Why it is hard to share the wealth

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G A P M I N D E R: HOME

G A P M I N D E R: HOME
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How to fold a shirt on Dec 13

Sean O'Brien dons Mitre to read Rilke

Rilke and the Contemporary Reader, by Sean O'Brien: "We live in a period of designer religion and low-cost spirituality, when profundity is another product to be bought off the shelf. A New Age Rilke would not be Rilke at all, of course, and there is nothing to be said to readers who might seek to adapt him to this end. "

Evolutionary Psychology Primer by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby

Evolutionary Psychology Primer by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby:

"The results of these investigations were striking. People who ordinarily cannot detect violations of if-then rules can do so easily and accurately when that violation represents cheating in a situation of social exchange (Cosmides, 1985, 1989; Cosmides & Tooby, 1989; 1992). This is a situation in which one is entitled to a benefit only if one has fulfilled a requirement (e.g., 'If you are to eat those cookies, then you must first fix your bed'; 'If a man eats cassava root, then he must have a tattoo on his chest'; or, more generally, 'If you take benefit B, then you must satisfy requirement R'). Cheating is accepting the benefit specified without satisfying the condition that provision of that benefit was made contingent upon (e.g., eating the cookies without having first fixed your bed)."

2 Hour course in Situated Cognition

Situated Cognition

Emotions in the wild: The situated perspective

Male Golden Sebright Chickens, for example, make a fuss when they find and
consume a valuable morsel of food, but only if there are female chickens in the vicinity(Marler & Evans, 1997). There is, presumably, no point in demonstrating foraging ability to other males!

Breakdancing with fingers - Google Video

Breakdancing with fingers - Google Video

50 Coolest Websites 2005 - TIME.com

50 Coolest Websites 2005 - TIME.com

Nicholas Jones: The art of books

Breathing, Heartbeat, Rhyme

'Dirk Cysarz of Herdecke University is studying the relationship between breathing, heartbeat and rhymed poetry. Among the many biological clocks that control the human body, there are two that are vital: the Mayer waves (ten-second cycles of blood pressure fluctuation) and the breathing cycle (15 breaths per minute). These two vital clocks are not in sync, although one needs the other. Hexameter is the most classic of classic poetry, used by Homer as well as in other civilizations. Cysarz found that reciting hexameter poetry has the effect of synchronizing breathing and heart rate. Similar phenomena are known to occur during the recitation of the Catholic rosary and the "om" mantra. The cardiorespiratory synchronization is probably due to the specific breathing patterns required to recite the verse. So it might be that classic poetry was born because it "felt good" to recite it, and only later was also used to deliver a message.'

from Thymos, a newsletter of consciousness

Infants and Prosody

Investigating how children can possibly learn language at such remarkable speeds, Patricia Kuhl at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington has discovered that the human brain in its early stages is particularly interested in classifying the statistical and prosodic patterns in language. The statistical distributions of sounds is used to infer phonemes and words. This process of language learning has a significant impact on the brain, because it alters the very way the brain works (basically, the brain tunes itself to detecting those patterns of speech). Thus the first language is learned faster than any other language, because other languages use different patterns from the ones that the brain has been modeled in early years to detect.

DIY Universe Creation

Linde...insisted that this genesis-in-a-lab scenario was feasible, at least in principle. "What my theoretical argument shows—and Alan Guth and others who have looked at this matter have come to the same conclusion—is that we can't rule out the possibility that our own universe was created in a lab by someone in another universe who just felt like doing it."

Wordsworth as therapist

John Stuart Mill, ... testified in his “Autobiography” that reading Wordsworth saved him from a nervous breakdown: “What made Wordsworth’s poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of.” - actually far from a silly idea.