below or click here for the official website.

For more info on how to get involved, visit 350.org

For more info on climate change from real scientists, visit RealClimate.org

As a follow up to my last post about iTunes U, I thought I’d tell you about one of the best lecture series that I’ve done on there: MIT 9.00 – Introduction to Psychology

It’s a first year course that covers a huge range of topics about how the brain works, why we act the way we do, effects of mental illness and a vast range of other topics. The professor, Prof. Jeremy Wolfe, is a great lecturer as he really knows how to keep your attention with humor and fascinating bits of information.

I’ve learned so much from it and really gained a lot from listening to it.  It’s 23 lectures, about 1hr 20min each and completely worth the time! It was my preferred listening while I was driving around the NZ countryside on my road trip there and I really can’t recommend it enough hahah

How to get it with iTunes:

1. Open up iTunes U in iTunes (see previous post on how to do this)
2. In the search box type “MIT Cognitive”
3. Click on “MIT 9.00 Introduction …” with the picture of the brain beside it
4. Start downloading those lectures

You’ll want to make sure on your iPod syncing options that you have the “Sync iTunes U” box checked off under the iTunes U tab.

How to get it without iTunes:

If you don’t have iTunes, you can still download the mp3′s of the lectures directly from the MIT Open courseware site.

Link for this specific course: Click Here

Link for MIT’s OpenCourseWare site: Click Here

Enjoy!

I’ve been meaning to share this for a while for those of you who don’t know about it!

iTunes U
iTunes U is an amazing part of Apple’s iTunes that gives you access to tons of university courses, lectures, public seminars, and opencourseware at the touch of a button, for free, to everyone (with an iPod lol).

There’s something available for almost every topic you can think of and so much amazing information to be learned.  I’ve listened to full course university lectures and tons of seminars on there from quite a few different universities.  It’s a truly incredible resource and great while traveling for continuing to learn more about the world!

How can you find it?

1. Open up iTunes
2. On the left click on “iTunes Store”
3. Once it has loaded in the main window, look at the top in the gray navigation bar and on the far right it “iTunes U”. Click it!
4. Begin your learning download =D

It’s that easy! I’ve found that MIT has some of the best stuff as they offer full courses on certain subjects and seminars in both audio (my preferred) as well as video downloads. Of course there are literally hundreds of other universities and other resources to go through so play around and find what works for you.

I truly love the direction our world is going with the dissemination and openness of such high caliber knowledge that is available to literally almost everyone at a touch of a button!

“What is your passion?” she asks next as we sit there talking on the front of the boat. “I don’t know really, I can’t say sports or something like that because they’re really not my passion. Hmmm, I guess…life!” I reply with a grin, thinking at first I was taking an easy way out of the question.  “I love to learn, I’m always trying to keep up to date on the latest research across all the different scientific fields to understand the world just a bit more. There’s so much to learn and it’s all just so incredible and amazing!” She smiles at me, inhales on her cigarette and goes back to her writing.

Later as I’m lying there staring at the clouds change from one shape to another I wonder, is it true? Do I really believe that this is my passion? I start to think about my answer.

I love learning about our world because it allows me to appreciate everything I see for the majesty and beauty contained within it. A thunder cloud isn’t something that makes you pissed off for having forgotten your umbrella, but rather it’s an amazing display of dust particles captured in tiny water droplets which have been travelling through incredibly powerful wind currents over thousands of kilometers, finally coming to a perfect moment where temperature, pressure and density causes it to cease floating in the heavens above and submit to the force of gravity, barrelling down through the atmosphere to finally land in an outstretched hand.

It’s trying to learn how to turn any moment into something positive by finding something in it to appreciate, to get your mind in a positive state, to create your own persistent euphoric utopia…

It’s chasing and creating a life with ever more and more perfect moments. Each adding just a few more notes to our staccato illusion of time.

My passion is to have done the best I could with the life I had, for myself and those around me. Bringing smiles to the faces of others, sharing and creating those euphoric moments of life’s perfection with them.

Contemplating our fragile mortality is frightening and it’s difficult not to allow that fear control my actions in life, but I’ve realized the moment you allow that…you cease to live.

I want to turn even the reality of my eventual death from something terrible to one of those moments. That even facing it, I’ll smile, and appreciate the microcosm of a life I had to appreciate the microcosm of my life…

Sorry for the weird site, the past day or so.  My site was hacked and I was trying to lock it down.  Thankfully the person was nice enough to just change a couple files and didn’t touch the content so I was able to restore it back.  Did make me aware of a few vulnerabilities though that I’m working to fix, so hopefully won’t happen again anytime soon.

Can you concieve of cognition or of life lacking language? To live less your lexicon and loss of elucidation?

Woefully wanting for words to narrate the nervous nuances of your nuerons’ manipulations of your mind.  The embattled balance of your emotions emanating in your exclamations and proclamations of passions, of yearnings, of you.

What magnificent mastery of majesty, what wonder of worlds, to delight in discussion and discourse as amply as you avow to afford.

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Wrote this at a really nice lookout point in the Marlborough Sounds while trying to contemplate of how to think without having language, it’s pretty difficult!