{ Richard Avedon, Stephanie Seymour, Model, New York City, 1992 | gelatin silver print, signed, numbered ‘5/5′ in pencil, copyright credit and reproduction title stamps (on the verso) 57¾ x 46in. (146.6 x 116.8cm.) | $182,500 | The stylist for this shoot was Polly Allen Mellon, the dress is by Comme des Garçons, Ms. Seymour’s hair is styled by Oribe, her make-up is by Kevin Aucoin. | Christie’s }
A neurologist and other scientists argue animals are capable of having spiritual experiences.
The researchers hold that spiritual experiences originate within primitive parts of the human brain, structures shared by animals.
The challenge lies in proving what animals experience. (…)
A Neurology journal study, for example, determined that out-of-body experiences in humans are likely caused by the brain’s arousal system, which regulates different states of consciousness.
“In humans, we know that if we disrupt the (brain) region where vision, sense of motion, orientation in the Earth’s gravitational field, and knowing the position of our body all come together, then out-of-body experiences can be caused literally by the flip of a switch,” he said. “There is absolutely no reason to believe it is any different for a dog, cat, or primate’s brain.”
Other mammals also probably have near-death experiences comparable to those reported by certain humans, he believes.
The brain has long enjoyed a privileged status as psychology’s favorite body organ. This is, of course, unsurprising given that the brain instantiates virtually all mental operations, from understanding language, to learning that fire is dangerous, to recalling names, to categorizing fruits and vegetables, to predicting the future. Arguing for the importance of the brain in psychology is like arguing for the importance of money in economics.
More surprising, however, is the role of the entire body in psychology and the capacity for body parts inside and out to influence and regulate the most intimate operations of emotional and social life. The stomach’s gastric activity , for example, corresponds to how intensely people experience feelings such as happiness and disgust. The hands’ manipulation of objects that vary in temperature and texture influences judgments of how “warm” or “rough” people are. And the ovaries and testes’ production of progesterone and testosterone shapes behavior ranging from financial risk-taking to shopping preferences.
Psychology’s recognition of the body’s influence on the mind coincides with a recent focus on the role of the heart in our social psychology. It turns out that the heart is not only critical for survival, but also for how people related to one another.
{ Scientific American | Continue reading }
One of the pressing questions in seventeenth century philosophy, and perhaps the most celebrated legacy of Descartes’s dualism, is the problem of how two radically different substances such as mind and body enter into a union in a human being and cause effects in each other. How can the extended body causally engage the unextended mind, which is incapable of contact or motion, and “move” it, that is, cause mental effects such as pains, sensations and perceptions.
Spinoza, in effect, denies that the human being is a union of two substances. The human mind and the human body are two different expressions—under Thought and under Extension—of one and the same thing: the person. And because there is no causal interaction between the mind and the body, the so-called mind-body problem does not, technically speaking, arise.
photo { Philippe Halsman }
Researchers say women really do sweat far less than men, particularly during intensive exercise.
On average, they tend to perspire half as much after similar amounts of physical activity in the same temperatures.
Sweating is an essential bodily function which cools us down. As we release fluid through our skin it evaporates, and this process takes heat from the body, lowering our overall temperature.
Scientists believe that thousands of years ago men evolved to sweat more than women as they tended to be more active.
They needed to cool down quickly while hunting wild animals in sweltering heat, for example.
By contrast, women evolved to sweat less, the experts believe. Their smaller bodies contain less water than men’s so if they perspire too much, there is a danger they will become dehydrated.
The Japanese researchers warn that women may be more at risk from heat stroke as their bodies are not as good at naturally cooling themselves down.
But the scientists also discovered that very fit people sweat the most, regardless of sex. Someone who plays a lot of sport will give off 60 per cent more bodily fluid during exercise than someone of the same sex who is relatively inactive.
photo { Stephanie Gonot }
Seeing as how fashion month has just ended, I thought it would be appropriate to write about what a stylist’s role is on runway shows. On some shows, I merely choose shoes for the looks, and on others I am involved six months before the show, from creative conception to the completion of the show.
Stylists cover the gamut for a designer by bringing in an outside perspective and fashion expertise of what is relevant, irrelevant and “new.” Stylists are needed on a runway show to edit the looks, ensure the designer is showing the most innovative pieces from a collection and that the hair, makeup, and models are on target with everything else happening in the world of fashion. A great stylist can take inspiration from the designer and translate it into every element of the runway show, from the manicure to the music.
photo { Meadham Kirchhoff, Spring 2011 Ready-to-Wear }
bonus:
{ 1. unsourced | 2. Ignas Kozlovas }
The Critique of Judgment, published in 1790, not only closes off Kant’s system as the end toward which Enlightenment thought had always tended, but also, in Deleuze’s interpretation, inaugurates Romanticism, (…) represents nothing less than “the foundation of Romanticism.”
{ Kant, Romantic irony, Unheimlichkeit | Cambridge University Press | Continue reading | PDF }
Kant (1724–1804) defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work The Critique of Pure Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant asserts that experience is based both upon the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge.
The Critique of Practical Reason (1788), is the second of Kant’s three critiques, deals with his moral philosophy. While the first Critique suggested that God, freedom, and immortality are unknowable, the second Critique will mitigate this claim.
Kant’s contribution to aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of “judgments of taste.” After A. G. Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750–58), Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system.
{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }
To understand the project of the Critique better, let us consider the historical and intellectual context in which it was written. Kant wrote the Critique toward the end of the Enlightenment, which was then in a state of crisis. Hindsight enables us to see that the 1780’s was a transitional decade in which the cultural balance shifted decisively away from the Enlightenment toward Romanticism, but of course Kant did not have the benefit of such hindsight.
The Enlightenment was a reaction to the rise and successes of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The spectacular achievement of Newton in particular engendered widespread confidence and optimism about the power of human reason to control nature and to improve human life. One effect of this new confidence in reason was that traditional authorities were increasingly questioned. For why should we need political or religious authorities to tell us how to live or what to believe, if each of us has the capacity to figure these things out for ourselves? (…)
Enlightenment is about thinking for oneself rather than letting others think for you. (…) The Enlightenment was about replacing traditional authorities with the authority of individual human reason, but it was not about overturning traditional moral and religious beliefs. (…)
So modern science, the pride of the Enlightenment, the source of its optimism about the powers of human reason, threatened to undermine traditional moral and religious beliefs that free rational thought was expected to support. This was the main intellectual crisis of the Enlightenment.
The Critique of Pure Reason is Kant’s response to this crisis. Its main topic is metaphysics because, for Kant, metaphysics is the domain of reason – it is “the inventory of all we possess through pure reason, ordered systematically” (Axx) — and the authority of reason was in question. Kant’s main goal is to show that a critique of reason by reason itself, unaided and unrestrained by traditional authorities, establishes a secure and consistent basis for both Newtonian science and traditional morality and religion. (…)
Hindsight enables us to see that the 1780’s was a transitional decade in which the cultural balance shifted decisively away from the Enlightenment toward Romanticism, but of course Kant did not have the benefit of such hindsight.
{ 1. Joseph Jastrow’s Duck-Rabbit, 1899, based on drawing published in German humor magazine Fliegende Blatter, 1892 | 2. Taxidermed rabbit–duck | via Richard Wiseman }
I noticed a depiction of the famous “duck-rabbit” figure, described as an “illusion” and attributed to Wittgenstein (Malach, Levy, & Hasson, 2002).
Technically, the duck-rabbit figure is an ambiguous (or reversible, or bistable) figure, not an illusion (Peterson, Kihlstrom, Rose, & Glisky, 1992). The two classes of perceptual phenomena have quite different theoretical implications. From a constructivist point of view, many illusions illustrate the role of unconscious inferences in perception, while the ambiguous figures illustrate the role of expectations, world-knowledge, and the direction of attention (Long & Toppino, 2004).For example, children tested on Easter Sunday are more likely to see the figure as a rabbit; if tested on a Sunday in October, they tend to see it as a duck or similar bird (Brugger & Brugger, 1993).
But the more important point of this letter concerns attribution: the duck-rabbit was “originally noted” not by Wittgenstein, but rather by the American psychologist Joseph Jastrow in 1899.
{ The townspeople demanded that Mary be killed. Debates on how to kill Mary ensued. It was determined that no gun existed big enough to take her down. Electrocution and canons were other proposed methods. Finally, it was decided that Mary would be hung from a rail yard crane in the nearby town of Erwin, Tennessee. | Keep my words | Continue reading }
related { Squirrels refuse medical care }
bonus:
MEDICINE PRIZE: Simon Rietveld of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Ilja van Beest of Tilburg University, The Netherlands, for discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE
Eric Adams of MIT, Scott Socolofsky of Texas A&M University, Stephen Masutani of the University of Hawaii, and BP [British Petroleum], for disproving the old belief that oil and water don’t mix.PHYSICS PRIZE: Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest of the University of Otago, New Zealand, for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.
MANAGEMENT PRIZE
Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE
Manuel Barbeito, Charles Mathews, and Larry Taylor of the Industrial Health and Safety Office, Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA, for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists.
New research indicates that holding a pose that opens up a person’s body and takes up space will alter hormone levels and make the person feel more powerful and more willing to take risks.
“These poses actually make you more powerful,” said study researcher Amy C.J. Cuddy, a social psychologist at the Harvard Business School.
The opposite also proved true: Constrictive postures lowered a person’s sense of power and willingness to take risks. (…)
The basic idea is that the mind/body relationship is not a one-way street, with the mind giving orders for the body to carry out. Rather, the body also influences the mind. Other studies have indicated, for example, that holding an expression, like a smile, can alter one’s mood, as can a hunched posture.
SCUBA: Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
RADAR: Radio detection and ranging
HSBC: Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation
JPEG: Joint photographic experts group
RSVP: Répondez s’il vous plaît
photo { Stanley Donwood, Teeth, 2006 }
You have a large box, a small box, and three stones. How can you put the stones in the boxes to ensure that each box contains an odd number of stones? There are at least two solutions – can you find both of them?
{ Another puzzle | Solutions }
There is a contemporary art genre still under the radar of many collectors and dealers: performance art. Performance art is, however, finally coming in from the margins with a flood of prestigious exhibitions and museum initiatives that throw new light on a medium often seen as a relic of the 1970s. And anyway – how is it possible to speak of buying and selling, or collecting, an art form that has no object, only a process and an experience? (…)
At what point did acquiring performance art switch from owning objects associated with the actions, such as videos and photographs, to possessing the “idea” behind the piece? Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal has evidently turned collecting criteria on their heads. He sells his performance art pieces by means of verbal transactions in the presence of a lawyer with no written contract. Instructions on how to re-enact his works are delivered literally by word-of-mouth, with collectors under strict orders never to photograph or video his “constructed situations”. Yet they sell in editions of four to six for $85,000 to $145,000 each, according to The Art Newspaper.
photo { Roy DeCarava, Dancers, 1956 }
{ 1. 2029 | Thanks Daemian | 2. Mimi }
Nobody asked me, but the building was designed for the Astor Estate by Herman Lee Meader, a Harvard-trained architect who gave legendary parties and kept a boa in his penthouse.
{ Christopher Gray | Photo: Ray Sawhill }
Herman Lee Meader (died February 14, 1930 at 55) was an American architect and author. He designed several prominent buildings in Manhattan, both commercial and residential, as well as much work on the Astor estate, including the Waldorf building located at 8 west 33rd St., then the heart of the fashionable shopping district. Meader lived in the Waldorf Building penthouse, where he created a surrounding rooftop Italian garden. There he held elaborate parties which attracted musicians, artists, writers, prizefighters, chess players and others—at one, Meader staged a fight between a black snake and a king snake.
bonus [click to enlarge]:
{ NY Times }
{ Harder to notice was that the person at the wheel was not actually driving. The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver. | NY Times | Continue reading }
Matter and Memory (1896) is one of the four main works by the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941). Its subtitle is “Essay on the relation of body and spirit”, and the work presents an analysis of the classical philosophical problems concerning this relation. (…)
Bergson distinguishes two different forms of memory. On the one hand memories concerning habitude, replaying and repeating past action, not strictly recognized as representing the past, but utilizing it for the purpose of present action. This kind of memory is automatic, inscribed within the body, and serving a utilitarian purpose. Bergson takes as an example the learning of a verse by rote: Recitation tending toward non-reflective and mechanical repetition. The duration of the habitual recitation tends toward the regular and one may compare this kind of memory to a practical knowledge or habit. “It is habitude clarified by memory, more than memory itself strictly speaking.” Pure memory, on the other hand, registers the past in the form of “image-remembrance”, representing the past, recognized as such. It is of a contemplative and fundamentally spiritual kind, and it is free. This is true memory. Bergson takes as his example the remembrance of the lesson of learning the same verse, a dated fact that cannot be recreated. Pure memory or remembrance permits the acknowledgment that the lesson has been learned in the past, cannot be repeated, and is not internal to the body.
{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }
Bergson’s famous (or infamous) image of the memory cone. The image of the inverted cone occurs twice in the third chapter of Matter and Memory (pp. 152 and 162). The image of the cone is constructed with a plane and an inverted cone whose summit is inserted into the plane. The plane, “plane P,” as Bergson calls it, is the “plane of my actual representation of the universe.” The cone “SAB,” of course, is supposed to symbolize memory, specifically, the true memory or regressive memory.
photo { Robb Johnson }
