The Null Device

2005/12/13

Black Box Recorder vocalist Sarah Nixey is back, this time doing solo work and guesting for a band named Infantjoy. She is now workng on a solo album, which apparently will be almost as edgy as the Black Box Recorder material.

(via xrrf) black box recorder indie sarah nixie 1

There is now a 39-megapixel digital camera on the market. You read that right; 39 megapixels, which would be about 7,212 by 5,408 pixels. The Phase One P45 can also boast a maximum frame rate of 35 frames per second; whether you'd end up using it is another matter, as its image files, weighing in at 117Mb, would pretty quickly fill up even the largest CompactFlash card. Though the existence of cameras of such a high resolution should bring light field photography somewhat closer to practicality.

I wonder what its dynamic range, thermal noise resistance and low-light performance are like, though; the smaller the pixels are on a CCD, the less sensitive to light they would theoretically tend to be.

(via Gizmodo) camera photography tech 1

Two scientists speculate on a genetic cause for why America is full of loud, energetic go-getters. Their hypothesis is that "American hypomania" results from the American gene pool containing many genes from immigrants, a group which, by its nature, would self-select for genes encouraging curiosity, risk-taking, neophilia and boldness:

Peter C. Whybrow of U.C.L.A. and John D. Gartner of Johns Hopkins University Medical School make their cases for an immigrant-specific genotype in their respective books, "American Mania" and "The Hypomanic Edge." Even when times are hard, Whybrow points out, most people don't leave their homelands. The 2 percent or so who do are a self-selecting group. What distinguishes them, he suggests, might be the genetic makeup of their dopamine-receptor system - the pathway in the brain that figures centrally in boldness and novelty seeking.
Why aren't Canada and Australia, where many immigrants and their descendants also live, as hypomanic as the United States? Whybrow answers that behavior is always a function of genetics and environment - nature with an overlay of nurture. "Here you have the genes and the completely unrestricted marketplace," he says - with the anything-goes rules of American capitalism also reflecting immigrant genetics. "That's what gives us our peculiar edge."
Of course, the fact that a lot of the descendents of Australians did not choose to emigrate could also have something to do with it.

By coincidence, I was thinking about American hypomania recently, in the context of American culture having a propensity for maximality in various areas (the biggest cars, the fastest roller-coasters, the most exciting movies, the loudest, most attention-grabbingly garish TV); it came up in the context of the ongoing popularity of the death penalty in America, and the recent execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Other than the ancient imperative for vengeance ("an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", as it says in the Hammurabi codex the Bible), it is arguable that humanely euthanasing a convicted criminal is not a greater punishment than leaving them to contemplate their wrongdoing for some decades from within a cell with no hope of release. However, from an observer's point of view, the ritual of executing an evildoer is a grander statement of symbolic redressing of wrongs than the boringly administrative option of merely locking them up.

(via mindhacks) capital punishment culture evolutionary psychology genetics natural selection neophilia society usa 0