Do you see what I hear?

I recently watched this documentary on Synesthesia, which I thought I would share. This is a fascinating condition, in which the 'stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway'. In other words, people have their senses crossed, so that, for example, they not only see visual images, but they can also 'see' sounds or even numbers (which is a great help in math). Or other examples would include someone who can taste words or someone who sees letters as having a particular color.

Even though I am not a synesthete (someone who has this condition), I have often wondered if certain sounds would have a particular color if our brain could register these things. After all, sound is just the vibration waves that our brain interprets as a particular note and color is simply what our brain interprets as a particular wave length.

Even though this condition might be quite annoying, those who have studied the condition feel that it also heightens creativity in those who have it. From Wikipedia: "Famous synesthetes include David Hockney, who perceives music as color, shape, and configuration, and who uses these perceptions when painting opera stage sets but not while creating his other artworks. Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky combined four senses: color, hearing, touch, and smell. Vladimir Nabokov describes his grapheme-color synesthesia at length in his autobiography, Speak, Memory and portrays it in some of his characters. Composers include Duke Ellington, Franz Liszt, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Olivier Messiaen, whose three types of complex colors are rendered explicitly in musical chord structures that he invented. Physicist Richard Feynman describes his colored equations in his autobiography, What Do You Care What Other People Think?"

Anyway, here is the documentary:
Imagine having the taste of earwax in your mouth every time someone says 'Derek'. Weird as it may sound, this is an abnormal condition that James Wannerton faces. Scientist have discovered that this condition is due to mixed up senses. Some people can see colours of certain words or numbers and some can taste them.

For years scientists dismissed it, putting it in the same category as séances and spoon-bending. But now, synaesthesia is sparking a revolution in our understanding of the human mind. 

Castle Courtyard I, 1908 by Kandinsky 

God on the Brain

I had just finished my previous post about 'Putting Things in Perspective', where I posted some pictures of the relative size of planets and stars, when I came across the following video. I listen to a lot of documentaries as I work at the computer and found this on fulldocumentaries.com ... although it turned out this was not really a documentary. Anyway, I thought it was strange because it starts out by showing the very images that I had just posted. What are the odds, considering this title has NOTHING to do with my previous post. As I quote again, 'life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind could invent'.

Jesus Christ: Above Church and Beyond Denominations


Well, the video is really long and I didn't really listen to it all because its mostly just people talking and kind of saying the same thing. But I do agree that Christians need to stop their squabblings and denominations and really follow and be like Christ. As Ghandi once said "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

I write this quote in sadness because I am a Christian, but I too agree with Ghandi in that the cultural Christianity that has developed especially in America is so far from the way that Christ showed us how to live. I'm far from being like Christ and I know that we are all at various stages in our spiritual journeys, but at least I know I need a lot of work. The thing that I think puts a lot of people off to Christianity is when Christians act like they have all the answers or are selective in their love for people, based on what they do or what their 'sins' are. The thing that I love about Jesus is that he always loved anyone and everyone... and thats the image of Christ that I want to be like.

The thing is that when I look at the pictures from my previous post, it really hits home to me just HOW MUCH I don't know. But it also makes me think about how it all got here... because even if it did start with a bang, all that energy had to come from somewhere - and so where did that energy come from? Actually, I think about this quite often. You could say I have God on the brain. I wouldn't say I'm a religious person and I think that religions have often done just as much harm as good in many ways, but I just find myself almost continually wondering about life, infinity, meaning, consciousness, and the nature of the universe and who God is.

The following is an interesting documentary I was watching earlier this week.

These people suffer from one of the strangest of all brain disorders. It makes them think they have been touched by god. But their unusual condition is giving scientists a unique insight into faith and the human mind. As a result researchers are now asking one of them most explosive questions of all - could it be that the physical makeup of our brain programmes us to believe in god? Or are our brains created in such a way to allow man to commune with God... are they receptors for understanding the supernatural?



Watch the rest here. I know this research is somewhat controversial, but I still find it interesting and I welcome any thoughts as long as it is in love :)

Plant Ponderings

I LOOOOOVE plants. I love the peace and serenity I feel when I'm around them. When I was a kid, I especially loved picking flowers and gardening (still do!), but then when I was in high school I used to think plants were a little boring... they just weren't as interesting as animals. Then I spent a semester in Costa Rica and another doing an agricultural internship, and I was hooked! My senior yr. I worked at the Museum of Science greenhouse in Boston, and after that I always hoped that I would have my own greenhouse some day. Now I do, and I'm so looking forward to spring!

Fortunately, I also have an indoor greenhouse which sustains me through winter. This is my absolute favorite room in my house. I fell in love when I first walked in. Even though we have a formal dining room, we've never actually eaten in it because we love having our meals amongst the beautiful tropical foliage.

The following is one of my absolutely favorite plant documentaries, although its only the first part. I love David Attenborough and I love the high-speed videography. It really helps you see how plants live and move. Sometimes I think about what we would look like from a plant's perspective if they had eyes.. we would be like flies buzzing around because we move around so fast compared to them. Anyway, this is great to watch even if you're not obsessed with plants like I am. I used to show these videos to my students when I was teaching, and they always expressed how it brought botany alive to them. I hope you enjoy!

Infinity plus one

In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.

I guess thinking about infinity and then infinities multiplied by infinities can overwhelm your brain. We owe these men a lot even though most of us don't recognize it or even know these names. I'm glad that I don't have to try to understand this stuff though, even though I find it fascinating.

One Misty Moisty Morning

The snow from yesterday is melting, because of today's rain, causing the snow to evaporate into a thin mist... and it is a very 'misty moisty morning'. I wasn't particularly thinking of the nursery rhyme this morning though until I stumbled upon a documentary about 'The Leatherman', a hobo who wandered around Connecticut and NY in the 19th century. The documentary begins with this little nursery rhyme/ song. I've always loved this rhyme, even though I never always knew the words entirely or what it was about.





The documentary makes it kind of seem that the rhyme had actually began because of this person, but I looked it up and it is much older. There are a number of versions, but here is the whole song:

One misty moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather,

I chanced to meet an old man a-clothèd all in leather.

He was clothèd all in leather, with a cap beneath his chin,

Singing 'How d'ye do and how d'ye do and how d'ye do again'.

This rustic was a thresher, as on his way he hied,

And with a leather bottle fast buckled by his side.

He wore no shirt upon his back, but wool unto his skin,

Singing 'How d'ye do and how d'ye do and how d'ye do again'.

I went a little further and there I met a maid

'A-going, a-milking, a-milking sir' she said.

Then I began to compliment and she began to sing,

Singing 'How d'ye do and how d'ye do and how d'ye do again'.

This maid her name was Dolly, clothed in a gown of grey,

I feeling somewhat jolly persuaded her to stay.

And straight I fell a-courting her in hopes her love to win,

Singing 'How d'ye do and how d'ye do and how d'ye do again'.

I having time and leisure, I spent a vacant hour

A-telling of my treasure while sitting in her bower.

With many kind embraces, I stroked her double chin,

Singing 'How d'ye do and how d'ye do and how d'ye do again'.

I said that I would married be, and she would be my bride,

And long we should not tarry and twenty things beside.

I'll plough and sow and reap and mow, and you shall sit and spin,

Singing 'How d'ye do and how d'ye do and how d'ye do again'.

Her parents then consented, all parties were agreed,

Her portion thirty shillings, we married were with speed.

Then Will the Piper he did play, whilst others dance and sing,

Saying 'How d'ye do and how d'ye do and how d'ye do again'.

Then lusty Ralph and Robin, with many damsels gay,

Did ride on roan and dobbin to celebrate the day,

And when they met together, their caps they off did fling,

Singing

'How d'ye do and

How d'ye do and

How d'ye do and

How d'ye doooooo .....

... and How d'ye do again!'.

I often wonder about nursery rhymes.. how they began and why they get passed along or how they change along the way. Some are really bizarre and as kids we don't even realize it. Like 'Ring around the Rosie' is perhaps said to be associated with the plague... or at least that was what I was told a few years ago. I just looked this up on wikipedia however and found that it is probably not true, although the rationalization for the argument does make some sense to me.


Many have associated the poem with the Great Plague of London in 1665, or with earlier outbreaks of bubonic plague in England. Interpreters of the rhyme before World War II make no mention of this;[15] by 1951, however, it seems to have become well established as an explanation for the form of the rhyme that had become standard in the United Kingdom. Peter and Iona Opie remark: "The invariable sneezing and falling down in modern English versions have given would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague. A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, posies of herbs were carried as protection, sneezing was a final fatal symptom , and 'all fall down' was exactly what happened."[16][17] The line Ashes, Ashes in alternative versions of the rhyme is claimed to refer variously to cremation of the bodies, the burning of victims' houses, or blackening of their skin, and the theory has been adapted to be applied to other versions of the rhyme, or other plagues.[18] In its various forms, the interpretation has entered into popular culture and has been used elsewhere to make oblique reference to the plague.[19] (For 'hidden meaning' in other nursery rhymes see Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, Humpty Dumpty, Jack Be Nimble, Little Jack Horner, Cock Robin and Meanings of nursery rhymes.)
Folklore scholars regard the theory as baseless for several reasons:
the late appearance of the explanation;[15]
the symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague;[17][20]
the great variety of forms makes it unlikely that the modern form is the most ancient one, and the words on which the interpretation are based are not found in many of the earliest records of the rhyme (see above);[18][21]
European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this "fall" was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.[22]

Anyway, just some random musings on this misty moisty morning.

1984, The Power of Nightmares, and Howard Zinn

I recently started reading the novel, 1984, by George Orwell. I realize its the kind of book you're supposed to read in high school or college, but for some reason it was never part of our curriculum (it probably has something to do with the schools I went to). I've been wanting to read it for years now, but there are just SO many books I want to read, some get put on the waiting list.

Well, I am loving this book so far and I just thought I'd write down some thoughts. In 1984, I was five years old. Fortunately, the 1984 I grew up in did not turn out as in the novel. We were in the thick of the cold war, however; although I was much more concerned with playing dress-up than what was happening in the USSR or in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. As I grew though, I was taught history from a particular perspective and I saw the news from a similar perspective. I remember however, when I first started to discover that our history was far from an exact science and that it all depended on who was telling that story. And as I continued to grow and explore the world, I talked with former Sandinistas in Nicaragua and listed to the perspective of those who lived through those same years on the other side, in the former USSR. I finally had to admit that some of what I knew as history was not just a particular perspective of the truth, but it had been a lie from the beginning.

And in light of these things, it makes you wonder what we are being told today about the 'war on terror'.

In some ways, the rhetoric today doesn't often sound very different from Big Brother in 1984:

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.



This week I was also re-watching a documentary series called The Power of Nightmares. It is extremely thought-provoking and touches on these same issues. This is the summary on youtube:

"Interesting BBC film concerning the parallel development of modern Islamic radicalism and Neo-conservatism. Details the rise of the latter movement and its masquerade as traditional conservatism to garner support and acquire power. This film also discusses the development of the current Arab political ideology and shows how both movements originated from the same basic philosophy: masses are more malleable when they are living in a constant state of fear."

You may or may not agree with it, but I encourage anyone to watch it and I welcome the discussion.



It's an 18 part series (about 10 min. each), so here is the link to my playlist with them all in order. There are also some other great documentaries on there:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2DCC80F22B67074B

My last thought on this topic, is to mourn the death of Howard Zinn, who passed away last week. He was one who showed us that history could be written in a more complete or different perspective. As a child, history always just seemed to be memorizing dates and places, but as I grew I learned how important history was in discovering who we are and for helping us to (hopefully) learn from our mistakes. I am thankful to people like Zinn for helping me to see this, and I feel blessed to have met him.