Walter Freeman, the inventor of the transorbital lobotomy, traveled around in the ‘50s and ‘60s in a car he called the “lobotomobile”, carrying the tools of his trade, icepick and mallet. This is the story of the upcoming film A Hole In One, starring Meat Loaf.

It is interesting to consider the effects of prefrontal lobotomies on religious behavior. Here is an excerpt from an old psychosurgery manual at www.lobotomy.info.

We have not infrequently operated upon patients who have experienced religious exaltation and others too numerous to mention who have considered themselves endowed with mystic powers or under the influence, beneficent or malign, of unexplained spiritual forces. These tend to disappear after operation, and their place is taken by rather matter-of-fact mode of religious observance to which they have been accustomed but without deep conviction or enthusiasm…In most instances—beyond attending church and singing with the congregation or in the choir—the externals appear to be sufficient. These patients are direct, practical and uninspired. Their beliefs are somewhat childlike, are seldom spoken of and are passed over, when direct inquiries are made, as of no particular importance. It is readily perceived that the spiritual life is gravely affected by prefrontal lobotomy.

And also:

Eliminating the affective components supplied by the thalamus does away with preoccupation with the self and the future, and consequently abolishes the demoralization that is synonymous with psychosis or neurosis..[The individual] goes through the forms of social and religious observance, but without the deep emotional conviction that characterized him before his illness.

A coherent theory of biotheology will explain such effects of lobotomies on religious belief and behavior.

In Newsweek’s 2001-05-01 cover article, “Faith Is More Than A Feeling”, Kenneth L. Woodward wrote:

The problem with neurotheology is that it confuses spiritual experiences—which few believers actually have—with religion.

Well, that’s not a “problem with neurotheology”, but it does point out how neurotheology has failed to properly categorize its subjects of inquiry, and chosen a misleading term to apply to itself. There are problems with both the “neuro” part and the “theology” part.

“Neuro” liimts the focus too narrowly to the brain. We don’t know much about how our entire organism implements the human predilection to religion, but it is possible, even probably, that more is involved than just the brain. That would argue for the prefix “bio”, which has already been used in the alternative term “biotheology”.

But the “theology” part is problematic as well. The dictionary definition that is relevant is:

• the study of the nature of God and religious truth; rational inquiry into religious questions

which seems broad enough, but in fact most people interpret the term “theology” more narrowly, with an emphasis on “God” or established religions, which doesn’t encompass so-called religious or transcendant experience, which is indeed what many “neurotheologians” are focusing on.

We need a clear taxonomy and clear terms to apply to its categories:

• biotranscendance: study how biological mechanisms interact with transcedant religious experience

• bionumenology: focus on how biology promotes human experiences of and beliefs in the divine and supernatural

• biomythology: study how human wiring gives rise to human societies sharing and passing down myths of every kind, including but not limited to beliefs in bearded white men in robes controlling everything

• biological study of ritual: show how biological systems impose or are satisfied by ritual

• biological bases of human emotional growth: learn the correlation between changes in the brain and other biological components and upward personal evolution

Plaxo is the very cool on-line address book app that keeps you up to date with all your friends addresses, and them up to date with yours.

But recently I was flabbergasted to find that my Plaxo “add me” page, containing all my information, was being indexed by search engines. Not only mine, but other people’s as well. Just try the query site:http://www.plaxo com bob.

I was equally astonished at the response I got when I reported this obvious violation of privacy to Plaxo’s “privacy officer”. S/he informed me that it was my problem: after all, I had invited Google to index the Plaxo page by including a pointer to it on my own home page (which I did).

I quoted to them a line from Plaxo’s own privacy policy, that “your Information is your own and you decide who will have access to it.”

The unbelievable response was:

Correct. And my point is that if someone has posted the link to their Add_me page publicly, then they have to understand that public bots will likely find and attempt to index this information. This would be similar to the user creating their own page with their information and a link to the page. By allowing robots to follow the link, it makes it one step easier to contact the individual.

Guess what, Plaxo, there’s a huge difference here. I can take down my page at any time, or I can tell Google not to index it or cache it. But once my address info page on your site is indexed, it always will be. I don’t “have to understand” anything other than that you don’t know what a robots.txt file is.

But can’t I just take down my Plaxo “add me” page, solving the problem (except for the Google cache)? Oops, not so quick.

Changing or taking down the add_me page, once created is a enhancement request that we’ve targeted for a future version of the Plaxo server. Unfortunately, the only method of taking down this page that currently exists is to recreate your Plaxo account.

Worse yet, I found in the Google index a link to a page which allowed me to change someone else’s address book entry. Plaxo’s lame response to me pointing this out was to say

But as there is no benefit to indexing these pages, we will correct this problem.

When I re-iterated, in my fourth e-mail exchange, that “I continue to believe that you should not let searchbots index add-me pages”, the “privacy officer” responded:”

Point taken, and I’ll bring it up for discussion with Engineering, but I do not foresee changing the existing functionality.

Huh? You need to talk to Engineering about adding one line to your robots.txt file? Let me help you out here. All you need is:

Disallow: /add_me

Plaxo is a useful concept, but we can’t possibly use it until they “get” privacy issues.

After five months, Google Print has still not gotten around to scanning in my book. They told me:

The amount of time it takes to get your book online will vary, depending on a number of factors. These can include the current volume of books to be scanned, as well as the complexity of your book. Because of these factors, we are unable to provide a specific time frame during which your books will go live, but we do make every effort to get your content live on our site as quickly as possible.

That’s lame. What use is their program, seemingly innovative in the way they share ad revenues with authors, if they never scan in your book and can’t even tell you when they will? Amazon.com scanned my book within one month.

Get it together, Google.

“Believe in yourself.” “You can do anything you put your mind to.” “Your possibilities are unlimited.”

Sounds like a load of pop-psychology crap.

Stanford psychology professor Albert Bandura has given this concept a scientific basis (as well as a new name, self-efficacy). According to the review of his book Self Efficacy: The Exercise of Control:

This book is based on Bandura’s theory that those with high self-efficacy expectancies – the belief that one can achieve what one sets out to do – are healthier, more effective, and generally more successful….[there are] provocative applications of this work to issues in education, health, psychopathology, athletics, business, and international affairs.

An Amazon.com reader points out the life-cycle aspects of the theory:

Self-regulation and perceived self-efficacy help people to adjust to realities of each life’s stage, from early childhood till aging and preparation to death.

In general I’m leery of starting lots of new books, no matter how interesting they sound, especially since I already know so much. But this one sounds like it could be well worth the time.

Martha Beck has written a book Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, about her father, the celebrated Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley, abusing her as a child.

It’s like a bad TV show: she accuses her father of raping her ritualistically while making incantations about Abraham and Isaac.

In general, I believe we have to treat recalled-memory situations with the utmost care. But without passing judgment, in this case one must admit a ring-of-truth aspect.

Web site

Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution is Ray Jackendoff’s new book which tries to build a bridge between traditional linguistics, neuroscience, and evolution.

But after slogging through more than 400 pages, I was dismayed to find in his Concluding Remarks that all he himself claims have accomplished in the book was to “sharpen some questions.” I read the book to get answers to the questions—about, for example, how syntactic categories are instantiated in the nervous system—not to get them “sharpened.”

One particular annoying thing about the book is Jackendoff’s use of the prefix “f-”, as in f-knowledge or f-mind, to refer to some magic stratum between body and the regular non-f-mind. He integrates the body and mind, in other words, by inventing an imaginary layer where they are integrated.

There are gems of insight in this book. The overall insistence that language is not purely syntax-driven is extremely welcome; Jackendoff calls this the “parallel architecture”, where the parallel components in question are phonology, syntax, and semantics. This makes a great deal of sense. There are also some tantalizing hints of coming closer to how evolution could have built up our language facility—but unfortunately, they remain mere hints.

Other problems with this book include that it spends too much time on the academic politics of linguistics. Sorry, if you have real insights you don’t need to spend all your time talking about fights you and other people had. He fails the self-citation criterion, referring to his own works (including future ones) hundreds of times. His prose desperately needed an editor. And he can’t escape the linguists’ disease of trotting out example after example, without ever really figuring out what they mean.

The question of how evolution could have resulted in brain structures that support our linguistic ability is an absolutely critical one. It’s just too bad that this book doesn’t answer it.

I’m extremely pleased to announce the on-line availability of my important proposal for a major reform of Japanese orthography: A New Kana (PDF, 646K).

Based on a sophisticated statistical analysis of the pronunciation profile of Sino-Japanese compounds, this innovative proposal promises to dramatically simplify the Japanese writing system while preserving its spirit and uniqueness.

Yakult defines their corporate mission uniquely: they want to solve all your intestinal needs. They really, really care about your intestines.

Back in 1935 their founder Dr. Minoru Shirota invented the lactobacillus in the distinctive fermented milk drink inside those ubiquitous little white plastic bottles you see everywhere in Japan. The whitish liquid scoots past your stomach’s defenses to head straight for the intestines where it can bestow its life-enhancing powers, which include stimulating the intestines, promoting bowel movements, and preventing the growth of unhealthy bacteria down there and the nasty intestinal putrefaction which can result.

The company raises Shirota’s ideas to the level of a pseudo-religion (“Shirota-ism”), and identifies as one of its defining values the notion that a healthy intestinal tract leads to a long life.

Where else can a focus on the gut take you as a business? Drugs, for one thing. Japan has one of the highest rates of stomach and intestinal cancer in the world, believed to stem from all the salted pickles and fish the people eat. Although Yakult’s eponymous drink itself has been shown to be effective in preventing cancer, Yakult also has an active pharmaceutical business. It already has the stomach cancer fighter “Campto” on the market, and just got approval for Oxaliplatin, part of a drug cocktail to treat colorectal cancer.

A bit further afield, under the rubric of “what’s good for your intestine might be good for your skin as well”, Yakult is bringing its expertise in biochemistry to the cosmetics business. The inspiration for this business, it is said, arose from the remarkably lustrous skin tone of the women whose job it was to wash Yakult bottles for re-use (way back when, before they went to the current plastic bottles).

Yakult is also researching mozuku, a particularly repulsive slimy type of seaweed. Turns out, the chemical that makes it slimy also prevents stomach ulcers.

The company still has its armies of “Yakult lady” salespeople, bringing intestinal health directly to your doorstep (although they’re now equipped with PDAs).

And like any other self-respecting Japanese company, Yakult has its own baseball team, the Yakult Swallows, although I wasn’t able to figure out the intestinal connection here.

In this day and age of ever greater specialization and segmentation, defining your business in terms of body parts may become a major trend. What will be next?

In addition to my many other hats, I’m an inventor. For a bit of year-end diversion, here are three inventions from this year:

1. Magnetic paper money. Place a weak magnetic strip along the narrow edge of a note of currency. This not only allows the money to stick together—instant money clip!—but also lets you stick it on your refrigerator door. In fact, my two US$1 bill prototypes are stuck on my refrigerator door right now.

Amazingly, this seems to not be the subject of any current US patent.

2. Holographic turn signals . Project cars’ turn signals holographically 10 ft. up above the car, so that following cars can see it even if there is another car in-between.

3. Self-announcing wet paint . Using nanoparticle technology, have wet paint automatically display the message “wet paint” over and over. When it dries, the message automatically disappears.

2005 was also the year in which my invention for “microlinking” images on a web page with text was awarded a US patent (see image), within the context of presenting game commentary and educational materials for strategy games such as chess or Go.