Via wikiHow: "Scientists have discovered that about an hour before a person expects to wake up, the body begins releasing a relatively high concentration of the hormone adrenocorticotropin into the blood. They believe that this may prepare the person to wake up. If this is true, you need only prompt the release of this hormone at the right time. (…)
If possible, try to sleep for a multiple of about 90 minutes; your sleep cycle repeats in approximately 90 minute intervals (this will differ from person to person). You can use this to your advantage, as it's easier to awaken from the lighter part (the end) of your sleep cycle."
[ Wunderkammer ]
People vs. Planet
7 Billion
January 10th, 2010
From National Geographic: "Before the 20th century, no human had lived through a doubling of the human population, but there are people alive today who have seen it triple. Sometime in late 2011, according to the UN Population Division, there will be seven billion of us. (…)
The annual meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA) is one of the premier gatherings of the world's demographers. Last April the global population explosion was not on the agenda. 'The problem has become a bit passé,' Hervé Le Bras says. Demographers are generally confident that by the second half of this century we will be ending one unique era in history—the population explosion—and entering another, in which population will level out or even fall. (…)
But one can also draw a different conclusion – that fixating on population numbers is not the best way to confront the future. People packed into slums need help, but the problem that needs solving is poverty and lack of infrastructure, not overpopulation. Giving every woman access to family planning services is a good idea – 'the one strategy that can make the biggest difference to women's lives,' Chandra calls it. But the most aggressive population control program imaginable will not save Bangladesh from sea level rise, Rwanda from another genocide, or all of us from our enormous environmental problems. (…)
The number of people does matter, of course. But how people consume resources matters a lot more. Some of us leave much bigger footprints than others. The central challenge for the future of people and the planet is how to raise more of us out of poverty – the slum dwellers in Delhi, the subsistence farmers in Rwanda – while reducing the impact each of us has on the planet. (…)
How many people can the Earth support? Cohen spent years reviewing all the research, from Leeuwenhoek on. 'I wrote the book thinking I would answer the question,' he says. 'I found out it's unanswerable in the present state of knowledge.' What he found instead was an enormous range of 'political numbers, intended to persuade people' one way or the other. (…)
Seven billion of us soon, nine billion in 2045. Let's hope that Malthus was right about our ingenuity."
My last present in 2010 represents everything I like: Sampling, collages and archiving. Also, it reminds me of my love for the analog in general.
Via Found Magazine: "We collect found stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, doodles – anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. Anything goes."
BookThe Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger provides a stunningly original take on the mystery of the mind in a time when the science of cognition is becoming as controversial as evolution.
Had the dish best served cold at Feedmee (pun intended) and let it go. The bliss kept me up all night and I just could not stop rejoicing. Was also one of those beautiful first days of summer. Thanks for the support, Nicola.
Perfume Black Afgano by Nasomatto, which is almost sold out worldwide. Thanks to my wonderful cousin for getting me another bottle in London.
Quote "It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to." – W. C. Fields.
Recource I love the New Shelton wet/dry for the witty assembly of headline, photo and text always creating something much bigger than the sum of its parts – a Gestalt, in the true sense of its meaning.
Talk Jiddu Krishnamurti's (1995-1986) seven talks and five Q&A meetings, Saanen, Switzerland in 1980 allow an impressive introduction to his radical thinking.
Unbearable loss Christoph Schlingensief (1960–2010). "He encompassed everything we hope of our heroes: virtue, magnetism and the absolute belief in his chosen mission. He had the ability to mobilize the outcast, and the gifted, instilling all with the strength and confidence that he possessed in abundance." – Patti Smith
Via kottge.org: "Connections is a ten-episode documentary television series created, written and presented by science historian James Burke. The series was produced and directed by Mick Jackson of the BBC Science & Features Department and first aired in 1978 (UK) and 1979 (USA). It took an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention and demonstrated how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events were built from one another successively in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology.
Connections explores an Alternative View of Change (the subtitle of the series) that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress. Burke contends that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation. Rather, the entire gestalt of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, each one consisting of a person or group acting for reasons of their own motivations (e.g. profit, curiosity, religious) with no concept of the final, modern result of what either their or their contemporaries' actions finally led to. The interplay of the results of these isolated events is what drives history and innovation, and is also the main focus of the series and its sequels.
Via Design Observer: "The last decade of litigation has brought similar and chilling trends in a every media. It is disconcerting to realize that creative pursuits like music, filmmaking and graphic design are shaped to some degree by unromantic things like copyright law. But if we scan down the history of collage and appropriation we can see the constant influence of political and socio-economic context: Sergey Eisenstein connected his idea of intellectual montage directly to the Bolshevik Revolution, Dada artists like Hannah Höch harnessed the brut power of collage in reaction to war and fascism, and in the late-sixties Guy Debord formulated detournement — a form of transgressive appropriation — as part of a widespread social movement. This history casts a revealing light on the Smithsonian/Showtime deal, and the diminution of sampling in general. It may be gratifying to imagine that our field is animated by an evolving aesthetic consensus, but the fact is that larger social and economic forces exert an immense and often invisible influence over creative practice."
From the comments: "One person who is providing a model for how to deal in archival footage without generating more restrictive copyrights is Rick Prelinger. The Prelinger Archive offers thousands of clips for free download and has demonstrated that this drives business to the clips he sells through Getty Images. Another organization working to create an alternative copyright reality is Creative Commons which offers a range of voluntary 'some rights reserved' licenses. A great general resource on this topic is Stay Free magazine which I relied on heavily while researching this article."
Via Wikipedia: "Knolling is the process of arranging like objects in parallel or 90 degree angles as a method of organization.
The term was first used in 1987 by Andrew Kromelow, a janitor at Frank Gehry's furniture fabrication shop. At the time, Gehry was designing chairs for Knoll, a company famously known for Florence Knoll's angular furniture. Kromelow would arrange any displaced tools at right angles on all surfaces, and called this routine knolling, in that the tools were arranged in right angles — similar to Knoll furniture. The result was an organized surface that allowed the user to see all objects at once."
From The Economist: "When people start out on adult life, they are, on average, pretty cheerful. Things go downhill from youth to middle age until they reach a nadir commonly known as the mid-life crisis. So far, so familiar. The surprising part happens after that. Although as people move towards old age they lose things they treasure — vitality, mental sharpness and looks — they also gain what people spend their lives pursuing: happiness.
This curious finding has emerged from a new branch of economics that seeks a more satisfactory measure than money of human well-being. Conventional economics uses money as a proxy for utility — the dismal way in which the discipline talks about happiness. But some economists, unconvinced that there is a direct relationship between money and well-being, have decided to go to the nub of the matter and measure happiness itself."
[ Wunderkammer ]
Into the dark forrest
Play your mind
December 11th, 2010
Via the New Shelton wet/dry: "We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us." Marcel Proust
Via Neuroskeptic: "What's the best way to overcome depression? Antidepressant drugs, or Buddhist meditation?
A new trial has examined this question. The short answer is that 8 weeks of mindfulness mediation training was just as good as prolonged antidepressant treatment over 18 months. But like all clinical trials, there are some catches."
Via The American Scholar: "Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people's ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.
I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else's; it's always what I've already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It's only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn't turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing."
