Richard Florida on Public Radio

Hat tip to Paul for the pointer.
The author of Who's Your City speaks on the OSU public radio. Definitely worth a listen.
Go here.

Best Paragraphs Read Today

Best Paragraphs I read today came from two different posts over at NPR's Monitormix. Carrie Brownstin's done it again, folks:
"I discovered last night that the albums we've come to take for granted can leave fresh marks upon us; they can override nostalgia and sentimentality; they can overtake a moment, permeate and flood. It's good to know, beyond mere mental recognition or a historical acknowledgement, that certain music can and does turn you inside out. It's hard to make the space, physically or mentally, for that power sometimes -- a lot of our music listening has become unintentional, crammed into crevices to make room for the rest of our hectic lives. Might I suggest, then, that every once in a while, you let some of your favorite songs or albums take over a whole room -- or, better yet, a whole night. But only if you're ready."
And...
"Once a song exists, it never ceases to exist, whether I have constant access to it or not. And much of my music collection is under-appreciated and under-listened to anyway. It takes up as much of a psychological space as it does a physical one. I guess, in the process of downsizing, I've come to the conclusion that memory is as good of a storage space as anything. Sure, maybe in a few years I'll seek out some of these albums again -- but I might not even miss them. It might not even feel like they're gone."

John Keats and Posthumous Glory

You lovers of Keats will like this.
"When John Keats died in February 1821, just 25, his friends believed that it was the reviews that killed him. In truth the critics could hardly have been less kind, especially about Keats’s second book, “Endymion.” “We venture to make our small prophecy that his bookseller will not a second time venture 50” pounds “on anything he can write,” a reviewer for Blackwood’s Magazine wrote. “It is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet. So back to the shop, Mr. John.”
graph per ny times

Dear Computer: What Gender Am I?

Just in case you need the internet to tell you what gender you happen to be, consider this.
I just took it and per my web history, my score is:
Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 76%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 24%

Coffee Myths

Schultz did more than create the Starbucks notion back in the '80's. He seemed to also know how much the legal stimulant would come to mean to so many people at the same time. The Times posts an interesting article on the topic. And since we tend to be quite partial to the macchiato in this neck of the woods, I'll quote a 'benefit' from the feature:
"Probably the most important effects of caffeine are its ability to enhance mood and mental and physical performance. At consumption levels up to 200 milligrams (the amount in about 16 ounces of ordinary brewed coffee), consumers report an improved sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability, Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reported, although higher amounts sometimes cause anxiety and stomach upset.

Millions of sleep-deprived Americans depend on caffeine to help them make it through their day and drive safely. The drug improves alertness and reaction time. In the sleep-deprived, it improves memory and the ability to perform complex tasks.

For the active, caffeine enhances endurance in aerobic activities and performance in anaerobic ones, perhaps because it blunts the perception of pain and aids the ability to burn fat for fuel instead of its carbohydrates."
Read full text here.
graph per ny times

What Music Reveals About One

This is too interesting to pass up.
"WHAT STUDIES SAY ABOUT YOUR SOUNDS:

POP: Conformists, overly responsible, role-conscious, struggling with sexuality or peer acceptance.

HEAVY METAL: Higher levels of suicidal ideation, depression, drug use, self-harm, shoplifting, vandalism, unprotected sex.

DANCE: Higher levels of drug use regardless of socio-economic background.

JAZZ/RHYTHM & BLUES: Introverted misfits, loners.

RAP: Higher levels of theft, violence, anger, street gang membership, drug use and misogyny."

Reactions?
Read all here.

LCD Soundsystem's Lesson in Geography

Good indie rock isn't the prerogative of the Brits alone. And nobody says this better than my '08 favorite LCD Soundsystem.

Boredom's Paging

My main preoccupation is not boredom but rather some measure of anxiety associated with the fleeting nature of time.
Obviously, I experience boredom too. The only times I do so, however, is when I'm divorced from my quotidian program and structure. Travel is one thing that makes boredom pop up. Gadgets that stop working when there are still hours left before departure time, would be one instigator to boredom. Another scenario would be waiting for hours at a doctor's office where phones are supposed to be off and the magazines are at least a year old. Add a lack of personal computers and books in your bag and that translates to inevitable yawning and incessant staring at some big clock from the 80's that's gracing the wall.

However, boredom is not only a high-frequency lexeme in many people's vocab, it's also a high-frequency human experience. A bit from a gripping Times article says:
"Psychologists have most often studied boredom using a 28-item questionnaire that asks people to rate how closely a list of sentences applies to them: “Time always seems to be passing too slowly,” for instance.

High scores in these tests tend to correlate with high scores on measures of depression and impulsivity. But it is not clear which comes first — proneness to boredom, or the mood and behavior problems. “It’s the difference between the sort of person who can look at a pool of mud and find something interesting, and someone who has a hard time getting absorbed in anything,” said Stephen J. Vodanovich, a psychologist at University of West Florida in Pensacola.

Boredom as a temporary state is another matter, and in part reflects the obvious: that the brain has concluded there is nothing new or useful it can learn from an environment, a person, an event, a paragraph. But it is far from a passive neural shrug. Using brain-imaging technology, neuroscientists have found that the brain is highly active when disengaged, consuming only about 5 percent less energy in its resting “default state” than when involved in routine tasks, according to Dr. Mark Mintun, a professor of radiology at Washington University in St. Louis.

That slight reduction can make a big difference in terms of time perception. The seconds usually seem to pass more slowly when the brain is idling than when it is absorbed. And those stretched seconds are not the live-in-the-moment, meditative variety, either. They are frustrated, restless moments. That combination, psychologists argue, makes boredom a state that demands relief — if not from a catnap or a conversation, then from some mental game."
Read more here.

When do you tend to experience boredom and how do you grapple with it?
graph per photogabble

More Things Sarkozy: The Son and His Scooter

There's always something with this guy. His ubiquity in the press also translates to ubiquity in my blog.... Sarkozy's quite the text, that's for sure. So, what's the news today?
Well, 'Sarkozy' news today revolves around his aesthetically superior blonde son, his lovely scooter, reckless driving, and that little concept called 'sense of entitlement.'
The premise of the article might seem inconsequential in the beginning. However, it does raise some valid questions.
Here it a bit:
"Jean Sarkozy has also been a beneficiary of his father’s power, it seems. When his motor scooter was stolen last year, the police recovered it quickly, even going to the extraordinary length of taking a DNA sample from his helmet. In 2005, he ran his scooter into the back of a BMW, according to a complaint brought by the car’s owner, M’Hamed Bellouti, who managed to catch the license plate number as the scooter sped away. The police failed to find the scooter, but the car owner’s insurance company did. Nevertheless, in a December 2007 trial, the complaint against Jean Sarkozy was dismissed.

Mr. Bellouti asked then: “Why is there a two-speed justice system? When they steal his scooter, they are full of zeal. When it hits my car, there is less zeal.”
Read more here.
graph per ny times

“Les Demoiselles d’Avignon" Rules

This, I loved reading about. Especially because I also think that Picasso's “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” is one of the best gifts of the 20th-century.
A bit from the Times feature says:

"Ask David Galenson to name the single greatest work of art from the 20th century, and he unhesitatingly answers “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” a 1907 painting by Picasso.
His confidence in the ranking doesn’t come from a stack of degrees in art history (though he has read a lot on the subject). After all, Mr. Galenson is an economist at the University of Chicago who initially specialized in colonial America....
His statistical approach has led to what he says is a radically new interpretation of 20th-century art, one he is certain art historians will hate. It is based in part on how frequently an illustration of a work appears in textbooks.
“Quantification has been almost totally absent from art history,” he said. “Art historians hate markets.”

Great read.
graph per google image