America’s New Shrink

Charles Ommanney / Getty Images for Newsweek

Therapist-in-Chief: The President explains the details of his $778 billion stimulus package to a crowd in Mesa, Arizona

If Ralph Waldo emerson had a 19th-century Facebook page, his “Favorite Quotation” (or maybe I should say my favorite Emerson quote) would likely be: “Events are in the saddle and tend to ride mankind.”

For the last six months, events have been in the saddle of the world economy and they might ride us for quite a while. Every day seems to bring bad news, with more on the way. Will commercial real estate crash next? Is General Motors toast? Dow 5,000, anyone?

When President Obama was sworn in, the stock market dropped. When he signed the largest economic recovery package in American history last week, the Dow plunged nearly 300 points. His widely panned bank rescue plan and even his better-received housing rescue plan both laid eggs on the Street.

Obama says he doesn’t worry too much about short-term market swoons, and he’s right not to. Who elected greedy gamblers to represent us? But the market is now based less on assessments of specific companies than on reaction to the federal government. And that reaction, cascading down to Main Street, is a fair reflection of the nation’s pessimistic mood. The new president is popular and refreshing, but still well short of transformative. For all of the legislative achievements of his first month in office, Americans have not yet had their faith in the future restored.

What’s a president to do? If he starts in with the happy talk, he sounds like John McCain saying “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” which is what sealed the election for Obama in the first place. But if he gets too gloomy, he’ll scare the bejesus out of the entire world. The balance Obama strikes is to say that things will get worse before they get better, but that they will get better. Now he must convince us that’s true.

Conservatives smell blood. The Republican National Committee issued a press release saying Obama’s first month was all about “wasteful spending, failed bipartisanship and questionable ethics.” Columnist Charles Krauthammer called the $787 billion stimulus package “a legislative abomination,” and Karl Rove wrote that “the more Americans learn about the bill, the less they like it.”

Polls say otherwise. The public likes the signs of action, respects that the new president is willing to admit error and appreciates his constant reminders that there are no easy cures to what ails us.

Read full article…

Alter: Barack Obama, Bringer of Confidence | Newsweek Politics | Newsweek.com.

The adult human brain is surprisingly malleable: it can rewire itself and even grow new cells. Here are some habits that can fine-tune your mind

IMAGE COMPOSITION BY SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND; JULIE FELTON ISTOCKPHOTO (brain); DEAN TURNER ISTOCKPHOTO (background)

Amputees sometimes experience phantom limb sensations, feeling pain, itching or other impulses coming from limbs that no longer exist. Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran worked with patients who had so-called phantom limbs, including Tom, a man who had lost one of his arms.

Ramachandran discovered that if he stroked Tom’s face, Tom felt like his missing fingers were also being touched. Each part of the body is represented by a different region of the somatosensory cortex, and, as it happens, the region for the hand is adjacent to the region for the face. The neuroscientist deduced that a remarkable change had taken place in Tom’s somatosensory cortex.

Ramachandran concluded that because Tom’s cortex was no longer getting input from his missing hand, the region processing sensation from his face had slowly taken over the hand’s territory. So touching Tom’s face produced sensation in his nonexistent fingers.

This kind of rewiring is an example of neuroplasticity, the adult brain’s ability to change and remold itself. Scientists are finding that the adult brain is far more malleable than they once thought. Our behavior and environment can cause substantial rewiring of the brain or a reorganization of its functions and where they are located. Some believe that even our patterns of thinking alone are enough to reshape the brain.

Researchers now know that neurogenesis (the birth of new neurons) is a normal feature of the adult brain. Studies have shown that one of the most active regions for neurogenesis is the hippocampus, a structure that is vitally important for learning and long-term memory.

Neurogenesis also takes place in the olfactory bulb, which is involved in processing smells. But not all the neurons that are born survive; in fact, most of them die. To survive, the new cells need nutrients and connections with other neurons that are already thriving. Scientists are currently identifying the factors that affect the rate of neurogenesis and the survival of new cells. Mental and physical exercise, for instance, both boost neuron survival.

Full article here…

Six Ways to Boost Brainpower: Scientific American.

NASA’s Swift Gamma-Ray Explorer satellite took this shot of Comet Lulin on Jan. 28, and regular folks may be able to catch their own glimpse with binoculars in a few days.

The image was taken as the comet was passing through the constellation Libra, 100 million miles from Earth and 115 million miles from the sun. It combines data from Swift’s optical and ultraviolet telescope (the blue colors) and its X-ray telescope (red). The star-field background comes from a Digital Sky Survey image.

Lulin’s tail — grit and grains from the comet’s rock-and-ice surface pushed off into space by solar radiation — extends to the right. Lulin is shedding 800 gallons of water every second, according to NASA astronomers. That’s enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in less than 15 minutes.

Solar radiation also breaks comet water down into hydroxyl particles, composed of one oxygen and one hydrogen molecule. Swift determined that the hydroxyl cloud around Lulin is about 250,000 miles wide, slightly greater than the distance from the Earth to the moon.

Lulin, discovered in July 2007, is now visible to the naked eye in dark, rural skies. But the view will get better: On the night of Feb. 23, Lulin will pass within 38 million miles of Earth, appearing about 2 degrees south-southwest of Saturn in the night sky. Stargazers with binoculars should get a good look. By mid-March, Lulin will have zoomed off into deep space and out of sight.

Rare Comet Close-Up Coming to a Sky Near You | Wired Science from Wired.com.

A couple of weeks, ago, Geoff Livingston wrote a post called “What Will You Do When Social Media Isn’t Special Anymore?” While I agree with part of his premise (that social media won’t remain the shiny new object forever), the other part (that traditional agencies will soak up the social media work) is simply wrong. Here’s why:

Historically, specialists stick around

Geoff argues that once the PR, advertising and interactive agencies figure this all out, they’ll take the work back. This should be true, but it never is.

• 1996: “Once advertising agencies figure out HTML, they’ll do all the web development. These interactive agencies will be absorbed.” Should’ve been true. Wasn’t.
• 2000: “Once the interactive agencies figure out the tricks of SEO, specialists in search engine optimization will go away.” Again, didn’t happen.
• Today: “Once the PR people, or the ad people, or the digital people, or maybe the SEO people, figure out this social stuff…”  Not going to happen.

In fact, it never happens.

Big brands that are already utilizing social media agencies include Ford, Microsoft, Intel, SAP, Citibank, Coke.  The list goes on. These folks have access to all types of large, talented agencies, but they see a need for specialists—for some of what they do.

Divergence is the most powerful force in the universe

In their outstanding 2004 book, “The Origin of Brands,” Ries and Ries demonstrate how the world gets infinitely more complicated and products, and specialties continue to branch out. The telephone splits into landlines and cell phones. Landlines split into traditional and VOIP. Cell phones split into texting phones, smart phones, flip phones.

And on and on.

Complete article here…

Why the Social Media Genie Isn’t Going Back in the Bottle.