(This probably doesn’t work anymore.)
Dropbox will create a link to an image that looks like https://www.dropbox.com/s/8dlmxjlf3jkd5zd/DSC09789.jpg?dl=0. When I follow it, I get a page with the image in it, but not just the image itself. The link can’t be used to place an image in an HTML page.
To make such a link, change https://www.dropbox.com to https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/pd92mem44ojeuwl/DSC01141-diptych.jpg?dl=0
The Sensel Morph: INTERACTION, EVOLVED. by Sensel —Kickstarter
Done
Done
The first pressure-sensitive, multi-touch input device that enables users to interact with the digital world like never before.
Created by
1,612 backers pledged $442,648 to help bring this project to life.
Rewards Campaign Updates 31 Comments 176 Community
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September 22
Hi all!
We’ve been super busy preparing for our large manufacturing round and testing the Morph in every way possible.
As part of the extension of the delivery schedule we… Read more
20 likes
]35
[
September 2
…and they are absolutely beautiful!
We’ve been hard at work here at Sensel, making sure that the devices you’ll be receiving will be in tip-top shape! During this first factory… Read more
6 Comments 28 likes
]36
Aug 2016
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August 26
Dear Backers,
One year ago we launched the Sensel Morph project, unsure of whether or not people would feel as passionate about our goals of creating a next generation input… Read more
3 Comments 15 likes
]37
Jul 2016
Jun 2016
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June 17
Great news, all:
The final prototyped housings are in! We’ll be using these housings to set up the production line at our factory and to start testing for regulatory compliance.
… Read more
5 Comments 25 likes
]38
[
June 10
After many design changes (to find the perfect look and functionality) we’ve gotten our final design for the Custom Morph Case down and now have final versions in the office!… Read more
10 Comments 18 likes
]39
May 2016
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May 17
Dear backers,
We have some great news for you and some not so great news. We’ve had our hands full lately, hard at work trying to bring the Morph into… Read more
13 Comments 19 likes
]40
Apr 2016
Mar 2016
[
March 8
An undeniable fact of creating thousands of hardware devices is that, inevitably, there will be minor variations in quality from one device to the next. To make sure that each… Read more
4 Comments 11 likes
]41
[
March 7
We are pleased and honored to announce that we were on stage twice at the IxDA Interaction Awards last week! We took home two awards, one for “Best Concept”and… Read more
7 Comments 15 likes
]42
Feb 2016
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February 15
2 Comments 4 likes
** For backers only **
]43
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February 10
9 Comments 6 likes
** For backers only **
]44
Jan 2016
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January 15
Hi Backers, great news! Your BackerKit Surveys are on their way!
We will send an email with a special link to BackerKit surveys . It is important to respond to… Read more
9 Comments 8 likes
]45
[
January 8
Our Design Intern Stephanie Lim has spent several months perfecting the case design for the Morph. After teaching herself how to sew, finding the perfect materials, and building countless prototypes,… Read more
12 Comments 29 likes
]46
Dec 2015
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December 23, 2015
Thank you to all of our backers who voted on the top 5 Overlay submissions for the Sensel Morph Overlay Contest. The winning design is the Universal Media Editing Overlay… Read more
1 Comment 6 likes
]47
[
December 15, 2015
The Thank You Cards and Laptop Decal have arrived!
For those of you awesome supporters who backed us for our “Special Thanks” reward tier, please fill out the survey we… Read more
3 likes
]48
[
December 11, 2015
Today’s the day! Our Kickstarter backers will be able to vote on the top 5 overlays from the Morph Overlay Contest. The winning design will be added as an Overlay… Read more
4 Comments 3 likes
]49
[
December 7, 2015
It was wonderful getting to meet some of our first-day backers in San Francisco this Saturday at Local Brewing Co. We received so much exciting, positive feedback from the backers,… Read more
3 likes
]50
Nov 2015
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November 10, 2015
Hi Backers,
We hope you’ve been well! We’ve been hard at work here at Sensel HQ. We have some great news, too!
5 Comments 7 likes
]51
Oct 2015
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October 9, 2015
THANK YOU to all of our amazing backers who have made our dream a reality. Your support and feedback is invaluable to the team here at Sensel and we can’t… Read more
2 Comments 23 likes
]52
October 9, 2015
Successfully raised $442,648 with 1,612 backers
[
October 7, 2015
Hi everyone,
In the survey we’ve given to our backers, we found that many of our backers would like AZERTY or DVORAK keyboards. We’re happy to announce that we will… Read more
10 Comments 8 likes
]53
[
October 5, 2015
Many of our backers have asked us for Photoshop support, so here it is: We’re excited to officially announce that we are compatible with Adobe Photoshop! In the video below,… Read more
9 Comments 11 likes
]54
[
October 2, 2015
Pianist Daniel Reyna, who has been playing for over 14 years, stopped by the Sensel HQ to see what all the buzz was about with the Morph. We took some… Read more
4 Comments 7 likes
]55
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October 2, 2015
If you’re in the Bay Area and would like to meet the Sensel team and see the Morph in action, we’d love to invite you to our Meet Up on… Read more
5 likes
]56
[
October 1, 2015
Hi all,
Thank you for the amazing support thus far. We just wanted to remind everyone who hasn’t gotten a chance to back us yet, but wants the Morph, that… Read more
1 Comment 10 likes
]57
Sep 2015
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September 29, 2015
Hey there,
We’ve been getting some questions about what the Morph can sense. The answer is simple: anything with mass (and sometimes even things like air if there’s enough pressure)…. Read more
3 Comments 19 likes
]58
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September 24, 2015
The Sensel Morph API is simple, intuitive, and extremely easy to get started. If you’re a developer that’s eager to see what developing with the Morph looks like, make sure… Read more
4 likes
]59
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September 23, 2015
To say thank you for all of the support we’ve been getting, we’re giving everyone a chance to win a free Sensel Morph! If you’ve already backed us and you… Read more
2 Comments 13 likes
]60
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September 18, 2015
Designing the Music Production Overlay with Dubspot
Designing the Music Production Overlay was an important part of developing the Morph. This overlay was the first interface not designed by the… Read more
2 Comments 6 likes
]61
September 14, 2015
Project of the Day
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September 8, 2015
We’ve started posting some “behind-the-scenes” updates on our social media, from Instagram photos of staff birthday celebrations to our latest videos on YouTube. To keep updated, follow us on each… Read more
7 likes
]62
Aug 2015
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August 28, 2015
You’ve helped us reach our stretch goal! We’re so thankful for all of the support we’ve been getting and hope that it continues. Now, all of our backers who ordered… Read more
2 Comments 18 likes
]63
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August 27, 2015
Visit Sensel.com/overlaycontest for more info!
1 Comment 7 likes
]64
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August 25, 2015
We’re so thrilled to have met our initial goal in the first 3 hours of our campaign! Thank you so much to all of our supportive backers! As a stretch… Read more
12 likes
]65
August 25, 2015
Project launched
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A Lava Jato e a importância da cooperação internacional para o combate ao crime foram temas de destaque em pronunciamentos de membros do Ministério Público Federal (MPF) durante a 21ª Conferência Anual da Associação Internacional de Procuradores (IAP), realizada em Dublin, na Irlanda. O órgão foi representado por seu secretário de cooperação internacional, procurador regional da República Vladimir Aras, e pelo coordenador jurídico do grupo de trabalho da Procuradoria-Geral da República que atua na Lava Jato, procurador regional Douglas Fischer.
Em pronunciamento, Fischer destacou a independência dos investigadores e a importância da cooperação direta na busca de combater a criminalidade com maior eficiência. “A soberania dos estados deve ser respeitada, mas alguns tipos de crimes não possuem fronteiras nacionais”, afirmou ao falar de lavagem de dinheiro, organizações criminosas, corrupção, tráfico de armas, de drogas e de pessoas, terrorismo, pedofilia e crimes cibernéticos. “Precisamos juntar nossas forças, não as dividir. Temos que ampliar nossos horizontes para, com segurança e legalidade, produzir evidências fortes e firmes”, concluiu.
Ao apresentar informações sobre a Lava Jato, Douglas Fischer apontou dois aspectos que revelam a importância da cooperação internacional no combate à corrupção. Primeiramente o fato de grande parte do dinheiro lavado ter sido enviado ao exterior, por meio de depósitos em offshores. O segundo ponto é o armazenamento de informações e documentos em servidores de internet de outros países. “Precisamos fortalecer relações de cooperação e de confiança, mostrando a seriedade das nossas atuações”, afirmou.
A Lava Jato também foi tema central no workshop ministrado por Vladimir Aras no evento. Na ocasião, o secretário de cooperação internacional apontou que os pilares para o sucesso da operação são coordenação, colaboração, cooperação, transparência e treinamento/ferramentas. Um dos reflexos do trabalho desenvolvido foi um recorde de recuperação de ativos em 2015.
Entre 2014 e 2016, foram firmados 70 acordos de cooperação internacional relacionados à Lava Jato. A cooperação entre Brasil e Suíça foi usada como exemplo de sucesso para recuperação de ativos e aprofundamento das investigações, a partir da colaboração e do compartilhamento de informações e procedimentos, bem como a transferência de investigações. Ainda do exemplo suíço, a cooperação permitiu o bloqueio de mais de R$ 800 milhões, sendo que R$ 250 milhões já foram repatriados.
Comitê Executivo — Durante o encontro, o procurador-geral da República, Rodrigo Janot, foi confirmado membro do Comitê Executivo da IAP, passo importante para reforçar e incrementar a cooperação internacional.
During their first year in the spotlight, the young federal prosecutors leading the “Operation Car Wash” corruption probe seemed to handle themselves with an eerie, almost cinematic grace. From the case’s obscure roots of money laundering at a gas station, to its eruption into an unprecedented scandal that helped bring down Dilma Rousseff’s presidency, the investigators let their casework speak mostly for itself. Their relative seclusion in the mid-sized city of Curitiba only added to their mystique - it was like watching a dozen thirty-somethings from Cincinnati calmly take down half the establishment of Washington and New York, one airtight indictment at a time. When Folha de S.Paulo plastered a group photo of the prosecutors across its front page with the headline “The Untouchables” in April 2015, it was the first time most Brazilians had seen the men (yes, they were all men) - and the description seemed to fit.
But we tend to forget that not even Eliot Ness was perfect - his career ended in alcoholism, a failed mayoral run and his expulsion from the legal profession altogether. Nothing so grave has happened to the Brazilian prosecutors; but in retrospect, it’s a miracle their charmed run lasted as long as it did. The intense pressures of investigating and jailing dozens of Brazil’s most powerful figures, plus their near-deification by local and international media (including this magazine), were bound to eventually result in hubris and mistakes. The first glimpses of their mortality started to appear earlier this year, as Rousseff’s impeachment gained pace, and erupted into full view in recent weeks with a disastrous public presentation of their case against former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the heavy-handed arrest of a former finance minister at a hospital just as his wife was being sedated for cancer surgery.
These controversies have resuscitated a series of basic, but difficult-to-answer, questions about the Car Wash probe and its consequences: How exactly will the case end? When? What percentage of Brazil’s political and business elite will end up behind bars? Will the case result in a substantial long-term improvement in Brazilian justice and institutions, as its supporters hope? Or will it fizzle out like the “Clean Hands” investigation in Italy of the 1990s, which resulted in more than 1,000 arrests but little decline in systemic corruption over time?
Spoiler alert: There are no definitive answers to these questions, here or anywhere else. The sheer number of institutions and individuals involved makes a precise forecast impossible. But there is, in fact, a lot we _do _know. And in my mind, any analysis of where Car Wash is headed must start by addressing the main criticism of the probe itself: that it has become politicized. That the prosecutors and the man overseeing their work, federal Judge Sérgio Moro, have gone well beyond normal judicial tactics of methodically following clues and prosecuting the guilty. That they have employed political thinking and tactics in their casework, and the methods they use to influence the media and the Brazilian public at large.
To which I would reply: Hell yes, Car Wash has become politicized. But out of necessity, rather than design. Indeed, I’d argue that the politicization of the case is exactly what has allowed it to progress this far without being shut down by its enemies. Perversely, it is also the thing that will start to bring the investigation to an end, probably within the next few months.
–
To understand why, it’s important to remember just how much Car Wash has accomplished since early 2014, when it started to become part of the world’s vocabulary. Many of us have become desensitized to the case’s scale since then, but terms like “massive” and “historic” don’t quite do it justice. The investigation began with money laundering at a network of gas stations and exploded when a serial criminal named Alberto Youssef cut a deal with the prosecutors in Curitiba (the capital of his home state) to tell all. Through skillful use of wiretaps, plea bargains and old-fashioned detective work, prosecutors and the Federal Police soon uncovered much more than they bargained for: An entire scheme - _the _scheme, you could say - by which Rousseff’s Workers’ Party and its allies, including the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party of new President Michel Temer, sought to maintain themselves in power. The core of the con was to overcharge on contracts at Petrobras, the state-run oil company, and use the proceeds to fund campaigns and buy political support. To date, prosecutors have jailed the Workers’ Party treasurer, a senator, some of Brazil’s most powerful executives, and others. In all, they’ve brought criminal accusations against 239 people, sought information from 30 countries, levied about $10 billion in fines and dished out 1,148 years of criminal sentences.
It’s funny, though, because having just written all that, it still seems insufficient. Indeed, the best way to think about Car Wash is that the prosecutors busted the entire Brazilian political system - or at least, the majority of parties that allegedly relied on illicit funds to fill their coffers and personally enrich their leaders and allies. A large chunk of the business world was also implicated - Petrobras alone had annual revenues equal to 8 percentof Brazil’s GDP. Odebrecht SA, the largest of the Petrobras contractors implicated in the scandal, once generated more annual revenues ($41 billion) than the entire economy of Panama. The constellation of implicated entities also includes several government ministries, a large percentage of Congress, Brazil’s second-largest public bank, and so on.
Rousseff and Temer in better days
All of this is to say that, by late 2014, the prosecutors found themselves locked in an existential battle royale with Brazil’s executive branch, most of its legislative branch, and a huge swathe of the business elite as well. With all the lawyers, money, power and political pressure that implies. And make no mistake - the empire did try to strike back. From virtually day one, various interest groups worked furiously to try to move the case out of Curitiba to a friendlier, more politically malleable court; to curtail the use of plea bargains; to reduce the investigative power of the Federal Police; or to have the case thrown out altogether.
So how did the tiny team in Curitiba prevail? By appealing directly to the Brazilian public, and winning the population over to their “side.”
Some of this happened naturally: Brazilians _loved _watching corrupt politicians and tycoons being led away in handcuffs. This was an especially poignant sight in one of the world’s most unequal countries, where a tiny elite was accustomed to literally getting away with murder. But the Car Wash team believed their only true defense was to make the investigation so popular that politicians wouldn’t dare touch it, for fear of triggering street protests or certain defeat at the ballot box. The prosecutors also bet - correctly, I think - that a robotic, faceless, by-the-book recitation of charges and sentences was not going to accomplish that alone. To build a sufficiently high firewall, they’d have to play the game of public relations - which meant talking to journalists, speaking at conferences and setting up a user-friendly website about the case - with the ultimate goal of convincing Brazilians that the Car Wash probe, if allowed to do its job without interference, would lead to a less corrupt, more fair Brazil.
For this task and many others, the team was blessed with a once-in-a-generation talent: Sérgio Moro, a 44-year-old federal judge. In the Brazilian system, judges don’t collaborate directly with prosecutors, but rule on whether and when to accept the charges they file - and then decide if the defendant is guilty. Moro’s modus operandi is to be extremely conservative at the front end of cases, forcing prosecutors to assemble an impeccable case - but then, once the decision is made, to go after defendants with the full force of the law. As a result, his success rate is not quite 100 percent, but it’s close. One higher court after another has upheld Moro’s rulings as well as his use of controversial tactics, namely the pre-trial detention of suspects. Just last week, a court voted 13 to 1 to reject a motion that would have temporarily removed Moro from the Car Wash case and investigated him for supposed procedural violations.
That record, when paired with Moro’s personal manner - soft-spoken, cautious, humble - has made him an extraordinary spokesman for Car Wash and its larger mission of strengthening Brazilian justice. I’ve seen Moro up close several times at public events and private forums, and people ask me what he’s really like. I reply: “You know, he really doesn’t have that much to say.” People laugh, but I explain that I mean this as the highest possible compliment. Moro seems interested solely in the equal application of the law, rather than any kind of partisan agenda, which is heroic but also, after you’ve listened to the man talk for two hours, kind of repetitive. I know Moro’s critics, who say he is leading a witch hunt against the Workers’ Party, will roll their eyes and call me naive. Fair enough. But most Brazilians have bought what he’s selling: Moro is the only public figure in Brazil with an approval rating consistently above 50 percent; he is greeted in public with rapturous applause; his face adorns murals, Carnival floats and bumper stickers. No government - neither Rousseff’s nor Temer’s - has so far dared to mess with him or the investigation in any meaningful, sustained way.
Thanks to this overwhelming public approval, Moro and the prosecutors have gotten this far. But their approach also has a major drawback: Once you start to play the political game, once you step on that field, a kind of countdown clock starts to go tick tick tick. Because by moving beyond pure jurisprudence, and including public relations in your focus, you become vulnerable to the inevitable ebbs and flows of public opinion. Because unfortunately, not everybody on the team will play the game as well as Moro. As the case’s endgame draws closer, the pressure will get even greater. Over time, you will make mistakes. Sometimes, really big ones.
–
On September 14, the Curitiba prosecutors convened a press conference where, after months of anticipation, they would finally present their case against former President Lula, who governed Brazil during the years the Petrobras scheme took root. I tuned in late, with the presentation already underway. But within just a few seconds, it was obvious that things had gone horribly wrong.
The prosecutor giving the presentation, Deltan Dallagnol, is a 36-year-old Harvard Law graduate who cites Gandhi as his inspiration and is, by all accounts, a brilliant legal mind. But unlike Moro, who has never given an on-record interview and steered well clear of social media, Dallagnol is a regular presence in the media as well as on Facebook and Twitter, where his profile describes him as a “follower of Jesus” and a “passionate father and husband.” He posts constantly about the need to pass new federal anti-corruption legislation, and has traveled to Brasília to press Congress for its passage. Which is to say that Dallagnol has been skating for months on the edge of what is acceptable in the blurring of politics and the law.
On that Wednesday, before a live television audience of millions, Dallagnol wiped out. Instead of focusing on the relatively narrow (but still significant) charges that Lula received more than $1 million in benefits from a construction company, Dallagnol went much further. He called Lula the “master” and “maximum commander” of the entire Petrobras corruption scheme, but did not present formal charges to that effect or provide sufficient evidence to support the claim. Much ridicule has been directed at the prosecutors’ amateurish Power Point presentation, which put “LULA” in the center of a circle with a bunch of arrows pointing at it. But what immediately caught my attention was Dallagnol’s tone - tense, self-righteous, _political. _Which, at a purely human level, I get: Lula is their Moby Dick. But the stakes at this stage are too high, and the audience too unforgiving, to make such mistakes.
Condemnation came right away, and not just from the usual suspects. “It’s inadmissible,” seethed Reinaldo Azevedo, one of Brazil’s most rabidly anti-Lula columnists, “that an accusation of such gravity would be made public merely as support for another accusation that is stupidly smaller and less important … Where are the charges?” The head of the Brazilian Order of Lawyers called the presentation a “spectacle.” _Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, _also no friend of the Workers’ Party, lamented that the prosecutors had “failed to present robust evidence … and tried to fill the gap with rhetoric.” Lula himself quickly staged a rally where he declared, sobbing: “Prove any corruption by me and I’ll walk to the police station myself.”
Sensing opportunity, the foes of Car Wash acted with remarkable speed. Five days after the ill-fated press conference, with President Temer on an official trip to New York, a group of legislators daringly tried to pass a bill that would have granted retroactive legal immunity to politicians and companies that engaged in illegal campaign finance. The bill was shelved before it came to a vote; even for a Congress where 60 percent of legislators are under investigation for some kind of crime, this was too bold - testimony again to the perceived political cost of messing with Moro and company. The next morning, nobody would even admit whose idea the maneuver was. But the fact they tried so soon after the prosecutors’ misstep was not a coincidence; and the margin of failure was not large. Forebodingly, one of Temer’s top aides even said he was in favor of the bill.
Dallagnol presents the case against Lula, September 14, 2016
The lasting effect of Dallagnol’s mistake, and the incident days later with the former finance minister and his ailing wife, is unclear. Such errors may be forgotten if eventual plea bargain testimony from Odebrecht’s former CEO is as dramatic as most expect, or if Lula ends up in jail. But it’s hard to escape the sensation that the trend line for Car Wash is pointing down. The case has been going on for more than two and half years. Some are eager to minimize its disruptive effect on Brazil’s economy, trapped in its worst recession ever. The fact that Rousseff was impeached in August means that some Brazilians are ready to move on. The center simply cannot hold forever.
Moro, as the case’s shepherd, has always been conscious of this. A decade ago, he studied Italy’s “Clean Hands” investigation - and he has highlighted how the case sprawled too far and for too long, and eventually fizzled as a result. “As long as it can count on the support of public opinion, (an investigation) can move forward and produce good results,” Moro once wrote of the Italian probe. “If that doesn’t happen, it will hardly succeed.” At a conference in Washington in July, Moro said: “I hope to conclude my role in Car Wash by the end of the year.’” Once you allow for the fact that (pardon me for saying this) hardly anything in Brazil ever concludes on time, it’s reasonable to expect that the investigative phase of Car Wash will largely wrap up by the first quarter of 2017. The criminal trials themselves could, of course, go on for years.
What does this mean in practice? Here again, the uniqueness of the case comes into play - remember, the prosecutors busted the entire political system. They have a trove of bank statements, plea bargains and wiretaps that point to corruption well beyond Petrobras and into similarly massive entities like the BNDES, Brazil’s state development bank. In a world of unlimited resources and no political factors, prosecutors could probably spend the next 20 years investigating just the leads they already have. One source close to the Curitiba team told me they think they “probably could put close to 100 percent of Congress in jail.” But in the real world, they know this is more than the system would bear. So they will focus instead on jailing the ringleaders - the people at the top of the Petrobras scheme’s organizational chart. Some of the mid-level operators, and peripheral corruption schemes, will inevitably go unpunished - or be taken up by other, less accomplished courts.
Is that fair? No, it’s not. But it’s not even a political tactic - it’s a classic investigative one. It may also be the strategy that gives Car Wash the best odds of leaving a strong, intact legacy.
—
Throughout the misery of the past year, many Brazilians have clung to one hope: that the Car Wash probe would lead to a quantum leap in the quality of their institutions. Even as unemployment soared beyond 11 percent and one weak, unpopular government gave way to another, voters have consistently identified corruption as their country’s number-one problem in polls. Foreign investors have also cheered the probe, apart from a minority who worship the false god they call “stability.” A less corrupt Brazil will be a better place to do business, and a better place to call home. One popular T-shirt seen at demonstrations in support of Car Wash reads: “I don’t want to live in another country. I want to live in another Brazil.”
That said, success is not guaranteed - not yet. Some of the probe’s legacy will depend on who goes to jail, and whether the sentences stick. Moro accepted the relatively narrow corruption charges that Dallagnol and his team filed against Lula this month - but Lula is a defendant unlike any other, with a tarnished but still powerful brand among poorer voters and many powerful allies at home and abroad. Meanwhile, it is still possible, if unlikely, that the investigation could unravel on a technicality or some other unforeseen event. Many commentators have darkly noted that “Clean Hands” left a political vacuum in Italy that culminated in Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister. If a populist demagogue succeeds Temer as president in 2018, history will look at Car Wash in a different way.
But I believe that, even if Car Wash doesn’t get a Hollywood ending, the case has still forever changed the culture of impunity in Brazil - and perhaps beyond. The sight of once-powerful people like Marcelo Odebrecht, Antonio Palocci and Delcídio do Amaral being led away in handcuffs has altered the cost-benefit analysis of anyone who considers paying or receiving a bribe. Corruption never totally disappears; but it can be greatly reduced in the course of a generation. The most encouraging development is the proliferation of other probes throughout Brazil that cite Car Wash as their inspiration. The case also has its admirers in places like Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina and Peru. That this all started in Curitiba is remarkable - I’ve seen the prosecutors’ cramped, unglamorous offices, the meager resources at their disposal, and the tiny shrine of posters and Brazilian flags erected by their admirers just across the street. What they’ve already accomplished is truly extraordinary.
At the end of the 1987 film version of “The Untouchables,” when Al Capone is being led away from the courtroom by police, Eliot Ness confronts him, jabs a finger and says, repeatedly and with controlled emotion: “Never stop fighting until the fighting is done.” That was just a movie, of course. Car Wash is real - and the fighting isn’t done quite yet.
–
_Winter is the editor-in-chief of _AQ, which will publish a special Brazil-focused issue in October
Getting Out the Vote Campaigns
Candidates often turn to last minute expenditures in get out the vote efforts as a way to make effective use of campaign funds. This can include phone bank service, robocalls, and paid canvass. While I am not a fan of robotic phone calls, especially in the era of cell phones, many of these last-minute expenses are a way to try and make sure you bank votes for your candidates.
For Jessica Jones, these expenses are one of the last minute expenses she is planning on making. Jones has committed to join with other candidates in providing a full service phone bank and some funds for a paid canvass in her district to turn out voters. She’ll allocate whatever resources needed toward that effort.
Digital Campaigns Can Get Off the Ground Fast
While mail programs can take significant time to get approved, printed, stamped and delivered, a digital campaign can occur in a matter of minutes. Candidates may be encouraged to pay for increased content on sites like Facebook, Google, YouTube or anywhere else.
With video production cost low at the moment and small state campaigns looking for content they can help make viral, a digital ad campaign can be a solid last minute solution to build name ID and increase voter participation.
Making Sure Expenses & Bills Are Paid
One last minute expense that campaigns often forget is that bills still need to be paid. Campaigns often have outstanding debt to people who put service into a campaign. It is important that you try to pay all the bills you know are outstanding or have a plan to do so. Do not get surprised by a last minute bill you are unprepared to pay.
It is not unusual for a campaign to lose track of expenditures. This is why it is also important to make sure you follow up with vendors and staff who worked for the campaign. From mileage reimbursements to campaign loans, these are the kind of expenses you take care of at the very, very end, days before the election where there are few expenses you can make that will impact the voter totals in your district.
Final Thoughts
It may be only October 1, but candidates are already thinking of many expenses as last-minute planning. This is the time where you want to make sure that you are doing everything possible to bring home a win. Donors are okay with expenses that don’t work out. Many donors are not okay with campaigns that end up significantly in the black—they wonder why they gave money if you didn’t spend it.
Next Week: Media Responses.
Nuts & Bolts: Building Democratic Campaigns
Contact the Daily Kos group Nuts and Bolts by kosmail (members of Daily Kos only).
Every Saturday this group will chronicle the ins and outs of campaigns, small and large. Issues to be covered:** Campaign Staffing, Fundraising, Canvass, Field Work, Data Services, Earned Media, Spending and Budget Practices, How to Keep Your Mental Health, and on the last Saturday of the month: “Don’t Do This!”** a diary on how you can learn from the mistakes of campaigns in the past.
You can follow prior installments in this series HERE.
What is the self? How does the activity of neurons give rise to the sense of being a conscious human being? Even this most ancient of philosophical problems, I believe, will yield to the methods of empirical science. It now seems increasingly likely that the self is not a holistic property of the entire brain; it arises from the activity of specific sets of interlinked brain circuits. But we need to know which circuits are critically involved and what their functions might be. It is the “turning inward” aspect of the self — its recursiveness — that gives it its peculiar paradoxical quality.
It has been suggested by Horace Barlow, Nick Humphrey, David Premack and Marvin Minsky (among others) that consciousness may have evolved primarily in a social context. Minsky speaks of a second parallel mechanism that has evolved in humans to create representations of earlier representations and Humphrey has argued that our ability to introspect may have evolved specifically to construct meaningful models of other peoples minds in order to predict their behavior. “I feel jealous in order to understand what jealousy feels like in someone else” — a short cut to predicting that persons behavior.
Here I develop these arguments further. If I succeed in seeing any further it is by “standing on the shoulders of these giants”. Specifically, I suggest that “other awareness” may have evolved first and then counterintutively, as often happens in evolution, the same ability was exploited to model ones own mind — what one calls self awareness. I will also suggest that a specific system of neurons called mirror neurons are involved in this ability. Finally I discuss some clinical examples to illustrate these ideas and make some testable predictions.
There are many aspects of self. It has a sense of unity despite the multitude of sense impressions and beliefs. In addition it has a sense of continuity in time, of being in control of its actions (“free will”), of being anchored in a body, a sense of its worth, dignity and mortality (or immortality). Each of these aspects of self may be mediated by different centers in different parts of the brain and its only for convenience that we lump them together in a single word.
As noted earlier there is one aspect of self that seems stranger than all the others — the fact that it is aware of itself. I would like to suggest that groups of neurons called mirror neurons are critically involved in this ability.
The discovery of mirror neurons was made G. Rizzolati, V Gallase and I Iaccoboni while recording from the brains of monkeys performed certain goal-directed voluntary actions. For instance when the monkey reached for a peanut a certain neuron in its pre motor cortex ( in the frontal lobes) would fire. Another neuron would fire when the monkey pushed a button, a third neuron when he pulled a lever. The existence of such Command neurons that control voluntary movements has been known for decades. Amazingly, a subset of these neurons had an additional peculiar property. The neuron fired not only (say) when the monkey reached for a peanut but also when it watched another monkey reach for a peanut!
These were dubbed “mirror neurons” or “monkey-see-monkey-do” neurons. This was an extraordinary observation because it implies that the neuron (or more accurately, the network which it is part of) was not only generating a highly specific command (“reach for the nut”) but was capable of adopting another monkey’s point of view. It was doing a sort of internal virtual reality simulation of the other monkeys action in order to figure out what he was “up to”. It was, in short, a “mind-reading” neuron.
Neurons in the anterior cingulate will respond to the patient being poked with a needle; they are often referred to as sensory pain neurons. Remarkably, researchers at the University of Toronto have found that some of them will fire equally strongly when the patient watches someone else is poked. I call these “empathy neurons” or “Dalai Lama neurons” for they are, dissolving the barrier between self and others. Notice that in saying this one isn’t being metaphorical; the neuron in question simply doesn’t know the difference between it and others.
Primates (including humans) are highly social creatures and knowing what someone is “up to” — creating an internal simulation of his/her mind — is crucial for survival, earning us the title “the Machiavellian primate”. In an essay for Edge (2001) entitled “Mirror Neurons and the Great Leap Forward”I suggested that in addition to providing a neural substrate for figuring out another persons intentions (as noted by Rizzolati’s group) the emergence and subsequent sophistication of mirror neurons in hominids may have played a crucial role in many quintessentially human abilities such as empathy, learning through imitation (rather than trial and error), and the rapid transmission of what we call “culture”. (And the “great leap forward” — the rapid Lamarckian transmission of “accidental”) one-of-a kind inventions.
I turn now to the main concern of this essay — the nature of self. When you think of your own self, what comes into mind? You have sense of “introspecting” on your own thoughts and feelings and of ” watching” yourself going about your business — as if you were looking at yourself from another persons vantage point. How does this happen ?
Evolution often takes advantage of pre-existing structures to evolve completely novel abilities. I suggest that once the ability to engage in cross modal abstraction emerged — e.g. between visual “vertical” on the retina and photoreceptive “vertical” signaled by muscles (for grasping trees) it set the stage for the emergence of mirror neurons in hominids. Mirror neurons are also abundant in the inferior parietal lobule — a structure that underwent an accelerated expansion in the great apes and, later, in humans.. As the brain evolved further the lobule split into two gyri — the supramarginal gyrus that allowed you to “reflect” on your own anticipated actions and the angular gyrus that allowed you to “reflect” on your body (on the right) and perhaps on other more social and linguistic aspects of your self (left hemisphere) I have argued elsewhere that mirror neurons are fundamentally performing a kind of abstraction across activity in visual maps and motor maps. This in turn may have paved the way for more conceptual types of abstraction; such as metaphor (“get a grip on yourself”).
How does all this lead to self awareness? I suggest that self awareness is simply using mirror neurons for “looking at myself as if someone else is look at me” (the word “me” encompassing some of my brain processes, as well). The mirror neuron mechanism — the same algorithm — that originally evolved to help you adopt another’s point of view was turned inward to look at your own self. This, in essence, is the basis of things like “introspection”. It may not be coincidental that we use phrases like “self conscious” when you really mean that you are conscious of others being conscious of you. Or say “I am reflecting” when you mean you are aware of yourself thinking. In other words the ability to turn inward to introspect or reflect may be a sort of metaphorical extension of the mirror neurons ability to read others minds. It is often tacitly assumed that the uniquely human ability to construct a “theory of other minds” or “TOM” (seeing the world from the others point of view; “mind reading”, figuring out what someone is up to, etc.) must come after an already pre- existing sense of self. I am arguing that the exact opposite is true; the TOM evolved first in response to social needs and then later, as an unexpected bonus, came the ability to introspect on your own thoughts and intentions. I claim no great originality for these ideas; they are part of the current zeitgeist. Any novelty derives from the manner in which I shall marshall the evidence from physiology and from our own work in neurology. Note that I am not arguing that mirror neurons are sufficient for the emergence of self; only that they must have played a pivotal role. (Otherwise monkeys would have self awareness and they don’t). They may have to reach a certain critical level of sophistication that allowed them to build on earlier functions (TOM) and become linked to certain other brain circuits, especially the Wernickes (“language comprehension”) area and parts of the frontal lobes.
Does the mirror neuron theory of self make other predictions? Given our discovery that autistic children have deficient mirror neurons and correspondingly deficient TOM, we would predict that they would have a deficient sense of self (TMM) and difficulty with introspection. The same might be true for other neurological disorders; damage to the inferior parietal lobule/TPO junction (which are known to contain mirror neurons) and parts of the frontal lobes should also lead to a deficiency of certain aspects self awareness. (Incidentally, Gallup’s mirror test — removing a paint splotch from your face while looking at a mirror — is not an adequate test of self awareness, even though it is touted as such. We have seen patients who vehemently claim that their reflection in the mirror is “someone else” yet they pass the Gallup test!)
It has recently been shown that if a conscious awake human patient has his parietal lobe stimulated during neurosurgery, he will sometimes have an “out of body” experience — as if he was a detached entity watching his own body from up near the ceiling. I suggest that this arises because of a dysfunction in the mirror neuron system in the parieto-occipital junction caused by the stimulating electrode. These neurons are ordinarily activated when we temporarily “adopt” another’s view of our body and mind (as outlined earlier in this essay). But we are always aware we are doing this partly because of other signals (both sensory and reafference/command signals) telling you you are not literally moving out of yourself. (There may also be frontal inhibitory mechanisms that stop you from involuntarily mimicking another person looking at you).
If these mirror neuron-related mechanisms are deranged by the stimulating electrode the net result would be an out-of-body experience. Some years ago we examined a patient with a syndrome called anosognosia who had a lesion in his right parietal lobe and vehemently denied the paralysis. Remarkably the patient also denied the paralysis of another patient sitting in an adjacent wheelchair! (who failed to move the arm on command from the physician.) Here again was, evidence that two seemingly contradictory aspects of self — its the individuation and intense privacy vs. its social reciprocity — may complement each other and arise from the same neural mechanism, mirror neurons. Like the two sides of a Mobius strip, they are really the same, even they appear — on local inspection — to be fundamentally different.
Have we solved the problem of self? Obviously not — we have barely scratched the surface. But hopefully we have paved the way for future models and empirical studies on the nature of self, a problem that philosophers have made essentially no headway in solving. (And not for want of effort — they have been at it for three thousand years). Hence our grounds for optimism about the future of brain research — especially for solving what is arguably Science’s greatest riddle.
