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How language shapes thought – All In The Mind – ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

How language shapes thought – All In The Mind – ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): “It’s been controversial for centuries but new empirical research suggests that language has a powerful influence over the way we think and perceive the world. Lera Boroditsky from Stanford University suggests that Japanese and Spanish speakers have a different sense of blame, and some Indigenous Australians have a different sense of space—all because of the language they speak.”

Click to play & download
language-shapes-thought.mp3

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Shakespeare Sonnets – Evolution – Kim Hill – Brian Boyd (and relationship)

Loved this discussion:

Click to play & download Bryan Boyd Interviewed by Kim Hill

Here is the book:

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Kindle

I will read the book. But as I listened I was burning to join in on the discussion. I have since my days studying under Prof. Robert Bigelow in the late 60s at Canterbury had an understanding of “gene pools”. The concept makes sense of how some things might benefit the survival of a species even when individuals do not have more babies.

Brian Boyd touched on this lightly in the interview, I’ll be interested to see if he does this more fully in the book.

The point is this: if lyrical poetry (or anything else) is useful to the group then only a few need to have a gene for it, and even if they individually don’t have more babies, the group as a whole might survive and a neighbouring group who does not have that gene in their pool might not.

I’ve been thinking about this in relationship to the purpose of monogamy. It seems that it has a special place in healing wounds from childhood. But this typically does not happen till after the crucial childbearing years, in the second reflective half of life. I think of the powerful impact even one or two healing couples can have in a group. They can foster relationship education as well. They might influence psychological health, and more robust grandchildren.

PS

Bigelow’s book here: Amazon – The Dawn Warriors

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Podcasts I’ve enjoyed lately

I’ve been using Pocketcasts on the iPhone. First one I’ve liked in all these years. The iTunes one never satisfied and the way I used to do it – was clumsy. But it worked and was essentially what did on the Palm.

Casts (as it also gets called) has a sharing function so I can easily pop them inhere from time to time. — though not the full audio. So the links might no work. When there is one I really want I’ll post the whole thing. The pocket cast links work only on the iPhone (or Android?) if you have the app.

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Are Computers Creative?

Studio 360 from PRI and WNYCEpisode:

http://www.pocketcasts.com/share/ttW4ML

I did follow this one up:

I liked this show. Why dpi these AI programs never use the Internet, Wolfram Alpgha etc? Siri creates its own search … I think the big breakthrough will come when they link all of these things – the music – art and writing and all search through some higher entity.

I just noticed the words “higher entity” I just mean a meta engine. Ha.

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RNZ: Saturday MorningEpisode: Kim Hill

Chris Szekely – Rahui and libraries

http://www.pocketcasts.com/share/s6Ur45

I like this and I have the book!

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU1110/S00196/rahui-an-exceptional-new-childrens-book.htm

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WeAreMany.org

Ways of Seeing: The Art Criticism of John Berger

http://www.pocketcasts.com/share/ODAn7Y

All the talks at the Chicago socialist conference are here. I like some of them.

Listened to this just as I was given this book

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RNZ: Saturday MorningEpisode: Kim Hill Saturday Morning 19 May 2012

Art with Mary Kisler – Angelica Garnett

http://www.pocketcasts.com/share/7TLKXO

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I like stuff about the Bloomsbury group. Bohemians.

Untitled

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I now have the Kindle Sample”

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Mac Power UsersEpisode:

Mac Power Users 56: Mail

http://www.pocketcasts.com/share/1s4pG1

Very long and a bit boring but what a resource if you want to understand Mail on the Mac.

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Wabi Sabi Photos -> Mark Tobey

 

Now I wonder how much wabi sabi influenced the work of Jackson Pollock and those whom bought calligraphic ideas from japan like Mark Tobey

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Autumn Field

1957
Mark Tobey
Born: Centerville, Wisconsin 1890
Died: Basel, Switzerland 1976
tempera on paper
sheet: 47 x 36 in. (119.4 x 91.5 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
1968.52.23

Not currently on view

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Poem and Paintings

I like this poem by David Dominguez.

And I found images of the portrait, and the watermelon paintings as well.

 

Wedding Portrait

BY DAVID DOMINGUEZ

Yesterday afternoon, I hung a framed print in the living room—
a task that took two head-throbbing hours.
It’s a wedding portrait that we love: Frida and Diego Rivera.
I wonder how two people could consistently hurt each other,
but still feel love so deeply as their bones turned into dust?
Before Frida died, she painted a watermelon still life;
before his death, Diego did too.
I want to believe that those paintings were composed
during parallel moments because of their undying devotion.
If I close my eyes, I can see melon wedges left like
centerpieces except for the slice
Diego put on the table’s corner—
one piece of fruit pecked at by a dove
that passed through a window.
I know that I won’t be building a bookshelf anytime soon
and that the chances of me constructing a roll-top desk
are as slim as me building an Adirondack chair that sits plumb,
but I’m good with the spackle and putty knives in my tool belt.
The knots in my back might not be there
if I had listened to her suggestions,
and I could well have done without two hours of silence
over a few holes in the wall.
But somehow, life has its ways of working things out.
This afternoon, I shut the blinds,
turned off the TV, lights, and phone,
and massaged my wife’s feet to fight off a migraine—
her second one this week despite
the prophylactics and pain killers that we store in the breadbox.
For once, I’d like to experience what she feels:
nausea, blindness, and pain that strike
when the cranial vessels dilate,
fill with blood, leak, and make the brain swell.
Earlier, an MRI triggered the reaction as it mapped her head
with electrical current, gradient magnets, and radio waves
hammering her floundering eyes.
For now, we have our room, the bed frame, and the mattress
where she lies as I knead her toes.
Come nightfall, I hope that we’ll sit in the patio and watch
the breeze stirring the lemon, lime, and orange trees
that I planted along the back fence.
On certain nights, the moon turns our lawn
into green acrylic where we sip Syrah and mint tea
until all we know is the sound
of our breathing among the whispering leaves.

David Dominguez, “Wedding Portrait” from The Ghost of Cesar Chavez. Copyright © 2010 by David Dominguez.  Reprinted by permission of C&R Press.

Source: The Ghost of Caesar Chavez: Poems (C&R Press, 2010)

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Viva La Vida 1954

Perhaps this was the portrait: