Wednesday is Indigo Blue

Extras

Chapter 3: The Brain Adjusts itself to any Body Plan

Faith the dog:

Dogs can learn to control the movement of skateboards:

[video of skateboarding bulldog here]

....and they can drive large body plans which include steering wheels and tires:

Chapter 4: The Brain Wraps Itself around New Inputs: Sensory Substitution and Addition

See this video of plasticity from WIRED Science: "Mixed Feelings"

Chapter 5:

Interview with Miguel Nicolelis on the Daily Show

The Walk Again Project, an international collaboration of researchers to allow the paralyzed to control robotic suits with their thoughts.

Video: Monkey and robotic arm

Silicon Immortality: Downloading Consciousness into Computers

Well before we understand how brains work, we may find ourselves able to digitally copy the brain's structure and able to download the conscious mind into a computer. What are the possibilities and challenges?
The Mystery of Expertise

To the extent that consciousness is useful, it is useful in small quantities, and for very particular kinds of tasks. It's easy to understand why you would not want to be consciously aware of the intricacies of your muscle movement, but this can be less intuitive when applied to your perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs, which are also final products of…
Emily Blunt reads "The Cast" from Sum

Hear actress Emily Blunt read the story "The Cast" from Sum.
Why I am a Possibilian

Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story is true or not true. I call myself a possibilian. Find out why.