Friday, September 27, 2013
Childhood movie scenes
Most of the movie scenes that stand out from my childhood were the things that scared me. The heffalumps and woozles from Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, the witch from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and the tyrannosaur from the first The Land Before Time movie. All these scenes had scary music and scary faces. The floating crazy eyes of the heffalumps and woozles and the eerie song (which is now just cute and funny) warning me that "heffalumps and woozles steal honey: beware, beware!"was enough to send me running out of the room. The evil witch queen from Snow White was always in a dark ominous room and was especially scary when she transformed into the witch with long scraggly hair. Oh, and the trees in the forest trying to grab Snow White as she spun around crying scared me a lot as well. And the tyrannosaur? It had big scary teeth and it killed Littlefoot's mom! If it could kill a mom, Littlefoot had no chance. I don't know why the scary things are the things I remember the best. I watched a lot of happy movies too, but they were never the ones that visited me in the middle of the night.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Music and Memories
Most people connect songs and memories, but until a few years ago we didn't understand why. Back in 2009, cognitive neuroscientists found a link in the prefrontal cortex of our brains between where we store our memories and where we process musical input. Because the prefrontal cortex is one of the last parts of the brain to atrophy in Alzheimer's patients, neuroscientists hope to use music to help bring back some lost memories. When I worked in an Alzheimer's ward, nothing could get the residents quite as happy and relaxed as listening to Elvis Presley. No matter how far gone they were, they all remembered Elvis.
The songs that are most special to me are from my childhood. Dad would pull out his guitar at night and play Neil Young's Heart of Gold and Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends. Paul Simon, The Doors, and Jim Croce will always make me think of my dad. The Beatles were also a huge part of my growing up years. Twist and Shout puts me right back in front of the kitchen sink, washing dishes with my sisters and splattering bubbles all over the cassette player on the window sill as we enthusiastically shouted right along with John Lennon.
Link with information about the '09 prefrontal cortex study: http://www.livescience.com/5327-music-memory-connection-brain.html
Friday, September 6, 2013
6 seconds to Mars
Had I the opportunity to initiate first contact with an alien species but was limited to a six second video, what would I put into that vital six seconds?
My first thought would be to show video of the ocean and a human caring for marine life in some way, then switch to plants and land and show a human watering a plant and another caring for an animal and then for a child. I would want to establish in the minds of the aliens, if only just vaguely, that humans are the dominant life form on the planet Earth and we take our job as caretakers seriously. In this way I would be able to indicate that while we are not naturally a warlike species, we will protect our planet, thus covering my bases whether the aliens turn out to be hostile or not. But if the aliens are half observant, upon arriving on earth they would quickly realize that this is not an accurate representation of our species and may be overly skeptical of anything else we tell them. So in order to gain a trusting relationship with this new alien species, it would probably be simpler to just send them a six second compilation video of as many people as I could fit waving at the camera and saying "hello" in their native language. This way, no matter which country the aliens happen to land in, they know how to say hi and can make their own observations and judgements about humanity.
My first thought would be to show video of the ocean and a human caring for marine life in some way, then switch to plants and land and show a human watering a plant and another caring for an animal and then for a child. I would want to establish in the minds of the aliens, if only just vaguely, that humans are the dominant life form on the planet Earth and we take our job as caretakers seriously. In this way I would be able to indicate that while we are not naturally a warlike species, we will protect our planet, thus covering my bases whether the aliens turn out to be hostile or not. But if the aliens are half observant, upon arriving on earth they would quickly realize that this is not an accurate representation of our species and may be overly skeptical of anything else we tell them. So in order to gain a trusting relationship with this new alien species, it would probably be simpler to just send them a six second compilation video of as many people as I could fit waving at the camera and saying "hello" in their native language. This way, no matter which country the aliens happen to land in, they know how to say hi and can make their own observations and judgements about humanity.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Life without media
Life would be dramatically different without media, especially books and other kinds of writing.
We would know next to nothing about history. Without any murals or other kinds of artistic recordings, the only method of recording history would be oral traditions.
The ancient Babylonians set up huge stone pillars in their major cities inscribed with all the laws of their country. Without even this option available to us, country size would be confined to the reach of traveling heralds memorizing and announcing new laws. Even traffic laws (if, by some miracle, cars had been invented) would have to be passed on orally in the absence of traffic signs.
Technology advancements would be greatly stunted because without a fast and efficient way of passing on and sharing information, each tiny advance would take years.
The medical field would be vastly different; without reference manuals to consult, doctors would be limited to the not unimpressive information that they or their closest colleagues had memorized.
Higher learning would be restricted to those families who could afford to apprentice their children to an oral professor, and even then their learning would be confined to the information their brain could effectively store.
Without recording devices or players, music would only exist as people created it. Music would be primarily a communal experience rather than a private one.
For me, personally, in a world without media I would be phenomenally undereducated. As a poor kid, my parents would be unable to pay for my education and I would be unable to learn on my own. I would probably sing a very great deal whatever songs my family and neighbors sang and I had learned as I worked in whatever occupation my family had been involved in for the past twelve generations - an occupation they knew how to pass on. I would probably dream of a different life, but is unlikely that I would know enough about other lives and places to ever go and see them for myself. Media is a great instructor; without it it would be much more difficult to learn about far off places and things from the past.
We would know next to nothing about history. Without any murals or other kinds of artistic recordings, the only method of recording history would be oral traditions.
The ancient Babylonians set up huge stone pillars in their major cities inscribed with all the laws of their country. Without even this option available to us, country size would be confined to the reach of traveling heralds memorizing and announcing new laws. Even traffic laws (if, by some miracle, cars had been invented) would have to be passed on orally in the absence of traffic signs.
Technology advancements would be greatly stunted because without a fast and efficient way of passing on and sharing information, each tiny advance would take years.
The medical field would be vastly different; without reference manuals to consult, doctors would be limited to the not unimpressive information that they or their closest colleagues had memorized.
Higher learning would be restricted to those families who could afford to apprentice their children to an oral professor, and even then their learning would be confined to the information their brain could effectively store.
Without recording devices or players, music would only exist as people created it. Music would be primarily a communal experience rather than a private one.
For me, personally, in a world without media I would be phenomenally undereducated. As a poor kid, my parents would be unable to pay for my education and I would be unable to learn on my own. I would probably sing a very great deal whatever songs my family and neighbors sang and I had learned as I worked in whatever occupation my family had been involved in for the past twelve generations - an occupation they knew how to pass on. I would probably dream of a different life, but is unlikely that I would know enough about other lives and places to ever go and see them for myself. Media is a great instructor; without it it would be much more difficult to learn about far off places and things from the past.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)