Silver-lining in the Cloud during the pandemic

I began to appreciate these technologies while updating some Wikipedia articles of the wildfires in Alberta and then in the Amazon. The excerpts below are based on an March 19 ESA article “COVID-19: nitrogen dioxide over China.”

Some of the content is from the Wikipedia article on the Sentinel-5 Precursor.

The European Space Agency (ESA)’s Earth observation satellite, Sentinel-5 Precursor, which is part of the Copernicus Programme is monitors and reports on air pollution. The Tropomi instrument on the 5P satellite, showed a “dramatic reduction in nitrogen dioxide concentrations” in “all major Chinese cities between late-January and February,” 2020. China had enacted strict measures in late December 2019, and by late January, daily activities in China had ceased following orders by Chinese authorities to close and to clear streets. According to the European Space Agency (ESA) Nitrogen dioxide is released by “power plants, industrial facilities and vehicles.”

Studies, based on Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service’s (CAMS) combination of “satellite observations with detailed computer models of the atmosphere, said that, in February 2002, compared to the three previous years, there was a decrease of about 20 to 30 percent one of the “most important air pollutants”—fine suspended particulate matter (SPM) over large parts of China.”

The March 19 article also said that recent data showed a “decline of air pollution over northern Italy coinciding with its nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19).”

The European_Space_Agency (ESA)’s Earth observation satellite, Sentinel-5 Precursor, which is part of the Copernicus Programme is monitoring and reporting on air pollution.

“The Tropomi instrument on the 5P satellite, showed a “dramatic reduction in nitrogen dioxide concentrations” in “all major Chinese cities between late-January and February,” 2020. China had enacted strict measures in late December 2019, and by late January, daily activities in China had ceased following orders by Chinese authorities to close and to clear streets. According to the European Space Agency (ESA) Nitrogen dioxide is released by “power plants, industrial facilities and vehicles.”

“Studies, based on Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service’s (CAMS) combination of “satellite observations with detailed computer models of the atmosphere, said that, in February 2002, compared to the three previous years, there was a decrease of about 20 to 30 percent one of the “most important air pollutants”—fine suspended particulate matter (SPM) over large parts of China.”

Notes

The “Tropomi (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument) is a spectrometer sensing ultraviolet (UV), visible (VIS), near (NIR) and short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) to monitor ozone, methane, formaldehyde, aerosol, carbon monoxide, NO2 and SO2 in the atmosphere.”

Emphatic Relationship between Knower and Known

1939 Heinz Kohut (1913-1981) was forced to emigrate from Vienna to Chicago when the Nazis took power. He was trained as a medical doctor in Austria but became known as Mr. Psychoanalysis in America where he played a central role in the twentieth-century psychoanalytic movement (Strozier 2001).

1966 Academics challenged the scientific establishment’s faith in objective science creating a schism among academics. Abraham H. Maslow contributed to the debate in his influential book entitled The Psychology of Science: a Renaissance (1966). In it he argued that by integrating experience (practice) and abstraction (theory), he wished to enlarge not destroy science.  However, Maslow rejected the concept of a neutral observer removed from reality and experience. Rifkin described how Maslow following Goethe and Kohut argued for more sensitive observers capable of incorporating more of the world into the self. These emphatic observers identify with “wider and more inclusive circles of living and nonliving things (Maslow 1966).” Maslow used AA as an argument for the legitimacy of knowledge claims from experience versus theory. Rifkin (2009:610) referred to Maslow’s “receptive strategy” of knowing in section entitled “Teaching Emphatic Science” in the chapter entitled “Biosphere Consciousness in a Climax Economy” in The Emphatic Civilization (2009). He cited Maslow:

“Can all the sciences, all knowledge be conceptualized as a resultant of loving and caring interrelationship between knower and known? What would be the advantages to us of setting this epistemology alongside the one that now reigns in “objective science”? Can we simultaneosly use both?” (Maslow 1966).

1970s The Chicago Institute had a lively intellectual atmosphere was polarized into two factions those who supported Freudian traditional psychoanalysis with its emphasis on drives (instinctual motivations of sex and aggression), internal conflicts, and fantasies and individual guilt and those who accepted Kohut’s empathic approach which embraced the post WWII zeitgeist with is emphasis on how issues of identity, meaning, ideals, and self-expression impact on emotional needs and concerns (Strozier 2001).

1978 The first self psychology conference was held in Chicago. Kohut replaced Freud’s structural theory of the id, ego, and superego with his own concept of the tripartite self (Flanagan 1996), self psychology with its emphasis on relationships. One’s “self states,” including one’s sense of worth and well-being, are met in relationships with others.

1980 A major conference on history and psychoanalysis was organized by Arnold Goldberg and Heinz Kohut.

Webliography and Bibliography

Rifkin, Jeremy. 2009. The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World of Crisis. New York: Jeremy T. Tarcher.

Strozier, Charles B. 2001 “Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst.” New York:Farrar, Straus & Giroux.  See also this critical review of Strozier’s biography.

Flanagan, L.M. 1996. “The theory of self psychology”. In (Eds.) Berzoff, J., Flanagan, L.M., & Hertz, P. Inside out and outside in, New Jersey:Jason Aronson Inc.)

Maslow, Abraham H. 1966. The Psychology of Science: a Renaissance. South Bend: Gateway Editions, Ltd.  McIsaac, David S. 1997. “Empathy Reconsidered: New Directions in Psychotherapy. Washington: American Psychological Association. (McIsaac 1997:248 cited in Rifkin EC 2009) ftn 19

Kohut, Heinz. 1978. The Psychoanalyst in the Community of Scholars.” In Paul H. Ornstein Ed. The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut: 1950-1978. Vol. a. New York: International University Press. (Kohut 1978:702 cited in Rifkin EC 2009) ftn 20

Ornstein, Paul H.  Ed. The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut: 1950-1978. Vol. a. New York: International University Press. (Kohut 1978:82 cited in Rifkin EC 2009) ftn 21

Paul H. Ornstein Ed. The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut: 1950-1978. Vol. a. New York: International University Press. (Kohut 1978:714 cited in Rifkin EC 2009) ftn 22

Ornstein, Paul H.  Ed. The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut: 1950-1978. Vol. 1. New York: International University Press. (Kohut 1978:529 cited in Rifkin EC 2009) ftn 23

Ornstein, Paul H.  Ed. The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut: 1950-1978. Vol. 1. New York: International University Press. (Kohut 1978:707 cited in Rifkin EC 2009) ftn 24

Memory: Floods and Flows

“Mind-Brain Compass: Stress, Flood, Flow.”ocean.flynn

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has been collecting and analysing data on the question, “What is the good life?” since 1967. He explores issues such as the structure of everyday life, develops well-known concepts such as psychic entropy and challenge-skill ratio (CSR). MC’s flow model and the Experience Sampling Method blend the science of pyschology and folksy-self-help (1997) He reveals that the moments of flow where an individual experiences a good challenge-skill ratio, are likely to happen at work (2000:121-123) although they can also occur when an artist is at work in her studio, or a Nintendo players is up to her game.

Memory: Floods and Flows

“The American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has written about the concept of flow, which is the feeling we have of being completely focused on and absorbed in the work we are doing. An artist painting a picture who is so engrossed in his work that he becomes unaware of himself and the passage of time is in a state of flow. Flow can also be attained when a surgeon performs a difficult operation in which she has to use all her abilities and skills. What Csikszentmihalyi has tried to do is identify the circumstances that elicit flow. He reasons that if we analyze situations in terms of the challenges they present and the skills of the person involved in them, we find that flow arises in contexts characterized by a high level of challenge and skill, in which capacity of the doer exactly matches the demands of the task being done (Klingberg 2009:167-8).”

“Considering Csikszentmihalyi’s diagram as a cognitive map with north at the top, it is in the northeast sector where we find the state of flow. When the challenge exceeds skill, we get stres. When skill exceeds challenge we get a sense of control, which becomes boredom as the level of challenge drops. Exchange “skill” for “working memory capacity” and “challenge” for “Information overload,” and perhaps we have a map illustrating the subjective side of the information demand. When this demand exceeds our capacity, we experience the relative attention deficit due north of the map. However, we should not simply avoid these demands, for when they are too low we become bored and apathetic. In other words, there is a reason for us to cater to our need for stimulation and information. It is when demand and capacity, or skill and challenge, are in a state of equilibrium that the situation is conducive to flow. And perhaps it is precisely here, where we exploit our full capacity, that we develop and train our abilities (Klingberg 2009:168)”

“While our working memory load exactly matches working memory capacity and we hover around the magical number seven, the training effect is its most powerful. Now that we know this, it is up to us to control our environments and reshape the work we do to our abilities. Let us hope that we can learn to perfect the compass that will show us where to find balance and help us navigate into the northeast corner of the map, where we can feel the flow and develop to our full capacity (Klingberg 2009:169).”

The Ethical Brain: Chemical Conscience, Homeostasis and Religion

Michael S. Gazzaniga [1] argued that our beliefs about the world and the nature of human experience are merely tendentious and our memories fallible. Therefore we should rely not on “the ubiquitous personal belief systems held by billions of people (which he describes as akin to believing in Santa Claus (Gazzaniga 2005:163) but on modern science to seek out, understand and define our universal ethics grounded in the natural order (Gazzaniga 2005:178). From his viewpoint great religions of the world were conceived by ill-informed humans (not received from the Divine) who lacked competing data about the essence of the natural world (Gazzaniga 2005:162). He explains religious experiences as Temporary Lobe Epilepsy (TLE). He compares the conception of a fetus to the “conception” of a house at Home Depot. When is a fetus a person? When is a house a house? Gazzaniga believes that a fertilized egg is hardly deserving of the same moral status we confer on the newborn child or the functioning adult (Gazzaniga 2005:17-8). He also argued that the aging brain’s level of consciousness should be assessed by scientific means and euthanasia considered as an option (Gazzaniga 2005:33). His reasoning is not robust and appears to be directed to those already converted to his belief system.

However, it is his argument for brain enhancement through genetic intervention that causes a shiver of repugnance:

“Perhaps we should be free to try whatever we can think to try- this is the nature of scientific inquiry. Let an innate moral-ethics system assert itself and stop us from going too far. We have never annihilated ourselves; we have managed to stop short of doing that so far. I am confident that we will always understand what is ultimately good for the species and what is not (Gazzaniga 2005:54).”

One wonders on what planet he has been living.

We are currently listening to political debates around the clock as two nations head to the polls. Different value systems clash as “facts” are presented on each side of debates over contentious issues. We live in a time when scientific facts themselves are challenged as informed readers inquire about motivation and agendas of scientific researchers. Who finances the research? We are all too aware of the ease with which policy makers and decision makers choose comfortable truths over the uncomfortable.

Gazzaniga oversimplifies the awe-inspiring mind-soul-spirit by reducing humans to the chemical brain. He grossly underestimates followers of religions capable of making ethical decisions by considering both scientific information and their religious principles.

He argued that universal ethics are social, contextualized, influenced by emotions and natural survival-instincts. Whether your guide in life is simply “received wisdom” or “the confluence of neuroscientific data, historical data, and other information illuminating our past” he claim s we all share the same hard-wired moral networks and systems and therefore respond in similar ways to similar issues. He further claims that social systems explain individual feelings which are institutionalized into social structure (Gazzaniga 2005:162).”

According to his logic philosophers involved in neuroethics[2] should “use understandings of the brain’s hard-wiring to contextualize and debate gut instincts that serve the greatest good- or the most logical solutions- given specific contexts (Gazzaniga 2005:178).”

“Neuroscience reads brains, not minds. The mind, while completely enabled by the brain, is a totally different beast (Gazzaniga 2005:119).”

Gazzaniga (2005:iv-v) describes neuroethics as a spin-off of bioethics [which] was developed and defined to take medical ethics further, as scientific findings became more advanced and needed more specialized philosophers thinking about what is acceptable and unacceptable in areas like genetic engineering, reproductive science, defining brain death, and so on. [. . . Neuroethics are involved] whenever a bioethical issue involves the brain or central nervous system (2005: v).”

“We now step into the world of neuroethics. This is the field of philosophy that discusses the rights and wrongs of the treatment of, or enhancement of, the human brain.” “Was the medical team acting ethically, putting the patients’ interests first, or was it influenced by the humanitarian prospect of the advancement of specific knowledge about the brain — or by the attraction of the world fame and professional prestige that would follow a high achievement?” “Not just neurosurgeons but other brain scientists are thinking long and hard about the morality (right or wrong) and the ethics (fair or unfair) of what such breakthroughs as genomics, molecular imaging and pharmaceuticals will make it possible for them to do.” “In the treatment or cure of brain disease or disability, the public tends to support neuroscience’s needs for closely controlled and informed experimentation. But in the enhancement of the brain’s ability to learn or remember, or to be cheerful at home or attentive in school, many of the scientists are not so quick to embrace mood-manipulating drugs or a mindless race to enhance the mind (Safire 2003-07-10).”

“The brain’s ethical sense may run deeper than we think. ”The essence of ethical behavior,” writes the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio in Looking for Spinoza, his newest book, ”does not begin with humans.” Ravens and vampire bats ”can detect cheaters among the food gatherers in their group and punish them accordingly.” Though human altruism is much further evolved, in one experiment ”monkeys abstained from pulling a chain that would deliver food to them if pulling the chain caused another monkey to receive an electric shock. Damasio does not believe that there is a gene for ethical behavior or that we are likely to find a moral center in the brain. But we may one day understand the ”natural and automatic devices of homeostasis” — the brain’s system that balances appetites and controls emotions, much as a constitution and a system of laws regulates and governs a nation (Safire 2003-07-10).”

“[Brain] scientists . . . debate going beyond the cure of disease to the possibilities of meddling with memory or implanting a happy demeanor (Safire 2003-07-10).”

“Maybe the human brain has a self-defense mechanism that causes brain scientists to pause before they improve on the healthy brain. Would we feel guilty about discovering the chemistry of conscience (Safire 2003-07-10)?”

Folksonomy, taxonomy, tags, key words, classification, semantic web

cognitive neuroscience: moral and ethical aspects, ethics, Damasio, science and religion, chemical conscience, meddling with memory, permalink,

Health

Notes

1. Michael S. Gazzaniga is President of the American Psychology Society, and director of the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College.
2. According to Gazzaniga it was William Safire who coined the term neuroethics to describe the field of philosophy that discusses the rights and wrongs of the treatment of, or enhancement of, the human brain.”
3. The Dana Foundation: “The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropy with principal interests in brain science, immunology, and arts education. Charles A. Dana, a New York State legislator, industrialist and philanthropist, was president of the Dana Foundation from 1950 to 1966 and actively shaped its programs and principles until his death in 1975.”
4. Some of these bibliographic entries were inserted using Zotero’s capacity to let “users choose a citation format, such as Chicago, MLA, APA, or others. To add a source from Zotero, a user simply drags that source into an application such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs [and WordPress!!!!], and a properly formatted citation is inserted. Zotero also generates a bibliography of all the sources included in a paper.” I did not choose my preferred citation format or generate the bibliography in the proper Zotero mode yet. This needs tweeking on my part but it was successful.

Citations from Antes, Geertz and Warne (2004).

4. “Body, Emotion, and Consciousness: The Portuguese born neurologist at the University of Iowa College of Medicine and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Antonio R. Damasio, has argued in a number of books that studies of the brain, cognition and consciousness are seriously hampered because neuroscientists traditionally ignore the role of functions and emotions in the brain. 47 He claims that “it is possible that feelings are poised at the threshold that separates being from knowing and thus have a privileged connection to consciousness” (Damasio 1999:43). Emotions are at a fairly high level of life regulation, and when they are sensed, that is when one has ‘feelings,’ the threshold of consciousness has been crossed. Emotions are part of homeostasis, which is the automatic regulation of temperature, oxygen contentration or pH in the body by the autonomatic nervous system, the endrocrine system and the immune system. According to Damasio, homeostasis is the key to consciousness (Damasio 1999:40). Damasio defined consciousness as constructing knowledge about two facts: “that the organism is involved in relating to some object, and that the object in the relation causes a change in the organism” (Damasio 1999:20). Understanding the biology of consciousness becomes, then, a matter of discovering “how the brain can map both the two players and the relationship they hold” (Damasio 1999:20). The interesting thing is that the brain holds a model of the whole thing, and this may be the key to understanding the underpinnings of consciousness (Antes, Geertz, Warne 2004:365).”

“[Damasio’s] explanation for this enigma is precisely as follows: “I have come to the conclusion that the organism, as represented inside its own brain, is a likely biological forerunner for what eventually becomes the elusive sense of self. The deep roots for the self, including the elaborate self which encompasses identity and personhood, are to be found in the ensemble of brain devices which continuously and nonconsciously maintain the body state within the narrow range and relative stability required for survival. These devices continually represent, nonconsciously, the state of the living body, along its many dimensions. I call the state of activity within the ensemble of such devices the proto-self, the nonconscious forerunner for the levels of self which appear in our minds as the conscious protagonists of consciousness: core self and autobiographical self.” (Damasio 1999:20) cited in (Antes, Geertz, Warne 2004:365).”

“This is, indeed, a radical embodiment theory and should be of interest to scholars of religion involved in studies of central religious concepts such as personalities, personhood, selves and souls. The very fact of plurality of selves in Damasio’s model should prove useful to the study of religions that deal with multiple selves and souls (Antes, Geertz, Warne 2004:365).”

Webliography and Bibliography

Antes, Peter; Geertz, Armin W.; Warne, Randi R. 2004. Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Religion. Walter de Gruyter: Berlin/New York.

Anthony Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt, 1999).

“Brain-Based Education – Summary Principles of Brain-Based Research, Critiques of Brain-Based Education,”

Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Ethical Brain (New York: Dana Press, 2005).

Henry T. Greely, “Prediction, Litigation, Privacy, and Property: Some Possible Legal and Social Implications of Advances in Neuroscience,” in Neuroscience and the Law: Brain, Mind, and the Scales of Justice . Dana Press.

Safire, William. 2003-07-10. “The Risk that Failed.” New York Times.

Educause, “7 Things You Should Know About Geolocation,” 2008,

Dendrons, Pisces and the Cosmos

This layered image 1440 x 900 at 300 dpi is one stage of the development of my next digitage entitled "Digitage Web2.0 Plus." It is an update on Logo Digitage ( http://snurl.com/25nqe ) in my Flickr album that was the basis for slideshare.net .ppt called Deconstructing Digitage: Web 2.0 as Organic Rhizomic Synapses which has had 1859 views since first uploading 8 months ago.

A comment from slideshare.net cofounder Amit Ranjanon ( http://snurl.com/266mt ) on the .ppt about the low resolution along with the need for .ppt default sizes for to increase shareability, led me to revisit the original .psd file and the .jpg components.

Each layer is being revisited and updated as I learn more about Adobe Photoshop tools and more about each of the component metaphorical images embedded in the many layers. At the same time I am learning more about the organic growth of Web 2.0 Plus (also called Web 3.0, etc). Aggregators and microblogging technologies like twitter http://snurl.com/25t6 have enhanced and simplified connectivity while confusing virtual cartographic projects to visualize the blogosphere as it grows exponentially. I learn from others and also by playing with new technological tools. I remain a bricoleuse, better able to find things in the virtual thrift stores that might come in handy one day. I don’t like to learn by following anymore than the basic instructions and the need-to-know-how things for reasons of security or time-efficiency.

This entry is posted on speechless.

Folksonomy for Flickr

View ocean.flynn’s map
Taken in a place with no name (See more photos or videos here)
This layered image 1440 x 900 at 300 dpi is one stage of the development of my next digitage entitled “Digitage Web2.0 Plus.” It is an update on Logo Digitage ( snurl.com/25nqe ) in my Flickr album that was the basis for slideshare.net .ppt called Deconstructing Digitage: Web 2.0 as Organic Rhizomic Synapses which has had 1859 views since first uploading 8 months ago.

A comment from slideshare.net cofounder Amit Ranjanon ( snurl.com/266mt ) on the .ppt about the low resolution along with the need for .ppt default sizes for to increase shareability, led me to revisit the original .psd file and the .jpg components.

Each layer is being revisited and updated as I learn more about Adobe Photoshop tools and more about each of the component metaphorical images embedded in the many layers. At the same time I am learning more about the organic growth of Web 2.0 Plus (also called Web 3.0, etc). Aggregators and microblogging technologies like twitter snurl.com/25t6 have enhanced and simplified connectivity while confusing virtual cartographic projects to visualize the blogosphere as it grows exponentially. I learn from others and also by playing with new technological tools. I remain a bricoleuse, better able to find things in the virtual thrift stores that might come in handy one day. I don’t like to learn by following anymore than the basic instructions and the need-to-know-how things for reasons of security or time-efficiency.

Flickr groups to which this image belongs: Art & Theory Nobs (Pool), Folksonomy (Pool); Digg It Flickr. Pool (Pool) [X]

Flickr folksonomy: folksonomy, flickr, digitage, creation, creativecommons, connectivity, blogging, adobephotoshop, 1440×900, microblogging, mindbrain, mind, neuralarchitectonics, neuroscience, portrait, powerpoint, powerpointbackground, presentation, raptureofthedeepinternet, reflexivity, rhizome, sharingpresentations, selfportrait, slides, slideshare, synapses, synapticgasp, tagclouds, tagging, taxonomy, technology, theoryinpictures, twitter, vastation, visualization, visualizations, web20, wordpresscom,