Do We Have Free Will To Think About Jennifer Aniston?

In The Secret You (available on iPlayer until 27/11/09), Professor Marcus du Sautoy (a mathematician) goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are?

It’s basically about the search for a natural explanation for our consciousness. Are our thoughts just neurons firing? or is there something more going on?

In one experiment, where Marcus decided whether to press the button in his left or right hand, the scan of his brain apparently indicated which side he was going to choose 6 seconds before he even knew himself.

Obviously scientists like things to have a natural cause, and this seems to indicate that our thoughts are predictable, and hence that our concept of free will is a bit messed up. I began to wonder if a criminal could argue that he wasn’t in control of his actions based on this, but the guy did insist that our subconscious is obedient to our conscious wishes.

In other experiments, people were shown a load of pictures, and the response of a certain neuron detected. With one patient, out of 100 pictures, it only responded to the 6 pictures of Jennifer Aniston, and only when she was photographed on her own, it didn’t respond to a picture of her with Brad Pitt.

There was other stuff in there like sticking spots to babies’ faces and giving Marcus an “out of body experience”, and I found it very interesting, but in conclusion, there’s still plenty we don’t understand.

Man’s Best Friend

I watched Marley & Me last night. If you have (or have had) a dog, I reckon it’s a great film.

It brought back memories of our dog, Chester.

He wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Marley.  Favourite memories include my 3 year old (at the time) brother being scared of him when we first got him and climbing on the kitchen table to get away. Then there’s the imitating a fire engine siren that he did once, but disappointingly we couldn’t manage to entice out of him again. Hanging one of his toys on the washing line until he managed to jump high enough to get hold of it and bend the pole as he came back down was also pretty funny.

I’m not sure my parents were quite as attached to Chester as John and Jenny to Marley though. When we moved house, in an attempt to avoid the whole house being covered in hair and smelling of dog, he was banished from the living room once we got a new carpet. There were exceptions to this rule, he was allowed in on special occasions, by which I mean spiders were even less welcome in the living room and he was brought in to eat any that intruded.

Here’s another man’s tribute to a dog:

TWIT-ter

Article at uk.msn.com

Apparently celebrities such as John Mayer are not immune to spending too much time on t’internet.

To get dumped by Jennifer Aniston for tweeting instead of talking to her is pretty stupid in my book.

I’m aware of the irony of posting this on my blog, I probably spend too much time on various websites too.

Oh well, I still quite like some of his music.