"Intelligence genes discovered by scientists"

The Telegraph: They liken the gene network to a football team. When all the players are in the right positions, the brain appears to function optimally, leading to clarity of thought and what we think of as quickness or cleverness.

However when the genes are mutated or in the wrong order, it can lead to dullness of thinking, or even serious cognitive impairments.

Scientists believe that there must be a ‘master switch’ regulating the networks and if they could find it, they could ‘switch on’ intelligence for everyone.

“We know that genetics plays a major role in intelligence but until now haven’t known which genes are relevant,” said Dr Michael Johnson, lead author of the study from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College.

“This research highlights some of genes involved in human intelligence, and how they interact with each other.

“What’s exciting about this is that the genes we have found are likely to share a common regulation, which means that potentially we can manipulate a whole set of genes whose activity is linked to human intelligence.

“Our research suggests that it might be possible to work with these genes to modify intelligence, but that is only a theoretical possibility at the moment – we have just taken a first step along that road.”

Study: Intelligent people's brains wired differently to those with fewer intellectual abilities

"Scientists claim to have found a correlation between how well wired-up some individuals were to their cognitive abilities and general success in life."

“We’ve tried to see how we can relate what we see in the brain to the behavioural skills we can measure in different people. In doing this, we hope to able to understand what goes on ‘under the bonnet’ of the brain,” said Professor Stephen Smith of Oxford University, who led the study published in Nature Neuroscience.

“You can think of it as a population-average map of 200 regions across the brain that are functionally distinct from one another. Then we looked at how much all of those regions communicated with each other, in every participant,” Professor Smith said.

“It may be that with hundreds of different brain circuits, the tests that are used to measure cognitive ability actually make use of different sets of overlapping circuits,” Professor Smith said.

“We hope that by looking at brain-imaging data we’ll be able to relate connections in the brain to the specific measures, and work out what these kinds of test actually require the brain to do,” he said.

It may also be possible to use the research to work out how to train people to improve their brain connectivity and therefore push than up the scale so that they achieve more than they otherwise would, he added.

“It’s a question of whether it’s possible to move people up the axis of connectivity. We know from other research that it is possible to improve cognitive performance with training, but what we don’t know yet is whether this is true of connectivity,” he explained.

These guys are distinguished scientists... you can tell.

"Once you hear them, it has an effect on you"

"Numbers stations and use of shortwave have declined after the Cold War, but there are still transmissions heard every day – the shortwave decline has not been as pronounced as one would expect. Part of the reason for this is that it is a secure means of one-way communication. Since the airwaves are being released out into the ether – the intended recipient is completely untrackable. Presumably, spies would carry a one-time pad, which would have the encryption code to be used (ideally) for just one broadcast (hence one-time). This makes decryption from pedestrians and enemies nearly impossible unless that one-time pad is misused or corrupted."

Almost all of the information we have on these numbers stations is due to hobbyists listening, sourcing, and sometimes attempting to decode the stations with their own radios. The communities of hobbyists are vast – and their logging can be prolific. There is the Spooks Spy Numbers Station Mailing List, the Conet Project (which compiles recordings of shortwave), the Spy Numbers Station Database, and many others. They keep track of the frequency, the time, the numbers, and sometimes record audio each time spooks hear a Numbers broadcast. These shortwave enthusiasts sometimes spend hours trying to locate the source of these broadcasts – sometimes, to no avail. (read the whole thing)

Before we had a black and white television, we had, I should say my father had a short wave radio. No one was allowed to touch it. It was truly fascinating to a kid like me to hear a station say where they were broadcasting from and then find it on a map in a geography book. The cleanest most reliable broadcast was from a station in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Do you have any short wave radio stories?

Courageous Palestinian Christian confronts 60 Minutes

Christy (Anastas, apparently), a Palestinian Christian relates her experience as citizen under Palestinian Authority.

Seen on PJ media lifestyle cross-posted on Roger Simon's site there. Simon's take is the Walter Durante Prize for mendacious journalism is well-considered for awarding Bob Simon for his 60 Minutes report "Christians of the Holy Land" in which Israel is blamed for violence and for Christians leaving in such large numbers. The video received in email from CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting describes a different situation entirely. The woman was granted asylum in Britain and lives under threat.

The video was pulled from YouTube but put up again by the efforts Jerusalem Institute for Justice, but there is no certainty it will stay up.

I find the comments on YouTube to this video well informed. "I hold your finger." 

This is irrelevant but I fell in love on the spot. Her eyes are extraordinary. She has me. I'm hers.