… think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  At least in the sense of memory manipulation.  Jessica Hamzelou in NewScientist (14 March 2015) reports scientists can implant false memories in mice.

[Karim] Benchenane’s team used electrodes to monitor the activity of mice’s place cells [neurons that fire in response to being in or thinking about a specific place] as the animals explored an enclosed arena, and in each mouse they identified a cell that fired only in a certain arena location. Later, when the mice were sleeping, the researchers monitored the animals’ brain activity as they replayed the day’s experiences. A computer recognised when the specific place cell fired; each time it did, a separate electrode would stimulate brain areas associated with reward.

When the mice awoke, they made a beeline for the location represented by the place cell that had been linked to a rewarding feeling in their sleep. A brand new memory – linking a place with reward – had been formed.

It seems so reasonable, but assuming this can be scaled up to human memory, it’s a trifle unsettling, especially if an electrode could be replaced with an electric cap.

Or a remote device.

I suppose I could talk about how memories are notoriously unreliable; pictures and videos are much  more trustworthy.  But then think about how they can be modified.

Reality is becoming far too plastic for my tastes.

Sue Branford and Maurício Torres (NewScientist 7 March 2015) in “Dambusters” (paywall) cover the latest events in the Amazon Basin.  Key information:

According to official satellite data, 22 per cent of the forest has been felled. But this is an underestimate as it fails to account for selective logging, which the satellite images don’t detect. After several years of marked declines in forest clearance, which won Brazil international plaudits, the level of deforestation has risen again.

As we all should have learned in school, there is a cycle of evaporation -> rain -> evaporation called the water cycle.  In the Amazon the forest is a key part of this cycle:

While this may be a result of natural climate variability, Antonio Nobre, a senior researcher at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research in São José dos Campos, says that the disruption is linked to deforestation. Recent research has shown that Amazon vegetation, particularly large trees, play a central role in maintaining the hydrological cycle. “In a single day a large tree in the rainforest can pump over 1000 litres of moisture from the soil into the atmosphere. If this is scaled up for the whole forest, it means the Amazon forest transpires 20 billion tonnes of water a day,” he says. Cut down the forest and you destroy the flying rivers.

So do trees make evaporation more efficient?  That’s not clear in the article.  The “flying river” is a nickname coined by a Brazilian scientist for the clouds formed from this evaporation that delivers rain to the south.  But:

São Paulo, the industrial heartland of Brazil, is in the grip of the worst drought in living memory. The clouds from the Amazon that make the basin itself so wet and also deliver rain to the south of the country – dubbed “flying rivers” by one Brazilian scientist – have failed to materialise.

And so on to the chase.  The forest of the Amazon has been under attack for decades by slash and burn farmers, by miners, by developers – many of whom are operating illegally against Brazilian law, and all of whom are impacting local tribes, most in a negative manner as the forest they have existed in for centuries are now torn from them simply because they do not conform to modern notions of ownership – although the authors of the NewScientist article do cover the efforts of the Munduruku to take ownership of their bit of it.  I think most folks would consider this to be … evil-doing.  Not that the perpetrators see it that way, but then English colonialists hardly ever felt badly about killing American Indians, either.  Here’s the thing: I think you can identify true “good guys” by the their activity patttern: they are cooperative.  They have a sense of justice and they are aware that in order to achieve justice, they must work with each other, compromise.

The other side, what I find myself calling the bad guys tonight, cannot do that: they are motivated by unmoderated greed.  Not that the good guys don’t have a spot of avariciousness in whatever they use for a soul, but it’s moderated and used for positive purposes.  But if you look at criminal gangs, evil regimes, and even fiction: the bad guys tend to destroy each other.  Working together tends to deny the greed which they feel.  So:

if deforestation continues, the viability of the large dams may be compromised. Until recently most scientists thought that cutting down trees near dams increased the amount of water flowing into them. But a recent study by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in San Francisco, California, came to a very different conclusion. It found that by 2050, when on present trends at least 40 per cent of Brazil’s Amazon forest will be gone, there will be a significant decline in river flows and energy generation (PNAS, vol 110, p 9601). This would make the reliability of the dams as an energy source highly questionable. …

Along with growing doubts from scientists, another factor is creating the perception that the authorities’ love affair with Amazon hydropower may be waning. Historically, one of the biggest drivers of dam-building has been a cosy relationship between big engineering companies and their political allies. “Energy planning in Brazil is not treated as a strategic issue but as a source of money for engineering companies and politicians,” says Felício Pontes, prosecutor for the Federal Public Ministry in Pará.

But many of the companies are now caught up in a massive corruption scandal involving bribery and money laundering by the state-owned oil company, Petrobrás. Investigators are examining the contracts for the Belo Monte dam, and a leading executive of one of the companies, Camargo Corrêa, which has been funding viability studies for the São Luís do Tapajós dam, has been arrested.

So, in order to build a dam, they have to destroy that which makes the dam economically viable, transgressing against folks who’ve lived in these areas for centuries; and in the process of deciding who gets to do what, the government and the companies indulge in corruption.  As the scientists take in the new data and come to (always contingent) conclusions that this project will self-destruct, it is becoming less likely that hydroelectric power will be implemented on the Amazon.

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi summarizes the current state of social media in the Arab world on PS21:

Although Al Qaeda has used social media to a limited degree over the past few years beyond posting their videos on YouTube, their breakaway group ISIS has taken its use another level. For starters, ISIS videos have been of a much higher production quality than Al Qaeda, using Hollywood-like special effects. In one of the videos posted online, the ISIS killer draws his knife to behead a hostage as the film cuts to slow motion to increase the dramatic effect. In a subsequent ISIS video of the beheading of 18 Syrian regime soldiers, the sound of beating heartbeats is added to the soundtrack. ISIS’ most gruesome upload to date featured the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot in a 21 minute video“that imitates the production values of documentaries aired on outlets like the History Channel”. The film ends by showing alleged homes of other Jordanian pilots identified through aerial mapping technology.

Since July 2014 ISIS has also been publishing an online magazine called Dabiq, now in its fifth issue, available to download in PDF and published in English. The propagandist publication, which without the gruesome content would look like a lifestyle magazine, features interviews with fighters and stories about recent conquests by the terrorist organization. The group has also used popular hashtags such as #WorldCup2014 to disseminate their videos and flood Twitter with their messages.

Conclusion:

What initially was a space for liberal minded technology geeks and activists is now a darker, gloomier world in which threats are made and videos of brutal beheadings and government flogging of liberal activists are shared and cheered. Today the social media landscape in the Middle East resembles the squares and streets of the Arab Spring cities of yore: it is a new battleground for hearts and minds between regimes, Islamists and activists; between young and old; between freedom and constraint.

There are signs of hope, though. In the midst of the all the doom and gloom, comedy from the likes of Bassem Youssef, Karl Sharro and Fahad Albutairi has become a tool to counter the growing online restrictions. Satire, “the weapon of the powerless against the powerful” has angered brainwashed ISIS followers and countered racist and Islamophobic coverage in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacres. One thing is clear: the liberal minded activists of the Arab Spring may be down, but they are certainly not out.

The easy thought: any weapon can be turned against you.  But there’s a limited audience for brutality, and brutality begats brutality and little else.  For those who exist through its employment, they may enjoy limited success, but I do not imagine living in such a society brings one much pleasure.