Clipmarks | abailart's Comments

Dr. Karl Paulnack: Why Does Music Affect Us?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:24:18 GMT

clipped by: clip-on-tie
clipper's remarks: Great article: http://greenroom.fromthetop.org/2009/03/11/karl-paulnack-to-the-boston-conservatory-freshman-class/

Clip Source: greenroom.fromthetop.org

Karl Paulnack

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done.

to play for this old soldier and help him connect,

to connect their memories of their lost friends

Tags: music

Allotments: Grow Your Own

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:46:01 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly
clipper's remarks: "Allotment gardens are characterised by a concentration in one place of a few or up to several hundreds of land parcels that are assigned to individuals or families. In allotment gardens, the parcels are cultivated individually, contrary to other community garden types where the entire area is tended collectively by a group of people.[1] The individual size of a parcel ranges between 200 and 400 square meters, and often the plots include a shed for tools and shelter. The individual gardeners are organised in an allotment association which leases the land from the owner who may be a public, private or ecclesiastical entity, provided that it is only used for gardening (i.e. growing vegetables, fruits and flowers), but not for residential purposes. The gardeners have to pay a small membership fee to the association, and have to abide by the corresponding constitution and by-laws. However, the membership entitles them to certain democratic rights.[2][3]"

Clip Source: dearcomputer.nl

Tibetan Monks and Nuns Turn Their Minds Toward Science

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:21:56 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: The Chinese have begun the cultural genocide in Tibet. They have even taken the appointment of the Dalai away from the Tibetans.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

DHARAMSALA, India — Tibetan monks and nuns spend their lives studying the inner world of the mind rather than the physical world of matter. Yet for one month this spring a group of 91 monastics devoted themselves to the corporeal realm of science.

Many in the group, whose ages ranged from the 20s to 40s, had never learned science and math. In Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, the curriculum has remained unchanged for centuries.

Yet the Tibetan spiritual leader views science and Buddhism as complementary “investigative approaches with the same greater goal, of seeking the truth,” he wrote in “The Universe in a Single Atom,” his book on “how science and spirituality can serve our world.” He stresses that science is especially important for monastics who study the nature of the mind and the relationship between mind and brain.

The need to keep Tibetan cultural identity alive, yet modern and relevant, has grown increasingly urgent as the 73-year-old Dalai Lama ages.

An Open Letter to Closed Minds

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:58:23 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: A challenge to orthodoxy tends to be ignored at first. But if it gains popular support, the first move is to discredit and silence the challenger.

“Belief” is the crux of the matter. No amount of evidence will change the consensus view until a sufficient number “convert” to a belief in the new theory.

“It gets worse. As the evidence accumulates, the two camps will not only fail to reach consensus but actually be driven further apart - propelled by their different views ..And worst of all, there is no prospect of such a consensus unless the two sides can agree about the cause of the data.” Such a conclusion bodes ill for any attempt to change the status quo.

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the new ideas from the beginning.”

Applicable to both science and religion, I reckon.

Clip Source: www.holoscience.com

An Open Letter to Closed Minds

A widely-accepted foundation stone of scientific logic involves a process of elimination, requiring all available possibilities to be considered with incorrect ideas discarded when they fail to predict experimental results.

a leading group of concerned scientists

questions a core belief – the belief in the so-called big bang theory.

Already, the first line of defense – censorship – has held. The journal Nature rejected the letter for publication

"You could write the entire history of science in the last 50 years in terms of papers rejected by Science or Nature." – Paul C. Lauterbur, winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine, whose seminal paper on magnetic resonance imaging was originally rejected by Nature.

That scathing commentator on errant human behavior, John Ralston Saul, has compared the scientific community to the medieval church

setting up organizations – political, religious, and scientific – that with time become authoritarian, exclusive and dogmatic.

What is a fair price for free knowledge?

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:59:02 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "When it comes to knowledge, you can never have too much of a good thing."

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Finding a fair price for free knowledge

TEN years ago, a piece of software called Napster taught us that scarcity is no longer a law of nature. The physics of our universe would allow everyone with access to a networked computer to enjoy, for free, every song, every film, every book, every piece of research, every computer program, every last thing that could be made out of digital ones and zeros. The question became not, will nature allow it, but will our legal and economic system ever allow it?

The irony of the battle between advocates of abundance and advocates of scarcity is that both sides are right. It makes no sense to limit and control access now we have technologies to give information to everyone. But it is also foolish to pretend we do not need incentives to help produce and publish that information.

build institutions that promote knowledge-sharing

while at the same time ensuring that there are incentives for creative and technical minds to contribute

Tags: internet, knowledge, open source

People May be Able to Taste Words

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 21:07:02 GMT

clipped by: carrerinyes
clipper's remarks: He and his co-author, Cesare Parise, tested 12 volunteers in trials during which an image flashed up on a screen at a slightly different time to one of two tones - one low-pitched and one high-pitched - being played.

There were two sets of image: a large and a small black dot, or an angular and a very rounded shape,
Dots of a certain size match tones of a certain pitch. People associate the low-pitched sound with the larger dot

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

People may be able to taste words

We are all capable of "hearing" shapes and sizes and perhaps even "tasting" sounds, according to researchers.

This blending of sensory experiences, or synaesthesia, they say, influences our perception and helps us make sense of a jumble of simultaneous sensations.

Oxford University scientists found that people associate lower-pitched sounds with larger and more rounded shapes.

One of the team is now working with chef Heston Blumenthal to incorporate words into a new dining experience.

Synaesthesia itself is a rare and unusual condition thought to affect less than 1% of the population.

It can takes many different forms - some people may "see sounds", in that certain sounds trigger them to see particular colours. Others might experience colours while reading those words in simple black text.

But according to Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, we are all "synaesthetes" up to a point.

Education for Leisure

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:28:27 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Today I am going to kill something. Anything.

I have had enough of being ignored and today

I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,

a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets

I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.

We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in

another language and now the fly is in another language.

I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.

I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half

the chance. But today I am going to change the world.

Something's world. The cat avoids me. The cat

knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.

I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.

Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town

For signing on. They don't appreciate my autograph.

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio

and tell the man he's talking to a superstar.

He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.

The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

Carol Ann Duffy

Tags: contemporary poetry, modern poets, poems, banned, censorship

hands teach the mind

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:03:08 GMT

clipped by: taoguide
clipper's remarks: chop wood, carry water, find enlightenment

Clip Source: www.ft.com

Why manual labour is making a comeback

“Shop class” is the American term for technical studies courses at secondary schools – classes that are fast disappearing from US curricula. The book is a protest against that sort of development – against white-collar culture and the educational system designed to populate it. Crawford, who has a PhD in political thought from the University of Chicago, takes America to task for devaluing skilled manual labour. Trade work, he argues, is more psychologically, intellectually and financially satisfying than the information-processing jobs for which students are typically prepared.

Crawford’s metaphor is not the journey but the journeyman, the tradesman who makes his way using knowledge he has acquired from coping with physical materials. “A carpenter faces the accusation of his level, an electrician the question whether the lights are in fact on,” he writes. “Such standards have a universal validity.”

I felt a Funeral in my Brain

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:43:24 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: www.cs.rice.edu

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading--treading--till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through--

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum--
Kept beating--beating--till I thought
My Mind was going numb--

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space--began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here--

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down--
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing--then--

	-- Emily Dickinson

Tags: emily dickinson

Poverty Hurts

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:51:15 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Been waiting for science to confirm what I always knew & felt growing up in poverty. It's not just about the money, it's the pain that makes it traumatic. This article was life-validating.

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

Poverty Hurts

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

The findings were unambiguous. As reported in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, thinking about expenses and spending—lack of money in general—increased feelings of distress, especially for those who were excluded by their social group. It also led to diminished pain tolerance in the hot-water test. Put another way, people who were focused on financial need suffered more pain of every kind than people who felt financially empowered.

When the researchers looked at this the other way around, they found that inflicting pain or social rejection also increased volunteers' desire for money. There's the risk of a vicious spiral here: the very real pain of being poor and marginalized could actually exaggerate and distort the desire the desire for money, so that further rejection and hardship is even more painful, and so on. The result could be a kind of psychological inflation.

Tags: poverty, pain, suffering, social rejection, money

Iranian Suffering Dwarfed By Jackson Death

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:05:41 GMT

clipped by: redbourn
clipper's remarks: Is the West morally bankrupt?

If the media is correct, and more people are interested in Michael Jackson's death that what's being done to protesters in Iran, then the answer would seem to be yes.

Clip Source: www.ourchangingglobe.com

Iranian Suffering Dwarfed By Jackson Death

It’s a strong indictment of our MSM (main stream media) and perhaps of our western society too, that the saddening and historic events that are taking place in Iran have been pushed off of the headlines because of Michael Jackson’s death.

One witness to the attacks in the Velenjak district said, “On June 22, while we were shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ from the rooftops, the Basiji entered our neighborhood and started firing live rounds into the air, in the direction of the buildings from which they believe the shouting of ‘Allahu Akbar’ is coming from”.

What has not been widely reported is why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using the Basijis and not the Revolutionary Guard to crush dissent.

General Ali Fazli, who was the head of the guard in Tehran refused to fire on his own countrymen and was subsequently arrested.

Tags: iran, demonstrations, jackson, obama, guard, basijis, human rights

I felt a Funeral in my Brain

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:43:24 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: www.cs.rice.edu

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading--treading--till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through--

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum--
Kept beating--beating--till I thought
My Mind was going numb--

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space--began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here--

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down--
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing--then--

	-- Emily Dickinson

Tags: emily dickinson

G.K. Chesterton Quotes on Love & Marriage

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:18:52 GMT

clipped by: kris_tea

Clip Source: chesterton.org

"Love means loving the unlovable - or it is no virtue at all." - Heretics, 1905

"A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage." - Chaucer

"A good man's work is effected by doing what he does, a woman's by being what she is." - Robert Browning

"Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue." - Chesterton on Dickens

"Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline." - Manalive

"The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous." - ILN 1/9/09

Existentialism in Literature and Film

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:02:50 GMT

clipped by: Fast T friend
clipper's remarks: Haven't checked it out yet, but it seems promising.

Clip Source: webcast.berkeley.edu

Phil 7: Existentialism in Literature and Film - Spring 2006. The course will be organized around various attempts to reinterpret the Judeo/Christian God, and to determine in what sense, if at all, such a God is still a living God. We will study Dostoyevsky's and Kierkegaard's attempts to preserve a non-theological version of the God of Christianity, as well as Nietzche's attempt to save us from belief in any version of God offered by our tradition. We will view and discuss three films that deal with related issues.

Introduction: What is Existentialism?

'Fear and Trembling' - Preamble from Heart I

Discussion of Film 'The Third Man' - Rough audio quality

'Sickness Unto Death' (xeroxed excerpts) I

'Brothers Karamazov', Part I

Film: 'Breathless' - No Lecture

Tags: art, cinema, existentialism, film, literature

The Consciousness Conundrum

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:32:00 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.spectrum.ieee.org

In spite of all those advances, neuroscientists still do not understand at all how a brain (the squishy agglomeration of tissue and neurons) makes a conscious mind (the intangible entity that enables you to fall in love, find irony in a novel, and appreciate the elegance of a circuit design). ”No one has the foggiest notion,” says the neuroscientist Eric Kandel of Columbia University Medical Center, in New York City. ”At the moment all you can get are informed, intelligent opinions.”

Adding to the complexity, synaptic connections constantly form, strengthen, weaken, and dissolve. Old neurons die and--evidence now indicates, overturning decades of dogma--new ones are born.

Within a decade or so, computers will surpass the computational power of brains, many singularitarians say.

We've heard such prophesies before.

predicted that computers would exceed human intelligence within a generation.

But even Minsky admits that computers are still idiot savants.

Tags: 1-operation, 1-understanding, 2-lack, 3-research, 3-theory, 4-intl