Showing posts with label architectue for culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architectue for culture. Show all posts
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Friday, September 30, 2011
Study finds 'science' makes people sing YMCA
From The Age
Catchy tunes have a scientific "X-factor" that make them singalong hits, British experts have revealed.
Researchers wanted to know why certain songs inspired unabashed wedding guests and clubbers to belt out their favourites in public.
They solved the karaoke conundrum after observing thousands of volunteers as they lent their voices to a long list of tunes.
Singalong songs contained four key elements, the scientists discovered.
These were: long and detailed musical phrases, multiple pitch changes in a song's "hook", male vocalists, and higher male voices making a noticeable vocal effort.
Using this formula, the researchers then compiled a list of the 10 most singalong-able hits.
Number One was We are the Champions by rock group Queen.
Taking the next five places in the singalong chart were YMCA by Village People, Fat Lip by Sum 41, The Final Countdown by Europe, and Monster by The Automatic.
Music psychologist Dr Daniel Mullensiefen, from Goldsmiths University of London, said: "Every musical hit is reliant on maths, science, engineering and technology; from the physics and frequencies of sound that determine pitch and harmony, to the hi-tech digital processors and synthesisers which can add effects to make a song more catchy.
"We've discovered that there's a science behind the singalong and a special combination of neuroscience, maths and cognitive psychology can produce the elusive elixir of the perfect singalong song.
"We hope that our study will inspire musicians of the future to crack the equation for the textbook tune."
The findings were released to coincide with the final call for entries to Britain's 2012 National Science and Engineering Competition, which is open to young people undertaking science and technology projects.
Ex-Queen guitarist Brian May commented: "Fabulous, so it's proved then? We truly are the champions."
Male vocalists are important because singing along to a song is a "subconscious war cry", the researchers believe.
Psychologically, people looked to men to lead them into battle.
Vocal effort indicated high energy and purpose, especially when combined with a smaller vocal range.
Examples of "high effort" male singers included Freddie Mercury of Queen and Jon Bon Jovi.
Other songs on the singalong list included Ruby by the Kaiser Chiefs, I'm Always Here by Jimi Jamison, Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison, Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus, and Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/study-finds-science-makes-people-sing-ymca-20110929-1kz1f.html#ixzz1ZQZb40EY
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/study-finds-science-makes-people-sing-ymca-20110929-1kz1f.html#ixzz1ZQZH4ElH
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Why natural talent is overrated
From The Age September 20, 2011 - 4:36PM
Tiger Woods.
Tiger Woods' father had studied the most effective methods for training young men. Photo: Getty Imageshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Very few of the world’s great achievers were born with any real degree of talent, according to the book Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin.
The book covers great performers from all fields, examining how much of a part talent played in their success.
For example Mozart was born to a father who was a professional music composer and an expert in teaching music, particularly to young men.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Tiger Woods was born to an amateur golfer who also studied the most effective strategies for training young men. Before Tiger could walk, his father would take him to the garage, sit him in his high chair and start to hit golf balls in to a net in the garage. “It was as if he was watching a movie,” Tiger’s father said, according to the book.
In both case studies, both Mozart and Tiger have been labeled through the ages as exceptionally talented. Yet when looking into their history it becomes apparent that there was more at work than just pure talent.
One of Tiger’s childhood coaches once remarked that Tiger “was like Mozart.” According to these accounts, indeed he was.
The research in the field shows that ‘talent’, a natural aptitude in a specific field, does exist yet when it comes to being great in a particular field, it is irrelevant.
So what makes all the difference?
Francis Galton, who authored the book Hereditary Genius in 1869, coined the term “nature versus nurture”.
Galton argued that people had innate limits in what they could achieve in life, and regardless of the work they put in, they would never break past these predetermined boundaries. At which time, it’s best if they just accept it, stay within their boundaries and “find true moral repose in an honest conviction that he is engaged in as much good work as his nature rendered him capable of performing’’. In other words, give up and be content.
This explains a lot of the thought patterns in our culture that surround great performers and the notion that they operate at an unattainable standard. You either have it or you don’t.
Over 100 years has passed but the research continues. Hundreds of studies have been done on the subject; the employees whose performance had plateaued for years, seemingly hitting their “rigidly determinate natural limits”, only to a see a consistent improvement in performance after new incentives were offered.
In his now famous paper, The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, Anders Ericsson concludes that “the search for stable heritable characteristics that could predict or at least account for superior performance…has been surprisingly unsuccessful’’. Meaning after countless case studies, researchers found no relationship between natural talent and great performance.
However at the time of this paper, “natural talent” was still the favoured theory when it came to high achievers. To this the authors indicate, “the conviction in the importance of talent appears to be based on the insufficiency of alternative hypothesis’’. That means people believe in ‘talent’ because they don’t have an alternative.
Until now.
Recent research indicates that the number one determinant when looking at the greats is what has become known as ‘deliberate practice’.
This is not the same as saying ‘experience matters’. Often people who have 20 years experience are found to be performing at a lesser standard to those that have been in a particular field for five years.
Experience alone does not make the difference. Practice alone will not make you great. For example you may go to the driving range and hit golf balls for an hour, going through the motions, making your way through the irons and eventually getting the drivers. However if there isn’t specific concentration and thought going into every stroke and it is simply a form of entertainment, this doesn’t constitute deliberate practice.
It can be similar for people who have remained in the same industry for 20 years. If they haven’t been constantly learning more, seeking feedback and bettering themselves it may be more like one year of experience repeated 20 times.
Deliberate practice has been found to encompass five characteristics:
1. It is designed specifically to improve performance
The exercise often needs to be designed by a teacher or mentor who understands what your weaknesses are and what needs to be done to improve.
The activities need to be designed to stretch you and push you outside your comfort zone. Tiger Woods will drop a golf ball into a sand bunker, step on it, and then play the stroke and he will do that thousands of times until he is exhausted. Tiger may only play that stroke a handful of times through his career, but when he comes to it he is well rehearsed in how to execute.
2. It can be repeated a lot
Repetition counts. Repetition alone however is not good enough, but when focusing on a particular skill-set with a clear outcome, there needs to be high repetition.
In business this can be achieved through role-play and rehearsal. When preparing for a high stakes show in Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve, Chris Rock performed 18 dress rehearsal evenings in small clubs across America, perfecting his material with every laugh.
3. Feedback on results is continually available
In business, feedback is everywhere and often it comes in the form of failure; a proposal that didn’t get through, a presentation that didn’t hit, a deal which fell over. Rather than looking at these experiences as failures, if we can examine what happened and take from it an understanding of what to do differently next time, there is our feedback. This is best done with a mentor or manager.
4. It is highly demanding mentally
Several studies have shown that four or five hours a day seems to be the most we can engage in deliberate practice. This is due to the mental exhaustion that accompanies it.
Even professional athletes that may be hitting more tennis balls in a day than most people do in a year, report that at the end of the day it is the mental exhaustion, not the physical exhaustion, that is most obvious.
5. It isn’t fun
Often people can have a romantic notion of what it is to be an ‘entrepreneur’. These notions don’t usually make it past the first year.
Doing what we’re good at is enjoyable. However when you take what you are good at, hone in on your weaknesses and repeat a deliberately designed exercise to the point of mental exhaustion, often it is not fun.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
This is of course a good thing. If it were easy – everyone would be doing it.
The research highlights that when looking at business moguls such as Branson, Gates or Trump, we no longer have an excuse to write them off as being “on another level” or “unbelievably talented.” Admittedly these people may be on another level today, however the studies show that they weren’t born there. It was through hours, years and decades of deliberate practice, that they were able to attain a level of performance somewhat resembling greatness.
As Colvin concludes: “great performance is not reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and everyone
Read more here:
Tiger Woods.
Tiger Woods' father had studied the most effective methods for training young men. Photo: Getty Imageshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Very few of the world’s great achievers were born with any real degree of talent, according to the book Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin.
The book covers great performers from all fields, examining how much of a part talent played in their success.
For example Mozart was born to a father who was a professional music composer and an expert in teaching music, particularly to young men.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Tiger Woods was born to an amateur golfer who also studied the most effective strategies for training young men. Before Tiger could walk, his father would take him to the garage, sit him in his high chair and start to hit golf balls in to a net in the garage. “It was as if he was watching a movie,” Tiger’s father said, according to the book.
In both case studies, both Mozart and Tiger have been labeled through the ages as exceptionally talented. Yet when looking into their history it becomes apparent that there was more at work than just pure talent.
One of Tiger’s childhood coaches once remarked that Tiger “was like Mozart.” According to these accounts, indeed he was.
The research in the field shows that ‘talent’, a natural aptitude in a specific field, does exist yet when it comes to being great in a particular field, it is irrelevant.
So what makes all the difference?
Francis Galton, who authored the book Hereditary Genius in 1869, coined the term “nature versus nurture”.
Galton argued that people had innate limits in what they could achieve in life, and regardless of the work they put in, they would never break past these predetermined boundaries. At which time, it’s best if they just accept it, stay within their boundaries and “find true moral repose in an honest conviction that he is engaged in as much good work as his nature rendered him capable of performing’’. In other words, give up and be content.
This explains a lot of the thought patterns in our culture that surround great performers and the notion that they operate at an unattainable standard. You either have it or you don’t.
Over 100 years has passed but the research continues. Hundreds of studies have been done on the subject; the employees whose performance had plateaued for years, seemingly hitting their “rigidly determinate natural limits”, only to a see a consistent improvement in performance after new incentives were offered.
In his now famous paper, The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, Anders Ericsson concludes that “the search for stable heritable characteristics that could predict or at least account for superior performance…has been surprisingly unsuccessful’’. Meaning after countless case studies, researchers found no relationship between natural talent and great performance.
However at the time of this paper, “natural talent” was still the favoured theory when it came to high achievers. To this the authors indicate, “the conviction in the importance of talent appears to be based on the insufficiency of alternative hypothesis’’. That means people believe in ‘talent’ because they don’t have an alternative.
Until now.
Recent research indicates that the number one determinant when looking at the greats is what has become known as ‘deliberate practice’.
This is not the same as saying ‘experience matters’. Often people who have 20 years experience are found to be performing at a lesser standard to those that have been in a particular field for five years.
Experience alone does not make the difference. Practice alone will not make you great. For example you may go to the driving range and hit golf balls for an hour, going through the motions, making your way through the irons and eventually getting the drivers. However if there isn’t specific concentration and thought going into every stroke and it is simply a form of entertainment, this doesn’t constitute deliberate practice.
It can be similar for people who have remained in the same industry for 20 years. If they haven’t been constantly learning more, seeking feedback and bettering themselves it may be more like one year of experience repeated 20 times.
Deliberate practice has been found to encompass five characteristics:
1. It is designed specifically to improve performance
The exercise often needs to be designed by a teacher or mentor who understands what your weaknesses are and what needs to be done to improve.
The activities need to be designed to stretch you and push you outside your comfort zone. Tiger Woods will drop a golf ball into a sand bunker, step on it, and then play the stroke and he will do that thousands of times until he is exhausted. Tiger may only play that stroke a handful of times through his career, but when he comes to it he is well rehearsed in how to execute.
2. It can be repeated a lot
Repetition counts. Repetition alone however is not good enough, but when focusing on a particular skill-set with a clear outcome, there needs to be high repetition.
In business this can be achieved through role-play and rehearsal. When preparing for a high stakes show in Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve, Chris Rock performed 18 dress rehearsal evenings in small clubs across America, perfecting his material with every laugh.
3. Feedback on results is continually available
In business, feedback is everywhere and often it comes in the form of failure; a proposal that didn’t get through, a presentation that didn’t hit, a deal which fell over. Rather than looking at these experiences as failures, if we can examine what happened and take from it an understanding of what to do differently next time, there is our feedback. This is best done with a mentor or manager.
4. It is highly demanding mentally
Several studies have shown that four or five hours a day seems to be the most we can engage in deliberate practice. This is due to the mental exhaustion that accompanies it.
Even professional athletes that may be hitting more tennis balls in a day than most people do in a year, report that at the end of the day it is the mental exhaustion, not the physical exhaustion, that is most obvious.
5. It isn’t fun
Often people can have a romantic notion of what it is to be an ‘entrepreneur’. These notions don’t usually make it past the first year.
Doing what we’re good at is enjoyable. However when you take what you are good at, hone in on your weaknesses and repeat a deliberately designed exercise to the point of mental exhaustion, often it is not fun.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
This is of course a good thing. If it were easy – everyone would be doing it.
The research highlights that when looking at business moguls such as Branson, Gates or Trump, we no longer have an excuse to write them off as being “on another level” or “unbelievably talented.” Admittedly these people may be on another level today, however the studies show that they weren’t born there. It was through hours, years and decades of deliberate practice, that they were able to attain a level of performance somewhat resembling greatness.
As Colvin concludes: “great performance is not reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and everyone
Read more here:
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
in the path of "onrushing luck"
Originally published on theage.com.au
Lucky people arrange their lives in characteristic patterns, Gunther said, and tend to position themselves in the path of "onrushing luck".
Here are his 13 tips to turn your luck around:
1. Never confuse luck with planning:
When a desired outcome is brought about by luck, you must acknowledge that fact. If you confuse luck with planning, you will all but guarantee that your luck, in the long run, will be bad.
2. Find the fast flow:
Go where events flow fastest, surround yourself with a churning mass of people and things will happen. It doesn't matter if you are a quiet person; all you need to do is meet a lot of people and let them know who you are. Then they will direct opportunities your way.
3. Take calculated risks:
There are two ways to be an almost sure loser in life. One is to take risks that are out of proportion to the rewards being sought.
The other is to take no risks at all. Lucky people, characteristically, avoid both extremes.
4. Know when to cut and run:
Always assume that a run of luck is going to be short, never try to ride a run to its peak.
You will virtually always be right as the law of averages is heavily on your side.
5. Know how to select luck:
Is there some likelihood that the problems with your investment - whether it be time, money or love - will go away? Do you have some realistic hope of fixing them?
If so, you should stay aboard. If not, you should get out and look for better luck elsewhere.
6. Take the zig zag path:
Despite what many people think the path to success is rarely a straight line. Lucky men and women, on the whole, are not straight-line strugglers.
They not only allow themselves to be distracted, they invite distraction.
A plan should be used as a guide only and if something better comes along the plan should be discarded immediately without regret.
7. Supernatural belief can help:
Not because it makes you more lucky but because it helps you make impossible choices. Sometimes there is no rational choice to make, yet the worst reaction is to do nothing.
A supernatural belief can enable people to get into a potentially winning position simply by helping them make choices.
8. Be a bit pessimistic:
Lucky people, as a breed, tend to be pessimistic. Optimism means expecting the best, but good luck involves knowing how you will handle the worst.
9. Learn to keep your mouth shut:
Talk can tie you up and lock you in positions that seem right today but may be wrong tomorrow. Avoid unnecessary talk about your problems, plans and feelings. When there is no good reason to say something, say nothing.
10. Recognise a non-lesson:
There are experiences in life that seem to be lessons but aren't.
Recognise when something was just bad luck and move on.
11. Accept the universe is unfair:
All of us, the good, the bad and the in-between, are all equally likely to realise our fondest dreams or contract cancer.
12. Be willing to be busy:
The more activities you have going the greater the likelihood that something good will happen.
13. Find a destiny partner:
This is someone who is someone who changes your luck over a long term. This person is not necessarily a romantic partner and is usually just found by blind luck but it can help if you are actively looking.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Design For the First World - The Rest Saving the West
Our fellows in the first world often come to visit and give us their well intentioned but often very problematic "solutions". We thought, why don’t we pay back? Dx1W is a competition for designers, artists, scientists, makers and thinkers in developing countries to provide solutions for First World problems.
Link here: Design For the First World
Designers Without Borders
The Feel-Good Alternative
It’s said that altruism results in elevated serotonin levels.1 Be the first on your block to own one of these rapturous Samaritan testaments. $18 post paid. You can have any color you want, as long as it’s black. Show ’em what kind of drugs you’re on!
Above: Serotonin Tee
Please designate size: s,m,l,xl. All proceeds benefit Designers Without Borders.
To make a purchase click the tax-deductible donation button here.
It’s said that altruism results in elevated serotonin levels.1 Be the first on your block to own one of these rapturous Samaritan testaments. $18 post paid. You can have any color you want, as long as it’s black. Show ’em what kind of drugs you’re on!
Above: Serotonin Tee
Please designate size: s,m,l,xl. All proceeds benefit Designers Without Borders.
To make a purchase click the tax-deductible donation button here.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
austraia lacks legislatable human rights
check out what appears to be a petition by get up australia in relation to a government call out about the lack of human rights in australia or one of the consequences of not having a bill of rights like in the us or a consitution based on individual rights (correct me if that's wrong)
7. Conclusion
This consultation is long-overdue and most welcome. GetUp is proud to have been able to play such an involved role in giving voice to everyday Australians’ concerns on a whole range of issues that come under the protective umbrella of human rights protection, and we thank the Committee for their work towards the same aim.
When asked, it is clear that Australians care about and are willingly to respond to the issue of human rights protection more than it would generally be expected.
When asked, it is clear that many Australians were simply waiting for the opportunity to be heard on matters that are of everyday importance to them.
‘Human rights’ are not some abstract legal strictures within which we wish to confine our legislatures; they are recognition of the inherent dignity with which we all expect to conduct our lives and the recognition that that depends on us working together to allow the other a fruitful and peaceful enjoyment of being.
Framed in such terms, a formal recognition of rights reflects and accommodates a society well-equipped to meet and overcome challenges together. It is obviously advisable to work towards such an Australia.
We eagerly await the Government’s response to the Committee’s recommendations, and
have our army of concerned citizens mobilised to see their human rights concerns adequately reflected in legislative protection.
Thank you for your consideration,
The GetUp team
check our get up's original document here: http://www.getup.org.au/files/campaigns/getuphumanrightssubmission.pdf
7. Conclusion
This consultation is long-overdue and most welcome. GetUp is proud to have been able to play such an involved role in giving voice to everyday Australians’ concerns on a whole range of issues that come under the protective umbrella of human rights protection, and we thank the Committee for their work towards the same aim.
When asked, it is clear that Australians care about and are willingly to respond to the issue of human rights protection more than it would generally be expected.
When asked, it is clear that many Australians were simply waiting for the opportunity to be heard on matters that are of everyday importance to them.
‘Human rights’ are not some abstract legal strictures within which we wish to confine our legislatures; they are recognition of the inherent dignity with which we all expect to conduct our lives and the recognition that that depends on us working together to allow the other a fruitful and peaceful enjoyment of being.
Framed in such terms, a formal recognition of rights reflects and accommodates a society well-equipped to meet and overcome challenges together. It is obviously advisable to work towards such an Australia.
We eagerly await the Government’s response to the Committee’s recommendations, and
have our army of concerned citizens mobilised to see their human rights concerns adequately reflected in legislative protection.
Thank you for your consideration,
The GetUp team
check our get up's original document here: http://www.getup.org.au/files/campaigns/getuphumanrightssubmission.pdf
Friday, February 26, 2010
Top 10: Steps to a better brain
From New Scientist print edition, 28 May 2005
It doesn't matter how brainy you are or how much education you've had - you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn't have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 10 of them.
1. Smart drugs
2. Food for thought
3. The Mozart effect
4. Gainful employment
5. Memory marvels
6. Sleep on it
7. Body and mind
8. Nuns on a run
9. Attention seeking
10. Positive feedback
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1. Smart drugs
Does getting old have to mean worsening memory, slower reactions and fuzzy thinking?
AROUND the age of 40, honest folks may already admit to noticing changes in their mental abilities. This is the beginning of a gradual decline that in all too many of us will culminate in full-blown dementia. If it were possible somehow to reverse it, slow it or mask it, wouldn't you?
A few drugs that might do the job, known as "cognitive enhancement", are already on the market, and a few dozen others are on the way. Perhaps the best-known is modafinil. Licensed to treat narcolepsy, the condition that causes people to suddenly fall asleep, it has notable effects in healthy people too. Modafinil can keep a person awake and alert for 90 hours straight, with none of the jitteriness and bad concentration that amphetamines or even coffee seem to produce.
In fact, with the help of modafinil, sleep-deprived people can perform even better than their well-rested, unmedicated selves. The forfeited rest doesn't even need to be made good. Military research is finding that people can stay awake for 40 hours, sleep the normal 8 hours, and then pull a few more all-nighters with no ill effects. It's an open secret that many, perhaps most, prescriptions for modafinil are written not for people who suffer from narcolepsy, but for those who simply want to stay awake. Similarly, many people are using Ritalin not because they suffer from attention deficit or any other disorder, but because they want superior concentration during exams or heavy-duty negotiations. The pharmaceutical pipeline is clogged with promising compounds - drugs that act on the nicotinic receptors that smokers have long exploited, drugs that work on the cannabinoid system to block pot-smoking-type effects. Some drugs have also been specially designed to augment memory. Many of these look genuinely plausible: they seem to work, and without any major side effects.
So why aren't we all on cognitive enhancers already? "We need to be careful what we wish for," says Daniele Piomelli at the University of California at Irvine. He is studying the body's cannabinoid system with a view to making memories less emotionally charged in people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Tinkering with memory may have unwanted effects, he warns. "Ultimately we may end up remembering things we don't want to."
Gary Lynch, also at UC Irvine, voices a similar concern. He is the inventor of ampakines, a class of drugs that changes the rules about how a memory is encoded and how strong a memory trace is - the essence of learning (see New Scientist, 14 May, p 6). But maybe the rules have already been optimised by evolution, he suggests. What looks to be an improvement could have hidden downsides.
Still, the opportunity may be too tempting to pass up. The drug acts only in the brain, claims Lynch. It has a short half-life of hours. Ampakines have been shown to restore function to severely sleep-deprived monkeys that would otherwise perform poorly. Preliminary studies in humans are just as exciting. You could make an elderly person perform like a much younger person, he says. And who doesn't wish for that?
Back to top
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2. Food for thought
You are what you eat, and that includes your brain. So what is the ultimate mastermind diet?
YOUR brain is the greediest organ in your body, with some quite specific dietary requirements. So it is hardly surprising that what you eat can affect how you think. If you believe the dietary supplement industry, you could become the next Einstein just by popping the right combination of pills. Look closer, however, and it isn't that simple. The savvy consumer should take talk of brain-boosting diets with a pinch of low-sodium salt. But if it is possible to eat your way to genius, it must surely be worth a try.
First, go to the top of the class by eating breakfast. The brain is best fuelled by a steady supply of glucose, and many studies have shown that skipping breakfast reduces people's performance at school and at work.
But it isn't simply a matter of getting some calories down. According to research published in 2003, kids breakfasting on fizzy drinks and sugary snacks performed at the level of an average 70-year-old in tests of memory and attention. Beans on toast is a far better combination, as Barbara Stewart from the University of Ulster, UK, discovered. Toast alone boosted children's scores on a variety of cognitive tests, but when the tests got tougher, the breakfast with the high-protein beans worked best. Beans are also a good source of fibre, and other research has shown a link between a high-fibre diet and improved cognition. If you can't stomach beans before midday, wholemeal toast with Marmite makes a great alternative. The yeast extract is packed with B vitamins, whose brain-boosting powers have been demonstrated in many studies.
A smart choice for lunch is omelette and salad. Eggs are rich in choline, which your body uses to produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Researchers at Boston University found that when healthy young adults were given the drug scopolamine, which blocks acetylcholine receptors in the brain, it significantly reduced their ability to remember word pairs. Low levels of acetylcholine are also associated with Alzheimer's disease, and some studies suggest that boosting dietary intake may slow age-related memory loss.
A salad packed full of antioxidants, including beta-carotene and vitamins C and E, should also help keep an ageing brain in tip-top condition by helping to mop up damaging free radicals. Dwight Tapp and colleagues from the University of California at Irvine found that a diet high in antioxidants improved the cognitive skills of 39 ageing beagles - proving that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Round off lunch with a yogurt dessert, and you should be alert and ready to face the stresses of the afternoon. That's because yogurt contains the amino acid tyrosine, needed for the production of the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenalin, among others. Studies by the US military indicate that tyrosine becomes depleted when we are under stress and that supplementing your intake can improve alertness and memory.
Don't forget to snaffle a snack mid-afternoon, to maintain your glucose levels. Just make sure you avoid junk food, and especially highly processed goodies such as cakes, pastries and biscuits, which contain trans-fatty acids. These not only pile on the pounds, but are implicated in a slew of serious mental disorders, from dyslexia and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to autism. Hard evidence for this is still thin on the ground, but last year researchers at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, California, reported that rats and mice raised on the rodent equivalent of junk food struggled to find their way around a maze, and took longer to remember solutions to problems they had already solved.
It seems that some of the damage may be mediated through triglyceride, a cholesterol-like substance found at high levels in rodents fed on trans-fats. When the researchers gave these rats a drug to bring triglyceride levels down again, the animals' performance on the memory tasks improved.
Brains are around 60 per cent fat, so if trans-fats clog up the system, what should you eat to keep it well oiled? Evidence is mounting in favour of omega-3 fatty acids, in particular docosahexaenoic acid or DHA. In other words, your granny was right: fish is the best brain food. Not only will it feed and lubricate a developing brain, DHA also seems to help stave off dementia. Studies published last year reveal that older mice from a strain genetically altered to develop Alzheimer's had 70 per cent less of the amyloid plaques associated with the disease when fed on a high-DHA diet.
Finally, you could do worse than finish off your evening meal with strawberries and blueberries. Rats fed on these fruits have shown improved coordination, concentration and short-term memory. And even if they don't work such wonders in people, they still taste fantastic. So what have you got to lose?
Back to top
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3. The Mozart effect
Music may tune up your thinking, but you can't just crank up the volume and expect to become a genius
A DECADE ago Frances Rauscher, a psychologist now at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, and her colleagues made waves with the discovery that listening to Mozart improved people's mathematical and spatial reasoning. Even rats ran mazes faster and more accurately after hearing Mozart than after white noise or music by the minimalist composer Philip Glass. Last year, Rauscher reported that, for rats at least, a Mozart piano sonata seems to stimulate activity in three genes involved in nerve-cell signalling in the brain.
This sounds like the most harmonious way to tune up your mental faculties. But before you grab the CDs, hear this note of caution. Not everyone who has looked for the Mozart effect has found it. What's more, even its proponents tend to think that music boosts brain power simply because it makes listeners feel better - relaxed and stimulated at the same time - and that a comparable stimulus might do just as well. In fact, one study found that listening to a story gave a similar performance boost.
There is, however, one way in which music really does make you smarter, though unfortunately it requires a bit more effort than just selecting something mellow on your iPod. Music lessons are the key. Six-year-old children who were given music lessons, as opposed to drama lessons or no extra instruction, got a 2 to 3-point boost in IQ scores compared with the others. Similarly, Rauscher found that after two years of music lessons, pre-school children scored better on spatial reasoning tests than those who took computer lessons.
Maybe music lessons exercise a range of mental skills, with their requirement for delicate and precise finger movements, and listening for pitch and rhythm, all combined with an emotional dimension. Nobody knows for sure. Neither do they know whether adults can get the same mental boost as young children. But, surely, it can't hurt to try.
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4. Gainful employment
Put your mind to work in the right way and it could repay you with an impressive bonus.
UNTIL recently, a person's IQ - a measure of all kinds of mental problem-solving abilities, including spatial skills, memory and verbal reasoning - was thought to be a fixed commodity largely determined by genetics. But recent hints suggest that a very basic brain function called working memory might underlie our general intelligence, opening up the intriguing possibility that if you improve your working memory, you could boost your IQ too.
Working memory is the brain's short-term information storage system. It's a workbench for solving mental problems. For example if you calculate 73 - 6 + 7, your working memory will store the intermediate steps necessary to work out the answer. And the amount of information that the working memory can hold is strongly related to general intelligence.
A team led by Torkel Klingberg at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, has found signs that the neural systems that underlie working memory may grow in response to training. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, they measured the brain activity of adults before and after a working-memory training programme, which involved tasks such as memorising the positions of a series of dots on a grid. After five weeks of training, their brain activity had increased in the regions associated with this type of memory (Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 75).
Perhaps more significantly, when the group studied children who had completed these types of mental workouts, they saw improvement in a range of cognitive abilities not related to the training, and a leap in IQ test scores of 8 per cent (Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, vol 44, p 177). It's early days yet, but Klingberg thinks working-memory training could be a key to unlocking brain power. "Genetics determines a lot and so does the early gestation period," he says. "On top of that, there is a few per cent - we don't know how much - that can be improved by training."
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5. Memory marvels
Mind like a sieve? Don't worry. The difference between mere mortals and memory champs is more method than mental capacity
AN AUDITORIUM is filled with 600 people. As they file out, they each tell you their name. An hour later, you are asked to recall them all. Can you do it? Most of us would balk at the idea. But in truth we're probably all up to the task. It just needs a little technique and dedication.
First, learn a trick from the "mnemonists" who routinely memorise strings of thousands of digits, entire epic poems, or hundreds of unrelated words. When Eleanor Maguire from University College London and her colleagues studied eight front runners in the annual World Memory Championships they did not find any evidence that these people have particularly high IQs or differently configured brains. But, while memorising, these people did show activity in three brain regions that become active during movements and navigation tasks but are not normally active during simple memory tests.
This may be connected to the fact that seven of them used a strategy in which they place items to be remembered along a visualised route (Nature Neuroscience, vol 6, p 90). To remember the sequence of an entire pack of playing cards for example, the champions assign each card an identity, perhaps an object or person, and as they flick through the cards they can make up a story based on a sequence of interactions between these characters and objects at sites along a well-trodden route.
Actors use a related technique: they attach emotional meaning to what they say. We always remember highly emotional moments better than less emotionally loaded ones. Professional actors also seem to link words with movement, remembering action-accompanied lines significantly better than those delivered while static, even months after a show has closed.
Helga Noice, a psychologist from Elmhurst College in Illinois, and Tony Noice, an actor, who together discovered this effect, found that non-thesps can benefit by adopting a similar technique. Students who paired their words with previously learned actions could reproduce 38 per cent of them after just 5 minutes, whereas rote learners only managed 14 per cent. The Noices believe that having two mental representations gives you a better shot at remembering what you are supposed to say.
Strategy is important in everyday life too, says Barry Gordon from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Simple things like always putting your car keys in the same place, writing things down to get them off your mind, or just deciding to pay attention, can make a big difference to how much information you retain. And if names are your downfall, try making some mental associations. Just remember to keep the derogatory ones to yourself.
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6. Sleep on it
Never underestimate the power of a good night's rest
SKIMPING on sleep does awful things to your brain. Planning, problem-solving, learning, concentration,working memory and alertness all take a hit. IQ scores tumble. "If you have been awake for 21 hours straight, your abilities are equivalent to someone who is legally drunk," says Sean Drummond from the University of California, San Diego. And you don't need to pull an all-nighter to suffer the effects: two or three late nights and early mornings on the trot have the same effect.
Luckily, it's reversible - and more. If you let someone who isn't sleep-deprived have an extra hour or two of shut-eye, they perform much better than normal on tasks requiring sustained attention, such taking an exam. And being able to concentrate harder has knock-on benefits for overall mental performance. "Attention is the base of a mental pyramid," says Drummond. "If you boost that, you can't help boosting everything above it."
These are not the only benefits of a decent night's sleep. Sleep is when your brain processes new memories, practises and hones new skills - and even solves problems. Say you're trying to master a new video game. Instead of grinding away into the small hours, you would be better off playing for a couple of hours, then going to bed. While you are asleep your brain will reactivate the circuits it was using as you learned the game, rehearse them, and then shunt the new memories into long-term storage. When you wake up, hey presto! You will be a better player. The same applies to other skills such as playing the piano, driving a car and, some researchers claim, memorising facts and figures. Even taking a nap after training can help, says Carlyle Smith of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.
There is also some evidence that sleep can help produce moments of problem-solving insight. The famous story about the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev suddenly "getting" the periodic table in a dream after a day spent struggling with the problem is probably true. It seems that sleep somehow allows the brain to juggle new memories to produce flashes of creative insight. So if you want to have a eureka moment, stop racking your brains and get your head down.
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7. Body and mind
Physical exercise can boost brain as well as brawn
IT'S a dream come true for those who hate studying. Simply walking sedately for half an hour three times a week can improve abilities such as learning, concentration and abstract reasoning by 15 per cent. The effects are particularly noticeable in older people. Senior citizens who walk regularly perform better on memory tests than their sedentary peers. What's more, over several years their scores on a variety of cognitive tests show far less decline than those of non-walkers. Every extra mile a week has measurable benefits.
It's not only oldies who benefit, however. Angela Balding from the University of Exeter, UK, has found that schoolchildren who exercise three or four times a week get higher than average exam grades at age 10 or 11. The effect is strongest in boys, and while Balding admits that the link may not be causal, she suggests that aerobic exercise may boost mental powers by getting extra oxygen to your energy-guzzling brain.
There's another reason why your brain loves physical exercise: it promotes the growth of new brain cells. Until recently, received wisdom had it that we are born with a full complement of neurons and produce no new ones during our lifetime. Fred Gage from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, busted that myth in 2000 when he showed that even adults can grow new brain cells. He also found that exercise is one of the best ways to achieve this.
In mice, at least, the brain-building effects of exercise are strongest in the hippocampus, which is involved with learning and memory. This also happens to be the brain region that is damaged by elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol. So if you are feeling frazzled, do your brain a favour and go for a run.
Even more gentle exercise, such as yoga, can do wonders for your brain. Last year, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, reported results from a pilot study in which they considered the mood-altering ability of different yoga poses. Comparing back bends, forward bends and standing poses, they concluded that the best way to get a mental lift is to bend over backwards.
And the effect works both ways. Just as physical exercise can boost the brain, mental exercise can boost the body. In 2001, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio asked volunteers to spend just 15 minutes a day thinking about exercising their biceps. After 12 weeks, their arms were 13 per cent stronger.
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8. Nuns on a run
If you don't want senility to interfere with your old age, perhaps you should seek some sisterly guidance
THE convent of the School Sisters of Notre Dame on Good Counsel Hill in Mankato, Minnesota, might seem an unusual place for a pioneering brain-science experiment. But a study of its 75 to 107-year-old inhabitants is revealing more about keeping the brain alive and healthy than perhaps any other to date. The "Nun study" is a unique collaboration between 678 Catholic sisters recruited in 1991 and Alzheimer's expert David Snowdon of the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging and the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
The sisters' miraculous longevity - the group boasts seven centenarians and many others well on their way - is surely in no small part attributable to their impeccable lifestyle. They do not drink or smoke, they live quietly and communally, they are spiritual and calm and they eat healthily and in moderation. Nevertheless, small differences between individual nuns could reveal the key to a healthy mind in later life.
Some of the nuns have suffered from Alzheimer's disease, but many have avoided any kind of dementia or senility. They include Sister Matthia, who was mentally fit and active from her birth in 1894 to the day she died peacefully in her sleep, aged 104. She was happy and productive, knitting mittens for the poor every day until the end of her life. A post-mortem of Sister Matthia's brain revealed no signs of excessive ageing. But in some other, remarkable cases, Snowdon has found sisters who showed no outwards signs of senility in life, yet had brains that looked as if they were ravaged by dementia.
How did Sister Matthia and the others cheat time? Snowdon's study, which includes an annual barrage of mental agility tests and detailed medical exams, has found several common denominators. The right amount of vitamin folate is one. Verbal ability early in life is another, as are positive emotions early in life, which were revealed by Snowdon's analysis of the personal autobiographical essays each woman wrote in her 20s as she took her vows. Activities, crosswords, knitting and exercising also helped to prevent senility, showing that the old adage "use it or lose it" is pertinent. And spirituality, or the positive attitude that comes from it, can't be overlooked. But individual differences also matter. To avoid dementia, your general health may be vital: metabolic problems, small strokes and head injuries seem to be common triggers of Alzheimer's dementia.
Obviously, you don't have to become a nun to stay mentally agile. We can all aspire to these kinds of improvements. As one of the sisters put it, "Think no evil, do no evil, hear no evil, and you will never write a best-selling novel."
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9. Attention seeking
You can be smart, well-read, creative and knowledgeable, but none of it is any use if your mind isn't on the job
PAYING attention is a complex mental process, an interplay of zooming in on detail and stepping back to survey the big picture. So unfortunately there is no single remedy to enhance your concentration. But there are a few ways to improve it.
The first is to raise your arousal levels. The brain's attentional state is controlled by the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenalin. Dopamine encourages a persistent, goal-centred state of mind whereas noradrenalin produces an outward-looking, vigilant state. So not surprisingly, anything that raises dopamine levels can boost your powers of concentration.
One way to do this is with drugs such as amphetamines and the ADHD drug methylphenidate, better known as Ritalin. Caffeine also works. But if you prefer the drug-free approach, the best strategy is to sleep well, eat foods packed with slow-release sugars, and take lots of exercise. It also helps if you are trying to focus on something that you find interesting.
The second step is to cut down on distractions. Workplace studies have found that it takes up to 15 minutes to regain a deep state of concentration after a distraction such as a phone call. Just a few such interruptions and half the day is wasted.
Music can help as long as you listen to something familiar and soothing that serves primarily to drown out background noise. Psychologists also recommend that you avoid working near potential diversions, such as the fridge.
There are mental drills to deal with distractions. College counsellors routinely teach students to recognise when their thoughts are wandering, and catch themselves by saying "Stop! Be here now!" It sounds corny but can develop into a valuable habit. As any Zen meditator will tell you, concentration is as much a skill to be lovingly cultivated as it is a physiochemical state of the brain.
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10. Positive feedback
Thought control is easier than you might imagine
IT SOUNDS a bit New Age, but there is a mysterious method of thought control you can learn that seems to boost brain power. No one quite knows how it works, and it is hard to describe exactly how to do it: it's not relaxation or concentration as such, more a state of mind. It's called neurofeedback. And it is slowly gaining scientific credibility.
Neurofeedback grew out of biofeedback therapy, popular in the 1960s. It works by showing people a real-time measure of some seemingly uncontrollable aspect of their physiology - heart rate, say - and encouraging them to try and change it. Astonishingly, many patients found that they could, though only rarely could they describe how they did it.
More recently, this technique has been applied to the brain - specifically to brain wave activity measured by an electroencephalogram, or EEG. The first attempts were aimed at boosting the size of the alpha wave, which crescendos when we are calm and focused. In one experiment, researchers linked the speed of a car in a computer game to the size of the alpha wave. They then asked subjects to make the car go faster using only their minds. Many managed to do so, and seemed to become more alert and focused as a result.
This early success encouraged others, and neurofeedback soon became a popular alternative therapy for ADHD. There is now good scientific evidence that it works, as well as some success in treating epilepsy, depression, tinnitus, anxiety, stroke and brain injuries.
And to keep up with the times, some experimenters have used brain scanners in place of EEGs. Scanners can allow people to see and control activity of specific parts of the brain. A team at Stanford University in California showed that people could learn to control pain by watching the activity of their pain centres (New Scientist, 1 May 2004, p 9).
But what about outside the clinic? Will neuro feedback ever allow ordinary people to boost their brain function? Possibly. John Gruzelier of Imperial College London has shown that it can improve medical students' memory and make them feel calmer before exams. He has also shown that it can improve musicians' and dancers' technique, and is testing it out on opera singers and surgeons.
Neils Birbaumer from the University of Tübingen in Germany wants to see whether neurofeedback can help psychopathic criminals control their impulsiveness. And there are hints that the method could boost creativity, enhance our orgasms, give shy people more confidence, lift low moods, alter the balance between left and right brain activity, and alter personality traits. All this by the power of thought.
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From New Scientist print edition, 28 May 2005
Friday, October 9, 2009
Business uproar over litigation
Chris Merritt, Legal affairs editor | October 09, 2009
Article from: The Australian
Full article link here
LITIGATORS and peak business groups have warned that a proposed federal law encouraging "public interest" litigation would create a US-style greenmail industry and play into the hands of plaintiff lawyers.
They warned unfashionable industries such as mining, forestry and power-generation would be vulnerable under commonwealth plans to exempt "public interest" activists from the normal loser-pays rule on legal costs.
Even if corporate defendants win in court, the government's plan would prevent them from recovering their legal costs from activists who were, in the eyes of a judge, acting in the public interest.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the proposal would skew the civil justice system by giving activists special treatment.
"Public interest litigation raises a whole new spectre of activism and agitation in the court system," ACCI chief executive Peter Anderson said.
"Opening new avenues for litigation has the potential to increase litigation because it is designed to be used. This form of litigation also puts the court in a difficult position. It is being asked to make costs orders based on a very elastic notion of what the public interest is."
The proposal, drawn up by the attorney-general's department, was criticised also by the Forest Industry Association of Tasmania, which warned that activists could use the procedure to impose unnecessary legal costs on a wide range of industries that were unfashionable.
"It's not just forestry," association chief executive Terry Edwards said.
"Farmers growing genetically modified crops of canola could also be vunerable."
Litigator Stuart Clark of Clayton Utz said the plan would play into the hands of plaintiff lawyers who had tried in the past to "dress up individual claims as some sort of public interest case".
"It is yet another attempt to tip the balance in favour of plaintiffs by removing rights and protections for defendants," he said.
"Business must have the right to defend claims that are brought against them and are entitled to the same protections as any other members of the community.
"These proposals are just aimed at removing all barriers for claims being brought against corporate defendants, and they are also trying to generate a situation where corporate defendants will simply give up."
The plan, which is outlined in the government's Access to Justice report, comes after Victoria's Public Interest Law Clearing House urged federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland to introduce a system of "protective" costs orders for public-interest litigants.
The Access to Justice Report cites and rejects warnings from business about the PILCH proposal that had been reported in The Australian in June.
"In cases where a public interest costs order were made, there would by definition be additional costs on defendants that are ultimately successful but are unable to recover a proportion of their costs," the report says.
"Concerns are raised on the basis of a potential flood of frivolous litigation, which business would have to pay for. It is also suggested that if a matter were truly in the public interest, then the public, not the business, should fund it.
"The cost to a defendant would be an important factor for a court to consider and it is not expected that such orders would be made as a matter of course."
However, the scheme recommended by the Access to Justice report makes no mention of requiring judges to consider the cost burden that would be shifted to defendants.
The report's proposal is broader than the scheme drawn up by PILCH, which included several control factors not present in the report's recommendation.
Before issuing any protective costs order, PILCH would have required judges to consider the financial resources available to the parties, the costs likely to be incurred during proceedings, whether the plaintiff had a pecuniary interest in the outcome and any prejudice to the defendant.
PILCH acting executive director Mat Tinkler said this week that the Access to Justice Report had produced a "basic" recommendation and he believed the control factors would be included in any legislative scheme.
He did not believe the absence of control factors in the report's recommended scheme meant they had been rejected.
"Because that is certainly the proposal we put forward and that is how the case law has developed in the UK and other jurisdictions," Mr Tinkler said.
When asked about the absence of control factors in the recommended scheme, a spokesman for Mr McClelland said the purpose of the report was to generate debate, and feedback would be welcomed.
In discussing public interest cost orders, the report says: "the main benefit in removing the barrier to litigation is only achieved in practice if litigants are aware of where they will stand as regards costs before those costs are incurred." However, the report recommends later that judges should be able to make public-interest cost orders "at any stage of the proceeding".
It says "a 'flood' of litigation is not expected" because case management rules would keep legal costs proportionate, courts could refer cases to alternative systems of dispute resolution and public interest plaintiffs would still face "the significant financial burden" of paying their own legal bills.
The report urges the government to allow judges to make these rulings whenever they are satisfied litigation would benefit the public. Judges would issue these orders in cases that would "determine, enforce or clarify an important right or obligation affecting the community or a significant section of the community, or affect the development of the law generally and reduce the need for further litigation".
Mr Anderson said the plan was far too open-ended and the report had made a weak case for such a significant change.
"If there is going to be public interest litigation, it should effectively be funded by the public," he said.
"The defendant, which will generally be business, is being used as a vehicle."
Article from: The Australian
Full article link here
LITIGATORS and peak business groups have warned that a proposed federal law encouraging "public interest" litigation would create a US-style greenmail industry and play into the hands of plaintiff lawyers.
They warned unfashionable industries such as mining, forestry and power-generation would be vulnerable under commonwealth plans to exempt "public interest" activists from the normal loser-pays rule on legal costs.
Even if corporate defendants win in court, the government's plan would prevent them from recovering their legal costs from activists who were, in the eyes of a judge, acting in the public interest.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the proposal would skew the civil justice system by giving activists special treatment.
"Public interest litigation raises a whole new spectre of activism and agitation in the court system," ACCI chief executive Peter Anderson said.
"Opening new avenues for litigation has the potential to increase litigation because it is designed to be used. This form of litigation also puts the court in a difficult position. It is being asked to make costs orders based on a very elastic notion of what the public interest is."
The proposal, drawn up by the attorney-general's department, was criticised also by the Forest Industry Association of Tasmania, which warned that activists could use the procedure to impose unnecessary legal costs on a wide range of industries that were unfashionable.
"It's not just forestry," association chief executive Terry Edwards said.
"Farmers growing genetically modified crops of canola could also be vunerable."
Litigator Stuart Clark of Clayton Utz said the plan would play into the hands of plaintiff lawyers who had tried in the past to "dress up individual claims as some sort of public interest case".
"It is yet another attempt to tip the balance in favour of plaintiffs by removing rights and protections for defendants," he said.
"Business must have the right to defend claims that are brought against them and are entitled to the same protections as any other members of the community.
"These proposals are just aimed at removing all barriers for claims being brought against corporate defendants, and they are also trying to generate a situation where corporate defendants will simply give up."
The plan, which is outlined in the government's Access to Justice report, comes after Victoria's Public Interest Law Clearing House urged federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland to introduce a system of "protective" costs orders for public-interest litigants.
The Access to Justice Report cites and rejects warnings from business about the PILCH proposal that had been reported in The Australian in June.
"In cases where a public interest costs order were made, there would by definition be additional costs on defendants that are ultimately successful but are unable to recover a proportion of their costs," the report says.
"Concerns are raised on the basis of a potential flood of frivolous litigation, which business would have to pay for. It is also suggested that if a matter were truly in the public interest, then the public, not the business, should fund it.
"The cost to a defendant would be an important factor for a court to consider and it is not expected that such orders would be made as a matter of course."
However, the scheme recommended by the Access to Justice report makes no mention of requiring judges to consider the cost burden that would be shifted to defendants.
The report's proposal is broader than the scheme drawn up by PILCH, which included several control factors not present in the report's recommendation.
Before issuing any protective costs order, PILCH would have required judges to consider the financial resources available to the parties, the costs likely to be incurred during proceedings, whether the plaintiff had a pecuniary interest in the outcome and any prejudice to the defendant.
PILCH acting executive director Mat Tinkler said this week that the Access to Justice Report had produced a "basic" recommendation and he believed the control factors would be included in any legislative scheme.
He did not believe the absence of control factors in the report's recommended scheme meant they had been rejected.
"Because that is certainly the proposal we put forward and that is how the case law has developed in the UK and other jurisdictions," Mr Tinkler said.
When asked about the absence of control factors in the recommended scheme, a spokesman for Mr McClelland said the purpose of the report was to generate debate, and feedback would be welcomed.
In discussing public interest cost orders, the report says: "the main benefit in removing the barrier to litigation is only achieved in practice if litigants are aware of where they will stand as regards costs before those costs are incurred." However, the report recommends later that judges should be able to make public-interest cost orders "at any stage of the proceeding".
It says "a 'flood' of litigation is not expected" because case management rules would keep legal costs proportionate, courts could refer cases to alternative systems of dispute resolution and public interest plaintiffs would still face "the significant financial burden" of paying their own legal bills.
The report urges the government to allow judges to make these rulings whenever they are satisfied litigation would benefit the public. Judges would issue these orders in cases that would "determine, enforce or clarify an important right or obligation affecting the community or a significant section of the community, or affect the development of the law generally and reduce the need for further litigation".
Mr Anderson said the plan was far too open-ended and the report had made a weak case for such a significant change.
"If there is going to be public interest litigation, it should effectively be funded by the public," he said.
"The defendant, which will generally be business, is being used as a vehicle."
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Just how much can a Logie bear? - by Catherine Deveny
From theage.com.au
By Catherine Deveny
May 9, 2009
From the wannabes to the couldneverbes to the usetobes, TV's big night brought out the worst.
THE 2009 Logie Awards. What did you miss? Pigs in suits and scrags in curtains. Vain, attention-seeking opportunists suffering relevance deprivation hoping to get lucky with one of the members of Hi5 but happy enough to go slops by standing next to Bud Tingwell when he sneezed.
It wasn't a car crash this year. It was a 30-car pile up. I should have known. With nominees for best dramas including Home and Away (Bogans by the Sea) McLeod's Daughters (Pony Porn) and Neighbours (So You Think You Can Act!) it was never going to be one of our finest moments. Kate Ritchie (Nice! Inoffensive! Pretty! Detonate now!) and Ian Smith (the fuddy-duddy from Neighbours with no neck who doesn't speak but gargles) being the Gold Logie favourites made me wish, during the In Memoriam package, that I were dead as well.
Packed to the Rafters (I See White People) and Underbelly (Tale of Two Titties - sure it's drugs, swearing, violence and tits but it's Australian drugs, swearing, violence and tits) sweeping the pool is a chilling reminder that everything on telly is dumbed down, sexed up or ripped off.
There was an epidemic of Stockholm Syndrome as talented actors gushed about fabulous scripts, amazing work and incredible experiences as they accepted awards for working on shit shows. Be Australian and take the piss you sucks.
This year's Logies was so trashy it made the Brownlow awards look like the Nobel Prize ceremony. "So who are you wearing, Stevo?" "Some little thing I picked up on Chapel Street, mate. She reckons she's 18."
I was hoping Gretel Killeen would be fabulous because she is. But she wasn't. And even she knew she wouldn't be. Which explains her four costume changes. The day before I bumped into Joan Kirner and I thought of Gretel. Because they only let the chicks behind the wheel when it's all heading down hill. Hello to Meredith Hellicar and Sue Morphet if you're reading. The industry was thrilled because they love nothing more than putting the wrong woman into a thankless high-profile job, seeing her fail and using it as evidence to maintain their unashamed regime of beef for the blokes and chicken for the ladies.
Sarah Murdoch inducted Bill Collins, Mr Movies, into the Logies Hall of Fame to recognise his passionate career of 46 years. You know her. She's a model and married to Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan. I'm not sure if her official title is "personality" or "celebrity". Regardless, it couldn't have been a more offensive choice. Apparently Bindi Irwin couldn't do it because she had a spelling bee the next day.
I don't mind Rebecca Gibney winning the gold. I just wished she'd won it for something other than being an Aussie mum who walks around holding a mug and then goes to bed wearing a full face of make-up. Gibney won best line of the night as she held her little statue and said, "Proof nanas can text."
My favourite moment was when The Footy Show lost. You didn't need to be a lip reader to work out what Garry Lyon said. Love a sore loser. Particularly when it's a pig in a suit.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/05/07/1241289312772.html
By Catherine Deveny
May 9, 2009
From the wannabes to the couldneverbes to the usetobes, TV's big night brought out the worst.
THE 2009 Logie Awards. What did you miss? Pigs in suits and scrags in curtains. Vain, attention-seeking opportunists suffering relevance deprivation hoping to get lucky with one of the members of Hi5 but happy enough to go slops by standing next to Bud Tingwell when he sneezed.
It wasn't a car crash this year. It was a 30-car pile up. I should have known. With nominees for best dramas including Home and Away (Bogans by the Sea) McLeod's Daughters (Pony Porn) and Neighbours (So You Think You Can Act!) it was never going to be one of our finest moments. Kate Ritchie (Nice! Inoffensive! Pretty! Detonate now!) and Ian Smith (the fuddy-duddy from Neighbours with no neck who doesn't speak but gargles) being the Gold Logie favourites made me wish, during the In Memoriam package, that I were dead as well.
Packed to the Rafters (I See White People) and Underbelly (Tale of Two Titties - sure it's drugs, swearing, violence and tits but it's Australian drugs, swearing, violence and tits) sweeping the pool is a chilling reminder that everything on telly is dumbed down, sexed up or ripped off.
There was an epidemic of Stockholm Syndrome as talented actors gushed about fabulous scripts, amazing work and incredible experiences as they accepted awards for working on shit shows. Be Australian and take the piss you sucks.
This year's Logies was so trashy it made the Brownlow awards look like the Nobel Prize ceremony. "So who are you wearing, Stevo?" "Some little thing I picked up on Chapel Street, mate. She reckons she's 18."
I was hoping Gretel Killeen would be fabulous because she is. But she wasn't. And even she knew she wouldn't be. Which explains her four costume changes. The day before I bumped into Joan Kirner and I thought of Gretel. Because they only let the chicks behind the wheel when it's all heading down hill. Hello to Meredith Hellicar and Sue Morphet if you're reading. The industry was thrilled because they love nothing more than putting the wrong woman into a thankless high-profile job, seeing her fail and using it as evidence to maintain their unashamed regime of beef for the blokes and chicken for the ladies.
Sarah Murdoch inducted Bill Collins, Mr Movies, into the Logies Hall of Fame to recognise his passionate career of 46 years. You know her. She's a model and married to Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan. I'm not sure if her official title is "personality" or "celebrity". Regardless, it couldn't have been a more offensive choice. Apparently Bindi Irwin couldn't do it because she had a spelling bee the next day.
I don't mind Rebecca Gibney winning the gold. I just wished she'd won it for something other than being an Aussie mum who walks around holding a mug and then goes to bed wearing a full face of make-up. Gibney won best line of the night as she held her little statue and said, "Proof nanas can text."
My favourite moment was when The Footy Show lost. You didn't need to be a lip reader to work out what Garry Lyon said. Love a sore loser. Particularly when it's a pig in a suit.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/05/07/1241289312772.html
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Recording people's dreams
From. The Age A Japanese science lab is developing technologies to visualise images and dreams - and eventually read people's minds. 04/04/09
Monday, March 30, 2009
Girls abandon hope in early teens
Source: the age
Staying positive … Meg, Ashleigh, Claire and Emma.
Photo: Sahlan Hayes
A strange thing can happen to girls as they move from year 7 to year 10 - a certain loss of hope.
They start high school more confident than boys about their ability to achieve their goals. But as they move through adolescence they rapidly lose self-belief. By age 15 boys are far more "hopeful" than girls.
"Girls seem to have a tougher transition than boys from year 7 to 10," says Joseph Ciarrochi, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Wollongong.
Dr Ciarrochi has helped track the inner lives of 700 high school students from the Illawarra over six years.
And he has found, perhaps not surprisingly, that as the students move from age 12 to 15 they tend to become a little sadder, a little less joyful, and less hopeful about their ability to achieve important goals.
But it was the degree to which a sense of hope plummeted among girls that struck Dr Ciarrochi. "Something happens to girls on the way to year 10," he says.
US research, reported in 2007, pointed to what might contribute to girls' rockier journey. Girls experienced more stressful personal events in a week - from arguing with a parent to getting kicked out of school.
And they also reacted more strongly than boys to the same events.
"If there is a romantic fight between a boy and a girl, on average a girl will respond with more depression," said Benjamin Hankin, assistant professor of psychology at the University of South Carolina. "A boy will go distract himself."
Louise Newman, professor of developmental psychiatry at Monash University, said girls were still raised to put more focus on relationships, self-reflection and appearance. "There is a pressure on girls to be seen as popular by girls and boys, and the relationships between girls can be more competitive than supportive," she said.
Dr Ciarrochi said the loss of hope could lead to under-achievement. "But I suspect the girls will rebound by year 12," he says.
In year 7, Meg Mclellan wanted to be an actor. She never entertained the thought her hope would not win out. Three years later, the student at Loreto Normanhurst is still positive. So are her friends, but she has more doubts now.
"I still have the desire to try really hard but there's not the optimism and the belief that I will be able to do it," the 15-year-old said of acting. "You question yourself and you … know there will be challenges."
Ashleigh Norman said: "In year 7 you compare yourself to yourself. Now you compare yourself to other people and that's really undermining."
Claire McGregor said: "Everything is far more complex. We're just more worried."
The Wollongong study also revealed that young people who engage in antisocial behaviour are less happy than their peers.
Far from feeling part of a "cool" crowd, they experience high levels of shame and low levels of hope. Dr Ciarrochi said the shame, rather than prompting better behaviour, tended to make them hostile at the world.
Last week the State Government announced a $100,000 grant to Dr Ciarrochi and his colleagues, Professor Patrick Heaven and Dr Peter Leeson, to conduct a study of young people, this time to focus on antisocial behaviour. The Minister for Juvenile Justice, Graham West, said the aim was to determine why some young people developed behavioural problems in their adolescent years and others did not.
"We can't always get rid of poverty or bad parental care," Dr Ciarrochi said, "but if we understand why some young people react better to their circumstances than others, we may be able to help."
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
You must be kidding
Jim Holt
in The Guardian,
Saturday October 25 2008
Original article here
There are nice jokes and naughty jokes, and a new genre of neocon ones - but why exactly do we find them funny? Jim Holt on how philosophers have explained our sense of humour.
'Do you believe in clubs for small children?' WC Fields was asked. 'Only when kindness fails,' he replied. Photograph: Ralph Crane/Time Life Pictures/Getty
A passage in a Bach fugue may fleetingly give you goosebumps. A line from Yeats might make you tingle a bit, or cause the little hairs on the back of your neck to stand up in appreciation. But there is one kind of aesthetic experience whose outward expression is grossly palpable, involving as it does the contraction of 15 facial muscles and a series of respiratory spasms. Healthful side effects of the experience are believed to include oxygenation of the blood, a reduction in stress hormones and a bolstering of the immune system. But if the experience is too intense, cataplexy can set in, leading to muscular collapse and possible injury. In rare cases the consequences are graver still. Anthony Trollope suffered a stroke undergoing this experience, while reading a now forgotten Victorian novel, Vice Versa. And the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis, reacting to the portrait of a hag he had just made, actually died of it.
What I have been describing is, of course, laughter. It is our characteristic response to the humorous, the comical, the funny. What is it about a humorous situation that evokes this response? Why should a certain kind of cerebral activity issue in such a peculiar behavioural reflex?
While there can be laughter without humour - tickling, embarrassment, nitrous oxide and vengeful exultation have been known to bring it forth - there cannot be humour without laughter. That, at any rate, is what contemporary philosophers think. "The propensity of the state of amusement to issue in laughter is arguably what is essential to its identity," we read under "Humour" in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Laughter is physical. You have to have a body to do it. Mere possession of a body, however, does not guarantee that one will laugh with any frequency. Isaac Newton is reported to have laughed precisely once in his life - when someone asked him what use he saw in Euclid's Elements. Joseph Stalin, too, seems to have been somewhat agelastic (from the Greek a-, "not", gelastes, "laugher"). "Seldom did anyone see Stalin laugh," we read in Marshal Georgy Zhukov's reminiscences. "When he did, it was more like a chuckle, as if to himself." Other reputed agelasts include Jonathan Swift, William Gladstone and Margaret Thatcher.
Like love, its only rival as an inner source of pleasure for mankind, laughter bridges the realms of the mental and the physical: so observed the incomparable Max Beerbohm in his 1920 essay "Laughter". But, Beerbohm noted, whereas love originates in the physical and culminates in the mental, the vector of laughter points in the opposite direction. One might also draw a parallel with sex. The objective in sexual congress, according to the Marquis de Sade, is to elicit involuntary noisemaking from your partner - which is precisely the object of humour, even if the nature of the noisemaking is a bit different.
Nothing in the philosophical tradition has produced a sustained account of humour and laughter that bears comparison with Freud's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Freud's interest in the problem of humour was not primarily philosophical. Rather, he was specifically attracted to jokes because of their many likenesses to dreams. In both jokes and dreams, Freud observed, meanings are condensed and displaced, things are represented indirectly or by their opposites, fallacious reasoning trumps logic. Jokes often arise involuntarily, like dreams, and tend to be swiftly forgotten. From these similarities Freud inferred that jokes and dreams share a common origin in the unconscious. Both are essentially means of outwitting our inner "censor". Yet there is a critical difference, Freud insisted. Jokes are meant to be understood; indeed, this is crucial to their success. The meaning of a dream, by contrast, eludes even the dreamer.
Freud was an avid collector of jokes, particularly Jewish jokes, and his book contains 138 specimens, by my count, some of which are excellent. ("A royal personage was making a tour through his provinces and noticed a man in the crowd who bore a striking resemblance to his own exalted person. He beckoned to him and asked: 'Was your mother at one time in service at the palace?' - 'No, your Highness,' was the reply, 'but my father was.'")
The very impulse to amass jokes can be given a psychosexual explanation. In a 1917 paper on "anal eroticism", Freud offered the following analysis: the infant is confused by his bodily products; his excrement seems to be of some value, since it issues from his body and attracts the interest of his parents (it's the infant's "first gift", Freud says); but this excrement is taken away and disposed of, so it also seems valueless. Gradually the child is weaned away from his normal curiosity in the waste products of his body by a series of drier and drier substitutes - mud pies, sand piles, and so on. Yet, among neurotics, the urge to hoard that which is disposable and of little intrinsic value - old newspapers, coasters, empty beer cans, money - remains. (The identification of gold with faeces, according to Freud, is behind such locutions as "filthy rich" and "a shitload of money".) And nothing is more disposable than a joke.
How many kinds of joke are there? There are classic jokes. ("Who was that lady I saw you with last night?" "That was no lady, that was my wife.") There are political jokes, such as Ronald Reagan's definition of liberalism: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidise it." The Iraq war has spawned an entire new category of neocon jokes: "How many neocons does it take to screw in a light bulb? None - President Bush has announced that in three months the light bulb will be able to change itself."
There are nice jokes that can be told in any drawing room. ("What does a snail say when riding on the back of a turtle?" "Whee!") And there are naughty jokes, such as the one about the woman who flies into Boston eager to enjoy a plate of the fish for which that city is famous. "Where can I get scrod?" she asks the driver as she gets into the cab. "Gee," he replies, "I've never heard it put in the pluperfect subjective before." Or the one about the successful diet Bill Clinton went on: "He's lost so much weight, now he can see his intern." And there are jokes that are inadvertent as well as jokes that are deliberate - and some that are, paradoxically, both at the same time, such as the London newspaper headline during the second world war: "British Push Bottles Up Germans".
Could any theory make sense of even this small sampling? There are three competing traditions, all a bit mouldy, that purport to explain how humour works. The "superiority theory" - propounded in various forms by Plato, Hobbes and Bergson - locates the essence of humour in the "sudden glory" (Hobbes) we feel when, say, we see Bill Gates get hit in the face with a custard pie. According to this theory, all humour is at root mockery and derision, all laughter a slightly spiritualised snarl.
The "incongruity theory", held by Pascal, Kant and Schopenhauer, says that humour arises when the decorous and logical abruptly dissolves into the low and absurd. "Do you believe in clubs for small children?" WC Fields is asked. "Only when kindness fails," he replies.
Why either of these perceptions - superiority or incongruity - should call forth a bout of cackling and chest heaving remains far from obvious. It is an advantage of the third theory, the "relief theory", that it at least tries to explain the causal link between humour and laughter. In Freud's version, the laughable - ideally a naughty joke - liberates the laughter from inhibitions about forbidden thoughts and feelings. The result is a discharge of nervous energy - a noisy outburst that, not incidentally, serves to distract the inner censor from what is going on.
For a scientist, choosing among competing theories generally means looking at how well they fit the data. And when the theories are about humour, jokes supply plenty of data. The superiority theory is well suited to jokes involving misfortune and deformity ("How did Helen Keller burn her fingers? She tried to read a waffle iron"), jokes about drunkards and henpecked husbands and lawyers, jokes about ethnic and racial groups. It may well explain the pleasure some take in a joke such as this: "Angry guy walks into a bar, orders a drink, says to the bartender, 'All agents are assholes.' Guy sitting at the end of the bar says, 'Just a minute, I resent that.' 'Why? You an agent?' 'No. I'm an asshole.'"
With a bit of stretching, the superiority theory can be made to cover almost all kinds of jokes, even those where contempt for the object of amusement gives way to sympathy. Superiority might be interpreted as a sort of godlike perspective on human affairs, or on the universe itself. (Beerbohm, debarking at the Port of New York, was asked by a reporter what he thought of the Statue of Liberty. "It is very vulgar," Beerbohm said. "It must come down.")
But what of the pun, widely and perhaps justly regarded as the lowest form of humour? (Vladimir Nabokov, when told by a professor of English that a nun who was auditing one of the professor's classes had complained that two students in the back of the classroom were "spooning" during a lecture, remarked: "You should have said 'Sister, you're lucky they weren't forking.'")
Of the three theories of humour, it is the incongruity theory that is taken most seriously by philosophers today. Even if not all incongruities are funny, nearly everything that is funny does seem to contain an incongruity of one sort or another. For Kant, the incongruity in a joke was between the "something" of the setup and the anticlimactic "nothing" of the punch line; the ludicrous effect arises "from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing". Schopenhauer thought that at the core of every joke was a sophistical syllogism. But some jokes simply defy syllogistic analysis. (Lily Tomlin: "When I was young I always wanted to be somebody. Now I wish I had been more specific.")
Blasphemous jokes and certain kinds of lewd jokes are deplored on moral grounds by many people who have perfectly good senses of humour. Among the most religiously fraught jokes are those dealing with the charge of deicide historically brought against the Jews because of the crucifixion. "Yeah, we killed Christ, the Jews killed him," said Lenny Bruce. "And if he comes back, we'll kill him again." Or, in a later variant, attributed to the Jewish intellectual Leon Wieseltier: "What's the big deal? We only killed him for a few days." Atheist jokes, oddly, tend to be more offensive to the devout than to their nominal target - for example: "Why should we feel sorry for the atheist? Because he has no one to talk to while getting a blow job."
Can jokes be dangerous? Hitler thought so; "joke courts" were set up to punish those who made fun of his regime, and one Berlin cabaret comic was executed for naming his horse Adolf. The Puritans were notorious haters of jokes, a prejudice that can be traced all the way back to Saint Paul, who warned the Ephesians against fornication and jesting.
For purely intellectual purposes, the most devastating joke is what might be called the "spontaneous counterexample". It begins with a ponderous generality, which, willy-nilly, furnishes the setup. Then comes the punch line, which slays that generality the way David slew Goliath. The greatest is due to Sidney Morgenbesser. A few decades ago, the Oxford philosopher JL Austin was giving an address to a large audience of his fellow philosophers in New York. In the course of this address, which was about the philosophy of language, Austin raised the perennially interesting issue of the double negative.
"In some languages," he observed in his clipped Oxbridge diction, "a double negative yields an affirmative. In other languages, a double negative yields a more emphatic negative. Yet, curiously enough, I know of no language, either natural or artificial, in which a double affirmative yields a negative." Suddenly, from the back of the hall, in Morgenbesser's round Brooklyn accent, came the comment: "Yeah, yeah."
But if I had to award the laurel, it would go to Oscar Wilde, for a retort he made to a now forgotten minor poet, Sir Lewis Morris. The time was the 1890s, just after the death of Tennyson, and Morris was complaining to Wilde that his claims to succeed Tennyson as poet laureate were being neglected: "It's a complete conspiracy of silence against me," Morris said, "a conspiracy of silence! What ought I to do, Oscar?"
Wilde: "Join it."
• Jim Holt's Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes is published by Profile (£8.99)
in The Guardian,
Saturday October 25 2008
Original article here
There are nice jokes and naughty jokes, and a new genre of neocon ones - but why exactly do we find them funny? Jim Holt on how philosophers have explained our sense of humour.
'Do you believe in clubs for small children?' WC Fields was asked. 'Only when kindness fails,' he replied. Photograph: Ralph Crane/Time Life Pictures/Getty
A passage in a Bach fugue may fleetingly give you goosebumps. A line from Yeats might make you tingle a bit, or cause the little hairs on the back of your neck to stand up in appreciation. But there is one kind of aesthetic experience whose outward expression is grossly palpable, involving as it does the contraction of 15 facial muscles and a series of respiratory spasms. Healthful side effects of the experience are believed to include oxygenation of the blood, a reduction in stress hormones and a bolstering of the immune system. But if the experience is too intense, cataplexy can set in, leading to muscular collapse and possible injury. In rare cases the consequences are graver still. Anthony Trollope suffered a stroke undergoing this experience, while reading a now forgotten Victorian novel, Vice Versa. And the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis, reacting to the portrait of a hag he had just made, actually died of it.
What I have been describing is, of course, laughter. It is our characteristic response to the humorous, the comical, the funny. What is it about a humorous situation that evokes this response? Why should a certain kind of cerebral activity issue in such a peculiar behavioural reflex?
While there can be laughter without humour - tickling, embarrassment, nitrous oxide and vengeful exultation have been known to bring it forth - there cannot be humour without laughter. That, at any rate, is what contemporary philosophers think. "The propensity of the state of amusement to issue in laughter is arguably what is essential to its identity," we read under "Humour" in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Laughter is physical. You have to have a body to do it. Mere possession of a body, however, does not guarantee that one will laugh with any frequency. Isaac Newton is reported to have laughed precisely once in his life - when someone asked him what use he saw in Euclid's Elements. Joseph Stalin, too, seems to have been somewhat agelastic (from the Greek a-, "not", gelastes, "laugher"). "Seldom did anyone see Stalin laugh," we read in Marshal Georgy Zhukov's reminiscences. "When he did, it was more like a chuckle, as if to himself." Other reputed agelasts include Jonathan Swift, William Gladstone and Margaret Thatcher.
Like love, its only rival as an inner source of pleasure for mankind, laughter bridges the realms of the mental and the physical: so observed the incomparable Max Beerbohm in his 1920 essay "Laughter". But, Beerbohm noted, whereas love originates in the physical and culminates in the mental, the vector of laughter points in the opposite direction. One might also draw a parallel with sex. The objective in sexual congress, according to the Marquis de Sade, is to elicit involuntary noisemaking from your partner - which is precisely the object of humour, even if the nature of the noisemaking is a bit different.
Nothing in the philosophical tradition has produced a sustained account of humour and laughter that bears comparison with Freud's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Freud's interest in the problem of humour was not primarily philosophical. Rather, he was specifically attracted to jokes because of their many likenesses to dreams. In both jokes and dreams, Freud observed, meanings are condensed and displaced, things are represented indirectly or by their opposites, fallacious reasoning trumps logic. Jokes often arise involuntarily, like dreams, and tend to be swiftly forgotten. From these similarities Freud inferred that jokes and dreams share a common origin in the unconscious. Both are essentially means of outwitting our inner "censor". Yet there is a critical difference, Freud insisted. Jokes are meant to be understood; indeed, this is crucial to their success. The meaning of a dream, by contrast, eludes even the dreamer.
Freud was an avid collector of jokes, particularly Jewish jokes, and his book contains 138 specimens, by my count, some of which are excellent. ("A royal personage was making a tour through his provinces and noticed a man in the crowd who bore a striking resemblance to his own exalted person. He beckoned to him and asked: 'Was your mother at one time in service at the palace?' - 'No, your Highness,' was the reply, 'but my father was.'")
The very impulse to amass jokes can be given a psychosexual explanation. In a 1917 paper on "anal eroticism", Freud offered the following analysis: the infant is confused by his bodily products; his excrement seems to be of some value, since it issues from his body and attracts the interest of his parents (it's the infant's "first gift", Freud says); but this excrement is taken away and disposed of, so it also seems valueless. Gradually the child is weaned away from his normal curiosity in the waste products of his body by a series of drier and drier substitutes - mud pies, sand piles, and so on. Yet, among neurotics, the urge to hoard that which is disposable and of little intrinsic value - old newspapers, coasters, empty beer cans, money - remains. (The identification of gold with faeces, according to Freud, is behind such locutions as "filthy rich" and "a shitload of money".) And nothing is more disposable than a joke.
How many kinds of joke are there? There are classic jokes. ("Who was that lady I saw you with last night?" "That was no lady, that was my wife.") There are political jokes, such as Ronald Reagan's definition of liberalism: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidise it." The Iraq war has spawned an entire new category of neocon jokes: "How many neocons does it take to screw in a light bulb? None - President Bush has announced that in three months the light bulb will be able to change itself."
There are nice jokes that can be told in any drawing room. ("What does a snail say when riding on the back of a turtle?" "Whee!") And there are naughty jokes, such as the one about the woman who flies into Boston eager to enjoy a plate of the fish for which that city is famous. "Where can I get scrod?" she asks the driver as she gets into the cab. "Gee," he replies, "I've never heard it put in the pluperfect subjective before." Or the one about the successful diet Bill Clinton went on: "He's lost so much weight, now he can see his intern." And there are jokes that are inadvertent as well as jokes that are deliberate - and some that are, paradoxically, both at the same time, such as the London newspaper headline during the second world war: "British Push Bottles Up Germans".
Could any theory make sense of even this small sampling? There are three competing traditions, all a bit mouldy, that purport to explain how humour works. The "superiority theory" - propounded in various forms by Plato, Hobbes and Bergson - locates the essence of humour in the "sudden glory" (Hobbes) we feel when, say, we see Bill Gates get hit in the face with a custard pie. According to this theory, all humour is at root mockery and derision, all laughter a slightly spiritualised snarl.
The "incongruity theory", held by Pascal, Kant and Schopenhauer, says that humour arises when the decorous and logical abruptly dissolves into the low and absurd. "Do you believe in clubs for small children?" WC Fields is asked. "Only when kindness fails," he replies.
Why either of these perceptions - superiority or incongruity - should call forth a bout of cackling and chest heaving remains far from obvious. It is an advantage of the third theory, the "relief theory", that it at least tries to explain the causal link between humour and laughter. In Freud's version, the laughable - ideally a naughty joke - liberates the laughter from inhibitions about forbidden thoughts and feelings. The result is a discharge of nervous energy - a noisy outburst that, not incidentally, serves to distract the inner censor from what is going on.
For a scientist, choosing among competing theories generally means looking at how well they fit the data. And when the theories are about humour, jokes supply plenty of data. The superiority theory is well suited to jokes involving misfortune and deformity ("How did Helen Keller burn her fingers? She tried to read a waffle iron"), jokes about drunkards and henpecked husbands and lawyers, jokes about ethnic and racial groups. It may well explain the pleasure some take in a joke such as this: "Angry guy walks into a bar, orders a drink, says to the bartender, 'All agents are assholes.' Guy sitting at the end of the bar says, 'Just a minute, I resent that.' 'Why? You an agent?' 'No. I'm an asshole.'"
With a bit of stretching, the superiority theory can be made to cover almost all kinds of jokes, even those where contempt for the object of amusement gives way to sympathy. Superiority might be interpreted as a sort of godlike perspective on human affairs, or on the universe itself. (Beerbohm, debarking at the Port of New York, was asked by a reporter what he thought of the Statue of Liberty. "It is very vulgar," Beerbohm said. "It must come down.")
But what of the pun, widely and perhaps justly regarded as the lowest form of humour? (Vladimir Nabokov, when told by a professor of English that a nun who was auditing one of the professor's classes had complained that two students in the back of the classroom were "spooning" during a lecture, remarked: "You should have said 'Sister, you're lucky they weren't forking.'")
Of the three theories of humour, it is the incongruity theory that is taken most seriously by philosophers today. Even if not all incongruities are funny, nearly everything that is funny does seem to contain an incongruity of one sort or another. For Kant, the incongruity in a joke was between the "something" of the setup and the anticlimactic "nothing" of the punch line; the ludicrous effect arises "from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing". Schopenhauer thought that at the core of every joke was a sophistical syllogism. But some jokes simply defy syllogistic analysis. (Lily Tomlin: "When I was young I always wanted to be somebody. Now I wish I had been more specific.")
Blasphemous jokes and certain kinds of lewd jokes are deplored on moral grounds by many people who have perfectly good senses of humour. Among the most religiously fraught jokes are those dealing with the charge of deicide historically brought against the Jews because of the crucifixion. "Yeah, we killed Christ, the Jews killed him," said Lenny Bruce. "And if he comes back, we'll kill him again." Or, in a later variant, attributed to the Jewish intellectual Leon Wieseltier: "What's the big deal? We only killed him for a few days." Atheist jokes, oddly, tend to be more offensive to the devout than to their nominal target - for example: "Why should we feel sorry for the atheist? Because he has no one to talk to while getting a blow job."
Can jokes be dangerous? Hitler thought so; "joke courts" were set up to punish those who made fun of his regime, and one Berlin cabaret comic was executed for naming his horse Adolf. The Puritans were notorious haters of jokes, a prejudice that can be traced all the way back to Saint Paul, who warned the Ephesians against fornication and jesting.
For purely intellectual purposes, the most devastating joke is what might be called the "spontaneous counterexample". It begins with a ponderous generality, which, willy-nilly, furnishes the setup. Then comes the punch line, which slays that generality the way David slew Goliath. The greatest is due to Sidney Morgenbesser. A few decades ago, the Oxford philosopher JL Austin was giving an address to a large audience of his fellow philosophers in New York. In the course of this address, which was about the philosophy of language, Austin raised the perennially interesting issue of the double negative.
"In some languages," he observed in his clipped Oxbridge diction, "a double negative yields an affirmative. In other languages, a double negative yields a more emphatic negative. Yet, curiously enough, I know of no language, either natural or artificial, in which a double affirmative yields a negative." Suddenly, from the back of the hall, in Morgenbesser's round Brooklyn accent, came the comment: "Yeah, yeah."
But if I had to award the laurel, it would go to Oscar Wilde, for a retort he made to a now forgotten minor poet, Sir Lewis Morris. The time was the 1890s, just after the death of Tennyson, and Morris was complaining to Wilde that his claims to succeed Tennyson as poet laureate were being neglected: "It's a complete conspiracy of silence against me," Morris said, "a conspiracy of silence! What ought I to do, Oscar?"
Wilde: "Join it."
• Jim Holt's Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes is published by Profile (£8.99)
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
A new advertising code could lift confidence in green goods
Paul McIntyre
July 31, 2008
From the smh.com.au
THE PITCH
Greenwashing and dodgy environmental claims might get a little harder to pull off next year as the country's main advertising body, the Australian Association of National Advertisers, goes on the offensive in August to develop a self-regulatory code that would bury such activity and keep regulators like the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission at bay.
It's unusual for the association to lead the way on such a controversial topic, but it knew something had to be done when "gap" analysis six months ago identified areas that could expose it to risk.
Greenwashing, or selling up the environmental claims of a product, emerged as the most pressing matter. Then the ACCC warned advertisers to be careful in making carbon offset claims and promotions to consumers on products and services.
Now the association, through the public affairs consultancy Res Publica, will press the flesh and take submissions from environmental ferals and conservative rednecks alike about how a green code might take shape.
So far it has consulted one of the more credible critics of corporate greenwashing, the Total Environment Centre, which has backed its plans and taken a central role in the review.
"We need a war on greenwash," the centre's director, Jeff Angel, said yesterday. "Environmental claims and brands should inspire and encourage consumers, not dupe them into thinking they are doing their part for the environment when they are not. It's essential that green products become mainstream, the normal products to buy, but for this to happen consumers must be confident about environmental claims."
Whole article here
July 31, 2008
From the smh.com.au
THE PITCH
Greenwashing and dodgy environmental claims might get a little harder to pull off next year as the country's main advertising body, the Australian Association of National Advertisers, goes on the offensive in August to develop a self-regulatory code that would bury such activity and keep regulators like the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission at bay.
It's unusual for the association to lead the way on such a controversial topic, but it knew something had to be done when "gap" analysis six months ago identified areas that could expose it to risk.
Greenwashing, or selling up the environmental claims of a product, emerged as the most pressing matter. Then the ACCC warned advertisers to be careful in making carbon offset claims and promotions to consumers on products and services.
Now the association, through the public affairs consultancy Res Publica, will press the flesh and take submissions from environmental ferals and conservative rednecks alike about how a green code might take shape.
So far it has consulted one of the more credible critics of corporate greenwashing, the Total Environment Centre, which has backed its plans and taken a central role in the review.
"We need a war on greenwash," the centre's director, Jeff Angel, said yesterday. "Environmental claims and brands should inspire and encourage consumers, not dupe them into thinking they are doing their part for the environment when they are not. It's essential that green products become mainstream, the normal products to buy, but for this to happen consumers must be confident about environmental claims."
Whole article here
Monday, August 4, 2008
Particpate in the Future of Melbourne City - the Future Wiki
Melbourne to become one of the world's top 10 most liveable and sustainable cities
"Future Melbourne is the community of Melbourne's long-term plan for the future direction of all aspects of city life. Developed by the community, it sets out the goals for the future, key trends and challenges, and outlines strategic growth areas for the city," Cr Ng said.
Future Melbourne sets out six goals:
1. A city for people
2. A prosperous city
3. An eco-city
4. A knowledge city
5. A creative city
6. A connected city.
A selection of 10 headline targets have been identified to measure progress towards the six Future Melbourne goals for the municipality by 2020. These include:
1. all visitors to and residents of the city feel welcome, safe and engaged;
2. all residents, businesses and visitors easily and affordably access the internet;
3. at least 140,000 people live in the municipality of Melbourne;
4. at least 20 per cent of new housing in the municipality is affordable or social housing;
5. total employment in the municipality is more than 400,000;
6. per capita greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 have reduced by 35 per cent per resident and 59 per cent per worker from 2006 levels;
7. per capita drinking water use by 2020 has reduced by 40 per cent per resident and 50 per cent per worker compared to 2000 levels;
8. metropolitan Melbourne is ranked in the world's top research centres;
9. metropolitan Melbourne is ranked in the world's top five cities for international higher education; and
10. 90 per cent of people travel to work in the Melbourne CBD by walking, bicycle and or public transport.
Future Melbourne Reference Group Chair, Carol Schwartz, said the Future Melbourne draft plan was developed by engaging with Melbourne's many communities. More >>
Find out how to participate here:
Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership
No. 1
Courage is not the absence of fear — it's inspiring others to move beyond it
No. 2
Lead from the front — but don't leave your base behind
No. 3
Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front
No. 4
Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport
No. 5
Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer
No. 6
Appearances matter — and remember to smile
No. 7
Nothing is black or white
No. 8
Quitting is leading too
Nelson Mandela has always felt most at ease around children, and in some ways his greatest deprivation was that he spent 27 years without hearing a baby cry or holding a child's hand. Last month, when I visited Mandela in Johannesburg — a frailer, foggier Mandela than the one I used to know — his first instinct was to spread his arms to my two boys. Within seconds they were hugging the friendly old man who asked them what sports they liked to play and what they'd had for breakfast. While we talked, he held my son Gabriel, whose complicated middle name is Rolihlahla, Nelson Mandela's real first name. He told Gabriel the story of that name, how in Xhosa it translates as "pulling down the branch of a tree" but that its real meaning is "troublemaker."
As he celebrates his 90th birthday next week, Nelson Mandela has made enough trouble for several lifetimes. He liberated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite white and black, oppressor and oppressed, in a way that had never been done before. In the 1990s I worked with Mandela for almost two years on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. After all that time spent in his company, I felt a terrible sense of withdrawal when the book was done; it was like the sun going out of one's life. We have seen each other occasionally over the years, but I wanted to make what might be a final visit and have my sons meet him one more time.
I also wanted to talk to him about leadership. Mandela is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint, but he would be the first to admit that he is something far more pedestrian: a politician. He overthrew apartheid and created a nonracial democratic South Africa by knowing precisely when and how to transition between his roles as warrior, martyr, diplomat and statesman. Uncomfortable with abstract philosophical concepts, he would often say to me that an issue "was not a question of principle; it was a question of tactics." He is a master tactician.
Mandela is no longer comfortable with inquiries or favors. He's fearful that he may not be able to summon what people expect when they visit a living deity, and vain enough to care that they not think him diminished. But the world has never needed Mandela's gifts — as a tactician, as an activist and, yes, as a politician — more, as he showed again in London on June 25, when he rose to condemn the savagery of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. As we enter the main stretch of a historic presidential campaign in America, there is much that he can teach the two candidates. I've always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba's Rules (Madiba, his clan name, is what everyone close to him calls him), and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar. They are mostly practical. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.
Whole article here
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
10 WTF Sites That Will Warp Your Mind
From: http://www.listropolis.com/
"I can’t even begin to explain these sites. They are a little trippy, loaded with Flash, and a whole lot WTF. I feel these sites are hanging out on the outer-most sections of the internet universe, and I’ve done my best to pull them all together for you. You may never look at websites the same again."
Click here:
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Aussie who's changing the world of whistleblowers
From smh.com.au
Asher Moses
July 8, 2008 - 11:51AM
In the past year and a half, Australian-born Julian Assange and his band of online dissidents have helped swing the Kenyan Presidential election, embarrassed the US Government and sparked international scandal.
His site, Wikileaks, provides a safe haven for whistleblowers to anonymously upload confidential documents and, after 18 months of operation, Assange says no source has ever been exposed and no document - now over 1.2 million and counting - has ever been censored or removed.
Now, the site is expanding its focus from oppressive regimes and shady corporate dealings to religion and even the cult of celebrity.
Recently published documents include an early version of the movie script for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Wesley Snipes's tax bill and documents from the Church of Scientology and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
"In every negotiation, in every planning meeting and in every workplace dispute a perception is slowly building that the public interest may have a number of silent advocates in the room," Assange said in an email interview.
In August last year, The Guardian ran a front page report about widespread corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel Arap Moi, including evidence Moi siphoned off billions in government money. The report stated it was based on a document obtained from Wikileaks.
Assange says the revelation changed the result of the Kenyan presidential election, swinging the vote by 10 per cent towards the opposition, which won the election by 1-3 per cent of the vote.
Other previously confidential documents published by Wikileaks include the US Rules of Engagement for Iraq and the primary operations manual for the running of the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, which revealed that it was US policy to hide some detainees from the International Red Cross and use dogs to intimidate inmates.
The documents were reported on in the world's most respected papers including The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Wikileaks has been referenced 662 times on nytimes.com, 207 times on guardian.co.uk, 86 times on washingtonpost.com and 54 times on speigel.de.
Assange, who grew up in Australia but moved to East Africa two years ago and now splits his time between Kenya and Tanzania, has worked as a security consultant, professional hacker, activist and researcher.
Whole article here:
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