Personal · 27 July 2010, 00:10 ·
That old English-Turkish exercise book I found on the street...
…has a translation of the Daisy-song into Turkish:
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do.
I’m half crazy for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage,
I can’t afford a carriage.
But you’ll look sweet-upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two.
According to the wee book, this is translated into:
Papatya, Papatya, bana cevabim ver,
Senin askindan yari cilgina döndüm.
Modaya uygun bir dügün olmayacak.
Araba tutacak param yok.
Fakat sen cok tatli olacaksin
Iki kisilik bisikletin üstünde.
It was printed in 1962, 6 years before 2001:Space Odyssey.
Music · 24 July 2010, 22:47 ·
New 13&God album in February 2011?
According to a post by Dax Pierson in the 13&God facebook group I know ’13&God’ has nothing to do with religion, the supergroup consisting of members of the Notwist and Themselves, returned to the studio in January. Thus, when Themselves played in Glasgow yesterday, I asked Jel about the current state of the new record: Apparently there will be another brief recording session in Autumn, and they hope to have the album mixed down by February. That’s definitely something to look forward to.
One of the prospective tracks featured on the new record is “Sure as Dept.”, written during their 2007 tour:
Music · 22 July 2010, 01:52 ·
Le Peuple de l'Herbe vs Beth Gibbons
Another live video with Beth Gibbons, this time with the French Hip Hop group, interpreting “Roads” and “Glory Box” by Portishead. I really like the added trumpets and flugelhorns.
Le Peuple de l’Herbe vs Beth Gibbons from Le Peuple de l'Herbe on Vimeo.
Music · 20 July 2010, 19:51 ·
Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man - Candy Says
Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man – Candy Says (Paleo 2003) from Logic Will Break Your Heart on Vimeo.
Music Personal · 17 July 2010, 13:21 ·
Subcity - Laser Party 2010
Subcity LASER Party (2010) from Subcity Radio on Vimeo.
Subcity Radio, Glasgow University’s student radio station, doesn’t just do radio. We also do events, like this one here, at the Art School. Thanks Joe for this wee video.
Video: Joe Crogan
Music: Koopa Boss Mode – Laser Sword
Date: 13 June 2010
Location: Art School, Glasgow
Psychology · 9 July 2010, 20:16 ·
Fear, Faces and the Amygdala
Brain imaging techniques such as CT, fMRI and EEG have revolutionised psychology. They are indeed exciting technologies that can offer insights into the way our brain works. And thus, scientific columns in newspapers regularly report that a behaviour or perception can be linked to a certain brain area. The idea is that if we know that if a brain area is active during a certain task that is otherwise not, it is involved in the process, or, if a brain area is defective and with it specific cognitive functions, then these are linked, too. But things are not as simple. (They never are) Just because an area is active during a cognitive process does not necessarily tell you what it actually does.
Thus, it was generally assumed that the amygdala was involved in the processing of fear and threat. When psychologists made participants observe fearful faces in an fMRI, the amygdala would lighten up. So the evidence clearly points out that the amygdala is processing fearful faces, isn’t it? Further evidence that the processing of fearful faces is directly linked to the amygdala seemed to be provided by the case of SM, a patient with a lesion in the amygdala, who showed an impairment in recognising fear in facial expressions. Thus, when SM was presented with a number of fearful and happy faces she was able to recognise the happy ones only, and had difficulties identifying faces expressing fear. Therefore, the case of SM seemed to provide considerable support to the hypothesis that the amygdala was involved in the processing of fearful faces. Case sorted, right?
Not quite so. Adolphs et al. (2005) investigated the case further. In faces, fear is primarily expressed in the eye region, and happiness in the area of the mouth. (smile!) Thus, when you want to tell if someone is scared you have to look at her eyes, if you want to know whether someone is happy, you should watch out for a smile. So Adolphs and colleques asked SM to specifically look at the eye region when trying to tell the emotional state of a face. And suddenly SM’s fear peception in faces was equal to that of normal people, who did not show an impairment in the amygdala. So the evidence suggests that the amygdala is not directly linked to fear processing, but rather seeks, and makes use of, information in the eye region of faces.
The lessons learnt from this and similar cases is, that although brain imaging technology provides useful insights into cognitive processes, we have to remain cautious about their interpretation. The data provided by brain imaging is correlational only, and it is very difficult to draw causal connections to what certain brain areas are actually processing.
—
This text was inspired by a talk by Philippe Schyns at the Mind Science and Everything Conference.
For further reading, please refer to the following papers:
Adolphs, R., Gosselin, F., Buchanan, T.W., Tranel, D., Schyns, P., & Damasio, A.R. (2005), A mechanism for impaired fear recognition after amygdala damage, Nature 433, 68-72 | DOI:10.1038/nature03086;
Ralph Adolphsa, R, (2008) Fear, faces, and the human amygdala, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18 (2), Pages 166-172 | DOI:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071
Personal Music · 8 July 2010, 00:23 ·
Console
I’m in love with Console. Apparently he (or rather, they) will be releasing a new album in Autumn. It’s definitely something to look forward to.
It took me a while until I got into him, through my other big love, the Notwist. I had the chance of seeing him on the 2003 Immergut Festival, but I passed it. I was too young. My musical horizon was too limited, and frankly I just didn’t know what to expect. It wasn’t love at first sight, I was distracted by my first love, a different kind of love. But just with Portishead, or even Radiohead, it was love at second sight that proved to be long lasting and fulfilling. Console’s Magnolia is one of these songs that just stuck. It provides a closeness that’s only found in a few songs.
On the other hand “Suck and Run” provided the necessary distance to get over those relationships that did not last:
Also, through Console and his various alter egos like Acid Pauli and the For God Con Soul posse, I keep on stumbling upon plenty of other music that I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise, or, in other instances, would have remained inaccessible to me. Thus, I never really got into Philipp Boa and Pia Lund. Yet in a DJ Set by Console member FC Shuttle, I stumbled upon this rather fun song: Pia Lund – Der Himmel, a hypnotising tale about the prospect of love.
Media · 7 July 2010, 23:40 ·
The Times and the Paywall
A quick note on Murdoch’s experiment of erecting a paywall for the Sunday Times. There is currently an introductory rebate on the online subscription for the Times to get the whole thing started. Thus, you can currently get access to the Times and Sunday Times website for £1 for 30 days, instead of paying £1 per day and £2 for one week’s access.
A drop in readership
Yet the statistics show a considerable drop in visitors. According to Alexa webstats, timesonline.co.uk experienced a considerable drop of -16% of their total page views during the last 7 days, -50.3% over the last month and -18.8% over the last three months. (These Alexa statistics prove to be rather confusing here, but from the graph a big drop at around the introduction of the paywall seems evident.) The Inquirer already proclaims that the Times’ “readership plummets”. But although this is evident from the numbers mentioned, I do not share the view that already means it’s a failed experiment (yet). Whether or not Murdoch played the right card and will make money, depends on how many people will actually sign up, and whether the revenue from the paying readership will be higher than from placing advertisements on the website. It does not matter whether the actual readership declined drastically. It’s about balancing the numbers. If I have 1 million readers who each only earn me 5p per user through advertisements, I have made £50,000. But if I have only a tenth of the readership, but these 100,000 people each pay £1.50 on average, then I have made £150,000, alas thrice as much money. Mind you, these numbers are entirely made up and I believe the actual advertisement-based revenue is much higher than 5p. Yet, no one apart from the Times and Murdoch’s Newscorp have the statistics on this, and even if, it’s too early to tell whether the Times will be duly missed by its online readership. If so, I doubt it was because of its high quality science section.
In the meantime, the Guardian gives all the former Times readers a warm welcome and even begins to publish the data behind their facts and statistics.
Times taking a loose stance on copyright
However, there’s an interesting spin to the Time’s paywall for their “award-winning journalism” (Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International) Yet, the “real value” that she’s talking about seems to come from elsewhere and I’m inclined to say that the paywall the Times erected is permeable, but from the wrong way: The Times have ripped an article about a wee holiday trip of former home secretary Kenneth Clarke and Panorama’s Tom Mangold from a website called Gentlemen Ranters. Ironically, this is the very same behaviour that Murdoch continuously speaks out against: About those horrible blogs and evil Google stealing their precious content from their websites and not paying for it. No, the Times did not pay the Gentlemen Ranters, they did not even ask for permission. And although they credit the author, they don’t not mention the original source, thus depriving the Gentlemen Ranters of traffic. Ironically, even Google and most bloggers would have linked and accredited the source properly. But it seems that the media industry has double standards here: It’s not ok if you want to access content for free, but they may use whatever they want, put it behind a paywall and don’t pay a penny for it.
References
For an in-depth discussion of paywalls, I can recommend Shirky’s outlook on the future of newspapers and Cecil Adams case study of online boards.
Music · 30 June 2010, 20:15 ·
Muslimgauze - A Small Intricate Box Which Contains Old Blue Opium Marzipan
Personal · 22 June 2010, 22:40 ·
The Sun is, as a matter of fact, green
My Sun frame is back from the powder coaters in a lovely British Racing Green. I will get some white paint and do the appliances over the weekend. After that, the folks from Common Wheel are going to take over again and do their mastery, to bring this old frame back to glory.
