May 24, 2011
A sinecure [sahy-ni-kyoor] (Latin: sine ‘without,’ cura ‘care’) means an office that requires or involves little or no responsibility, labor, or active service. Sinecures have historically provided a potent tool for governments or monarchs to distribute patronage, while recipients are able to store up titles and easy salaries.
A sinecure is not necessarily a figurehead, which generally requires active participation in government, albeit with a lack of power. A sinecure, by contrast, has no real day-to-day responsibilities, but may have de jure power.
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May 24, 2011
Tafoni (singular: tafone) are small cave-like features found in granular rock such as sandstone, with rounded entrances and smooth concave walls. They often occur in groups that can riddle a hillside, cliff, or other rock formation.
They also frequently occur in granitic rocks. Small versions of tafoni are sometimes called alveoli; like the former, they are hypothesized to be results of salt weathering.
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May 24, 2011
Semantic satiation is a cognitive neuroscience phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who can only process the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. The explanation for the phenomenon was that verbal repetition repeatedly aroused a specific neural pattern in the cortex which corresponds to the meaning of the word. Rapid repetition causes both the peripheral sensorimotor activity and the central neural activation to fire repeatedly, which is known to cause reactive inhibition, hence a reduction in the intensity of the activity with each repetition.
Several activities demonstrate the operation of the semantic satiation effect in various cognitive tasks such as rating words and figures that are presented repeatedly in a short time, verbally repeating words then grouping them into concepts, adding numbers after repeating them out loud, and bilingual translations of words repeated in one of the two languages. In each case subjects would repeat a word or number for several seconds, then perform the cognitive task using that word. It was demonstrated that repeating a word prior to its use in a task made the task somewhat more difficult.
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May 24, 2011
Bauhaus [bou-hous] is the common term for the Staatliches Bauhaus, an art and architecture school in Germany that operated from 1919 to 1933 in Germany and in the United States from 1937-1938. The most natural meaning for its name (related to the German verb for ‘build’) is Architecture House.
The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of creating a ‘total’ work of art in which all arts, including architecture would eventually be brought together.
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May 23, 2011
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (1890 – 1941), better known as El Lissitzky was a Russian artist. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the former Soviet Union.
His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design.
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May 23, 2011
Nyotaimori often referred to as ‘body sushi,’ is the practice of serving sashimi or sushi from the body of a woman, typically naked. Nantaimori refers to the same practice using a male model. This subdivision of food play is originally an obscure Japanese practice that has attracted considerable international media attention. Promoters, eating participants, and proponents of the practice often say that nyotaimori is a form of art. This argument is rejected by some feminists, who argue that it objectifies the woman or the man doing the serving.
Before becoming a living sushi platter, the person is trained to lie down for hours without moving. She or he must also be able to withstand the prolonged exposure to the cold food. Before service, the individual is supposed to have taken a bath using a special fragrance-free soap and then finished off with a splash of cold water to cool the body down somewhat for the sushi. In some parts of the world, in order to comply with sanitation laws, there must be a layer of plastic or other material between the sushi and the body of the woman or man.
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May 21, 2011
A doodle is an unfocused drawing made while a person’s attention is otherwise occupied. They are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be abstract shapes.
Doodling can aid a person’s memory by expending just enough energy to keep one from daydreaming, which demands a lot of the brain’s processing power, as well as from not paying attention. Thus, it acts as a mediator between the spectrum of thinking too much or thinking too little and helps focus on the current situation. Continue reading →
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May 21, 2011
Marc Newson (b. 1963) born in Australia, and now based in London, is an industrial designer who works in aircraft design and product design. He incorporates a design style known as biomorphism to his various designs. This style uses smooth flowing lines, translucency, transparency and tends to have an absence of sharp edges.
He is currently adjunct professor in design at Sydney College of the Arts and is the creative director for Qantas. He co-founded and owns the Ikepod watch company. One of his three Lockheed Lounge chairs sold for $968,000 at Sotheby’s in 2006. Every year he races one of his four vintage sports cars – an Aston Martin, a Lamborghini, a Ferrari and a Cisitalia, in the Italian Mille Miglia.
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May 21, 2011
Robert Hare (b. 1934) is a Canadian researcher renowned in the field of criminal psychology. He developed the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) and Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R), used to diagnose cases of psychopathy and also useful in predicting the likelihood of violent behavior, and is professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia where his studies center on psychopathology and psychophysiology.
In contemporary research and clinical practice, Robert D. Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) is the psycho-diagnostic tool most commonly used to assess psychopathy. Continue reading →
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May 21, 2011
Amygdala [uh-mig-duh-luh] hijack is a term coined by psychologist Daniel Goleman in his 1996 book ‘Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.’ Goleman uses the term to describe emotional responses from people which are out of measure with the actual threat because it has triggered a much more significant emotional threat. The brain processes stimuli by having the thalamus direct sensory information to the neocortex (the ‘thinking brain’). The cortex then routes the signal to the amygdala (the ’emotional brain’) for the proper emotional reaction. The amygdala then triggers a flood of peptides and hormones to create emotion and action.
Perceived potential threats, however, can disrupt this smooth flow; the thalamus bypasses the cortex and routes the signal directly to the amygdala, which is the trigger point for the primitive fight-or-flight response; when the amygdala feels threatened, it can react irrationally and destructively. Goleman states that ‘Emotions make us pay attention right now – this is urgent – and give us an immediate action plan without having to think twice. The emotional component evolved very early: Do I eat it, or does it eat me?’ The emotional response ‘can take over the rest of the brain in a millisecond if threatened.’ An amygdala hijack exhibits three signs: strong emotional reaction, sudden onset, and post-episode realization that the reaction was inappropriate.
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May 21, 2011
The amygdala [uh-mig-duh-luh] (Latin: ‘almond’) are almond-shaped groups of nuclei (clusters of neurons) located deep within the temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans. Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system.
The amygdala sends impulses to the hypothalamus for activation of the sympathetic nervous system to trigger a fight or flight response, to the thalamic reticular nucleus for increased reflexes, to the nuclei of the trigeminal nerve and the facial nerve, and to the ventral tegmental area, locus coeruleus, and laterodorsal tegmental nucleus for activation of dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine (adrenalin). Continue reading →
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May 21, 2011
The limbic system (or Paleomammalian brain) is a set of brain structures including the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior thalamic nuclei, septum, limbic cortex and fornix, which seemingly support a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, long term memory, and olfaction (smell). The term ‘limbic’ comes from the Latin limbus, for ‘border’ or ‘edge.’ Some scientists have suggested that the concept of the limbic system should be abandoned as obsolete, as it is grounded more in transient tradition than in facts.
The limbic system operates by influencing the endocrine system (hormones) and the autonomic nervous system (visceral functions, e.g. breathing, urinating, salivating). It is highly interconnected with the nucleus accumbens, the brain’s pleasure center, which plays a role in sexual arousal and the ‘high’ derived from certain recreational drugs. In a 1954 experiment, rats with metal electrodes implanted into their nucleus accumbens as well as their septal nuclei repeatedly pressed a lever activating this region, and did so in preference to eating and drinking, eventually dying of exhaustion. Continue reading →
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