Tag: Affect Engineering

Theory of Emotion

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The BRAIN Initiative: Because We Don’t Already Have Enough Acronyms

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It’s always a good idea to know where, how, and for what purpose one’s tax dollars are being spent. The BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) is no exception. At its core, it is an attempt to understand how the brain works and is somewhat analogous to the Human Genome Project. The expectation is that this endeavor will lead to ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders, brain injuries, and a host of other maladies.

In the first year of funding since the project was announced last April, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are to invest approximately $50 million, $40 million, and $20 million, respectively, to facilitate these aims. From the private sector, the Allen Institute for Brain Science ($60 million annually), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute ($30 million annually), the Kavli Foundation ($4 million annually for ten years), and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies ($28 million) have also joined this effort.

BRAIN Initiative

It would seem that even frugality has its price these days, and nobody wants to come off looking cheap. Hopefully they get it right and don’t contradict one another; otherwise it might set neuroscience back quite a ways, at least in that most unforgiving of eyes, the public.

In some respects, I almost feel like a kid with a new toy to show off, though on a much smaller scale. There is, of course, quite a bit of work left to do… I would not want that toy to suddenly get a case of stage fright and malfunction.

Aside from patiently waiting for my query letters to be lifted from their slush piles – my gemstones cast in the mud – there is always the fun task of editing, always.  Some other updates to the site include an RSS feed to some notable psychology articles (i.e. potential deconstruction fodder), social media links, and a follow button.

For those interested, a more comprehensive description of the BRAIN Initiative can be found at the following pages:

National Institutes of Health

DARPA

National Science Foundation

White House Fact Sheet

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Epic Poetry + Comic Strip Art = Epic Comic Strip

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New content is on the way!  Oscar the Bard, Necromors, and Wild the Muse is a side project I fiddle with from time to time, like when I should be editing my manuscript (i.e. flogging my book) or enticing literary agents into representing me (i.e. flogging my book). Ok, that’s a bit of a stretch… it’s actually informed by Affect Engineering, and it helps sate my witty side when I’m editing.  It’s not always easy to wax poetic when one is also explaining cosine functions and exponential decay. A more in depth description of my dabbles in comic strip land is also in the menu under the new Just for Fun menu bar.  I make no claim to be the fastest or best illustrator out there, so the updating of it may be sporadic, depending on my time to draw and revise or write poetry, you know, when I should be doing other stuff.

Oscar the Bard, Necromors, and Wild the Muse

Oscar Necromors Wild edited Names jpeg

Accordingly, this post is under the new Artsy-Things category.  I’m looking to add a Deconstruction category and/or Hypotheticals category to keep the content mix lively in the near future.  They’ll likely be posts where I show how Affect Engineering would deconstruct a real life and plausible situation. Real life and plausible… did somebody say tabloids?

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The Zugzwang and the Zwischenzug

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Chess analogies are always fun to make to life, and equally exciting to dissect as they typically reveal something about the person who made them.

These two chess terms were chosen because, taken together, they account for nearly all of one’s success or failure in chess, with outright blunders making up the other portion. That, and all of those Z’s look pretty impressive in the headline.

First, a zugzwang (German term meaning compulsion to move) is a situation on the chess board where a player would prefer to make no move at all. Moreover, upon moving the player is forced to yield a decisive concession that leads to either defeat or a draw if one actually had the upper hand in material and winning opportunities. This can frequently occur in the endgame when both kings may be fighting to take the opposition. It goes without saying that one would want to avoid being put in a zugzwang as it is strongly associated with failure.

Secondly, a zwischenzug (German term meaning in-between move) is an intermediate move done before an anticipated response (i.e. before recapturing a piece) and can swing the outcome of a situation in one’s favor.  One would want to find a zwischenzug if it will lead to winning opportunities, compel one’s opponent to move into a zugzwang, or force a draw if one’s winning opportunities are slim to nothing. It is strongly associated with success.

These terms probably won’t make their way from the chess world into mainstream lexicon anytime soon. I might be surprised though. While people are not necessarily chess pieces that can be moved around to suit one’s whim, there are some who would beg to differ.