Neuropsychological Model of Spirituality

I have a copy of this, if you’re interested,

AU: Brick Johnstone, Bret A. Glass
TI: SUPPORT FOR A NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL MODEL OF SPIRITUALITY IN PERSONS WITH TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY
SO: Zygon(r)
VL: 43
NO: 4
PG: 861-874
YR: 2008
CP: © 2008 by the Joint Publication Board of Zygon
ON: 1467-9744
PN: 0591-2385
AD: Professor in the Department of Health Psychology, School, and Counseling Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO 65212; e-mail johnstoneg@health.missouri.edu.; Graduate student in the Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO 65212
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2008.00964.x
US: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2008.00964.x
AB: Recent research suggests that spiritual experiences are related to increased physiological activity of the frontal and temporal lobes and decreased activity of the right parietal lobe. The current study determined if similar relationships exist between self-reported spirituality and neuropsychological abilities associated with those cerebral structures for persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Participants included 26 adults with TBI referred for neuropsychological assessment. Measures included the Core Index of Spirituality (INSPIRIT); neuropsychological indices of cerebral structures: temporal lobes (Wechsler Memory Scale-III), right parietal lobe (Judgment of Line Orientation), and frontal lobes (Trail Making Test, Controlled Oral Word Association Test). As hypothesized, spirituality was significantly negatively correlated with a measure of right parietal lobe functioning and positively correlated (nonsignificantly) with measures of left temporal lobe functioning. Contrary to hypotheses, correlations between spirituality and measures of frontal lobe functioning were zero or negative (and nonsignificant). The data support a neuropsychological model that proposes that spiritual experiences are related to decreased activity of the right parietal lobe, which may be associated with decreased awareness of the self (transcendence) and increased activity of the left temporal lobe, which may be associated with the experience of specific religious archetypes (religious figures and symbols).

Fit, Sexy, Geeky Chicks!

In an article called “The Virtual Battle of the Sexes“, the BBC report on research by Dmitri Williams (University of Southern California) Mia Consalvo (Ohio University), Scott Caplan (University of Delaware ) and Nick Yee (Palo Alto Research Center).

In particular they highlight analyses which suggests EQ2 players tend to be healthier than the general population, and that 40% of them are female and 5 times more likely to be bisexual.

Williams also posts about this paper on Terranova in an article called “Gender differences: New findings, new paper“

You can get the original 44 page manuscript from his publications list,

Williams, D., M. Consalvo, S. Caplan & N. Yee. (2009, in press). Looking for gender (LFG): Gender roles and behaviors among online gamers. Journal of Communication.

Here’s the abstract,

“Gender role theory was used to examine differences among male and female players of a large online game. Several hypotheses regarding the importance of gender and relationships were tested by combining a large survey dataset with unobtrusive behavioral data from a year of play. Consistent with expectations, males played for achievement-oriented reasons and were more aggressive, especially within romantic relationships where both partners played. Female players in such relationships had higher general life happiness than their male counterparts. Female players were more likely to play for social reasons. Contrary to popular stereotypes and current hypotheses, it was the female players who played the most. Female players were also healthier than male players or females in the general population. The several findings have implications for gender theory and communication-oriented methods in games and online research—most notably for the use of self-reported time spent, which was systematically incorrect and different by gender.”

Words of wisdom

I like these,

• “Don’t be surprised when people are not pleased for your success and are happy when you fail”

• “Never chase after a bus or a girl – another one’ll come along soon enough!”

National Dish

My favourite foods in Australia were Schnitzel and Laksa.

In Austria I particularly enjoyed Sushi.

  

And in the UK, it’s a nice Korma.
 

Mobile Phone Battery

My phone battery is pretty much useless these days.

Manufacturer: Sanyo
Model: WIZA16
Type: Li-ion
Capacity: 1250 mAh
Voltage: 3.7VDC

These suppliers seem to be the cheapest in the UK,

• Replacement for DOPOD 838, D600, WIZA100, HTC Wizard, I-Mate K-JAM, O2 Xda Mini, QTEK 9100, T-MOBILE MDA Vario PDA Battery (£10.05 + £3.95 registered delivery of 4-7 business days, PayPal MasterCard or Maestro)

• Replacement PDA Battery for DOPOD WIZA16 (£10.40 + £4.00 registered delivery of 2-5 days. 1% off when using PayPal with MasterCard or Maestro)

Paper, Scissors, Stone

After a long day of study I finally posted this Tweet at around 01:50 in the morning,

“About to give up and let sleep beat work once again. If only I knew the third part of this Paper/Scissors/Stone-like triad…”

It couldn’t be easier: the final part is Play.

• Sleep beats Work
• Work beats Play
• Play beats Sleep

Console Windows

My internet connection’s slow, so X over SSH isn’t usable for remote connections.

Twin might be a solution,

 

sudo apt-get install twin

 

Alternatively there’s VWM,

 

Download, make and install in the following order:

libpseudo

make && sudo make install

 

sudo apt-get install libgpmg1-dev


make && sudo make install

 

libviper

make && sudo make install

 

Viper Window Manager

sudo make && sudo make install

sudo mkdir /usr/lib/vwm/modules

 

Personally I had some problems (make wasn’t creating the modules directory, and I don’t understand how to use the application once it’s launched anyway.)

University of Sussex – RAE Results

Results of the Research Assessment Exercise have been published with the following notable findings,

“Taking account of all staff who could have been submitted, with some institutions excluding many eligible staff, Sussex is at 16th place overall – a measure of the research intensity of the institution.”

“Over 90% of Sussex research activity is rated as world-leading, internationally excellent or internationally recognised, confirming the University among the leading 30 research universities in the UK, on a simple average across all scores.”

 

Of course, as they say, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. There’s a bit of discussion about this over at the Times,

“Lancaster produces alternative RAE 2008 rankings“

PlayOnLinux – Synaptic

For a while I’ve seen error messages when running

apt-get update

At the start of the update it produces the following:

Err http://playonlinux.botux.net hardy Release.gpg
Could not resolve ‘playonlinux.botux.net’
Err http://playonlinux.botux.net hardy/main Translation-en_GB
Could not resolve ‘playonlinux.botux.net’

Then at the end gives these error messages

W: Failed to fetch http://playonlinux.botux.net/dists/hardy/Release.gpg
Could not resolve ‘playonlinux.botux.net’
W: Failed to fetch http://playonlinux.botux.net/dists/hardy/main/i18n/Translation-en_GB.bz2 Could not resolve ‘playonlinux.botux.
net’
W: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

The solution was to edit the file

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list

And just comment out the line,

deb http://playonlinux.botux.net/ hardy main

OSX Commandline User/Group

“Add a New Group” similar to groupadd on Ubuntu.

Basically does this sort of thing,

dscl . create /groups/GROUPNAME gid GROUPGID
dscl . create /groups/GROUPNAME passwd '*'
dscl . merge /groups/GROUPNAME users USERNAME

You could also download the GNU OSXUserTools (V1.4) which includes:

• useradd
• groupadd
• groupdel
• userdel
• etcpasssync

“Add a user to the admin group via command line“
Make sure the user’s not already in the group,

niutil -readprop . /groups/admin users

Add a user to the group,

niutil -appendprop . /groups/admin users gneagle

Removing a user from the group:

niutil -destroyval . /groups/admin users gneagle

The modern way to do this is,

sudo dscl -p / -append /Groups/GROUPNAME users USERNAME

For more info, see the poorly-named ”How to: Add a user from the OS X command line, works with Leopard!” (which isn’t Leopard specific.)