The lateral frontal poles are brussels-sprout-sized neural structures located approximately above and behind each eyebrow, unique to human neuroanatomy (even other primates lack the features).
"This region monitors how good the choices are that we don't take," said Professor Matthew Rushworth, who led the research, "How green the grass is on the other side."
In other words, they function much like your wife; quick to inform you that you just screwed up again, and it would have been so much better had you done this instead of that. Damage to these areas go far to explain the conduct of folks like our current Resident, Chris Matthews, and Jeffery Dahmer. Perhaps the nicest thing of all is that when next you're advised to "examine your conscience", you can simply ponder the results of your most recent CT scan.
I was going to use the line from Top Gun, "That's one ballsy move", but it doesn't seem to apply - not when a guy tries to rob another guy in downtown Porkland, encounters resistance, shoots the victim in the leg, then heroically stuffs the pistol into his pants and promptly blows his nuts off.
Even Tom Cruise isn't dumb enough to do something like that.
And really, it's kind of surprising that anything like that could ever happen in the first place, here in Green&Sustainable Porkland, Oregon - 'cause it's against the law to carry a loaded gun in the city, and everybody knows that! On the other hand, this is the USA, where you have to print things like "Warning! This coffee is hot!" on to-go cups (in Canada, they figure you should be able to figure that out on your own, eh?).
So in his defense, he might not have got down into the fine print in the law. Or maybe he has a CCW permit, though that seems kind of unlikely.
In any case, we clearly need more restrictive gun laws to prevent any further such incidents.
Some may claim that I'm being insensitive; I get accused of that on occasion.
So hey, in this case, I fess up: I've got no empathy for this guy at all.
Trouble ahead, trouble behind - and you know that notion ain't crossed his mind.
Well, yeah, the recent state audit of the developmentagency really isn't looking so good, what with concerns about maintenance, safety, finances, and all. But founding FON member McFarlane's all over it (we'll conveniently ignore for now that another bus driver was attacked and sent to the hospital a day or so ago). I mean, really, Neil's all about safety, and as a matter of fact, you know, just the other day over lunch with his good friend Patricia McCaig, he was confiding his deep concerns about safety to her while rubbing her thigh and stuffing hundred-dollar bills down her cleavage. And this was at least a day or two before the audit came out! It just goes to show you the depth and penetrating commitment he has when it comes to this stuff.
The audit found that TriMet needs to fix a culture where low morale, secrecy, safety problems and more then $1 billion in unfunded financial obligations threaten to wreck the public transit agency.
Never one to ignore signals, McFarlane's indicated a willingness to dig deep into things as soon as - if not before - Patty can get her bra readjusted and move to convince governor Retread that the CRC - with its all-important light rail line - doesn't really have to die if the Oregon legislature doesn't act to save it next month. There's still plenty of wealth to spread around, after all.
Of course, that's because the government didn't get involved in it. But yeah, if you're going to buy health "insurance" through one of the exchanges (assuming any of them actually get up and running), be prepared for some surprises.
You see, what the government "exchanges" don't tell you is just how much it's all really going to cost; it really comes down to how much you're going to need medical services and medications. Choosing the wrong plan could end up costing you thousands of dollars in expenses, and the "exchanges" don't bring that up. At all. And they likely never will, even if they finally become operational.
“Picking the right plan matters and everything developed so far only gives you information on the lowest cost premium.”
Sometimes, the higher premium gold and platinum tier plans actually carry the lowest overall costs, although that’s not always the case. A lower-cost premium might make more sense for a healthy person.
Yes, as we've mentioned here before, if you're young and healthy, you don't need to go for the gold; you can pay your $75 out-of-pocket for a doctor visit because you'll only be there once. But if you're young with, say, asthma - get ready to pony up a lot more in either out-of-pocket or "insurance" costs, because you're going to get hosed: a generic nebulizer medication's going to run you at least thirty bucks on a "bronze" plan, but as little as $5 on a "platinum" plan. Some meds are even "free".
Here's the dirty little secret about Obamacare: like it or not, you are going to pay at least ten percent of your income for "health insurance". Choose the wrong plan, and you'll lose as much as 1/3 of your annual income to it. Oh, and forget about "keeping your doctor" - only Kaiser has that kind of stability.
You're going to need to run some scenarios before you have even a prayer of selecting something that won't tear you a new one. Here's where to start.
I don't always buy "health insurance", but when I'm forced to, I choose wisely. Stay healthy, my friends.
Whenever some idiot starts off a speech with the words, "My brothers and sisters", it's a sure sign that you're going to have to sit through some babble from a unionista or a Socialist. The main difference is that the unionista starts off with that as a prelude to breaking kneecaps with a baseball bat, whereas when a Socialist says it, it usually means that the guns will be arriving momentarily. Hey, Li'l Kim over in Best Korea often refers warmly to his brothers and sisters immediately prior to ordering their execution.
Seattle folks, being even stupider than Porkland residents, actually elected an open and active Socialist to their City Council.
Naturally, it must be presumed that everyone will find her thoughts of crucial importance, so she graciously took it upon herself to respond to the Resident's State of the Ego address last night. After all, she's a Seattle City Councillor, so she's kind of a big deal.
Oddly, she seems to want "Hopen'n'Change". I don't suppose we can tell her to just go back to New Delhi. Naah...that'd be raaacist.
Edward Snowden was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian politicians, including a former government minister, for contributing to transparency and global stability by exposing a U.S. surveillance program.
According to Barrd and Snorre (the latter particularly well-named), the two Socialists who nominated him, little Eddie's done a great service to the world. Certainly at least as much as Barky's contributions.
We may not know how old the Grand Canyon is, but we know for sure that you're causing Mann-made global warming!
So, although the Grand Canyon as a whole is relatively young, they say, a couple of sections are ancient.
"We're making a major leap from thinking of a canyon that has a simple history ... to a more sophisticated understanding of how landscapes actually evolve through time," Karlstrom says.
It wasn't too long ago that scientists generally agreed on a simpler history. Karlstrom was part of the team that developed a walking path called the Trail of Time along the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Signs there tell visitors that the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon in the past 6 million years.
"The Trail of Time exhibit has what we considered at the time, in 2010, to be the scientific consensus," says Karlstrom, who hiked the canyon as a kid and has studied it professionally for 30 years.
Goolay gee! The "scientific consensus" has done up and changed - a whole lot - over the past three years! Who'da thunkit? So here's the new deal, now: the Grand Canyon's 15 to 25 million years old (or maybe 70 million years old) in some places, but only 6 million years old in other places.
No, no...no thanks necessary; happy to help clear that up for you.
Meanwhile, Atlanta's dealing with its own little "scientific consensus" issues.
English: Mug shot of Osho (Rajneesh) in 1985 taken by the Oregon Department of Corrections, Multnomah County, Oregon
Yeah, about that...it turns out that they aren't really either:
What's the greenest roof? A white one. White-painted roofs are three times more efficient than "green roofs"—rooftops that are planted over with grass or other greenery—at countering global warming, a new analysis found.
So all of those folks with the sedum and moss up on the roof - yes, I'm looking at you, Multnomah County - feeling all smug about doing your part to "fight global worming"? Step over here so I can slap the smug off your face; you're only marginally better than a standard black roof in the summer. In fact, for maximal energy savings at least cost, your best bet is likely a flexible white layer that can be rolled out across your standard dark roof in the summer: that gives you reduced energy consumption in winter as black absorbs solar radiation, and reduced energy costs in summer as white reflects solar radiation.
Ta da! Less energy used to heat your crib during the winter (while reducing your horrible "carbon footprint" - and less energy used to cool the space in summer. You don't have to be a religious Greenie to do some good for your wallet.
Oregon's gov. Retread really, really means it, this time: either the state legislature acts in the upcoming February session, or the CRC is dead.
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber says the 2014 Oregon Legislature must either fund a state-led Columbia River Crossing project or spend its transportation money on something else.
And he wants a final decision by March 9.
He just can't get it through his pointy little head that apart from his cronies, nobody wants to ram a light rail line from Porkland into Washington state. You've probably lost track of the number of times he's drawn a line in the sand and said, "Now, or else". There's no reason to believe he's any more serious this time than he's been previously.
"Replacing the bridge and improving the adjacent Oregon interchanges are critical infrastructure investments for the safety of our citizens and the future vitality of our state. Businesses from all over our state rely on this bridge to get their goods to and from market. Yet businesses that haul goods critical to our state’s economic well-being must rely on a bridge that is both seismically at risk and an obsolete design that leads to increased accidents and gridlock in the corridor. For Oregon, there is no viable alternative plan that is less complicated or less expensive," the letter said.
There are just a few problems with his strongly-worded missive: first, studies by ODOT and independent agencies have concluded that there are at least a dozen bridges that are in far worse shape than the existing I-5 bridges, including the Marquam bridge over the Willamette River near downtown Porkland. Yet Retread doesn't seem too worried about that one (probably because he can't stick a train on it).
Moreover, the number of accidents on the existing I-5 bridges has actually decreased in recent years - and the "gridlock" is at the Rose Quarter area, where I-5 is constricted to two lanes in each direction. In other words, Retread either doesn't know what he's talking about, or he's deliberately lying.
Douglas's review contributed to the success of Silent Spring, an important turning point for the environmental movement.
Increasingly, folks have just got burned out on the whole man-made global warming/climate change thing. So, it's time to change things up a bit: introducing for your alarmist pleasure - the Earth's magnetic field may be about to flip. Thus far, they haven't found a way to blame it on you, but rest assured, they're looking hard.
There were doubtless a lot of alarmists further back in the mists of time, but they really took off in the 1960s (and every decade since):
Rachel Carson brought us the wildly popular - but wildly wrong -Silent Spring, which was quickly followed by Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, with its grim forcasts of overpopulation and mass starvation. The 1970s brought us global cooling, and grim predictions of mass starvations CAUSED by global cooling.
As if that wasn't enough to worry about, there was acid rain, a potential nuclear winter, and esteemed scientist Meryl Streep tearfully testifying before Congress about the dangers of Alar. And since AlGore lost his election effort, we've been treated to "Mann-Made Global Warming", "hockey sticks" and other tricks, and finally, "climate change".
But now that's losing its cachet,so it's time to scare you to death about the dangers of the magnetic poles pulling the old switcheroo. There's gotta be a pile of grant money in there somewhere!
In the past sixty years, there have been no less than eight "crises". And most of them are All Your Fault. Now, the fact that none of them ever came to pass is just an inconvenience.
Yet one might think that somewhere along the line it might begin to dawn on people that "Hey, there's been a crisis of one sort or another during every decade of my life; maybe we can just call BS for a couple of decades, and maybe the scientists can quit lurching from one crisis to another as they chase grant money." Maybe they can try getting a real job for a few years, and see how that works out for them.
By Rembrandt. 
