Using pen and paper to perform long multiplications is the first step of externalizing cognistive processes – but we are more and more on a route to have many external actions being part of our cognitive processes (think of Google for extending our current actual knowledge).
So far, so good, but how about mind? Can that then too be partially externalized?
An example given by the authors is the comparison of the behavior of a ‘normal’ person with a person with Alzheimers disease when trying to find a museum. One uses the information in the head, whereas the other relies completely on things in his laptop.
Next step: can  my mental states be partly constitued by the states of other thinkers?
And then how about an extended self?
And if this is extended out of my person – will interfering with my environment have a moral significance similar to interfering with the person? And are some forms of social activity more like ‘thought’ instead of communication and action?

Citing older work the distribution is most of the time a power law distribution with varying power coefficients. New work done by the author is to look at the distribution of casualties of events belonging to one war – and they also follow powerlaws (data for Iraq and Columbia are investigated) – and compared for terroristic events.

The power coefficient is in these at roughly 2.5. Making a further analysis of this coefficient as it changes during the war time (by subpartitioning the data) one sees that for the Iraq war it goes from lower to 2.5 (from large armies to insurgents), for the Columbia war from higher to 2.5 (small disorganized to better organized insurgents). Terroristic casualties are following a power law with about 2.5.

One more thing is the analysis of time sequence of events, compared to randomized set of these events: this shows a difference, meaning that the time-sequences are non-random, so have at least some systematic order in it (unfortunately no more details are given on that).

The power-law behavior might not be too surprising as it is the result of random group acts in this case, without any given ’scale’.

The article is interesting but I find it a bit introductory (it starts by explaining normal vs. power-law distributions), still the application of scientific statistical methods to this area is an important contribution.

In a somewhat similar direction there is a fascinating talk by Quinn Norton (slides, video) about functional body hacking – which includes for example the (not recommended) implant of a small magnet into a fingertip – enabling a completely new sense of our environment. This also sounds pretty cool – I wonder whether one could get a similar new feeling by not implanting it, but always attach a small magnet to a fingertip?

I very much like this:

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

The wikipedia article contains a transcript like summary and more good quotes.

Links: Video part 1: The God Delusion http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9002284641446868316&hl=en
Video part 2: The Virus of Faith http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5876041252887258266&hl=en