Category: The Dish

Since the ancients found that buildings can affect sound – hence acoustics – architects have known that the way buildings are constructed can affect the way people think and feel in them. And as science advances, especially neuroscience, the tools available to create new moods through new buildings keep multiplying. This was an interesting discovery:

An experiment conducted at the University of Minnesota asserts that ceiling height can affect how one thinks. In a series of experiments, people were asked to do perform certain tasks, some of which favored abstract thinking and others favoring detail-oriented thinking. It was found that, in general, people focused more on specifics when the ceiling was eight feet high and more on the abstract when the ceiling was ten feet high. One of the authors of the study, Joan Meyers-Levy, suggested that this has great implications. She suggested that, perhaps, managers would want higher ceilings to think of new, broad initiatives while technicians and engineers might want lower ceilings to help them focus on details.

According to [Jim] Olds, [a neuroscientist at George Mason University], not every design firm is sold on the idea that architecture affects people on a neurological level. Still, he notes that what he calls ‘neuromarketting’ is a growing and well funded field that could well expand into mainstream architecture.

“Well, neuromarketting is a big field and it’s highly funded… And brain scanning is now replacing the focus group as a way to do marketing and certainly product placement in a retail space is an extremely important component of marketing,” said Olds.

More here.

An online quiz! Among the categories:

“Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm,” “Literate Good Citizen,” “Book Snob,” “Fad Reader,” and “Non Reader.”

Have at it.

And they know from melody:

Watanabe and Sato [Behav. Processes 47, 1 (1999)] have shown that Java sparrows can discriminate between Bach’s French Suite no. 5 in G minor and Arnold Schoenberg’s Suite for Piano opus 25. The birds were also able to generalize new music by Bach (Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major) and Schoenberg (Five Orchestra Pieces, Opus 16) and artists in similar categories, i.e., Vivaldi and Elliott Carter. In these experiments, music by Bach and Vivaldi was considered classical music, while the music of Schoenberg and Carter was considered modern music. Watanabe and Nemoto [Behav. Processes 43, 2 (1998)] have also shown that, given the option of three perches producing either silence, classical, or modern music, the Java sparrows preferred Bach to Schoenberg and Vivaldi to Carter. These results indicate that Java sparrows or songbirds prefer classical to modern music, or perhaps just more harmonious to dissonant sounds. Additionally, the sparrows chose music they ‘liked’ (e.g., Bach) over silence or music they ‘disliked’ (e.g., Schoenberg)."

Alex Ross’s book of essays on twentieth century music, "The Rest Is Noise," can be found here.

One American interrogator in Iraq felt it, and resisted. He has some lessons from the experience.

Yeah: these guys are apparently critical social glue. Everything is explained here.

A reader writes re: John Lewis:

Let me come to your defense on this. The question you asked (Did Bill get to him?) is a valid one. It is a question that will only get someone’s knickers in a twist if they have a short memory and/or don’t know the facts.

In March of this year when Obama and Clinton were in Selma, Ala. to commemmorate the march, John Lewis was on Obama’s side. He was with him at Brown Chapel AME Church and not with Clinton at the First Baptist Church. As I understand it, he (John Lewis) wanted to come out for Obama then, but Bill stepped in to ask him to wait.

I won’t go on any further, but I see your question as a good and valid one. To which I’ll answer with not Yeah … but HELL YEAH!!!!

Fading memory has helped some to forget about the Clintons, their political machine and their ruthlessness. A rising black politician in the Democratic party is a threat to them and their power over blacks. So they are doing what they can to crush him, and punish any Democrat who associates with him. As Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers rise, her leverage increases. As does the fear of those Democrats who know what follows if they cross the power-couple from Hot Springs. I don’t know what prompted Lewis to back Clinton; he marched between Obama and Clinton in Selma, but worshipped with Obama afterwards as you can see above. But I very much doubt that Bill did not have a word with him. Again: the way in which Hillary uses her marriage to advance her own power is striking. No real feminist would do this; only someone who postures as a feminist while using her husband as a tool.

(Photo: Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama speaks with U.S. congressman John Lewis before addressing a crowd gathered for the commemoration of the 1965 Voting Rights March at Brown Chapel AME Church March 4, 2007 in Selma, Alabama. By Scott Olson/Getty.)

If you missed Steven Pinker’s essay in the New Republic, you shouldn’t have. Vaughan at Mind Hacks offers this aside:

Once, whilst drinking with a psycholinguist (say that after a few pints) I was taught a useful way of quickly working out the stressed syllable in any English word – something which is apparently called the ‘fuck test’.

Simply insert the word ‘fucking’ into the word, as if you were using the swear word for emphasis, and the syllable that follows the ‘fucking’ is the stressed syllable.

For example, absolutely -> abso-fucking-lutely. The stressed syllable  is the third: i.e. absolutely. It works for every multi-syllable word I’ve found so far.

Which just goes to show that psycholinguists are some of the coolest melonfarmers in the whole of cognitive science.

Absofuckinglutely, man.

There’s a difference between being frugal and being a "tightwad." Marketers are beginning to understand and exploit the difference.

"Shaker visual poetry" is a phrase used to describe the drawings that the Christian sect of Shakers made under the influence of the Holy Spirit. UbuWeb explains:

Between 1837 and 1850 ("known as the Era of Manifestations") the Shakers composed (or were the recipients of) "hundreds of … visionary drawings … really [spiritual] messages in pictorial form," writes Edward Deming Andrews (The Gift To Be Simple, 1940). "The designers of these symbolic documents felt their work was controlled by supernatural agencies … — gifts bestowed on some individual in the order (usually not the one who made the drawing." The same is true of the "gift songs" and other verbal works, and the invention of forms in both the songs and drawings is extraordinary, as is their resemblance to the practice of later poets and artists.

The above, from the early 1840s, is just one of many such "drawings."

Tacoma, Washington, 10.30 am.