#Personally I still hear flaws in the audio which I assume were from getting too close to the mic

[might-be-tiny-gt]

Welcome to Chapter 1 of the TAoLaW "dramatic" reading

What can I say, the theatre kid in me needed to record this in audio format.

Have I mentioned how much I love this fic? Yes? Well I'm saying it again, I LOVE THE ART OF LOVE AND WAR!!!

If you haven't read it please go read it. Index Page | Chapter 1

The Art of Love and War Is written by @fireflywritesgt and the audio reading is recorded and posted with permision.

[tirorah]

Road to Berlin – The Strike Witches Magnum Opus?

Hello! It’s been a long time. I don’t plan on returning to Tumblr long-term—it simply stole away too much of my time and energy, and I had to do what was best for myself. However, I thought I’d pop in for a very special message.

You see, Strike Witches’ third season, Road to Berlin, has now reached its halfway point. And I need you to watch it.

“Strike Witches?!” I hear you say. “That weird show about girls with no pants that you’re obsessed with for some reason?”

Yes, exactly! Hold on, don’t run away yet! Sit with me for a spell and allow me to explain my boundless love for this silly, emotionally gripping show. Allow me to tell you why it might affect you in the same way, and why Road to Berlin may be the best offering yet.

Welcome to the 501st Joint Fighter Wing

If you’ve heard of this anime, you’ve undoubtedly heard of (or witnessed) its rather infamous claim to fame: a group of teenage soldiers fighting strange creatures in an Alternate Universe World War 2 Europe, flying around with guns and magic-fueled leg machines, and none of them are wearing any decent trousers.

That takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? I’m not going to deny that. But while Strike Witches’ rather peculiar design decisions are inescapable, there’s one thing you need to take into account: Season 1 aired all the way back in 2008. And over those thirteen years, it’s evolved into an experience unlike anything its roots would suggest.

Strike Witches has always been a strange beast. It has a large cast and divides its activities evenly between (light) war drama and slice-of-life shenanigans. And there’s fanservice, lots and lots of it! But the show’s emphasis on risqué camera work, and how that camera work is handled, highly depends on which entry you’re watching.

You see, Strike Witches is strangely ambitious. It could’ve easily taken its bizarre concept and pushed that to its limits, bringing in as much fanservice as possible and playing a simple story in the background as window dressing. But it was never satisfied with just that. Even early on in Season 1, the show deals with heavier themes like pressure, trauma and loss.

And then there are the characters, the undisputed stars of the show. Twelve strong and all with different backgrounds and personal quirks, they may at first seem like TV Tropes come to life. And certainly, sometimes they are. However, as the series progressed, things started to change. Even Season 2, arguably the lightest and silliest of all entries, featured material that built on character development and character growth earned in its predecessor.

With the movie and a trio of OVAs to round out the cast a bit more, the stage was set for Road to Berlin.

The Difficult Road Ahead

When this season was first announced back in 2018, two things stood out to me. First of all, the key visual and promotional video released along with the announcement were much more similar in style to the movies and the OVAs, featuring serious-looking characters and stormy clouds. Secondly, for the first time in Strike Witches history, an entry received a subtitle. Yes, the OVAs were named Operation Victory Arrow, but that was merely wordplay to spell out “OVA.” It wasn’t wholly serious.

Road to Berlin, however, is deadly serious.

Let’s start with an overall theme. The vaunted 501st Joint Fighter Wing has had some major victories, but much of the continent is still under occupation by the Neuroi. The Hive over Berlin is the Wing’s new target, but the journey there is fraught with obstacles. Plans are thwarted and delayed by Neuroi more powerful and far craftier than their 2008 counterparts.

And as the opening song tells us: “We all have flaws.” The Road to Berlin isn’t an entirely literal road; it’s also a metaphorical one. The push to Berlin is their hardest battle yet. Victory can only be achieved if the characters face and overcome their weaknesses. But they’re not alone.

Friendship Is Power

As the characters have long since been established, there’s greater room for growth not just in one character, but also in how that character interacts with others. Road to Berlin chose the best possible route and decided to emphasize character dynamics. Episodes don’t focus on a single character anymore; they focus on relationships, and those relationships are at their peak here.

There’s a newfound maturity to the writing in Road to Berlin, a gentle touch that allows the characters to breathe and be more than their foremost traits. You get a sense that the characters have grown from their experiences; they feel different, more well-rounded, but they still behave exactly as they should. This is difficult to get right, and while I’m sure there might be a few eyebrow-raising moments here and there, the overall result is a cast that continues to improve every week.

Chekhov’s Gun

Underpinning the character work is a highly intriguing execution. Road to Berlin delivers subtle setups and satisfying payoffs in every episode. The pacing is also seriously tight. No moment is left unused, every opportunity for additional development is taken. Even the script itself doesn’t like to waste time; it explains things here and there, but it rightly assumes you know who the characters are and what everything means, so it doesn’t bother with many unnecessary lines.

On top of all that, this season is reaching new heights in confidence and sheer audacity, and it uses that to deliver something truly special. There are interactions here that I never could’ve imagined, twists that genuinely caught me off-guard, moments where I had to sit back and digest what I’d just witnessed.

Not a single episode has been predictable thus far; I’ve had more surprises than I can count. In fact, before I started watching I made a bingo card on a whim, filling it with trends and running gags I’d spotted over the course of the series. Some of those bingo spaces have already been proven wrong, and others are in question. Road to Berlin has done such a spectacular job at simultaneously defying and exceeding my expectations that I honestly have no idea where this journey will take me.

The Fault in Our Stars

Okay, hold up, stop the hype train! I admit, I’m a massive sucker for Strike Witches. One could say this somewhat clouds my judgement. Shocking, I know. So, to make this enthusiastic recommendation fairer, let’s dig into something that I hope to see an improvement on.

There is some terrible imbalance in screen time going on here. I know I said earlier that the cast is great, and it is amazing, but some characters have definitely been favored over others. Yoshika is the main character, of course, so it’s not unreasonable for her to have a large role. Similarly, characters like Minna, Gertrud and Shirley have more experience and higher ranks than the others, which means they have an easier time fitting into scenes.

So, who’s gotten the short end of the stick?

Let’s start with Lynne. She hasn’t had as much of a presence as I’d hoped. The primary reason for this is Shizuka, who’s taken up the role of newbie to the squadron and is often paired with Yoshika because they’re working together. As each episode focuses on the relationships between a select few characters at a time, the others are often relegated to minor roles, and poor Lynne hasn’t had an episode to highlight her yet. I’m sure her moment will come eventually.

I don’t know if the same thing applies to Minna. She’s mostly stuck behind her desk again, it seems, and while she’s definitely had some scenes, her role as Wing Commander hasn’t allowed her as much wiggle room as some of the others. What I want to see from Minna is more time to be a nurturing mom to her girls. The thing is, I’m not sure how they’d accomplish a Minna-centric episode. I suppose they could pair her up with Mio, but even then, I’m uncertain where to take her. It seems redundant to have her be worried out of her mind over Mio again, and she seems to be keeping it together pretty well so far anyway.

In a trend so merciless it’s almost comical, Sanya and Eila seem forever doomed to the peanut gallery. They started out with few lines and have pretty much remained in the background since. Of course, a big factor to it all is their role as the night patrol, which naturally separates their activities from everyone else’s. It’s my current prediction that their relationship is next in line to be showcased. The quality of that episode will likely hinge on how their personalities are tuned, but there’s potential for something great.

And most shocking of all, Mio—She Who Has Practiced Plot Armor Ten Thousand Times—has had the most infinitesimal role of all. I’m of two minds on this. It appears that Road to Berlin has realized that having Mio fly into battle without a shield or Striker Unit is silly, and this is good. On the other hand, Mio is an iconic and beloved character. She deserves some screen time as long as she doesn’t overshadow the others. For now, she seems to be relegated to strategizing and logistics, although I have a hunch that a way to circumvent her newfound vulnerability has already been set up. Time will tell if this ends up being utilized.

Journey’s End

In closing, Road to Berlin highlights the best of what Strike Witches has to offer. It’s striding boldly forward, eager to dazzle us with its animation and audio, grinning as it challenges our preconceptions about where its characters can go and what they can do.

The path to this greatness can be tough. Watching Strike Witches means accepting a number of strange concepts, which can give quite a few viewers a rough start with the series. However, if you made it all the way here and haven’t given Strike Witches a try yet, I sincerely implore you to make the attempt. If you allow the characters to sweep you off your feet, then Road to Berlin could be the apex of a most satisfying viewing experience.

Especially if its second half is as impressive as the first. I, personally, have high hopes. There’s no sky this show can’t conquer.

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Ian Martin’s Strange Paradise, Part II: The Top 5 Worst Things

Last week, I listed my top five favorite things about the first 44 episodes of Strange Paradise, when Ian Martin was headwriter and when the show had a very different feel to it than in the final four weeks of the Maljardin arc. But no creative work is perfect, and, despite my fondness for this show, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think that the writing for early Maljardin had several glaring flaws. Unlike Danny Horn, I don’t think that Ron Sproat was a better writer than Martin (actually, I consider Sproat the worst writer on SP), but that doesn’t mean that I don’t also feel that his writing needed some improvement. Note that this entry is specifically about the writing during this period, so things outside his creative control (e.g. the Conjure Man’s questionable casting) will be excluded from the list.

That said, here are my top five least favorite things about the writing in the first nine weeks of Strange Paradise:

5. Cheesy dialogue

More specifically, (1) bad jokes and (2) slang that was already outdated when these episodes originally aired in 1969. This one is #5 because, while these lines are cheesy, I can’t hate them because most of them make me laugh. Even my personal least favorite of Jacques’ jokes, the “pose” line from Episode 18, is kind of funny in an ironic, anti-humor sort of way, like the dad jokes that have become fashionable in recent years. While there are some jokes in this show that I find genuinely funny--Elizabeth’s Song of Solomon joke, for instance, or “the lady doth detest too much”--most others are the epitome of cornball. Sometimes you hear both in the same episode: Episode 21 is loaded with Devil jokes/puns that would be unforgivably corny if Colin Fox didn’t possess enough charisma to sell them, and yet the same episode also features a genuinely hilarious double entendre. The good jokes sneak up on you, sometimes amidst a hurricane of bad ones.

As for the slang, some comments that I’ve read mention that it was largely out of date even in the late sixties. My good friend Steve (with whom I often discuss SP) has told me that “you might not be aware of how campy that slang sounded in 1969 since you obviously did not live through the Sixties--this happened with a lot of TV shows during that period, the most egregious examples being the various ‘evil druggie Hippie’ episodes of DRAGNET.” Apparently Martin became infamous for using outdated slang later on when he wrote for CBS Radio Mystery Theater, putting lines like “I dig a man who’s far-out!” and “I think bein’ around here’s gonna be kicks!” in the mouths of some of his younger characters. Even if he had used up-to-date slang, it most likely would have still aged poorly (as slang typically does), especially for generations born after phrases like “the most” and “making the ___ scene” fell out of use.

4. Slow pace and excessive repetition

This one is also low on the list, because slow pace and repetition weren’t flaws when the show originally aired, but instead have aged poorly because of advances in technology that made them unnecessary. Before the advent of the programmable VCR, you had to be able to catch the program you wanted to watch on time or have someone you knew catch it on time and record it--which, in 1969, would have meant an audio-only tape recording. This meant that only the most fortunate and/or most loyal viewers would have been able to watch Strange Paradise every day, making it necessary to recap all the major events in subsequent episodes for those who missed out. This is also likely the reason why early SP (like most soaps of the time) has a relatively slow pace: if too much happens in one episode, you have to recap more and the people who missed the big episode are more disappointed.

Nowadays, with DVRs, video streaming, and DVD sets--not to mention certain legally-questionable means--it’s nearly impossible to miss an episode of your favorite show (with few exceptions), making extensive recap largely obsolete. Screenwriters can cram as many plot points as they want into one episode and no longer have to write five episodes of the other characters reacting to the news if they don’t want to.

Even so, just because the constant recap served a function at the time doesn’t mean I have to like it. It gets annoying hearing the same plot points reiterated episode after episode. Like I said while reviewing Episode 21, “if someone were to remake this show for Netflix or another streaming service, they could safely ignore about 75 percent of the original scripts and condense the remaining 25 percent quite a bit without omitting anything important.”

And don’t even get me started on the lampshading of absent cast members, like in Episode 9 when Jean Paul and Quito wasted two minutes searching for Raxl just to slow the plot down. It’s nothing compared to Ron Sproat’s “we must search for Quito” filler episode in Desmond Hall (Episode 78), but still, those scenes were pointless.

3. Extreme artistic license with certain historical/cultural details

Although Ian Martin did a surprising amount of research on certain subjects for Strange Paradise, there are some subjects where he either didn’t do enough research, or (more likely) made extensive use of artistic license. The first one is his portrayal of Jacques’ wife Huaco as an Inca princess despite their marriage occurring over a century after the fall of the Inca Empire. I discussed this all the way back in Part II of my review of the pilot, where I invented the theory of Jacques traveling back in time to marry her, but other possible explanations include Huaco being a 17th-century descendant of Inca royalty (as the Quechua people are still alive today), extreme artistic license, and/or critical research failure. I don’t know if we would have eventually gotten a good explanation if Martin had continued writing the series, but we would need a damn good one for the approximate equivalent of having a 21st-century character marry the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and accept it considering that this is a fantasy series, but it still creates a lot of plot holes that need to be filled.[1]

Another example of artistic license about which I feel more ambivalent is the conflation of voodoo with the Aztec-inspired indigenous religion of Maljardin, which I’ve discussed before both in my Episode 23 review and Part I of this post series. I’m not sure if this is genius--religious syncretism is a real phenomenon throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, and some people today do syncretize the vodou Serpent God with Quetzalcoatl--or just an instance of Martin playing fast and loose with facts. I would like to think it’s the former, but it could just as easily be the latter (hence why I referenced it on both lists--I have mixed feelings about it).

2. Annoying inconsistencies

Does Raxl know that Jean Paul is possessed by Jacques Eloi des Mondes? Does Vangie? Why does Jacques’ portrait disappear in some episodes after he possesses Jean Paul, but not in others? All three of these things vary from episode to episode, and change annoyingly often as the plot demands. Steve and I have also discussed this subject in the past, and he believes that Martin used this device to make the story easier to follow; if that’s the case, it appears that he used Raxl and Vangie as audience surrogates, especially for new viewers or people who didn’t tune in every day. But surely there were other ways to do that without creating continuity errors? It may have served a function, but that doesn’t make it good writing. What Martin is essentially doing is filling and reopening the same plothole, episode after episode.

Regarding the portrait, I don’t know how much to blame Martin’s scripts for this inconsistency and how much to blame the directors, as I don’t have access to any SP scripts beyond the pilot script and the Vignettes. However, I’m going to assume that he’s at least partially to blame, because at least the pilot script mentions the disappearing portrait (which literally disappears in all three of the Paperback Library novels), Also, while none of the characters ever mention the portrait vanishing (unlike in the tie-in novels), some of his episodes have characters looking at it while Jacques is controlling Jean Paul and commenting on the uncanny resemblance. See also the diegesis tag for more discussion and analysis of the disappearing portrait.

1. Tim’s subplot

It should surprise none of my regular readers that Tim’s subplot is my #1 least favorite thing about the first nine weeks of Maljardin. I’ve already written an entire post about why I dislike this subplot, so I’ll keep my discussion of it here brief. Jean Paul saves the life of artist Tim Stanton when he hires him to paint Erica’s portrait, but then does nothing to make the commission easy for him--which is not a bad set-up for a plot in and of itself, but the execution is terrible. Tim chooses to use Holly as his model despite her barely resembling Erica, and Martin mostly uses their subsequent interactions to drive the old, tired, clichéd plot where two people who bicker and hate each other at first eventually fall in love (or at least he appears to be setting that up[2]). The payoff for the Holly portrait subplot finally occurs in Episode 33, but it’s underwhelming (not to mention barely recapped) and the already bland Tim quickly becomes a background character. In short, his subplot is a boring waste of time and should have either had more payoff or--preferably--been scrapped altogether.

That concludes my list of the worst things about Ian Martin’s Strange Paradise. Stay tuned for my review of Episode 45 within the next two weeks.

{<- Previous: The Top 5 Best Things }

Note

[1] Interestingly, there is a possible (if unlikely) historical explanation for Huaco’s sister Rahua having “skin as white as goat’s milk” and “hair like ripened wheat.” An early Spanish account of the Chachapoya people (aka Cloud People) of the Northern Andes describe them as “the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas’ wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.” Assuming the Spanish account isn’t made up, this proves that reality is sometimes unrealistic.

[2] Thankfully, given the soap opera genre, it’s unlikely that Tim and Holly would have stayed together forever, even if they had eventually fallen in love during their painting-and-bickering sessions. Even so, that doesn’t make it a good subplot.

[dailyaudiobible]

04/29/2020 DAB Transcript

Judges 9:22-10:18, Luke 24:13-53, Psalms 100:1-5, Proverbs 14:11-12

Today is the 29th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a pleasure and an honor to be here with you today as we come around the Global Campfire and take the next step forward in the Scriptures as they lead us through a year of our lives. And the journey in the Old Testament has been taking us through the book of Judges, which is where we will continue our journey today. We learned the story of Gideon and we’re kind of in the story of what came after Gideon, which is Abimelech, one of Gideon's sons has assassinated all of his brothers except for one has taken control. And, so, we pick up the story. Judges chapter 9 verse 22 through 10 verse 18 today and we’re reading from the Common English Bible this week.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we are almost at the end of this month of April and today we concluded the gospel of Luke, which means tomorrow as we end a month we’ll be beginning the final of the Gospels, but the last thing that we read from the gospel of Luke is kind of like the aftermath of the resurrection. So, it's…it's resurrection day. This is the day we commemorate on Easter but it's the day of the resurrection and we’ve kind of already read the story of kinda running to the tomb, the tombs empty, the women, all of this, but it's still the same day. So, let's call it Easter. It's still Easter. Some of the followers of Jesus have departed Jerusalem. They've heard what happened, like they've heard that the tomb is empty, but they’ve still left Jerusalem to walk to this city of Emmaus when Jesus shows up and walks alongside them and they don't recognize Him. So, they’re going along and they’re talking to Him and, you know, He’s like, “what's going on?” And they’re like, “are You the only one in Jerusalem that doesn't know?” And He’s like, “what…what happened?” And they explain the whole story and then Jesus opens the Scriptures to them, they get to Emmaus, He’s gonna continue walking down the road and they’re like, “no. Come, be with us.” And He’s like, “no. I couldn’t. I’ve gotta keep going.” And they convinced Him to come and He sits down to dinner and breaks the bread and then…then they realize it's Jesus. So, like obviously He doesn't look like they were expecting Him to look. They didn't recognize Him, but then they did and then he disappeared. And, so, then they come back to Jerusalem to tell everybody what they had seen. Now they're convinced. And then Jesus shows up in the midst of them, including eating some fish, which would've been important to them because they thought he was a ghost, so a ghost wouldn't eat fish. A ghost wouldn't eat anything. Like we would believe that a ghost couldn't eat anything. So Jesus eats in front of them, they calm down and He tells them about a comforter that is going to be sent to them and then we’re kind of whisked away back across the Mount of olives as far as Bethany, where He then returns to the Father. And I think there's something pretty key in that…in that series of stories or scenes that the gospel of Luke ends with that is poignant to us. They stopped being able to completely recognize Him in His physicality. Like we could look at the story and go like, “Jesus appears and disappears, and He does all these supernatural things” or we could go into the story and realize He's among them, but they don't recognize Him in his physicality the way that they once did. They may see him that way, like He shows…shows His hands and feet in Jerusalem, but on the road Emmaus they don't. There’s scenes like this in the other Gospels too. So, what's up with that? Why the mystery? The key might be in what they said to each other after He disappeared in Emmaus. “Weren't our hearts on fire when He spoke to us along the road and when he explained the Scriptures for us?” So, before they understood it was Jesus their hearts were on fire. Once they knew it was Jesus, they reflected upon that. And after Jesus ascension didn't the Holy Spirit come with tongues of fire? Didn't the Holy Spirit come and ignite their hearts on fire? And isn't that fire still burning? Like didn’t the gospel then spread out of Jerusalem to the entire world from there without the physical Jesus walking around? It seems like the last lesson that Jesus is trying to teach His disciples, at least as told in the gospel of Luke is that His physicality isn't the only indicator of His presence. It kind of closes the loop on the kingdom He's been talking about all along, this is kingdom that is within you, that is among you, that is happening now if you simply have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. It's happening now. In terms of Jesus the King of this kingdom, it is also beyond physicality. He is within and among us now and always, even to the end of the age. Okay. So, so often we’re like just wanting any kind of…any amount of time that we could have with Jesus with skin on. Like, you know, I hear that all the time. And I…I've longed for the same thing. Maybe if we had eyes to see, we would see Jesus everywhere and maybe the place to start is by looking at our brothers and sisters. After all, we are the body of Christ in this world. We are the hands and feet of Jesus. We are Jesus to the world. Like we’ve heard these things all along. What if they’re true? What if my returning to the Father Jesus no longer situated Himself in a place at a time, but is rather now omnipresent in this world through us? Man, that could change everything, which was kind of the point and that could change the way we live today, which is kind of the point. It’s just so often we know our own imperfections and we know the imperfections of those that we love. And, so, we assume the imperfections of everybody else and we look for those imperfections. We like to point them out. And, so, we can deduce that…that this can’t be Jesus with skin on. This is a flawed person. But isn't that the story of the Bible? I mean isn’t the Bible full of the stories of flawed people that God uses when they open their eyes, when they awaken, when they have eyes to see? We’ve gotten to know the disciples to some degree in the Gospels, we’re they not flawed people? And did not the explosion of the gospel happen after Jesus removed Himself physically from the scene? Maybe if we would have eyes to see, we would realize He has not removed Himself from us. He has become even more present. He is not external to us as something that we can look. He is a part of who we are, He is within us. The interesting thing is, if we want to see Jesus all we have to do is go look in a mirror. And if that seems odd or that seems impossible because we know who we are then maybe we don't know who we are. Maybe we have to stare at ourselves in the mirror and keep looking and looking and looking until everything that is false crumbles away, and we do see, we do have eyes to seem He is within us, we can see Him and maybe that can change our lives as it is supposed to do, transforming us, working the work of sanctification within us, helping us to understand that we are becoming Christ like in this world. Some things to think about today.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit we invite you into that. We do believe that you are here. We do believe that you are our comforter, that you are our advocate, that you will lead us into all truth. We do believe because we are told in the Scriptures that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in us, which means that nothing is impossible, and this is the way of your kingdom. The impossible becomes possible with God. You have not abandoned us. You are not distant from us. You are as near as our next breath and may we receive that breath into our bodies and know that it is a gift and may we exhale it in worship and may we repeat that and repeat that and repeat that and repeat that for the rest of our lives understanding that we are your children, you have adopted us, and we have work to do. Come Holy Spirit into this make us aware, awaken us we pray, in the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

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[jacereviews]

Review: Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam

Television (Anime) Consumed in: English Sub Note: This review covers only the 50 episodes of TV Zeta, not A New Translation. For the sake of discussion I will have to cover the plot of Gundam 0079.

March 2nd, 1985 the second series of Gundam made its debut, Zeta Gundam. While the 0079 movies may have put Gundam on the map, it’s Zeta you still hear people discussing to this day. Revered by many as a classic, and one of the best mecha anime of the 80s, Zeta’s a big name, but does it hold up to it? Let’s rock.

PLOT: Universal Century 0087, the One-Year War between the Earth Federation and Zeon is long over, however peace is not to be had. In response to the remnants of Zeon, the federation has created a police-like military organization called the Titans to control Zeon and other spacenoid groups to prevent them from uprising and resisting the Federation’s control. To do this the Titans have been given borderline free reign to do whatever they see fit to do their job, no matter how atrocious it may be. In response to the unchecked reign of the titans, a resistance group called the Anti-Earth Union Group (or simply AEUG) has risen up to fight back. During an AEUG mission led the mysterious blonde pilot who always covers his eyes and his past named Quattro Bajeena to the colony Green Noa, a young man called Kamille Bidan steals a prototype Gundam Mk. II belonging to the Titans. The two cross paths and Kamille ultimately ends up joining Quattro on the Argama as it sails out to fight the Titans. From the get-go we have a story both similar and dissimilar to the prior series. Once again we have a young man piloting a Gundam on a white ship as it battles enemies, but instead of being a traditional soldier, we’re now following a rebellion. It takes awhile for the plot to get truly moving, but when it goes it goes. The Titans are a hateable cast of villains, unlike the Zeon of the first series the Titans are mostly irredeemable. The Titan cast is likeable at best and cartoonishly evil at worst. There was never a Ramba Ral style villain where it felt like that without the war they’d be our friend. As it goes on the plot gets more and more interesting with webs of betrayals, cyber-newtypes, and even the remnants of Zeon. Especially of note is the ending of Zeta, which without going into detail, is both narratively satisfying, thematically resonant, and quite shocking for a series aimed at young audiences. Very few series have an ending that really make me sit back and consider it like Zeta’s and that’s a good thing for Zeta. However the story is not without its flaws. The first 10 episodes can be kind of a drag, and the once again episodic format can lead to some weak and borderline filler episodes. I feel the series could’ve shaved off 10 episodes and be better for it. The biggest problem I had with Zeta however, is the amount of things that happen off-screen and details the series feels like it doesn’t need to give to the audience. Many a times I found myself confused or questioning stuff and just had to concluding that some change happened off-screen. Characters swap ships on both sides with little notice, and operations fly by with people hardly mentioning it. It made the whole experience way less cohesive. The series also had a few cases of trying to emulate the original series for no good reason, such as bringing kids on board the Argama half-way through. It made sense for the White Base to have kids but the Argama really didn’t need them and it just felt like poor decision making. However by the end I felt that the pluses far outshine the negatives and ultimately lead to this series being one hell of a ride. 

8/10, it’s good, messy, but good. Ending earns a whole point on its own.

CHARACTERS: Let’s start with Kamille Bidan himself. Kamille starts off as an obnoxious brat, a lot of my early enjoyment was seeing people beat the shit out of him, but he honestly grew on me, and by the end he’d gone through quite the character arc. He’s a good mc, but takes a damn long time to become that. Luckily he’s not alone. Let’s discuss the overly familiar looking Quattro Bajeena, doesn’t that scar look familiar? Might he be the Red Comet of Zeon? No he can’t be... But he is definitely a highlight of the series. The audience is invested in him from the get-go, and throughout the series we see him mentoring Kamille and doing some amazing stuff in his own right. He’s only human and has his flaws too, but whatever flaws they may be are something you forget when you see his speech during the Day of Dakar. Zeta’s also notable (by the audience and Kamille) for its sizeable female cast. Emma, Reccoa, and Fa Yuriy are all notable female characters put in powerful roles. Even if Reccoa’s later arc may inspire some ire from viewers they’re all great characters with their own interesting arcs. Another thing I’ve got to give Zeta a lot of credit is for how it used the returning characters from the first series. My boy Bright Noa shows up in episode 1, and many of the White Base members make some kind of reappearance (not really a spoiler because it’s in the opening). We get to see how they’ve lived their lives since the events of 0079, and they have many interesting scenes without it ever feeling like the series is too dependent on them (save for Bright). The problem I had with Zeta characters, is a lot of them act out and act irrationally. Now this isn’t necessarily bad character writing, but when someone acts out and takes a mech, does something stupid with it, and the next day is piloting a mech again it raises a few eyebrows. It can also get obnoxious with how many characters are being overly emotional twats, but I never found any of the Argama crew to be entirely irredeemable idiots. They were just flawed people in a stressful situation. The Titans on the other hand had what I felt to be a relatively lacking cast. While the character of Jerid and his varied love interests were all likeable, with Jerid himself being a standout likeable douche, aside from Jerid they didn’t get character arcs. Otherwise like Titans consisted of pitiable cyber-newtypes, hand-rubbing schemers, and straight up assholes. Aside from the cyber-newtypes none were very redeemable. The cyber-newtype Murasame Four was notable but limited by her limited screen time. They tried to make Paptimus Scirroco into a new Char, but he just felt way less interesting than Zeon’s red comet. The ultimate leader of the Titans, Jamitov, was just a bog standard evil politician. All in all only Jerid and Four were interesting characters, and only Jerid lived up to much potential. While you didn’t have any Garmas or Ramba Rals to make the war seem like a curse causing good people to die on either side, the Titans did fill the role of hateable villain well. Without going into too much detail, I do want to give a shoutout to Haman Karn. She was a rather engaging character but pretty much everything about her involves spoilers.

8/10, a lot of good characters, a lot of hateable villains, but most of the best characters are repeats from 0079.

VISUALS: Now probably the biggest improvement from 0079 is the animation. The noticeable errors of 0079 are gone, replaced with some truly gorgeous and fluid animation. Zeta has a lot of sakuga packing, and when it wants to move well it damn does. However when it doesn’t care it’ll freely use a lot of cheap tricks that the skilled eye will notice, but what doesn’t? The actual art of the series I’m less in love with. There were less moments of truly interesting visuals than 0079, but being okay is okay. The character designs were mostly fine, with a few (Jamaican in particular) being very dull. The mecha design is a mixed bag with me. The designs feel way less varied than 0079, with a lot of mechs feeling like the same skeleton with different overly ornate decorations. As cool as they looked I found myself just shaking my head and saying “Really?” at some of the more over-ornate designs. However the thing that bugged me the most was the Titans using Zeon-esque mechs. Being part of the Earth Federation you’d assume they’d use Federation mechs, but instead they use mechs designed like their original enemies. This didn’t make much sense outside of the meta-reasoning “Villain mechs in Gundam need the domed one-eye design.” However everything I’m saying is simply nitpicks. 

7/10, at worst we have functional art that suspends disbelief, at best we have gorgeous animation.

AUDIO: In all honesty, I don’t remember much of Zeta’s soundtrack which is an okay sign. What I do remember is pretty decent but nothing ever stuck out to me except the first opening. The first opening was a rather enjoyable song, the second was very mediocre. The ending theme for the whole time was entirely forgettable as you’re skipping to the next episode anyway. Sound design wise everything sounded fine and natural, despite sound effects in space. Voice acting was passable. Most of the voices fit well with no real stand out performances in my opinion. The voice of Bask Oum was notable for sounding overtly evil, so that was nice. However there were some voices that were not so great on minor characters. Every time the minor character Sydle talked I just wanted her to stop talking. Luckily she was incredibly minor.

6/10, functional with a demerit or two.

FINAL SCORE: 7/10

While not the perfect masterpiece many claim it to be, Zeta Gundam is something I’d personally recommend. With a powerful delivery of themes and a strong follow up to a good series, Zeta’s a fantastic watch. There’s a lot of great to be had here, though sadly the execution of the ideas is far from perfect. Held back by some bumps, Zeta nonetheless stands out as an excellent story animated quite well. The ending alone makes me want to raise the score even higher, but a show is more than it’s last five episodes. I now set out to continue my Gundam Quest with ZZ. I’ll probably get a lot of flack for rating the quintessential 80′s mecha so low, but don’t let a number understate how much I love this series.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/neuroscientist-hannah-critchlow-consciousness-is-a-really-funny-word/

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

On any given day in Cambridge, you may see numerous people jogging along the towpaths, and it’s not unreasonable to assume neuroscientists may be over-represented. “You see so many,” says Hannah Critchlow, a neuroscientist who likes to jog along the river. Physical fitness may be a secondary consideration, she says; what they are really trying to do is ramp up their neurogenesis – the birth of new nerve cells in the brain.

“People used to think that once you were born, that was it, that was all the nerve cells you have throughout life,” she says. “Then, 20 years ago, Rusty Gage [a professor at the Salk Institute in California] discovered that you get neurogenesis in adults, in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. It turns out that jogging is really good at increasing neurogenesis in the brain.” And so, Critchlow says with a laugh, she likes to run. “I go: ‘This is wonderful, my neurogenesis is really happy with me at the moment.’”

We are sitting in her study at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Critchlow is outreach fellow, tasked with public engagement. Once described by the Telegraph as “a sort of female Brian Cox”, she has given numerous talks, been a presenter on Tomorrow’s World Live, the interactive version of the BBC science show, appeared on TV, radio and podcasts and was named as a top 100 scientist for her work in science communication. She has just written a book on consciousness – part of the Ladybird Expert series aimed at adults, a brief but mindbending introduction to the brain and the idea of consciousness, taking in philosophy, famous neuroscience breakthroughs and brain facts.

Critchlow speaking at the Hay festival in 2016. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

“Our brain contains around 86bn nerve cells,” she writes. “To scale it down to something more palatable, if we took a dot of brain tissue the size of a sugar grain, it would contain roughly 10,000 nerve cells. Even more incredible: each of these nerve cells connects to around 10,000 others, forming the most densely packed and complicated circuit board imaginable.”

She also writes about smart drugs, such as those prescribed for ADHD, that increase focus (she has said in the past that they are a problem among both students and academic staff). Does she still think that? Yes, she says. “First of all, people are buying these over the internet so they have no idea what they’re actually getting. And they’re taking them at doses that aren’t maybe optimum for that person’s chemistry. We don’t know what the long-term effects are, particularly on the developing brain. The brain is undergoing a huge amount of plasticity until the mid-20s, so I think it’s a terrible idea to take any kind of mind-altering drug until you’ve passed your mid-20s. I think it’s a really worrying issue and a potential timebomb.”

She has started writing another book, based around the idea of free will. “There’s quite a lot of evidence to show it’s largely an illusion,” she says. “There’s a huge amount that seems to be hardwired into us and predetermined. You are born with a particular brain and that shapes your perception, shapes what you are hardwired to find rewarding. You are brought up in a particular environment and that reinforces what you are born with.” What does that mean for decision-making? “If your perception of the world is based on prior experiences and hardwiring, then that shapes your reality, which goes on to affect your decision-making. A large amount of your decision-making taps into your reward system in your brain. Although there is scope to change certain behaviours, you have to make a real conscious effort in order to break habits and change how your reward system affects your motivation. I think neuroscience can be very empowering in that, in making me go for a jog rather than reach for a bottle of shiraz.”

Surely there is a danger in being a neuroscientist, running injuries aside, that you can start to view people as simply a bunch of chemical and electrical reactions. “I haven’t got to that point, yet,” says Critchlow. “I hope I never do.” But isn’t that what neuroscience is basically saying we are? “Yeah, but it’s an awe-inspiring, highly sophisticated, highly dynamic system that is incredible and beautiful in its intricacy. There are some gorgeous videos of new connections taking place in living, moving mammals as they’re moving around, going around a maze, for example. It’s incredible that our brain, as we are navigating the space around us – or in this case, the mouse – changes shape. You can see consciousness happen, new connections forming.”

Demystifying the brain’s connections doesn’t reduce its magic, she says. “We each have such unique takes on the world. And then – and this is where I think it gets really interesting – our brains have these flaws, which means we make assumptions or we get things a little bit wrong, so our reality is not quite right. If we then discuss reality with another person who has another perspective, then we’re more likely to get a common understanding and appreciation of the world and it will become closer to reality.” But aren’t we living in polarised times, where nuance is out and it is impossible to find common ground with someone who believes the exact opposite? She thinks that ideas sharing through social-media technology is in its “toddler-tantrum” infancy and hopes we will be able to “exchange ideas in a more positive way”.

“Hopefully the educational system will catch up and help people to evaluate whether they trust a particular source or not. That’s a skill that needs to be fostered from a young age.”

The thing Critchlow most remembers about science lessons at school was being sent out of class for talking. She thought she might want to study medicine, but while working as a nursing assistant at a psychiatric hospital, she became fascinated by how the brain worked. “The medication and therapies on offer weren’t really doing anything other than making a lot of the patients almost catatonic. People would lose their cognitive capacity and potential to have joy from life.”

After a degree in biology at Brunel University, she studied for a PhD at Cambridge. Her experience informs her work now as outreach fellow – she goes to state secondary schools and colleges to give talks about neuroscience, but also about the possibility of higher education and the Oxbridge admissions process. For state school intake, Cambridge is ranked fifth worst (Oxford is fourth). While Critchlow can’t talk about the prejudice that may lurk within the admissions system, she says perception from students is one problem. “I went to a state school and when I was thinking of applying to university, there was no chance that I’d have thought about applying to Cambridge. I came here for my PhD but that was because, at that point, I’d gained enough confidence. It’s maybe the perception of Oxford and Cambridge being elite universities and maybe students not having the confidence to apply, or not knowing much about the application process.”

Critchlow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she is a fellow. Photograph: Martin Pope for the Guardian

There is still a gender gap in science. While women make up 42% of the scientific workforce, less than a quarter of professors are female. “I think lots of women are drawn to science but there’s quite a steep drop-off rate,” says Critchlow. Much of this is to do with the lifestyle and, often, its incompatibility with starting a family. “A lot of grants run for two or three years and you’ve got to get results, so if a woman is off for a year on maternity leave, that has quite a big impact.”

Is sexism a problem? When she was working on her PhD, a decade or so ago, she was giving a talk and one of the professors told her he couldn’t concentrate because when she was pointing to the data, her top was riding up slightly, exposing a “really small amount of my midriff. Apparently it was too distracting and he couldn’t concentrate on any of my data. I was pretty pissed off about that. You don’t imagine a male student gets those kind of comments.” People are much more aware now, she says. “I think there is still a bit of bias, but it’s been acknowledged.”

It’s a particularly fascinating time to be a neuroscientist, she says, because society is having discussions about consciousness, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. The question of consciousness has plagued neuroscientists and philosophers for centuries. What is Critchlow’s definition? “I think consciousness is a really funny word, and as we learn more about how the brain works, I think it is going to become even more difficult to give a succinct definition. Generally speaking, it has been agreed that consciousness is the ability to form a subjective view of the world, to have a unique view.”

She says that in the future, we will probably be appalled at the way we treat animals now as we learn more about their brains and consciousness, but she’s also interested in the idea plants can be “conscious”. In her book, she writes about plants using electrical signals to send information around their “bodies”, and responding to their environments. She gives the example of a caterpillar eating a leaf: “The plant will start to produce a chemical to repel the insect. Even if the plant is simply played an audio file of a munching caterpillar, it will respond, indicating that plants can hear.”

“So what do we eat?” says Critchlow. “Where do we draw a line? It’s starting to force us into this position where we have to ask ourselves maybe we don’t have this sovereignty over nature that we’ve always led ourselves to believe.”

Can AI be considered to be conscious? “As we discover more about the neural networks and connections in the brain that allow us to learn and remember and form a subjective view of the world, we are starting to be able to use that information and emulate it in artificial intelligence systems. They can learn and remember without being coded to process information in the way we have told them to. So using that definition, yes, we’ll be able to develop AI that has some semblance of consciousness. But it’s a funny word. It’s almost as if humans have developed this word to make ourselves seem more important than we are.”

Should robots have rights? She thinks for a while. “I’m not sure what the point would be. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how it all develops, to see the implications as AI evolves, what kind of rights should they have and what kind of limits should they have. I don’t think there’s a set answer. We don’t have a full handle on AI.”

Consciousness by Hannah Critchlow.

She caused a bit of a stir at the Hay festival in 2015 when she said it would be possible to download someone’s brain on to a computer – it seems less remarkable now that there are companies working on this, although in the face of much scepticism from the neuroscience community. “It’s a possibility, but I think there are a lot of things that are possibilities,” she says. “There are scientists that are working on taking a snapshot of the connectome, the 100tn or so connections in the brain, mapping those connections on a computer. So does that mean you can upload your brain if you have a snapshot of it at one particular time? Or if we have enough information could you then run simulations to see how the brain would evolve? We probably will get there at some point in the future.”

Critchlow says she’s not keen on the idea for herself, although she is planning to donate her body to scientific research. “I don’t think it would be me. A simulation of me. This would just be a copy of me, of my connections.” Besides, she says, she thinks her simulation might still miss tangible, physical pleasures that come from being attached to a body. Such as gnocchi. It makes me laugh because it’s so specific, and not what I was expecting her to say – wine, perhaps, or running. But it’s lunchtime and she’s hungry (and she really loves gnocchi). Or at least her hypothalamus is telling her she is.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

New Post has been published on http://funnythingshere.xyz/neuroscientist-hannah-critchlow-consciousness-is-a-really-funny-word/

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

On any given day in Cambridge, you may see numerous people jogging along the towpaths, and it’s not unreasonable to assume neuroscientists may be over-represented. “You see so many,” says Hannah Critchlow, a neuroscientist who likes to jog along the river. Physical fitness may be a secondary consideration, she says; what they are really trying to do is ramp up their neurogenesis – the birth of new nerve cells in the brain.

“People used to think that once you were born, that was it, that was all the nerve cells you have throughout life,” she says. “Then, 20 years ago, Rusty Gage [a professor at the Salk Institute in California] discovered that you get neurogenesis in adults, in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. It turns out that jogging is really good at increasing neurogenesis in the brain.” And so, Critchlow says with a laugh, she likes to run. “I go: ‘This is wonderful, my neurogenesis is really happy with me at the moment.’”

We are sitting in her study at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Critchlow is outreach fellow, tasked with public engagement. Once described by the Telegraph as “a sort of female Brian Cox”, she has given numerous talks, been a presenter on Tomorrow’s World Live, the interactive version of the BBC science show, appeared on TV, radio and podcasts and was named as a top 100 scientist for her work in science communication. She has just written a book on consciousness – part of the Ladybird Expert series aimed at adults, a brief but mindbending introduction to the brain and the idea of consciousness, taking in philosophy, famous neuroscience breakthroughs and brain facts.

Critchlow speaking at the Hay festival in 2016. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

“Our brain contains around 86bn nerve cells,” she writes. “To scale it down to something more palatable, if we took a dot of brain tissue the size of a sugar grain, it would contain roughly 10,000 nerve cells. Even more incredible: each of these nerve cells connects to around 10,000 others, forming the most densely packed and complicated circuit board imaginable.”

She also writes about smart drugs, such as those prescribed for ADHD, that increase focus (she has said in the past that they are a problem among both students and academic staff). Does she still think that? Yes, she says. “First of all, people are buying these over the internet so they have no idea what they’re actually getting. And they’re taking them at doses that aren’t maybe optimum for that person’s chemistry. We don’t know what the long-term effects are, particularly on the developing brain. The brain is undergoing a huge amount of plasticity until the mid-20s, so I think it’s a terrible idea to take any kind of mind-altering drug until you’ve passed your mid-20s. I think it’s a really worrying issue and a potential timebomb.”

She has started writing another book, based around the idea of free will. “There’s quite a lot of evidence to show it’s largely an illusion,” she says. “There’s a huge amount that seems to be hardwired into us and predetermined. You are born with a particular brain and that shapes your perception, shapes what you are hardwired to find rewarding. You are brought up in a particular environment and that reinforces what you are born with.” What does that mean for decision-making? “If your perception of the world is based on prior experiences and hardwiring, then that shapes your reality, which goes on to affect your decision-making. A large amount of your decision-making taps into your reward system in your brain. Although there is scope to change certain behaviours, you have to make a real conscious effort in order to break habits and change how your reward system affects your motivation. I think neuroscience can be very empowering in that, in making me go for a jog rather than reach for a bottle of shiraz.”

Surely there is a danger in being a neuroscientist, running injuries aside, that you can start to view people as simply a bunch of chemical and electrical reactions. “I haven’t got to that point, yet,” says Critchlow. “I hope I never do.” But isn’t that what neuroscience is basically saying we are? “Yeah, but it’s an awe-inspiring, highly sophisticated, highly dynamic system that is incredible and beautiful in its intricacy. There are some gorgeous videos of new connections taking place in living, moving mammals as they’re moving around, going around a maze, for example. It’s incredible that our brain, as we are navigating the space around us – or in this case, the mouse – changes shape. You can see consciousness happen, new connections forming.”

Demystifying the brain’s connections doesn’t reduce its magic, she says. “We each have such unique takes on the world. And then – and this is where I think it gets really interesting – our brains have these flaws, which means we make assumptions or we get things a little bit wrong, so our reality is not quite right. If we then discuss reality with another person who has another perspective, then we’re more likely to get a common understanding and appreciation of the world and it will become closer to reality.” But aren’t we living in polarised times, where nuance is out and it is impossible to find common ground with someone who believes the exact opposite? She thinks that ideas sharing through social-media technology is in its “toddler-tantrum” infancy and hopes we will be able to “exchange ideas in a more positive way”.

“Hopefully the educational system will catch up and help people to evaluate whether they trust a particular source or not. That’s a skill that needs to be fostered from a young age.”

The thing Critchlow most remembers about science lessons at school was being sent out of class for talking. She thought she might want to study medicine, but while working as a nursing assistant at a psychiatric hospital, she became fascinated by how the brain worked. “The medication and therapies on offer weren’t really doing anything other than making a lot of the patients almost catatonic. People would lose their cognitive capacity and potential to have joy from life.”

After a degree in biology at Brunel University, she studied for a PhD at Cambridge. Her experience informs her work now as outreach fellow – she goes to state secondary schools and colleges to give talks about neuroscience, but also about the possibility of higher education and the Oxbridge admissions process. For state school intake, Cambridge is ranked fifth worst (Oxford is fourth). While Critchlow can’t talk about the prejudice that may lurk within the admissions system, she says perception from students is one problem. “I went to a state school and when I was thinking of applying to university, there was no chance that I’d have thought about applying to Cambridge. I came here for my PhD but that was because, at that point, I’d gained enough confidence. It’s maybe the perception of Oxford and Cambridge being elite universities and maybe students not having the confidence to apply, or not knowing much about the application process.”

Critchlow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she is a fellow. Photograph: Martin Pope for the Guardian

There is still a gender gap in science. While women make up 42% of the scientific workforce, less than a quarter of professors are female. “I think lots of women are drawn to science but there’s quite a steep drop-off rate,” says Critchlow. Much of this is to do with the lifestyle and, often, its incompatibility with starting a family. “A lot of grants run for two or three years and you’ve got to get results, so if a woman is off for a year on maternity leave, that has quite a big impact.”

Is sexism a problem? When she was working on her PhD, a decade or so ago, she was giving a talk and one of the professors told her he couldn’t concentrate because when she was pointing to the data, her top was riding up slightly, exposing a “really small amount of my midriff. Apparently it was too distracting and he couldn’t concentrate on any of my data. I was pretty pissed off about that. You don’t imagine a male student gets those kind of comments.” People are much more aware now, she says. “I think there is still a bit of bias, but it’s been acknowledged.”

It’s a particularly fascinating time to be a neuroscientist, she says, because society is having discussions about consciousness, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. The question of consciousness has plagued neuroscientists and philosophers for centuries. What is Critchlow’s definition? “I think consciousness is a really funny word, and as we learn more about how the brain works, I think it is going to become even more difficult to give a succinct definition. Generally speaking, it has been agreed that consciousness is the ability to form a subjective view of the world, to have a unique view.”

She says that in the future, we will probably be appalled at the way we treat animals now as we learn more about their brains and consciousness, but she’s also interested in the idea plants can be “conscious”. In her book, she writes about plants using electrical signals to send information around their “bodies”, and responding to their environments. She gives the example of a caterpillar eating a leaf: “The plant will start to produce a chemical to repel the insect. Even if the plant is simply played an audio file of a munching caterpillar, it will respond, indicating that plants can hear.”

“So what do we eat?” says Critchlow. “Where do we draw a line? It’s starting to force us into this position where we have to ask ourselves maybe we don’t have this sovereignty over nature that we’ve always led ourselves to believe.”

Can AI be considered to be conscious? “As we discover more about the neural networks and connections in the brain that allow us to learn and remember and form a subjective view of the world, we are starting to be able to use that information and emulate it in artificial intelligence systems. They can learn and remember without being coded to process information in the way we have told them to. So using that definition, yes, we’ll be able to develop AI that has some semblance of consciousness. But it’s a funny word. It’s almost as if humans have developed this word to make ourselves seem more important than we are.”

Should robots have rights? She thinks for a while. “I’m not sure what the point would be. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how it all develops, to see the implications as AI evolves, what kind of rights should they have and what kind of limits should they have. I don’t think there’s a set answer. We don’t have a full handle on AI.”

Consciousness by Hannah Critchlow.

She caused a bit of a stir at the Hay festival in 2015 when she said it would be possible to download someone’s brain on to a computer – it seems less remarkable now that there are companies working on this, although in the face of much scepticism from the neuroscience community. “It’s a possibility, but I think there are a lot of things that are possibilities,” she says. “There are scientists that are working on taking a snapshot of the connectome, the 100tn or so connections in the brain, mapping those connections on a computer. So does that mean you can upload your brain if you have a snapshot of it at one particular time? Or if we have enough information could you then run simulations to see how the brain would evolve? We probably will get there at some point in the future.”

Critchlow says she’s not keen on the idea for herself, although she is planning to donate her body to scientific research. “I don’t think it would be me. A simulation of me. This would just be a copy of me, of my connections.” Besides, she says, she thinks her simulation might still miss tangible, physical pleasures that come from being attached to a body. Such as gnocchi. It makes me laugh because it’s so specific, and not what I was expecting her to say – wine, perhaps, or running. But it’s lunchtime and she’s hungry (and she really loves gnocchi). Or at least her hypothalamus is telling her she is.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

New Post has been published on http://funnythingshere.xyz/neuroscientist-hannah-critchlow-consciousness-is-a-really-funny-word/

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

On any given day in Cambridge, you may see numerous people jogging along the towpaths, and it’s not unreasonable to assume neuroscientists may be over-represented. “You see so many,” says Hannah Critchlow, a neuroscientist who likes to jog along the river. Physical fitness may be a secondary consideration, she says; what they are really trying to do is ramp up their neurogenesis – the birth of new nerve cells in the brain.

“People used to think that once you were born, that was it, that was all the nerve cells you have throughout life,” she says. “Then, 20 years ago, Rusty Gage [a professor at the Salk Institute in California] discovered that you get neurogenesis in adults, in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. It turns out that jogging is really good at increasing neurogenesis in the brain.” And so, Critchlow says with a laugh, she likes to run. “I go: ‘This is wonderful, my neurogenesis is really happy with me at the moment.’”

We are sitting in her study at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Critchlow is outreach fellow, tasked with public engagement. Once described by the Telegraph as “a sort of female Brian Cox”, she has given numerous talks, been a presenter on Tomorrow’s World Live, the interactive version of the BBC science show, appeared on TV, radio and podcasts and was named as a top 100 scientist for her work in science communication. She has just written a book on consciousness – part of the Ladybird Expert series aimed at adults, a brief but mindbending introduction to the brain and the idea of consciousness, taking in philosophy, famous neuroscience breakthroughs and brain facts.

Critchlow speaking at the Hay festival in 2016. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

“Our brain contains around 86bn nerve cells,” she writes. “To scale it down to something more palatable, if we took a dot of brain tissue the size of a sugar grain, it would contain roughly 10,000 nerve cells. Even more incredible: each of these nerve cells connects to around 10,000 others, forming the most densely packed and complicated circuit board imaginable.”

She also writes about smart drugs, such as those prescribed for ADHD, that increase focus (she has said in the past that they are a problem among both students and academic staff). Does she still think that? Yes, she says. “First of all, people are buying these over the internet so they have no idea what they’re actually getting. And they’re taking them at doses that aren’t maybe optimum for that person’s chemistry. We don’t know what the long-term effects are, particularly on the developing brain. The brain is undergoing a huge amount of plasticity until the mid-20s, so I think it’s a terrible idea to take any kind of mind-altering drug until you’ve passed your mid-20s. I think it’s a really worrying issue and a potential timebomb.”

She has started writing another book, based around the idea of free will. “There’s quite a lot of evidence to show it’s largely an illusion,” she says. “There’s a huge amount that seems to be hardwired into us and predetermined. You are born with a particular brain and that shapes your perception, shapes what you are hardwired to find rewarding. You are brought up in a particular environment and that reinforces what you are born with.” What does that mean for decision-making? “If your perception of the world is based on prior experiences and hardwiring, then that shapes your reality, which goes on to affect your decision-making. A large amount of your decision-making taps into your reward system in your brain. Although there is scope to change certain behaviours, you have to make a real conscious effort in order to break habits and change how your reward system affects your motivation. I think neuroscience can be very empowering in that, in making me go for a jog rather than reach for a bottle of shiraz.”

Surely there is a danger in being a neuroscientist, running injuries aside, that you can start to view people as simply a bunch of chemical and electrical reactions. “I haven’t got to that point, yet,” says Critchlow. “I hope I never do.” But isn’t that what neuroscience is basically saying we are? “Yeah, but it’s an awe-inspiring, highly sophisticated, highly dynamic system that is incredible and beautiful in its intricacy. There are some gorgeous videos of new connections taking place in living, moving mammals as they’re moving around, going around a maze, for example. It’s incredible that our brain, as we are navigating the space around us – or in this case, the mouse – changes shape. You can see consciousness happen, new connections forming.”

Demystifying the brain’s connections doesn’t reduce its magic, she says. “We each have such unique takes on the world. And then – and this is where I think it gets really interesting – our brains have these flaws, which means we make assumptions or we get things a little bit wrong, so our reality is not quite right. If we then discuss reality with another person who has another perspective, then we’re more likely to get a common understanding and appreciation of the world and it will become closer to reality.” But aren’t we living in polarised times, where nuance is out and it is impossible to find common ground with someone who believes the exact opposite? She thinks that ideas sharing through social-media technology is in its “toddler-tantrum” infancy and hopes we will be able to “exchange ideas in a more positive way”.

“Hopefully the educational system will catch up and help people to evaluate whether they trust a particular source or not. That’s a skill that needs to be fostered from a young age.”

The thing Critchlow most remembers about science lessons at school was being sent out of class for talking. She thought she might want to study medicine, but while working as a nursing assistant at a psychiatric hospital, she became fascinated by how the brain worked. “The medication and therapies on offer weren’t really doing anything other than making a lot of the patients almost catatonic. People would lose their cognitive capacity and potential to have joy from life.”

After a degree in biology at Brunel University, she studied for a PhD at Cambridge. Her experience informs her work now as outreach fellow – she goes to state secondary schools and colleges to give talks about neuroscience, but also about the possibility of higher education and the Oxbridge admissions process. For state school intake, Cambridge is ranked fifth worst (Oxford is fourth). While Critchlow can’t talk about the prejudice that may lurk within the admissions system, she says perception from students is one problem. “I went to a state school and when I was thinking of applying to university, there was no chance that I’d have thought about applying to Cambridge. I came here for my PhD but that was because, at that point, I’d gained enough confidence. It’s maybe the perception of Oxford and Cambridge being elite universities and maybe students not having the confidence to apply, or not knowing much about the application process.”

Critchlow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she is a fellow. Photograph: Martin Pope for the Guardian

There is still a gender gap in science. While women make up 42% of the scientific workforce, less than a quarter of professors are female. “I think lots of women are drawn to science but there’s quite a steep drop-off rate,” says Critchlow. Much of this is to do with the lifestyle and, often, its incompatibility with starting a family. “A lot of grants run for two or three years and you’ve got to get results, so if a woman is off for a year on maternity leave, that has quite a big impact.”

Is sexism a problem? When she was working on her PhD, a decade or so ago, she was giving a talk and one of the professors told her he couldn’t concentrate because when she was pointing to the data, her top was riding up slightly, exposing a “really small amount of my midriff. Apparently it was too distracting and he couldn’t concentrate on any of my data. I was pretty pissed off about that. You don’t imagine a male student gets those kind of comments.” People are much more aware now, she says. “I think there is still a bit of bias, but it’s been acknowledged.”

It’s a particularly fascinating time to be a neuroscientist, she says, because society is having discussions about consciousness, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. The question of consciousness has plagued neuroscientists and philosophers for centuries. What is Critchlow’s definition? “I think consciousness is a really funny word, and as we learn more about how the brain works, I think it is going to become even more difficult to give a succinct definition. Generally speaking, it has been agreed that consciousness is the ability to form a subjective view of the world, to have a unique view.”

She says that in the future, we will probably be appalled at the way we treat animals now as we learn more about their brains and consciousness, but she’s also interested in the idea plants can be “conscious”. In her book, she writes about plants using electrical signals to send information around their “bodies”, and responding to their environments. She gives the example of a caterpillar eating a leaf: “The plant will start to produce a chemical to repel the insect. Even if the plant is simply played an audio file of a munching caterpillar, it will respond, indicating that plants can hear.”

“So what do we eat?” says Critchlow. “Where do we draw a line? It’s starting to force us into this position where we have to ask ourselves maybe we don’t have this sovereignty over nature that we’ve always led ourselves to believe.”

Can AI be considered to be conscious? “As we discover more about the neural networks and connections in the brain that allow us to learn and remember and form a subjective view of the world, we are starting to be able to use that information and emulate it in artificial intelligence systems. They can learn and remember without being coded to process information in the way we have told them to. So using that definition, yes, we’ll be able to develop AI that has some semblance of consciousness. But it’s a funny word. It’s almost as if humans have developed this word to make ourselves seem more important than we are.”

Should robots have rights? She thinks for a while. “I’m not sure what the point would be. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how it all develops, to see the implications as AI evolves, what kind of rights should they have and what kind of limits should they have. I don’t think there’s a set answer. We don’t have a full handle on AI.”

Consciousness by Hannah Critchlow.

She caused a bit of a stir at the Hay festival in 2015 when she said it would be possible to download someone’s brain on to a computer – it seems less remarkable now that there are companies working on this, although in the face of much scepticism from the neuroscience community. “It’s a possibility, but I think there are a lot of things that are possibilities,” she says. “There are scientists that are working on taking a snapshot of the connectome, the 100tn or so connections in the brain, mapping those connections on a computer. So does that mean you can upload your brain if you have a snapshot of it at one particular time? Or if we have enough information could you then run simulations to see how the brain would evolve? We probably will get there at some point in the future.”

Critchlow says she’s not keen on the idea for herself, although she is planning to donate her body to scientific research. “I don’t think it would be me. A simulation of me. This would just be a copy of me, of my connections.” Besides, she says, she thinks her simulation might still miss tangible, physical pleasures that come from being attached to a body. Such as gnocchi. It makes me laugh because it’s so specific, and not what I was expecting her to say – wine, perhaps, or running. But it’s lunchtime and she’s hungry (and she really loves gnocchi). Or at least her hypothalamus is telling her she is.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/neuroscientist-hannah-critchlow-consciousness-is-a-really-funny-word/

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

On any given day in Cambridge, you may see numerous people jogging along the towpaths, and it’s not unreasonable to assume neuroscientists may be over-represented. “You see so many,” says Hannah Critchlow, a neuroscientist who likes to jog along the river. Physical fitness may be a secondary consideration, she says; what they are really trying to do is ramp up their neurogenesis – the birth of new nerve cells in the brain.

“People used to think that once you were born, that was it, that was all the nerve cells you have throughout life,” she says. “Then, 20 years ago, Rusty Gage [a professor at the Salk Institute in California] discovered that you get neurogenesis in adults, in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. It turns out that jogging is really good at increasing neurogenesis in the brain.” And so, Critchlow says with a laugh, she likes to run. “I go: ‘This is wonderful, my neurogenesis is really happy with me at the moment.’”

We are sitting in her study at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Critchlow is outreach fellow, tasked with public engagement. Once described by the Telegraph as “a sort of female Brian Cox”, she has given numerous talks, been a presenter on Tomorrow’s World Live, the interactive version of the BBC science show, appeared on TV, radio and podcasts and was named as a top 100 scientist for her work in science communication. She has just written a book on consciousness – part of the Ladybird Expert series aimed at adults, a brief but mindbending introduction to the brain and the idea of consciousness, taking in philosophy, famous neuroscience breakthroughs and brain facts.

Critchlow speaking at the Hay festival in 2016. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

“Our brain contains around 86bn nerve cells,” she writes. “To scale it down to something more palatable, if we took a dot of brain tissue the size of a sugar grain, it would contain roughly 10,000 nerve cells. Even more incredible: each of these nerve cells connects to around 10,000 others, forming the most densely packed and complicated circuit board imaginable.”

She also writes about smart drugs, such as those prescribed for ADHD, that increase focus (she has said in the past that they are a problem among both students and academic staff). Does she still think that? Yes, she says. “First of all, people are buying these over the internet so they have no idea what they’re actually getting. And they’re taking them at doses that aren’t maybe optimum for that person’s chemistry. We don’t know what the long-term effects are, particularly on the developing brain. The brain is undergoing a huge amount of plasticity until the mid-20s, so I think it’s a terrible idea to take any kind of mind-altering drug until you’ve passed your mid-20s. I think it’s a really worrying issue and a potential timebomb.”

She has started writing another book, based around the idea of free will. “There’s quite a lot of evidence to show it’s largely an illusion,” she says. “There’s a huge amount that seems to be hardwired into us and predetermined. You are born with a particular brain and that shapes your perception, shapes what you are hardwired to find rewarding. You are brought up in a particular environment and that reinforces what you are born with.” What does that mean for decision-making? “If your perception of the world is based on prior experiences and hardwiring, then that shapes your reality, which goes on to affect your decision-making. A large amount of your decision-making taps into your reward system in your brain. Although there is scope to change certain behaviours, you have to make a real conscious effort in order to break habits and change how your reward system affects your motivation. I think neuroscience can be very empowering in that, in making me go for a jog rather than reach for a bottle of shiraz.”

Surely there is a danger in being a neuroscientist, running injuries aside, that you can start to view people as simply a bunch of chemical and electrical reactions. “I haven’t got to that point, yet,” says Critchlow. “I hope I never do.” But isn’t that what neuroscience is basically saying we are? “Yeah, but it’s an awe-inspiring, highly sophisticated, highly dynamic system that is incredible and beautiful in its intricacy. There are some gorgeous videos of new connections taking place in living, moving mammals as they’re moving around, going around a maze, for example. It’s incredible that our brain, as we are navigating the space around us – or in this case, the mouse – changes shape. You can see consciousness happen, new connections forming.”

Demystifying the brain’s connections doesn’t reduce its magic, she says. “We each have such unique takes on the world. And then – and this is where I think it gets really interesting – our brains have these flaws, which means we make assumptions or we get things a little bit wrong, so our reality is not quite right. If we then discuss reality with another person who has another perspective, then we’re more likely to get a common understanding and appreciation of the world and it will become closer to reality.” But aren’t we living in polarised times, where nuance is out and it is impossible to find common ground with someone who believes the exact opposite? She thinks that ideas sharing through social-media technology is in its “toddler-tantrum” infancy and hopes we will be able to “exchange ideas in a more positive way”.

“Hopefully the educational system will catch up and help people to evaluate whether they trust a particular source or not. That’s a skill that needs to be fostered from a young age.”

The thing Critchlow most remembers about science lessons at school was being sent out of class for talking. She thought she might want to study medicine, but while working as a nursing assistant at a psychiatric hospital, she became fascinated by how the brain worked. “The medication and therapies on offer weren’t really doing anything other than making a lot of the patients almost catatonic. People would lose their cognitive capacity and potential to have joy from life.”

After a degree in biology at Brunel University, she studied for a PhD at Cambridge. Her experience informs her work now as outreach fellow – she goes to state secondary schools and colleges to give talks about neuroscience, but also about the possibility of higher education and the Oxbridge admissions process. For state school intake, Cambridge is ranked fifth worst (Oxford is fourth). While Critchlow can’t talk about the prejudice that may lurk within the admissions system, she says perception from students is one problem. “I went to a state school and when I was thinking of applying to university, there was no chance that I’d have thought about applying to Cambridge. I came here for my PhD but that was because, at that point, I’d gained enough confidence. It’s maybe the perception of Oxford and Cambridge being elite universities and maybe students not having the confidence to apply, or not knowing much about the application process.”

Critchlow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she is a fellow. Photograph: Martin Pope for the Guardian

There is still a gender gap in science. While women make up 42% of the scientific workforce, less than a quarter of professors are female. “I think lots of women are drawn to science but there’s quite a steep drop-off rate,” says Critchlow. Much of this is to do with the lifestyle and, often, its incompatibility with starting a family. “A lot of grants run for two or three years and you’ve got to get results, so if a woman is off for a year on maternity leave, that has quite a big impact.”

Is sexism a problem? When she was working on her PhD, a decade or so ago, she was giving a talk and one of the professors told her he couldn’t concentrate because when she was pointing to the data, her top was riding up slightly, exposing a “really small amount of my midriff. Apparently it was too distracting and he couldn’t concentrate on any of my data. I was pretty pissed off about that. You don’t imagine a male student gets those kind of comments.” People are much more aware now, she says. “I think there is still a bit of bias, but it’s been acknowledged.”

It’s a particularly fascinating time to be a neuroscientist, she says, because society is having discussions about consciousness, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. The question of consciousness has plagued neuroscientists and philosophers for centuries. What is Critchlow’s definition? “I think consciousness is a really funny word, and as we learn more about how the brain works, I think it is going to become even more difficult to give a succinct definition. Generally speaking, it has been agreed that consciousness is the ability to form a subjective view of the world, to have a unique view.”

She says that in the future, we will probably be appalled at the way we treat animals now as we learn more about their brains and consciousness, but she’s also interested in the idea plants can be “conscious”. In her book, she writes about plants using electrical signals to send information around their “bodies”, and responding to their environments. She gives the example of a caterpillar eating a leaf: “The plant will start to produce a chemical to repel the insect. Even if the plant is simply played an audio file of a munching caterpillar, it will respond, indicating that plants can hear.”

“So what do we eat?” says Critchlow. “Where do we draw a line? It’s starting to force us into this position where we have to ask ourselves maybe we don’t have this sovereignty over nature that we’ve always led ourselves to believe.”

Can AI be considered to be conscious? “As we discover more about the neural networks and connections in the brain that allow us to learn and remember and form a subjective view of the world, we are starting to be able to use that information and emulate it in artificial intelligence systems. They can learn and remember without being coded to process information in the way we have told them to. So using that definition, yes, we’ll be able to develop AI that has some semblance of consciousness. But it’s a funny word. It’s almost as if humans have developed this word to make ourselves seem more important than we are.”

Should robots have rights? She thinks for a while. “I’m not sure what the point would be. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how it all develops, to see the implications as AI evolves, what kind of rights should they have and what kind of limits should they have. I don’t think there’s a set answer. We don’t have a full handle on AI.”

Consciousness by Hannah Critchlow.

She caused a bit of a stir at the Hay festival in 2015 when she said it would be possible to download someone’s brain on to a computer – it seems less remarkable now that there are companies working on this, although in the face of much scepticism from the neuroscience community. “It’s a possibility, but I think there are a lot of things that are possibilities,” she says. “There are scientists that are working on taking a snapshot of the connectome, the 100tn or so connections in the brain, mapping those connections on a computer. So does that mean you can upload your brain if you have a snapshot of it at one particular time? Or if we have enough information could you then run simulations to see how the brain would evolve? We probably will get there at some point in the future.”

Critchlow says she’s not keen on the idea for herself, although she is planning to donate her body to scientific research. “I don’t think it would be me. A simulation of me. This would just be a copy of me, of my connections.” Besides, she says, she thinks her simulation might still miss tangible, physical pleasures that come from being attached to a body. Such as gnocchi. It makes me laugh because it’s so specific, and not what I was expecting her to say – wine, perhaps, or running. But it’s lunchtime and she’s hungry (and she really loves gnocchi). Or at least her hypothalamus is telling her she is.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/neuroscientist-hannah-critchlow-consciousness-is-a-really-funny-word/

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

On any given day in Cambridge, you may see numerous people jogging along the towpaths, and it’s not unreasonable to assume neuroscientists may be over-represented. “You see so many,” says Hannah Critchlow, a neuroscientist who likes to jog along the river. Physical fitness may be a secondary consideration, she says; what they are really trying to do is ramp up their neurogenesis – the birth of new nerve cells in the brain.

“People used to think that once you were born, that was it, that was all the nerve cells you have throughout life,” she says. “Then, 20 years ago, Rusty Gage [a professor at the Salk Institute in California] discovered that you get neurogenesis in adults, in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. It turns out that jogging is really good at increasing neurogenesis in the brain.” And so, Critchlow says with a laugh, she likes to run. “I go: ‘This is wonderful, my neurogenesis is really happy with me at the moment.’”

We are sitting in her study at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Critchlow is outreach fellow, tasked with public engagement. Once described by the Telegraph as “a sort of female Brian Cox”, she has given numerous talks, been a presenter on Tomorrow’s World Live, the interactive version of the BBC science show, appeared on TV, radio and podcasts and was named as a top 100 scientist for her work in science communication. She has just written a book on consciousness – part of the Ladybird Expert series aimed at adults, a brief but mindbending introduction to the brain and the idea of consciousness, taking in philosophy, famous neuroscience breakthroughs and brain facts.

Critchlow speaking at the Hay festival in 2016. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

“Our brain contains around 86bn nerve cells,” she writes. “To scale it down to something more palatable, if we took a dot of brain tissue the size of a sugar grain, it would contain roughly 10,000 nerve cells. Even more incredible: each of these nerve cells connects to around 10,000 others, forming the most densely packed and complicated circuit board imaginable.”

She also writes about smart drugs, such as those prescribed for ADHD, that increase focus (she has said in the past that they are a problem among both students and academic staff). Does she still think that? Yes, she says. “First of all, people are buying these over the internet so they have no idea what they’re actually getting. And they’re taking them at doses that aren’t maybe optimum for that person’s chemistry. We don’t know what the long-term effects are, particularly on the developing brain. The brain is undergoing a huge amount of plasticity until the mid-20s, so I think it’s a terrible idea to take any kind of mind-altering drug until you’ve passed your mid-20s. I think it’s a really worrying issue and a potential timebomb.”

She has started writing another book, based around the idea of free will. “There’s quite a lot of evidence to show it’s largely an illusion,” she says. “There’s a huge amount that seems to be hardwired into us and predetermined. You are born with a particular brain and that shapes your perception, shapes what you are hardwired to find rewarding. You are brought up in a particular environment and that reinforces what you are born with.” What does that mean for decision-making? “If your perception of the world is based on prior experiences and hardwiring, then that shapes your reality, which goes on to affect your decision-making. A large amount of your decision-making taps into your reward system in your brain. Although there is scope to change certain behaviours, you have to make a real conscious effort in order to break habits and change how your reward system affects your motivation. I think neuroscience can be very empowering in that, in making me go for a jog rather than reach for a bottle of shiraz.”

Surely there is a danger in being a neuroscientist, running injuries aside, that you can start to view people as simply a bunch of chemical and electrical reactions. “I haven’t got to that point, yet,” says Critchlow. “I hope I never do.” But isn’t that what neuroscience is basically saying we are? “Yeah, but it’s an awe-inspiring, highly sophisticated, highly dynamic system that is incredible and beautiful in its intricacy. There are some gorgeous videos of new connections taking place in living, moving mammals as they’re moving around, going around a maze, for example. It’s incredible that our brain, as we are navigating the space around us – or in this case, the mouse – changes shape. You can see consciousness happen, new connections forming.”

Demystifying the brain’s connections doesn’t reduce its magic, she says. “We each have such unique takes on the world. And then – and this is where I think it gets really interesting – our brains have these flaws, which means we make assumptions or we get things a little bit wrong, so our reality is not quite right. If we then discuss reality with another person who has another perspective, then we’re more likely to get a common understanding and appreciation of the world and it will become closer to reality.” But aren’t we living in polarised times, where nuance is out and it is impossible to find common ground with someone who believes the exact opposite? She thinks that ideas sharing through social-media technology is in its “toddler-tantrum” infancy and hopes we will be able to “exchange ideas in a more positive way”.

“Hopefully the educational system will catch up and help people to evaluate whether they trust a particular source or not. That’s a skill that needs to be fostered from a young age.”

The thing Critchlow most remembers about science lessons at school was being sent out of class for talking. She thought she might want to study medicine, but while working as a nursing assistant at a psychiatric hospital, she became fascinated by how the brain worked. “The medication and therapies on offer weren’t really doing anything other than making a lot of the patients almost catatonic. People would lose their cognitive capacity and potential to have joy from life.”

After a degree in biology at Brunel University, she studied for a PhD at Cambridge. Her experience informs her work now as outreach fellow – she goes to state secondary schools and colleges to give talks about neuroscience, but also about the possibility of higher education and the Oxbridge admissions process. For state school intake, Cambridge is ranked fifth worst (Oxford is fourth). While Critchlow can’t talk about the prejudice that may lurk within the admissions system, she says perception from students is one problem. “I went to a state school and when I was thinking of applying to university, there was no chance that I’d have thought about applying to Cambridge. I came here for my PhD but that was because, at that point, I’d gained enough confidence. It’s maybe the perception of Oxford and Cambridge being elite universities and maybe students not having the confidence to apply, or not knowing much about the application process.”

Critchlow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she is a fellow. Photograph: Martin Pope for the Guardian

There is still a gender gap in science. While women make up 42% of the scientific workforce, less than a quarter of professors are female. “I think lots of women are drawn to science but there’s quite a steep drop-off rate,” says Critchlow. Much of this is to do with the lifestyle and, often, its incompatibility with starting a family. “A lot of grants run for two or three years and you’ve got to get results, so if a woman is off for a year on maternity leave, that has quite a big impact.”

Is sexism a problem? When she was working on her PhD, a decade or so ago, she was giving a talk and one of the professors told her he couldn’t concentrate because when she was pointing to the data, her top was riding up slightly, exposing a “really small amount of my midriff. Apparently it was too distracting and he couldn’t concentrate on any of my data. I was pretty pissed off about that. You don’t imagine a male student gets those kind of comments.” People are much more aware now, she says. “I think there is still a bit of bias, but it’s been acknowledged.”

It’s a particularly fascinating time to be a neuroscientist, she says, because society is having discussions about consciousness, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. The question of consciousness has plagued neuroscientists and philosophers for centuries. What is Critchlow’s definition? “I think consciousness is a really funny word, and as we learn more about how the brain works, I think it is going to become even more difficult to give a succinct definition. Generally speaking, it has been agreed that consciousness is the ability to form a subjective view of the world, to have a unique view.”

She says that in the future, we will probably be appalled at the way we treat animals now as we learn more about their brains and consciousness, but she’s also interested in the idea plants can be “conscious”. In her book, she writes about plants using electrical signals to send information around their “bodies”, and responding to their environments. She gives the example of a caterpillar eating a leaf: “The plant will start to produce a chemical to repel the insect. Even if the plant is simply played an audio file of a munching caterpillar, it will respond, indicating that plants can hear.”

“So what do we eat?” says Critchlow. “Where do we draw a line? It’s starting to force us into this position where we have to ask ourselves maybe we don’t have this sovereignty over nature that we’ve always led ourselves to believe.”

Can AI be considered to be conscious? “As we discover more about the neural networks and connections in the brain that allow us to learn and remember and form a subjective view of the world, we are starting to be able to use that information and emulate it in artificial intelligence systems. They can learn and remember without being coded to process information in the way we have told them to. So using that definition, yes, we’ll be able to develop AI that has some semblance of consciousness. But it’s a funny word. It’s almost as if humans have developed this word to make ourselves seem more important than we are.”

Should robots have rights? She thinks for a while. “I’m not sure what the point would be. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how it all develops, to see the implications as AI evolves, what kind of rights should they have and what kind of limits should they have. I don’t think there’s a set answer. We don’t have a full handle on AI.”

Consciousness by Hannah Critchlow.

She caused a bit of a stir at the Hay festival in 2015 when she said it would be possible to download someone’s brain on to a computer – it seems less remarkable now that there are companies working on this, although in the face of much scepticism from the neuroscience community. “It’s a possibility, but I think there are a lot of things that are possibilities,” she says. “There are scientists that are working on taking a snapshot of the connectome, the 100tn or so connections in the brain, mapping those connections on a computer. So does that mean you can upload your brain if you have a snapshot of it at one particular time? Or if we have enough information could you then run simulations to see how the brain would evolve? We probably will get there at some point in the future.”

Critchlow says she’s not keen on the idea for herself, although she is planning to donate her body to scientific research. “I don’t think it would be me. A simulation of me. This would just be a copy of me, of my connections.” Besides, she says, she thinks her simulation might still miss tangible, physical pleasures that come from being attached to a body. Such as gnocchi. It makes me laugh because it’s so specific, and not what I was expecting her to say – wine, perhaps, or running. But it’s lunchtime and she’s hungry (and she really loves gnocchi). Or at least her hypothalamus is telling her she is.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/neuroscientist-hannah-critchlow-consciousness-is-a-really-funny-word/

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

On any given day in Cambridge, you may see numerous people jogging along the towpaths, and it’s not unreasonable to assume neuroscientists may be over-represented. “You see so many,” says Hannah Critchlow, a neuroscientist who likes to jog along the river. Physical fitness may be a secondary consideration, she says; what they are really trying to do is ramp up their neurogenesis – the birth of new nerve cells in the brain.

“People used to think that once you were born, that was it, that was all the nerve cells you have throughout life,” she says. “Then, 20 years ago, Rusty Gage [a professor at the Salk Institute in California] discovered that you get neurogenesis in adults, in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. It turns out that jogging is really good at increasing neurogenesis in the brain.” And so, Critchlow says with a laugh, she likes to run. “I go: ‘This is wonderful, my neurogenesis is really happy with me at the moment.’”

We are sitting in her study at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Critchlow is outreach fellow, tasked with public engagement. Once described by the Telegraph as “a sort of female Brian Cox”, she has given numerous talks, been a presenter on Tomorrow’s World Live, the interactive version of the BBC science show, appeared on TV, radio and podcasts and was named as a top 100 scientist for her work in science communication. She has just written a book on consciousness – part of the Ladybird Expert series aimed at adults, a brief but mindbending introduction to the brain and the idea of consciousness, taking in philosophy, famous neuroscience breakthroughs and brain facts.

Critchlow speaking at the Hay festival in 2016. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

“Our brain contains around 86bn nerve cells,” she writes. “To scale it down to something more palatable, if we took a dot of brain tissue the size of a sugar grain, it would contain roughly 10,000 nerve cells. Even more incredible: each of these nerve cells connects to around 10,000 others, forming the most densely packed and complicated circuit board imaginable.”

She also writes about smart drugs, such as those prescribed for ADHD, that increase focus (she has said in the past that they are a problem among both students and academic staff). Does she still think that? Yes, she says. “First of all, people are buying these over the internet so they have no idea what they’re actually getting. And they’re taking them at doses that aren’t maybe optimum for that person’s chemistry. We don’t know what the long-term effects are, particularly on the developing brain. The brain is undergoing a huge amount of plasticity until the mid-20s, so I think it’s a terrible idea to take any kind of mind-altering drug until you’ve passed your mid-20s. I think it’s a really worrying issue and a potential timebomb.”

She has started writing another book, based around the idea of free will. “There’s quite a lot of evidence to show it’s largely an illusion,” she says. “There’s a huge amount that seems to be hardwired into us and predetermined. You are born with a particular brain and that shapes your perception, shapes what you are hardwired to find rewarding. You are brought up in a particular environment and that reinforces what you are born with.” What does that mean for decision-making? “If your perception of the world is based on prior experiences and hardwiring, then that shapes your reality, which goes on to affect your decision-making. A large amount of your decision-making taps into your reward system in your brain. Although there is scope to change certain behaviours, you have to make a real conscious effort in order to break habits and change how your reward system affects your motivation. I think neuroscience can be very empowering in that, in making me go for a jog rather than reach for a bottle of shiraz.”

Surely there is a danger in being a neuroscientist, running injuries aside, that you can start to view people as simply a bunch of chemical and electrical reactions. “I haven’t got to that point, yet,” says Critchlow. “I hope I never do.” But isn’t that what neuroscience is basically saying we are? “Yeah, but it’s an awe-inspiring, highly sophisticated, highly dynamic system that is incredible and beautiful in its intricacy. There are some gorgeous videos of new connections taking place in living, moving mammals as they’re moving around, going around a maze, for example. It’s incredible that our brain, as we are navigating the space around us – or in this case, the mouse – changes shape. You can see consciousness happen, new connections forming.”

Demystifying the brain’s connections doesn’t reduce its magic, she says. “We each have such unique takes on the world. And then – and this is where I think it gets really interesting – our brains have these flaws, which means we make assumptions or we get things a little bit wrong, so our reality is not quite right. If we then discuss reality with another person who has another perspective, then we’re more likely to get a common understanding and appreciation of the world and it will become closer to reality.” But aren’t we living in polarised times, where nuance is out and it is impossible to find common ground with someone who believes the exact opposite? She thinks that ideas sharing through social-media technology is in its “toddler-tantrum” infancy and hopes we will be able to “exchange ideas in a more positive way”.

“Hopefully the educational system will catch up and help people to evaluate whether they trust a particular source or not. That’s a skill that needs to be fostered from a young age.”

The thing Critchlow most remembers about science lessons at school was being sent out of class for talking. She thought she might want to study medicine, but while working as a nursing assistant at a psychiatric hospital, she became fascinated by how the brain worked. “The medication and therapies on offer weren’t really doing anything other than making a lot of the patients almost catatonic. People would lose their cognitive capacity and potential to have joy from life.”

After a degree in biology at Brunel University, she studied for a PhD at Cambridge. Her experience informs her work now as outreach fellow – she goes to state secondary schools and colleges to give talks about neuroscience, but also about the possibility of higher education and the Oxbridge admissions process. For state school intake, Cambridge is ranked fifth worst (Oxford is fourth). While Critchlow can’t talk about the prejudice that may lurk within the admissions system, she says perception from students is one problem. “I went to a state school and when I was thinking of applying to university, there was no chance that I’d have thought about applying to Cambridge. I came here for my PhD but that was because, at that point, I’d gained enough confidence. It’s maybe the perception of Oxford and Cambridge being elite universities and maybe students not having the confidence to apply, or not knowing much about the application process.”

Critchlow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she is a fellow. Photograph: Martin Pope for the Guardian

There is still a gender gap in science. While women make up 42% of the scientific workforce, less than a quarter of professors are female. “I think lots of women are drawn to science but there’s quite a steep drop-off rate,” says Critchlow. Much of this is to do with the lifestyle and, often, its incompatibility with starting a family. “A lot of grants run for two or three years and you’ve got to get results, so if a woman is off for a year on maternity leave, that has quite a big impact.”

Is sexism a problem? When she was working on her PhD, a decade or so ago, she was giving a talk and one of the professors told her he couldn’t concentrate because when she was pointing to the data, her top was riding up slightly, exposing a “really small amount of my midriff. Apparently it was too distracting and he couldn’t concentrate on any of my data. I was pretty pissed off about that. You don’t imagine a male student gets those kind of comments.” People are much more aware now, she says. “I think there is still a bit of bias, but it’s been acknowledged.”

It’s a particularly fascinating time to be a neuroscientist, she says, because society is having discussions about consciousness, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. The question of consciousness has plagued neuroscientists and philosophers for centuries. What is Critchlow’s definition? “I think consciousness is a really funny word, and as we learn more about how the brain works, I think it is going to become even more difficult to give a succinct definition. Generally speaking, it has been agreed that consciousness is the ability to form a subjective view of the world, to have a unique view.”

She says that in the future, we will probably be appalled at the way we treat animals now as we learn more about their brains and consciousness, but she’s also interested in the idea plants can be “conscious”. In her book, she writes about plants using electrical signals to send information around their “bodies”, and responding to their environments. She gives the example of a caterpillar eating a leaf: “The plant will start to produce a chemical to repel the insect. Even if the plant is simply played an audio file of a munching caterpillar, it will respond, indicating that plants can hear.”

“So what do we eat?” says Critchlow. “Where do we draw a line? It’s starting to force us into this position where we have to ask ourselves maybe we don’t have this sovereignty over nature that we’ve always led ourselves to believe.”

Can AI be considered to be conscious? “As we discover more about the neural networks and connections in the brain that allow us to learn and remember and form a subjective view of the world, we are starting to be able to use that information and emulate it in artificial intelligence systems. They can learn and remember without being coded to process information in the way we have told them to. So using that definition, yes, we’ll be able to develop AI that has some semblance of consciousness. But it’s a funny word. It’s almost as if humans have developed this word to make ourselves seem more important than we are.”

Should robots have rights? She thinks for a while. “I’m not sure what the point would be. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how it all develops, to see the implications as AI evolves, what kind of rights should they have and what kind of limits should they have. I don’t think there’s a set answer. We don’t have a full handle on AI.”

Consciousness by Hannah Critchlow.

She caused a bit of a stir at the Hay festival in 2015 when she said it would be possible to download someone’s brain on to a computer – it seems less remarkable now that there are companies working on this, although in the face of much scepticism from the neuroscience community. “It’s a possibility, but I think there are a lot of things that are possibilities,” she says. “There are scientists that are working on taking a snapshot of the connectome, the 100tn or so connections in the brain, mapping those connections on a computer. So does that mean you can upload your brain if you have a snapshot of it at one particular time? Or if we have enough information could you then run simulations to see how the brain would evolve? We probably will get there at some point in the future.”

Critchlow says she’s not keen on the idea for herself, although she is planning to donate her body to scientific research. “I don’t think it would be me. A simulation of me. This would just be a copy of me, of my connections.” Besides, she says, she thinks her simulation might still miss tangible, physical pleasures that come from being attached to a body. Such as gnocchi. It makes me laugh because it’s so specific, and not what I was expecting her to say – wine, perhaps, or running. But it’s lunchtime and she’s hungry (and she really loves gnocchi). Or at least her hypothalamus is telling her she is.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/neuroscientist-hannah-critchlow-consciousness-is-a-really-funny-word/

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow: 'Consciousness is a really funny word'

On any given day in Cambridge, you may see numerous people jogging along the towpaths, and it’s not unreasonable to assume neuroscientists may be over-represented. “You see so many,” says Hannah Critchlow, a neuroscientist who likes to jog along the river. Physical fitness may be a secondary consideration, she says; what they are really trying to do is ramp up their neurogenesis – the birth of new nerve cells in the brain.

“People used to think that once you were born, that was it, that was all the nerve cells you have throughout life,” she says. “Then, 20 years ago, Rusty Gage [a professor at the Salk Institute in California] discovered that you get neurogenesis in adults, in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. It turns out that jogging is really good at increasing neurogenesis in the brain.” And so, Critchlow says with a laugh, she likes to run. “I go: ‘This is wonderful, my neurogenesis is really happy with me at the moment.’”

We are sitting in her study at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Critchlow is outreach fellow, tasked with public engagement. Once described by the Telegraph as “a sort of female Brian Cox”, she has given numerous talks, been a presenter on Tomorrow’s World Live, the interactive version of the BBC science show, appeared on TV, radio and podcasts and was named as a top 100 scientist for her work in science communication. She has just written a book on consciousness – part of the Ladybird Expert series aimed at adults, a brief but mindbending introduction to the brain and the idea of consciousness, taking in philosophy, famous neuroscience breakthroughs and brain facts.

Critchlow speaking at the Hay festival in 2016. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

“Our brain contains around 86bn nerve cells,” she writes. “To scale it down to something more palatable, if we took a dot of brain tissue the size of a sugar grain, it would contain roughly 10,000 nerve cells. Even more incredible: each of these nerve cells connects to around 10,000 others, forming the most densely packed and complicated circuit board imaginable.”

She also writes about smart drugs, such as those prescribed for ADHD, that increase focus (she has said in the past that they are a problem among both students and academic staff). Does she still think that? Yes, she says. “First of all, people are buying these over the internet so they have no idea what they’re actually getting. And they’re taking them at doses that aren’t maybe optimum for that person’s chemistry. We don’t know what the long-term effects are, particularly on the developing brain. The brain is undergoing a huge amount of plasticity until the mid-20s, so I think it’s a terrible idea to take any kind of mind-altering drug until you’ve passed your mid-20s. I think it’s a really worrying issue and a potential timebomb.”

She has started writing another book, based around the idea of free will. “There’s quite a lot of evidence to show it’s largely an illusion,” she says. “There’s a huge amount that seems to be hardwired into us and predetermined. You are born with a particular brain and that shapes your perception, shapes what you are hardwired to find rewarding. You are brought up in a particular environment and that reinforces what you are born with.” What does that mean for decision-making? “If your perception of the world is based on prior experiences and hardwiring, then that shapes your reality, which goes on to affect your decision-making. A large amount of your decision-making taps into your reward system in your brain. Although there is scope to change certain behaviours, you have to make a real conscious effort in order to break habits and change how your reward system affects your motivation. I think neuroscience can be very empowering in that, in making me go for a jog rather than reach for a bottle of shiraz.”

Surely there is a danger in being a neuroscientist, running injuries aside, that you can start to view people as simply a bunch of chemical and electrical reactions. “I haven’t got to that point, yet,” says Critchlow. “I hope I never do.” But isn’t that what neuroscience is basically saying we are? “Yeah, but it’s an awe-inspiring, highly sophisticated, highly dynamic system that is incredible and beautiful in its intricacy. There are some gorgeous videos of new connections taking place in living, moving mammals as they’re moving around, going around a maze, for example. It’s incredible that our brain, as we are navigating the space around us – or in this case, the mouse – changes shape. You can see consciousness happen, new connections forming.”

Demystifying the brain’s connections doesn’t reduce its magic, she says. “We each have such unique takes on the world. And then – and this is where I think it gets really interesting – our brains have these flaws, which means we make assumptions or we get things a little bit wrong, so our reality is not quite right. If we then discuss reality with another person who has another perspective, then we’re more likely to get a common understanding and appreciation of the world and it will become closer to reality.” But aren’t we living in polarised times, where nuance is out and it is impossible to find common ground with someone who believes the exact opposite? She thinks that ideas sharing through social-media technology is in its “toddler-tantrum” infancy and hopes we will be able to “exchange ideas in a more positive way”.

“Hopefully the educational system will catch up and help people to evaluate whether they trust a particular source or not. That’s a skill that needs to be fostered from a young age.”

The thing Critchlow most remembers about science lessons at school was being sent out of class for talking. She thought she might want to study medicine, but while working as a nursing assistant at a psychiatric hospital, she became fascinated by how the brain worked. “The medication and therapies on offer weren’t really doing anything other than making a lot of the patients almost catatonic. People would lose their cognitive capacity and potential to have joy from life.”

After a degree in biology at Brunel University, she studied for a PhD at Cambridge. Her experience informs her work now as outreach fellow – she goes to state secondary schools and colleges to give talks about neuroscience, but also about the possibility of higher education and the Oxbridge admissions process. For state school intake, Cambridge is ranked fifth worst (Oxford is fourth). While Critchlow can’t talk about the prejudice that may lurk within the admissions system, she says perception from students is one problem. “I went to a state school and when I was thinking of applying to university, there was no chance that I’d have thought about applying to Cambridge. I came here for my PhD but that was because, at that point, I’d gained enough confidence. It’s maybe the perception of Oxford and Cambridge being elite universities and maybe students not having the confidence to apply, or not knowing much about the application process.”

Critchlow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she is a fellow. Photograph: Martin Pope for the Guardian

There is still a gender gap in science. While women make up 42% of the scientific workforce, less than a quarter of professors are female. “I think lots of women are drawn to science but there’s quite a steep drop-off rate,” says Critchlow. Much of this is to do with the lifestyle and, often, its incompatibility with starting a family. “A lot of grants run for two or three years and you’ve got to get results, so if a woman is off for a year on maternity leave, that has quite a big impact.”

Is sexism a problem? When she was working on her PhD, a decade or so ago, she was giving a talk and one of the professors told her he couldn’t concentrate because when she was pointing to the data, her top was riding up slightly, exposing a “really small amount of my midriff. Apparently it was too distracting and he couldn’t concentrate on any of my data. I was pretty pissed off about that. You don’t imagine a male student gets those kind of comments.” People are much more aware now, she says. “I think there is still a bit of bias, but it’s been acknowledged.”

It’s a particularly fascinating time to be a neuroscientist, she says, because society is having discussions about consciousness, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. The question of consciousness has plagued neuroscientists and philosophers for centuries. What is Critchlow’s definition? “I think consciousness is a really funny word, and as we learn more about how the brain works, I think it is going to become even more difficult to give a succinct definition. Generally speaking, it has been agreed that consciousness is the ability to form a subjective view of the world, to have a unique view.”

She says that in the future, we will probably be appalled at the way we treat animals now as we learn more about their brains and consciousness, but she’s also interested in the idea plants can be “conscious”. In her book, she writes about plants using electrical signals to send information around their “bodies”, and responding to their environments. She gives the example of a caterpillar eating a leaf: “The plant will start to produce a chemical to repel the insect. Even if the plant is simply played an audio file of a munching caterpillar, it will respond, indicating that plants can hear.”

“So what do we eat?” says Critchlow. “Where do we draw a line? It’s starting to force us into this position where we have to ask ourselves maybe we don’t have this sovereignty over nature that we’ve always led ourselves to believe.”

Can AI be considered to be conscious? “As we discover more about the neural networks and connections in the brain that allow us to learn and remember and form a subjective view of the world, we are starting to be able to use that information and emulate it in artificial intelligence systems. They can learn and remember without being coded to process information in the way we have told them to. So using that definition, yes, we’ll be able to develop AI that has some semblance of consciousness. But it’s a funny word. It’s almost as if humans have developed this word to make ourselves seem more important than we are.”

Should robots have rights? She thinks for a while. “I’m not sure what the point would be. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how it all develops, to see the implications as AI evolves, what kind of rights should they have and what kind of limits should they have. I don’t think there’s a set answer. We don’t have a full handle on AI.”

Consciousness by Hannah Critchlow.

She caused a bit of a stir at the Hay festival in 2015 when she said it would be possible to download someone’s brain on to a computer – it seems less remarkable now that there are companies working on this, although in the face of much scepticism from the neuroscience community. “It’s a possibility, but I think there are a lot of things that are possibilities,” she says. “There are scientists that are working on taking a snapshot of the connectome, the 100tn or so connections in the brain, mapping those connections on a computer. So does that mean you can upload your brain if you have a snapshot of it at one particular time? Or if we have enough information could you then run simulations to see how the brain would evolve? We probably will get there at some point in the future.”

Critchlow says she’s not keen on the idea for herself, although she is planning to donate her body to scientific research. “I don’t think it would be me. A simulation of me. This would just be a copy of me, of my connections.” Besides, she says, she thinks her simulation might still miss tangible, physical pleasures that come from being attached to a body. Such as gnocchi. It makes me laugh because it’s so specific, and not what I was expecting her to say – wine, perhaps, or running. But it’s lunchtime and she’s hungry (and she really loves gnocchi). Or at least her hypothalamus is telling her she is.