Back to calligraphy. Not on the iPhone at all, back to the M200! Wonders of digital, I added a new undercoat. don’t know what it needs?
Tussock
Alice Neel Video + iPhone app
Paris by Night
Brassai (Gyula Halasz) Open Gutter From “Paris by Night” (1933)
Indefensibe truth covered by a layer of lies.
The ambitious comprehensive radical work of Richard Moore. He starts from his work with software and becomes a something like a marxist. How come he’s not a Marxist? His book is called Escaping the Matrix. The movie too was a great metaphor for the basis / superstructure of society.
Richard’s book on his site, and on Amazon:
From a systems perspective I was intrigued by a certain oddity: the USA, the world’s leading power, seemed always to be bungling. American foreign and domestic policies frequently resulted in the opposite of their stated objectives. I began to notice that other, unstated objectives were being accomplished instead. These unstated objectives in many cases made perfect geopolitical and economic sense from a Machiavellian perspective—but a sense that would not be publicly defensible. Increasingly, I discounted the interpretive aspects of news reporting, and focused instead on the raw underlying events being chronicled.
I began to perceive a degree of consistency in the behavior of governments, politicians, and institutions, that was far greater than what one would sense from news reports, pundits, and official statements. The rough contours of underlying strategies and goals emerged which made seemingly chaotic phenomenon—such as US foreign policy—not only understandable but rather predictable.
How I listen to podcasts.
- Find the RSS feed eg http://www.democracynow.org/democracynow.rss
- Subscribe in Google Reader. http://www.google.com/reader/view/#overview-page
- Have a filter in Google Reader to get all the podcasts subscriptions into a Podcast folder, easy to review!
- Slide *episodes* over into the Firefox Download Box (I have it configured to be in the sidebar) if I think I’ll like them, or will have time to listen.
- From the Download Folder slide all those mp3s into iTunes as music. Give them the My Podcast Genre (or similar). Make a smart playlist, and have that ticked to go to the iPhone upon a sync.
- Walk! Listen. Rate. Once they are rated they leave the Podcast playlist (that how I set up the smart playlist). I use one star meaning delete. Soft reboot to clear the list.
That’s my Podcast System. Cumbersome? Tell me a better way.
I get exactly what I want. They stay in the Playlist till I’m done & then they go.
I can’t get that control with the built in Podcast folder, or the iTunes subscription system.
I see I made a post about this system before, has some more details.
How to get some sanity
I listen to Democracy Now more than any other news or current affair program. I find it gives me a better picture of the world than I can get from any NZ source. Left, not liberal, not sectarian. Amy Goodman – a hero!
I wish more people would listen to it. I found myself chatting casually about the plight of Haiti over the years because US interference and people though I was espousing conspiracy theory. Ordinary left thinking New Zealanders!
I’ll post up how I listen to Podcasts. The great thing is I walk & listen, good for my body. Good for the dog. Multitasking.
Bluffers Guide to the Bicameral Mind
I have always wondered exactly what this book was about. Now I know!
Bicameralism (psychology) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
In psychology, bicameralism is a hypothesis which argues that the human brain once assumed a state known as a bicameral mind in which cognitive functions are divided between one part of the brain which appears to be “speaking”, and a second part which listens and obeys.
The term was coined by psychologist Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality, that is to say a mental state in which there are two distinct sections of consciousness, was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3000 years ago. He used governmental bicameralism to metaphorically describe such a state, in which the experiences and memories of the right hemisphere of the brain are transmitted to the left hemisphere via auditory hallucinations. This mental model was replaced by the conscious mode of thought, which Jaynes argues is grounded in the acquisition of metaphorical language. The idea that language is a necessary component of subjective consciousness and more abstract forms of thinking has been gaining acceptance in recent years, with proponents such as Daniel Dennett, William H. Calvin, Merlin Donald, John Limber, Howard Margolis, Peter Carruthers, and Jose Luis Bermudez.[1]
Manufacturing Depression
There are several stories in this hour long program, one about earthquakes, one about race in a Californian university, and one about depression. The last one tells me what I know as a psychotherapy to be true. Not that antidepressants don’t always work, but that why they work is a big muddle, it could be the placebo effect or just time. And the price for this dubious result is to pathologise millions of people, to get them thinking about the psyche in a medical & unhelpful way.
All for huge profit.
The DSM 5 is a scandal and will make the problem worse!
All part of a 150 year trend… that bit was new to me.
Video of the Depression story on Democracy Now
Every health professional should watch this video, listen to this last story in this episode of Democracy Now, or read the book by Gary Greenberg, Amazon:
Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease
The primary point that Greenberg expressed in the interview is that we are taking a normal human experience and turning it into a disease. He makes it clear that he has no problem with relieving the suffering of depression with drugs, but he questions whether we have turned normal blue moods into a disease in order to justify medicating away sadness.
A satisfying read online is where Greenberg is interviewed on the Well. Quote follows.
Conformity Study
Conformity: Ten Timeless Influencers | PsyBlog – http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/02/conformity-ten-timeless-influencers.php






