Stock up on tin foil

This is not an attempt to corner the tin foil market or another pump and dump scheme. It is a well meaning post about science.

The K-landers love science to the extent of taking a UC class on microbiology for the fun of talking about protein folding. Or for more practical applications like turning a lightwire sequencer into a poor man's taser.

We even think that the Adam and Eve rib story of the bible is just a superb way of explaining cloning to a stupid monkey, a prehistoric Genetic Engineering for Dummies.

For us to call for stocking up on tin foil to make tin foil hats, something serious must have happened.

That brain mapping research drive is this serious thing.

Of course, we love the idea of curing some of the worst illnesses around.

But there will be a time when that government job will be tied to successfully passing some sort of brain scan. Look at the news about "reading dreams" on the BBC, and other current collations of brain images, and you can see where we are heading.

It will start out slowly and in the service of society -- like tests on prisoners, and then it will become a little more pervasive.

For early adopters look at the US and the UK. In the UK, they'll use it to weed out the undeserving poor, those who live a glamorous life on welfare to the detriment of the wealthy.

The US will be more practical, for example, they'll try to answer the question if that man on death row only pretends to have an IQ of 60, or if they can safely fry him. Testing of welfare applicants won't happen, either because welfare will not exist anymore, or because the tests are deemed too expensive for this purpose.

We don't know what other countries will do with this cool capability, but we figure that the French will focus on answering the problem of romantic love vs. the brain. The Germans, we know they have brains, but we have not been here long enough to figure out exactly what value they place on them. Maybe they'll team up with the French, or maybe they will try to figure out what they were thinking when they mandated all foreigners had to learn German. Or when they ordered a little train station for the price of Cyprus bailout.

Don't get your hopes up that all candidates for high political office will undergo the test. 

One  more thing: Expect a thriving cottage industry of visualization trainers to help you ace the test.