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Functional MRI is one of the coolest scientific devices ever developed. With it the scientists are able to monitor which parts of the brain are activated, when individuals are involved in different activities. From dancing to taking decisions the functional MRI has revolutionized our understanding of many fundamental human activities. As Helen Fisher put it, the most passionate human activity, the romantic love is one of the latest to be investigated in functional MRI. According to their results, love activates the reward/punishment mechanisms, along with risk taking and strategic game playing parts of the brain. Unlike people who can leave in a split second, the activity in those areas continue even 15 months after separation. Also, people who claim to be in love after 25 years still have those regions active! Lastly, the same reward region is activated in a cocaine high! Here is a 15 minute video of Helen Fisher's talk, which is definitely worth watching! Helen Fisher: The Brain ...

* My childhood dream was becoming a radio-astronomer. My high school dream was becoming a theoretical physicist, after reading Stephan Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I ended up a electrical engineer, but I try to nurture my childhood dreams by following the developments on both fields. It's been said that these days are the best days to be a physicist since the days of Einstein. The reason for this excitement is the Large Hadron Collider which will be operational this month in CERN, Switzerland. The largest particle collider ever built, the largest scientific instrument as a matter of fact, accelerates fundamental particles to near speed of light speeds and collide them, and observe the wreck. The biggest problem in physics today is a very fundamental one. Why do particles have mass? In the beginning there was only light, or energy, which are carried by massless photons. Somehow all this massless energy ended up having mass, and that is how I am writing this entry, and you...

Anytime you feel down, or lack self-esteem listen to Love Unlimited by The Fun Lovin' Criminals. The best feel-cool-song I've ever listened.

I've been reading about evolutionary psychology lately. The premise of evolutionary psychology, which goes hand-in-hand with the current advances in neuro-biology, is that our brain is composed of cognitive organs which evolved just like other parts of our body, and therefore human behaviors can be explained from an evolutionary perspective. One of the biases we inherited from our caveman ancestors is the tendency to associate "bad" things in the "society" we live with an external agent. We always look for a villain outside. Another shortcoming of our brains is that we don't come in terms with mathematical phenomena that do not occur in our everyday lives. Everyone knows the story of the king who was fooled by his clever servant who wanted two times the grain of gold on each tile of a chess board. That is because we never come across exponential grow in our lives, and hence did not evolve a sub-organ for it. As a matter of fact there are some tribes who don...

... as the new season brings new hopes again. We are Besiktas fans, Besiktas fans, No one can understand this love, Even if the hell breaks loose, We are the guardians of black and white, Black and white is trusted to us!

219 years ago the people of Paris said enough. Long live the revolution!

In my book the perfect desert is Middle Eastern specialty Künefe: it is made out of very thin vermicelli -little worms in Italian- like pastry called kadayif, a specially flavored soft cheese and a light citrus flavored syrup. This soft non-salty cheese is hard to get in most parts of Turkey, and to eat a salty desert may turn this culinary ecstasy into a nightmare. This is what used to happen to me in Turkey when I ordered künefe in restaurants I didn't know. Surprisingly, the quality of künefe I ate in Berlin has been exceptionally good, which made me wonder. I mean how can the Berlin restaurant owners find this special cheese, and the most of them in Turkey can't? The answer is they can't. But they use fresh mozzarella instead! Being a fresh cheese itself mozzarella fills all the requirements -except mahlab flavor- of a good künefe cheese. Italian cheese substituting South Anatolian cheese! Well that is just another walk of life that binds people from different corners ...

with my old bike not rusting in Ankara, but here with me I follow this years tour with additional excitement!

I am reading this very interesting book called Breaking the Spell by the American philosopher Dan Dennet . The book is an attempt to summarize the previous scientific work that try to explain all forms of religion as a natural phenomenon, based on our genetic and cultural evolution, and make further very intriguing philosophical and scientific speculations. Along the evolution of religion, the concept of divination plays an important role. Divination is any form of delegating important decisions in human life to the God, Gods, or Ancestors. Divination takes very different forms, from looking at the broken stern bones of a human sacrifice, to looking at feces' of animals or the kings to see the future, or help us taking important decisions! As a matter of fact all forms of astrology and fortune telling are nothing but cultural traditions that exploit the basic human trait of looking for an intelligent agent behind everything in the world, and the human insecurities when it comes ...

Dostum Mehmet Yagli'nin bana ilettigi Taha Akyol yazisini , bugünlerde ülkemizin gectigi degisim ile ilgili kafa yoran herkesin okumasinin yararli olacagini düsünüyorum. Bu önemli degisim sirasinda da kendini bu güzel Ülke'nin bir evladi olarak gören herkesin bu konulara kafa yormasi ve öneriler getirmesi gerektigine inaniyorum. Susmak, saklanmak, küstüm ben oynamiyorumculuk oynama zamani degil.

Among the anti-Americanism in todays world, fueled by the false foreign policy decisions and executions, 4th of July still gives me a moment to celebrate the revolutionary and humanist aspects of the American Revolution: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." as well as reflect on how slavery and and its aftermath, segregation, lasted only until the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, how it is still accepted to use torture in interrogations, and how it is still possible to detain equally created men without any charge for years under constant psychological stress, in a land whose Deceleration of Independence contained the sentence above.

"One time, a lonely cage went looking for a bird." Franz Kafka was born 125 years ago this day. Read Kafka, ask questions.

When we first moved to our house in Ankara the whole neighborhood was supplied by a single lousy transformer. Every time it rained, it would short circuit, and left us without electricity for hours. When it was pitch dark, the first thing my sister would do was to shout "Mother!" I thought she had a fear of dark, but maybe she was following her Paleolithic instincts. French Scientists made a very interesting discovery in the famous caves in France which are filled with paintings from the Paleolithic era. It turns out that the paintings might have been used as road signs in the dark caves! Imagine you are in pitch black cave, and you have a light source that can only light up few meters around you. How would you go from point A to B. Answer? Take a singer with you! The idea is to have the singer sing for you, and mark those points on the way, where the singers voice sounds like an animal due to echoes and the shape of the current section of the cave, by painting those animals...

Ergenekon firtinasi icinde unutuldu gitti. Yasamim boyunca tanik oldugum en vahsi eylemdi. Lütfen bazi sorulari kendinize sorun. Hangisi daha önemlidir? Sizin gibi yasayan, nefes alan, aciyan, sevinen, aglayan, kizan, kufreden, asik olan, yaratan, dusunen bir insanin hayati mi, yoksa inanclariniz mi?

Su an Ergenekon gözaltilariyla baslayan sureic ile ilgili yorum yapmak icin cok erken. Ancak moralim cok bozuk. Cunku cozumsuzluk görüyorum olaylarin sonunu. Sadece bu cozumsuzlugun nedenleri ile ilgili yorum yapabilirim. Cozumsuzlugun en onemli nedeni yarginin siyasilesmesi ve sonucunda gelen güvensizliktir. Yargi da diger tüm organlar gibi ikiye bolünürse durum son derece tehlikeli hale gelecektir. Yargi'nin yavas calismasindan kaynakli Yargi'nin isleyebilirligine dair bir güvensizlik her zaman olmus olsa bile, iki tarafin da Yargi'nin her hareketin ardinda baska bir neden aramasina kadar büyüyen güvensizlik ile ilgili daha önceki girdimd e düsüncelerimi belirtmistim. Bu noktaya gelirken iki tarafin da hatalari oldugunu düsünüyorum. * Abdullah Gül'ün Cumhurbaskanligi: Abdullah Gül gibi tarafsiz olmasi, ya da tarafsiz olarak kabul edilmesi imkansiz olan birini Cumhurbaskani yapmak AKP'nin büyük bir yanlisiydi. Demokrasi'nin karsilikli anlayis sanati oldugunu ...