I'm on now on Part IV of a book I ordered recently, THE REPUBLICAN BRAIN The Science Of Why They Deny Science - And Reality. I got it just this last Tuesday.
This is amazing!
I've been learning more about the neurophysiology of the human brain. Apparently, MRI scans do show some structural differences between the brains of conservatives and liberals.
For example: Two regions of the brain, the Amygdala which is located in the Limbic System, the older part of the brain, among other functions, the Amygdala plays a key role in our emotional responses to threats and stimuli that evoke fear.
The second region, the Anterior Cingulated Cortex, ACC, is part of the frontal lobe and shares many links to the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in detecting mistakes and errors that we make that require a corrective response, what is sometimes called "conflict monitoring" or "cognitive control" switching from automatic responses to more measured responses.
Now, here is where it gets really interesting!
In a recent Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI study, of 90 University College of London students, the study has found that on average, political conservatives have a larger right-lobe on the Amygdala, while political liberals had more grey matter located in the ACC.
Of course, not everything in the human brain is necessarily hard-wired. Learning new skills, for example: learning to play the piano, or learning any new skills actually re-wires neurological pathways in the brain.
Also, people have been known to go from being conservative to liberal in later years, or from being liberal to conservative as they get older.
Anyway . . . since I haven't finished reading the book, I'm not going to draw any conclusions yet. I'll probably finish the rest of the book this evening when I get back from shopping. Then I will finish reading Part IV and go on to Part V.
Last night, I ordered another book by Chris Mooney, The Republican War On Science.
"A compelling and frightening account of (the US) governmentâ??s increasing unwillingness to distinguish between legitimate research and ideologically driven pseudoscience."
I should be getting this book sometime next week. I had ordered it From Barnes & Nobel last night.
It was about a couple of months ago when I ordered IDIOT AMERICA How Stupidity Became a Virtue in The Land of The Free.
And also, COSMOS by Carl Sagan.
And then, a few days ago, I ordered This Wild Abyss by Gale E Christianson.
All the other books above are hard cover, but this last one I can only get in paperback. Oh well.
It's an older book written back in the 1970s and I read it back in 1980.
I wanted this one, because it goes into more intimate details of the lives of Copernicus, Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton, and the book presented many historical facts that are not generally known, for example: a medieval scholar who also proposed that the earth and planets revolved around the sun, some centuries before Copernicus and Galileo came along. I had forgotten his name, but I remember reading about him in this particular book.
Anyway . . . . .
I wish I could have gotten this book in hard cover instead of paperback.
Yeah! I guess I am conservative in this one thing.
I prefer hard cover books to paperback, good old fashion hard cover books one can proudly display on shelves.
I love going into a living room in a friend's house, and seeing shelves loaded with books, and books laying on the coffee table, and books scattered about in a kind of hodge-podge everywhere, along with cups of coffee and pipes in ash trays, a living room that is a little bit on the disorderly side.
Ah yes! The smell of coffee, pipe tobacco, and the smell of books.
If you're going to be addicted to something, it might as well be books.
I can't stand fucking retards who don't like to read.
I'm fat and sassy! I love to sing & dance & stomp my feet & really rock your world!
