Clipmarks | All clippers jansegers follows

Second language changes the way bilinguals read in their native tongue

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:35:10 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: Do bilinguals have an internal switch that stops their two languages from interfering with each other, or are both languages always "on"?

Clip Source: bps-research-digest.blogspot.com

The fact that bilinguals aren't forever spurting out words from the wrong language implies there's some kind of switch.

in 2007, brain surgeons reported evidence for a language switch when their cortical prodding with an electrode caused two bilingual patients to switch languages suddenly and involuntarily.

On the other hand, there's good evidence that languages are integrated in the bilingual mind.

bilinguals are faster at naming an object when the word for that object is similar or the same in the two languages they speak (e.g. ship/schip in English and Dutch).

even when bilinguals read sentence after sentence in their native tongue, access to words in their second language remains open, rather than switched off, thus having an effect on the way the native language is processed.

"Becoming a bilingual means one will never read the newspaper again in the same way," they concluded. "It changes one of people's seemingly most automatic skills, namely, reading in one's native language."

Tags: language, perception, psychology, reading, speech, research

How Concepts Affect Consumption

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:00:05 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: fascinating, go read

Clip Source: www.predictablyirrational.com

Our prehistoric ancestors spent much of their waking hours foraging for and consuming food, an instinct that obviously paid off. Today this instinct is no less powerful, but for billions of us it’s satisfied in the minutes it takes to swing by the store and pop a meal in the microwave. With our physical needs sated and time on our hands, increasingly we’re finding psychological outlets for this drive, by seeking out and consuming concepts.

Conceptual consumption strongly influences physical consumption. Keeping up with the Joneses is an obvious example. The SUV in the driveway is only partly about the need for transport; the concept consumed is status. Dozens of studies tease out the many ways in which concepts influence people’s consumption, independent of the physical thing being consumed. Here are just three of the classes of conceptual consumption that we and others have identified.

by Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton

The full paper on which this article is based is available here.

Tags: concepts, consumption

The Possibility of Impossible cultures

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:35:28 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Heuser suggests that only humans have evolved four computational capacities, constituting a phylogenetic mind gap between humans and other animals.

An important perspective, go read all of it

Clip Source: mindblog.dericbownds.net

Marc Hauser offers an essay in the 9 July issue of Nature, in which he suggests points of contact between work in the generative tradition of linguistics (Chomsky, etc.) and evolutionary developmental biology research on animal forms. Just as a developing animal form faces a massive range of possible variation:

...children are born with the capacity to acquire a wide range of possible languages, as opposed to specific languages such as English, Korean or French. This implies that a child is equipped with an abstract acquisition device, allowing the 'growth' of many different languages. Furthermore, as the child's acquisition device generates a space of possible languages, something internal or external to the device creates a space of impossible languages — forms that are never entertained by the child because they are poorly designed for acquisition and externalization in linguistic communication.

Generative computation

Mental symbols

Promiscuous interfaces

Abstract thought

Tags: culture, language

Can Computers Decipher a 5,000-Year-Old Language?

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:06:58 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.smithsonianmag.com

A computer scientist is helping to uncover the secrets of the inscribed symbols of the Indus

The Indus civilization, which flourished throughout much of the third millennium B.C., was the most extensive society of its time. At its height, it encompassed an area of more than half a million square miles centered on what is today the India-Pakistan border. Remnants of the Indus have been found as far north as the Himalayas and as far south as Mumbai. It was the earliest known urban culture of the subcontinent and it boasted two large cities, one at Harappa and one at Mohenjo-daro. Yet despite its size and longevity, and despite nearly a century of archaeological investigations, much about the Indus remains shrouded in mystery.

A few years later, Rao entered the fray. Until then, people studying the script were archaeologists, historians, linguists or cryptologists. But Rao decided to coax out the secrets of the Indus script using the tool he knew best—computer science.

Tags: language, symbols

THE SYNCHRONIZATION OF BRAINS

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:01:12 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: JAMSHED BHARUCHA
Professor of Psychology, Provost, Senior Vice President, Tufts University

"An understanding of how brains synchronize " or fail to do so " will be a game-changing scientific development."

Highly recommended, go read it all

Clip Source: www.edge.org

Few behavioral forces are as strong as the delineation of in-groups and out-groups: 'us' and 'them'. Group affiliation requires alignment, coupling or synchronization of the brain states of members. Synchronization yields cooperative behavior, promotes group cohesion, and creates a sense of group agency greater than the sum of the individuals in the group. In the extreme, synchronization yields herding behavior. The absence of synchronization yields conflict.

People come under the grip of ideologies, emotions and moods are infectious, and memes spread rapidly through populations. Ethnic, religious, and political groups act as monolithic forces. Mobs, cults and militias are characterized by the melding of large numbers of individuals into larger units, such that the brains of individuals operate in lockstep – a single organism controlled by a single — distributed — nervous system.

Tags: brains, synchronization

Selective Memories/Creating an evocative user experience involves tapping into our most powerful method of recall and recognition.

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:10:24 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "So if memory rules perception, where does that leave the 21st-century product designer? The obvious answer"go out and create objects capable of evoking vivid memories"comes loaded with an inherent problem: memories exist in the mind of the user. The object, however well conceived, is merely a tool"

A fascinating read

Clip Source: www.metropolismag.com

In my book Emotional Design, I argue that the interplay between cognition and emotion occurs on three levels: the visceral, the behavioral, and the reflective. The lowest level, the visceral, is unconsciously triggered by the environment and driven by involuntary, biologically determined reactions (a fear of heights, say, or a yen for sweets). Visceral design is about appearances. Expert skills operate at the behavioral level. These are so well learned, so automatic (language, for example), that they’re performed with little or no conscious effort. The reflective level is where our consciousness resides, where we ponder the past and contemplate the future. Despite the sensual pull of the visceral, and our utter dependence on the behavioral, the reflective level ultimately dominates our perception. Why? Life is a series of temporary, fleeting experiences. The rest is, literally, memory.

Tags: design, experience, recall, recognition

The Question of Freedom at the Open Video Conference

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:04:47 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Benkler argued that Open Video was indicative of an “open democracy for everyone, everywhere, all the time.” Open Video Culture, he said, would usher in the possibility for “anyone to express oneself, be creative and innovative.” Benkler also claimed that because “millions of people are now looking at [social and political] problems” we will thus find millions of, “distributed solutions.” In this “free” culture, he continued, “human creativity would move to the core.” Aside from the seemingly naïve conflation of terms, exactly which society, which “everyone,” and which economic system did Benkler have in mind?"

A very important read

Clip Source: rhizome.org

The situation is nicely summed up by media scholar Geert Lovink, in his recent manifesto written with Ned Rossiter. “Web 2.0” they explain, “is not for free. ‘Free as in free beer’ is not like ‘free as in freedom’. Open does not equal free. These days ‘free’ is just another word for service economies…. Where is the enemy? Not on Facebook, where you can only have ‘friends’. What Web 2.0 lacks is the technique of antagonistic linkage. Instead, we are confronted with the Tyranny of Positive Energy...” The utopianism of “open and free” video culture, it seems, is correct in that it allows people to do things they could not do before. But this does not automatically equal change or democracy in itself. Any proclamation of social utopia deserves a second look, yet we also need to understand why Benkler framed his arguments in the way he did that morning––speaking to an audience of lawyers, corporate investors, sponsors, and public relations representatives.

Tags: free, freedom, open video

The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:06:12 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: Volume I and Volume II

Clip Source: www.flickr.com

Volume 1, edited by Alan Aldridge, 2nd impression 1970 by Macdonald Unit 75

Clip Source: www.flickr.com

The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics Vol. 2

Clip Source: www.flickr.com

Tags: books, music, beatles, illustration, art, reading

When comic book heroes and villains get old: Superheroes Decadence by Donald Soffritti

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:04:09 GMT

clipped by: haraya

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Italian cartoonist Donald Soffritti imagines the later years of superheroes, with hilarious results. His brilliant cartoons have been collected into a book, available here

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Tags: books, illustration, comics, reading, age, art

World As Lover; World As Self

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:48:09 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Go read this

Clip Source: www.context.org

Seeing the world as oneself - or as a lover - transforms ordinary reality and provides a greater sense of purpose

by Joanna Macy

Spiritual traditions have tended to look at the world in four major ways: as a battlefield, as a trap, as a lover, and as the self. The first two - as a stage set for our moral battles or as a prison to escape - are probably familiar, and have in many ways contributed to our lack of care for the world. But what of the other two? Might they shed some useful light on life in an interconnected world?

The way we define and delimit the self is arbitrary. We can place it between our ears and have it looking out from our eyes, or we can widen it to include the air we breathe, or at other moments, we can cast its boundaries farther to include the oxygen-giving trees and plankton, our external lungs, and beyond them the web of life in which they are sustained.

Tags: lover, self, world

Art In Your Pocket: iPhone and iPod Touch App Art

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:31:40 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: It is highly probable that software Art represents the new mode of communicating the cultural memes.

Clip Source: rhizome.org

As the niche genre of software art expands beyond the web and into mobile devices, media artists are finding ways to integrate their work into a new form of business model. Instead of giving away your work for free on the web, Apple's iPhone and iTouch devices provide an ample platform for distribution (through the Apple App Store) and hardware support for novel ways to experience screen-based work. Since the App Store was unveiled last year, the over 30,000 available applications have taken the form of everything from mock cigarette lighters (Zippo's App) to mobile flutes (Ocarina) to utilitarian apps such as Urban Spoon (Restaurant finder) to social networking in physical spaces (Loopt). Noticing this trend, media artists who once found their free and limitless distribution platform through a desktop computer browser are now turning their attention and creative efforts toward the mobile space of the iPhone.

Tags: iphone, ipod, touch app art

What counts as art.

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:16:34 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: “Transitory Objects”- the very term endears.. love this

Clip Source: seedmagazine.com

“Transitory Objects,” the latest exhibit at Vienna’s influential Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary gallery, features some of the most innovative and splendidly unconventional forms coming out of the architectural world today, including works from Matthew Ritchie, Neri Oxman, Alisa Andrasek, François Roche, Greg Lynn, and Hernan Diaz Alonso. To have these mesmerizing structures together in one exhibit is remarkable in itself, but to have them positioned alongside works of contemporary art, as this exhibit has done, raises a provocative point about how boundaries have collapsed between architectural objects, conceptual art, and theoretical science. The exhibit aims to look at those architectural works that “have achieved an appearance of being autonomous forms,” says curator Daniela Zyman, suggesting that these works are meaningful outside of a specific context or place.

Tags: transitory objects

WE ARE ALL WRITERS NOW

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:35:32 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "True, much of what is written online is quotidian, informational, ephemeral. But writing has always been so: traditional newspapers line bird-cages a day later; lab reports describe methodology in tedious detail; the founding fathers wrote what they ate for lunch. And the quality of many blogs is high, indistinguishable in eloquence and intellect from many traditionally published works."

an important read

Clip Source: www.moreintelligentlife.com

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook: these outlets are supposedly cheapening language and tarnishing our time. But the fact is we are all reading and writing much more than we used to, writes Anne Trubek ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

The chattering classes have become silent, tapping their views on increasingly smaller devices. And tapping they are: the screeds are everywhere, decrying the decline of smart writing, intelligent thought and proper grammar. Critics bemoan blogging as the province of the amateurism. Journalists rue the loose ethics and shoddy fact-checking of citizen journalists. Many save their most profound scorn for the newest forms of social media. Facebook and Twitter are heaped with derision for being insipid, time-sucking, sad testaments to our literary degradation. This view is often summed up with a disdainful question: “Do we really care about what you ate for lunch?”

Tags: life online, writing

Of Body and Mind, and Deep Meditation

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:26:42 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "

Physiological tests also revealed significant changes. Compared with the relaxation group, IBMT subjects had lower heart rates and skin conductance responses, increased belly breathing amplitude and decreased chest respiration rates, all of which, researchers wrote, "reflected less effort exerted by participants and more relaxation of body and calm state of mind."

Finally, researchers noted, IBMT subjects had more high-frequency heart-rate variability than their relaxation counterparts, indicating "successful inhibition of sympathetic tone and activation of parasympathetic tone [in the autonomic nervous system]." Sympathetic tone becomes more active when stressed."

Clip Source: www.newswise.com

Newswise — Chinese researchers have unlocked the mechanism of an emerging mind-body technique that produces measurable changes in attention and stress reduction in just five days of practice.

The practice -- integrative body-mind training (IBMT) -- was adapted from traditional Chinese medicine in the 1990s in China, where it is practiced by thousands of people. It is now being taught to undergraduates involved in research on the method at the University of Oregon.

"The previous paper indicated that IBMT subjects showed a reduced response to stress.” Tang said. "Why after five days did it work so fast?" The new findings, he said, point to how IBMT alters blood flow and electrical activity in the brain, breathing quality and even skin conductance, allowing for "a state of ah, much like in the morning opening your eyes, looking outside the grass and sunshine, you feel relaxed, calm and refresh without any stress, this is the meditation state."

Tags: brain, china, ibmt, meditation, neuroscience, oregon, relaxation, stress

The Great Order of the Universe by Christian Bök

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:15:07 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: Via @bitoy's Flickr

Clip Source: www.poetryfoundation.org

NOTES: “The Great Order of the Universe” is a response to the fiftieth anniversary of the LEGO patent. Using a conceptual strategy reminiscent of Sol LeWitt, the image enumerates every possible way of combining two LEGO bricks, each with six pegs. The caption consists of two texts: the first, a translated paragraph from a volume by Democritus; the second, a transcribed paragraph from the patent by Godtfred Kirk Christiansen. The two paragraphs are perfect anagrams of each other.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2009).

Tags: lego, fun, anagram, illustration, writing