Cognitive Labs

Just as people were ready to be dazzled by the bling of Olympic medals, it's time to take out that dusty game of Risk.

Roll the dice, send in three armies from Kamchatka.

What's starting as a little war in Georgia (the country north of Turkey and Armenia and Iran) is uncomfortably close to the oil fields of the Caucasus and the pipelines that take the crude for transshipment.

Georgia was in the USSR at the time of World War II and one of the objectives of the Wehrmacht's Army Group south during operation Barbarossa in 1941, which was to seize the land around the Volga, sweep around the Black Sea and hold the Caucasus oil fields since Germany had no other source of oil than limited supplies in Rumania. (Iran was occupied by Britain and the USSR in World War II and most of the petroleum-producing regions were under British hegemony)

The area in question is peninsular strip of land on the lower right hand side of the bluish region.

Labels: global, kamchatka, ossetia, risk

How can you use your brain to help the environment? Since the U.S. is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases - individual Americans, by changing their lifestyle slightly, can make the most difference.

If you want to learn more, read about how a science teacher in Massachusetts cut his energy bill by 2/3 through simple household changes. Slight changes, since they are easy to carry out, can make a greater difference than major initiatives requiring civic, regional, or national legislation (also, no need for bureaucratic ennui).

In the last 100 years since temperatures have been measured, five of the hottest ten years on record have occurred in this past decade.

Some of the simple things you can do to "cool down" the earth, including what the wise teacher did, are listed in this article. Small actions, like aggregate 'cooling' due to the air circulation from the beating wings of a 100 million butterflies, just might make the difference in reversing environmental change.

Labels: brain, butterfly, cognitive, environment, global, global_warming, superstorm

Quick,,,last 1o visitors:

Santa Fe, New Mexico, US
Los Angeles, California, US
Alameda, California, US
Stavanger, Rogaland, Norway
Garlasco, Lombardia, Italy
Moraga, California, US
Fremont, California, US
Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Chicago, Illinois, US
Valdez, Alaska, US
Savannah, Missouri, US
Portand, Oregon, US
Løkken, Sor-Trondelag, Norway

don't forget to take a test

Labels: alzheimers exercise brain canada, alzheimers_exercise, cognitive_labs, cogworld, game, global, sitemap

CogLabs world, a full-size version of the mini-map on the home page, is now live - where have people been taking tests and exercising their minds?

Now you know, globally. We answer that question with the world's first visualization of real-time cognitive performance across the world.

Keep in mind, this is just a few hundred plots - using all the data results in an endless loop and takes all the processing power of the CPU, so you see a subset of the data. The possibilities in the future are limitless. It's a wonderful time for visual display/Tufte fanatics.

Labels: brain, cognitive_labs, cogworld, global