"A friend, another friend, once showed a Picasso, to Picasso, who said no, it was a fake. The same friend from yet another source showed another would-be Picasso and Picasso said that too was a fake. Then yet another from another source; also fake, said Picasso. "But Pablo" said his friend, "I watched you paint that with my own eyes."
"Haha", said Picasso. "I can paint false Picasso's as well as anybody."
The editing is fantastic.. quick, tightly shot, with some great pausing; visually engaging. Great commentary on expertise too.. and shot and told in the way that you actually have to question everything... even if Elmyr himself actually existed! Great story telling. Confusing at first, but really fucking cool once you wrap your head around it....
It comes into question, at least to me now, that if simply playing the part, just doing it, going through the motions; can it be considered faking? Let me rephrase a bit. Is it based on the psychological situation? The human weakness to want to believe? (as suggested in the film.. ) Is simply going through the motions enough? This could be why con men are so successful. Are we like the black box; all that matters is what goes in and what comes out, without any consideration of its internal operations?
"Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared, some of them for a few decades, or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash. The triumphs, and the frauds. The treasures and the fakes. A fact of life. We're going to die.
Be of good heart, cry the dead artists, out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced. But what of it?
Go on singing. Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much."
More Orson Welles! More Orson Welles!
This movie, these thoughts, really clean up what I was quite poorly struggling with in the previous post, and goes a few steps further. Sharing ideas is awesome!
I honestly thought I blogged about this song earlier!.. but I can't find it here.. weird. I came here to look it up as I was listening to the song... Anyway, here's Andrew Bird's Sovay.
And a lot more. I really don't expect anyone to actually go through this; it's kinda too specific unless you love this song.
Lyrics:
i was getting ready to be a threat i was getting set for my accidental suicide the kind where no one dies, no one looks too surprised and then you, then you realize that you're riding on the para-success of a heavy-handed metaphor and a feeling like you've been here before
cause you've been here before, and you've been here before then a word washed to shore then a word washed to shore then a word washed to shore
sovay, sovay, sovay all along in the day
i was getting ready to consider my next plan of attack i think i'm gonna sack the whole board of trustees all those don quixotes in their b-17's and i swear this time, yeah this time they'll blow us back to the seventies and this time they're playin Ride of the Valkyries with no semblance of grace or ease and they're acting on vagaries, with their violent proclivities and they're playing ride, playing ride playing ride, ride, Ride of the Valkyries
sovay, sovay, sovay all along the day
i was getting ready to threaten to be a threat instead of thinking about my plan of attack, think about a sack the whole board of trustees, all those don quixotes in their b-17's and i swear this time it blows back to the 70's and this time, they're playin Ride of the Valkyries with no semblance of grace or ease now they're acting on vagaries with their violent proclivities
and they're playin ride and they're playin ride playin ride, playin ride, playin ride, playin ride Ride of the Valkyries
sovay, sovay, so ---
This is a really difficult song to fully understand lyrically (I'll get to the music in part two). There is so much going on here, maybe because it is so vague. Although, there are strong clues. I'm gonna try to not only stick to the clues, but also not to ignore other "clues" that may or may not match to the general idea (I think) is the basis for this song... basically, take a look at the song as empirically as I can, without the initial emotions attached.
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Sovay? What the hell (who the hell?) is Sovay? From Wiki:
Sovay is a traditional English folk song (Roud # 7) about a young woman who dresses and arms herself as a highwayman in order to test her suitor. In disguise she robs her suitor of nearly all his possessions, but even under threat of death he refuses to give up the gold ring given by Sovay, thus proving his devotion. Sovay subsequently confesses the ruse to her lover and returns his various possessions, admonishing him only that had he indeed given up the ring, she would have killed him.
Notes: From the notes to Martin Carthy's first album (A Guitar in Folk Music. Petersham: New Punchbowl Music): Sovay was a great favourite among country singers and was printed by Such, among others, under its alternative title of The Female Highwayman. Her name varies from place to place - Sovay, Silvy, Shilo, Sally, etc. - but the story remains the same being a rather involved and slightly chancy way of establishing her lover's good faith.
Here are the first few lyrics from the traditional folk "Sovay":
Sovay, Sovay, all on a day She dressed herself in man's array. With a sword and pistol all by her side, To meet her true love, To meet her true love away did ride.
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Ok, stepping back in, the other large theme here is a bit of war, riding, truth finding, complimented by Ride of the Valkyries..
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As an aside, here's Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries if you don't recognize the name:
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The word valkyrie derives from Old Norse valkyrja (plural valkyrjur), which is composed of two words; the noun valr (referring to the slain on the battlefield) and the verb kjósa (meaning "to choose"). Together, the compound means "chooser of the slain". The Old Norse valkyrja is cognate to Old English wælcyrge.[2] Other terms for valkyries include óskmey (Old Norse "wish girl"), appearing in the poem Oddrúnargrátr, and Óðins meyjar (Old Norse "Odin's girls"), appearing in the Nafnaþulur. Óskmey may be related to the Odinic name Óski (Old Norse, roughly meaning "wish fulfiller"), referring to the fact that Odin receives slain warriors in Valhalla.
Chooser of the slain? Sovay, as originally portrayed? Wish fulfiller? Wishful thinking?
In the opera-house, the Ride .. begins in the prelude to the Act, building up successive layers of accompaniment until the curtain rises to reveal a mountain peak where four of the eight Valkyrie sisters of Brünnhilde have gathered in preparation for the transportation of fallen heroes to Valhalla. As they are joined by the other four, the familiar tune is carried by the orchestra, while, above it, the Valkyries greet each other and sing their battle-cry.
Valkyries, ride over the battlefield I'm dying and glad to bleed Because I know today I will take my place with the heroes in Valhalla of old
For none but the brave, be he king or a slave With a pounding heart in his chest Will be worthy to rise and with the Valkyries fly And ride to Valhalla of old
There are obvious connections here with Sovay's desire, death-worthy need for the truth, and the Valkyries mission in/for Valhalla.
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Additional references in the song:
Don Quixote: From the Globe: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's book contains, in germ or full-blown or by implication, practically every imaginative technique and device used by subsequent fiction writers to engage their readers and construct their works. It crystallized forever the making of literature out of life and other literature, and explored in typically ironic fashion, and for the first time, the murky, illusory frontiers between fact and fiction, imagination and history, perception and physical reality.... By the time we reach the end of the book, it is eminently clear that these protagonists are not precisely the men they were when they started out on their quest for chivalric adventures... For example, what is called the "false Quixote,"... The fictional characters themselves deny the validity and veracity of the imitation... what we call "realism" and what Cervantes called "verisimilitude," or the appearance of truth. It also allows for a constant and discomfiting blurring of the lines between actuality and fiction.
Para (from the lyric "para-success") means "pair/couple" in Polish. Para also means "steam/vapor" in Polish (funny people, eh? ;). Para also alludes to parachutes, and is the B-17 was not only used for bombing, but also drop (parachute) missions by UK during WWII (the UK Parachute Regiments were called "1 PARA, 2 PARA, 3 PARA, etc.. ). Para in Sanskrit is an adjective meaning "transcendental" (Don Quixote???). Finally, para in english means close, beside, or next to.
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At this time, I'd like to over-analyze that last phrase in the context of everything written so far, "Accidental suicide The kind where no one dies". Hmm.. an accidental suicide>/. Could it be a reference to soldiers in a war? As in, signing up for war, you understand the risks, but it really is psychologically suicide? Or maybe the idea of knowing something to be true, and then it turning out not to be true? .. the kind where no one dies... is it Love he's referring to? I don't know.. more needs to be done here... it's a nice phrase for sure.
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Ok, that's enough for now. So with all this background, here's what I'm getting (ie. the take home message). There's large allusions to travel, to riding: (Sovay on her horse, Don Quixote and his horse, the B-17 flying fortress "The War Horse", Ride of the Valkyries, been here before, etc.. ). There is also a strong allusion to change and truth; to what is real and moreover, to when it is real (Don Quixote, Sovay's story, directly from the lyrics: "I was getting ready to consider my next plan of attack", "Accidental suicide The kind where no one dies".
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Anyway, this could be the greatest song ever written, or I'm over-analyzing the shit out of it. I haven't even started analyzing the musical genius here. "That you're riding on the para-success Of a heavy-handed metaphor And a feeling like you've been here before"...
So, lately I've been dancing around the issues of sleeping and dreaming. I've been putting up vague dreams and trying to somewhat interpret them without any real research other than that from my psyc classes and a few tid-bits picked up here and there, mostly from Freud, friends, and my father. I thought it might be interesting to ask the question and research the current scientific understand to why we dream, why do we dream about what we dream about, and moreover, why do we sleep at all?
I'm going to rely very heavily on the radiolab radio cast of this, cuz I think it's great and they are geniuses. Also, it'll provide some focus. This is meant to be an overview and if feel I need to add something and go back, I will add something and go back. This isn't brainiac mansion.
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Ok, first of all, I'm going to assume that dreams don't not serve a purpose.. errr.. I think there is a purpose to dreams and dreaming. Evolution doesn't tend to do things for fun, and I think there must be some sort of connection from sleeping and dreaming to the grand scheme of things evolutionarily.
So, let's start at the beginning; sleep. Why do we need to sleep? All mammals do it. All known animals actually do it.. cockroaches too. And it's not a voluntary thing; sleep will be forced upon you at some point whether you like it or not. Sort of analogous to Shakespeare describing sleep as death. He also described orgasms as death* so... you know Shakespeare!
*A recent study of brain activation patterns using PET give some support to the experience of an orgasm as a small death:
"To some degree, the present results seem to be in accordance with this notion, because female orgasm is associated with decreased blood flow in the orbitofrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is crucial for behavioural control."[1]
Anyway, back on topic. We now know this is very far from the truth. Sleep is not death, it's not even the opposite of awake. Our brain is still working hard as we sleep, going through cycles of different types of activity.
I'm not going to go through or define these cycles cuz I think they're not important for this overall current examination, but maybe another time cuz it is interesting.*
*As a quick aside one of my favourite Northern Exposure episodes, Ursa Minor, involves Chris, the dj guy, making a sleep contraption that fits on to his head like goggles. In the goggles there are motion sensors that read his eye movements. When his eyes move as he sleeps, this indicates REM sleep (err, Rapid Eye Movement), which coincides with our dream cycle. Anyway, these motion sensors, when they detect eye movement would set off blinking red lights onto Chris' eyelids. He trained himself (and apparently it's pretty easy to do - there's software out there now that will help you, and yes, there's an app for that) to recognize the flashing red lights in his sleep, and those lights would cue him that he was in a dream, and hence provide the opportunity for lucid dreaming. Really, really awesome.
Ok, so yeah, there is a ton of brain activity when we sleep, we know that. I'm sure you've also heard that dolphins only sleep with one half of their brains at a time. Because they are conscious breathers (they need to actively think about breathing) and because they breathe air (and not through the water), the need to stay relatively awake and at the surface of the water as they "sleep". So, half their brains show classic sleep brainwave patterns for a few minutes while the other half shows classic awake patterns, and then vice versa (this will flip back and forth) as they lie like logs on the surface of the water. Uni-hemispheric sleep. Also, of note, they end up sleeping eight hours a day. Most aquatic mammals do this, but other animals do this as well.
For example, ducks are really interesting.
They tend to sleep in rows, like let's say five to a row. The inner three centred ducks all sleep with their eyes closed, but the outer most ducks sleep withONE EYE OPEN. I bet you can guess which eye too.. yeah, the outer eye. They, the outer ducks, have even been observed to rotate their bodies 180 degrees as they sleep to allow for the other side of their brain to sleep! How cool is that. (link you need a subscription, but if anyone really wants to read the article and doesn't have a subscription, let me know and I'll just forward it to you. Alternatively, Scientific American back issues to 1993 are available on this torrent)
Now, this brings up an interesting evolutionary adaptation. We haven't really looked at why we need to sleep yet but, because we do, certain adaptation have evolved in animals because of the potential fear of predation.
Sleeping is dangerous. For dolphins, they don't want to drown. For ducks, there are always foxes and wolves. Lizards do this too. In lizard sleep studies, the introduction of a snake into the room overnight brought on the exact same one eye open sleep behaviour.
Uni-hemispheric sleep. Aquatic mammals have it. Birds, avians have it. Reptiles have it. But we, and all terrestrial mammals don't.
Following evolution, it figures we lost it somewhere along the way. To recap, sleep is necessary (we don't know yet why), but because it is, there are certain predatorary dangers involved. We may at times feel unsafe and insecure, for good evolutionary reason only hopefully, while we sleep.
So, the theory goes that the first terrestrial mammals were big hole diggers, and dug themselves underground to sleep, where they were safe and in the dark. They hid in caves, etc... Finally, safely hidden away from predation, the evolution and ability to sleep with both eyes closed developed/evolved. Not sure about the exact theory, but the simple idea is this: predation risk. If you feel safe and there is little risk of being killed, you can sleep easier. The obvious benefit is that you are then awake longer with both sides of your brain working.
How does this translate to humans? Well, there are sleep studies that people in novel sleeping environments (sleeping on a friend's couch for example, or a hotel for the first night) tend to have less deep sleep brainwaves. There is evidence that the sleep isn't as good, and that we are more alert sleepers when in novel environments. Buried deep in our reptile brain is some sort of predator alert system. A sort of fear radar when uncomfortable with our surroundings. Pretty neat stuff here. Evolutionarily, anxiety will translate into your sleep.
Alright. So, we've established that sleep is dangerous, evolutionarily, and that it can rightly cause us anxiety. If there was some way to circumvent it, wouldn't nature have allowed that/put pressure on that to happen? Or is there a requirement, an essential benefit to sleep that is so crucial to ALL our lives that these benefits outweigh the potential for death? Basically, what I'm asking here is why do we need to sleep.
Well, I couldn't find any Canadian numbers (surprise, surprise) but let's take a look at the 40+ million Americans, about 15% of the population, who can't sleep.
What happens when you don't sleep? You feel tired. Why do we feel tired? I mean, what happens chemically in our brains and bodies?
Dr. Allan Pack is perhaps the leading sleep biologist (he's up for a lifetime achievement award this year). He has been looking at sleep at the cellular level, and one of the things he’s found over and over and over — shown in mice, shown in rats, shown in the fruit fly — is that certain cells in all those different types of animals, when they are sleep-deprived, is that you don’t get proteins properly folding.
This is a phenomenon called the unfolded protein response. This is basically your worst nightmare (sorry, couldn't resist). Why do you need proteins to “properly fold”? Well, you’re made of proteins. Proteins are the essence of you. If your proteins are misshapen, if they’re not folded properly, if they don’t have the right three-dimensional structure, they start accumulating inside the cell, broken. Then these unfolded proteins can start to aggregate together and form clumps inside the cell and essentially clog it up, slow it down, and it’s really quite toxic. Clumpiness equals tiredness!
But when you get sleep, a group of "cleaner-uppers" go through your cells and removed these misshapen proteins so that, in effect, sleep is a housemaid, just in the hotel of you.
(This upcoming paragraph gets a bit technical, so skip it if you like; it's not essential.) Specifically, our body's unfolded protein response (UPR) are these "cleaner-uppers"(haha, "technical"), and they have two primary goals: (i) initially to restore normal function of the cell by first halting protein translation and (ii) activating the signaling pathways that lead to increasing the production of molecular chaperones involved in protein folding. If these objectives are not achieved within a certain time lapse or the disruption is prolonged, the UPR aims to initiate programmed cell death (apoptosis).
Honestly, there are no simple pictures of the UPR system. Seriously. If there were, I would put one here.
Blah, blah, blah... Ok, so what does this all mean? Well, sleep activates the clean up system and is really the main point here. Because not only are these cleaner uppers really really essential at preventing cancer, among other things, there is a theory that these cleaner-uppers could translate into learning.
DUH-DUHNNNNN!
Ok, so anyone who's played an instrument knows the score here, so to speak. You're practicing this one difficult section, or this one difficult drum rhythm, and you just can't get it... you keep on trying and trying until you finally give up for the night. You just can't nail it down.
So, you go to sleep.
Then, the next day, what inevitably happens is that you wake up, inevitably, and you go to the instrument and you try again. And what happens? You get it. You get that difficult parsing, or you get that rhythm down cold. Why? What happens?
Dr. Giulio Tunoni believes this is what happens as you sleep. Sleep helps you remember, by forgetting.
He believes that the space in your brain, what you can learn in a day is limited. And every experience you have in one day takes up space. Every experience uses up a little of what you have, and not only that, all these experiences interact with eachother and start to confuse themselves. Just talk to someone who's sleep deprived. They don't make sense, jumble up words and thoughts, can't concerntrate on immediate information, etc.. So the brain records and tries to learn/incorporate everything, whether you want to or not.
Experiences stick with us, having breakfast, talking to your mom, speaking with co-workers, even reading this; it all forces your brain to make new connections. I mean, think about it. Just the simple fact that you can remember what you read at the beginning of this sentence is proof that there have been new connections formed in your brain. Your brain is being reshaped. I am reshaping your brain right now!!! Ok, sorry, enough of that.
Ok, so now. You sit down with your cello or drum kit for two hours at the end of the day, and you start to play. Because you're concentrating more, perhaps you're making even more connections. Physical movements, proprioception, timings, memorizing. Everytime you do it all makes new connections in the brain.
The same thing with studying or learning. Everytime you think about something, you form new connections. If you think about something intensely, with emotion, the connections formed are going to be stronger and more numerous.
All of these synaptic connections are made during the day, and by the time you're ready for sleep, there is a giant mess in your brain! This is one argument not to have arguments at night, btw! Anyway, this is where sleep comes in, in Dr. Giulio Tunoni's opinion.
Sleep is like your housemaid, once again. Only, perhaps not in the way you think. The brain won't come through and pick and choose which connections should stay and which should go. It simply does an electronic sweep of EVERYTHING. Waves of electrical activity, starting at the back of your head, kind of like slow oscillations, 1000 times a night, will flow over your brain, and ALL of those synaptic connections will get just a little bit weaker. Again, it does not pick and choose which connections get stronger or weaker; this wave of electrical activity weakens all connections.
So, what does that mean? Well, the things you concentrated on most out of your day -- the things you spent the most time on, the things that had a strong emotional impact on you, that thing you couldn't get out of your head all day -- these things are the only things that will survive the general sweep.
Now, come next day, when you pick up that instrument, voila, you got it. Why? Because only those stronger connections survived. Even though they are weaker than last night, they are the only connections that survived. Moreover, because you practice the next day, you think about it the next day, these connections will once again start to strengthen. See the gradual pattern here? The connections that have survived the previous night are heard better because the background has become more silent, in a relative sense.
Once you start thinking about something over and over again, especially day after day, these connections are getting extremely strong. This is the reason (or at least the theory) behind learned behaviours and learning in general.
Of note, the brain learns both good and bad behaviours indifferently, cleans them all equally at night where only the strongest survive. If those behaviours are repeated the next day, they are just bound to get stronger. It really is a great system of reinforcement and temporary space usage!
Learning seems like the process of erosion. The things left standing the next day have an opportunity to be built up upon again.
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Ok, so, we've discussed the evolution of sleep and why we need to sleep. Now, why do we dream and what do they mean!
Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, if you haven't heard of him, was the dude who came up with the idea of the benzene molecule being in the shape of a ring in his dreams.
"...I was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis."
Ok,... not sure where that takes us. But think about it, it is possible that that is true, as weird as that sounds. I mean, just a few nights ago I had a dream of cottage cheese and gummy worms existing together as a desired, commercially available breakfast food. Weird stuff does tend to happen in dreams.
The stuff that you experienced the day before certainly does have the potential to enter your dreams. Think about playing Tetris. If you played Tetris as a kid and you didn't dream about it that night then you're lying. Even in daydreams, or just before bed, Tetris pieces were dancing on your eyelids.
And funnily enough, someone tested just that. Bob Stickgold of Harvard University sat subjects down in a room, made them play tetris for a good amount of time, then got them to sleep in a sleep lab, and then woke them up during their REM sleep and 60% of his subjects were dreaming about Tetris! Ok.. so, makes sense right!.. I mean, it's a pretty big deal, but whatever; it really isn't the whole answer right? I mean, sure we can dream about what we just experienced; no brainer.
Now here is where Matt Wilson comes into the picture. He studies brain waves from dreaming rats. He hooks the rats up to neural signal monitors and outputs these things, both audio and visual, for recording. What he did was during the day he sent these rats through a maze, and recorded their neuronal activity. Then at night, as they slept, he again recorded their neuronal activity. Guess what he found.
Yeah, they matched up. They matched up so well in fact that Matt Wilson was actually able to start to tell when the rats were running in their dreams, when the rats were stationary in their dreams, and when and where the rats were in the maze in their dreams. He started to be able to interpret, based on the lining up of the prior day's events, what the rats were dreaming about.
Specifically, when the rats ran through the maze during the day, let's say it took them 1 minute, they displayed a characteristic neuronal (fingerprint) message during that 1 minute. Well, that exact firing was again acheived while they slept, and Matt was able to line these up and interpret them! The rat was effectively re-running it's maze from earlier in the day. Matt has gotten so good at decoding the neuronal signatures that he can now just listen to the brainwaves, and without looking at the rats, he knows what they were doing.*
*Aside: remember this little fact, cuz it's gonna come up in a post a few days from now. Basically, Matt discovered how to read neuron activity, brain waves and thoughts in GREAT detail by comparing unknown wave patterns with known ones and experiences.
Ok, that is pretty great in and of itself, but, it gets better.
Now, at this point Matt put the rats through two different mazes, let's call them Maze #1 and Maze #2. He found that yes the rats dreamt that they were running in Maze #1 and dreamt separately that they were running in Maze #2 at different times in their REM sleep. But, he also found that the rats would in essence 're-mix' the mazes, and produce new patterns with parts of Maze #1 and parts of Maze #2. So, the implication is that the rat began to invent new mazes.
Sleep therefore seems like the opportunity to basically run through the events of the day and put them together in ways that may not have actually occurred while the animals were awake.
Now, isn't this what learning is?.. or, at least this synthesis is a part of learning? You take two things that are seemingly unrelated, figure out the connections between them, find out the hidden rules and figure out the undiscovered rules that will allow us to create something new and significant that could help us in the future.
Dreaming seems to allow us the opportunity to try out new possibilities and connections that were inhibited by consciousness in the waking hours. Some things end up making sense, some thing don't. But, when it does work, that, my dear, is a new connection and is learning. If it makes sense (even emotionally) and you thought about it, it has the potential to be reinforced.
Ok, so how does the brain decide what to try to connect? As in, what does the brain decide to put into a dream and what to leave out of a dream?
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People don't really have dreams about word processing, about surfing the net, about reading a text book. These are debatably things we do the majority of the time during the day, right? So, why aren't these the things in our dreams? Bob Stickgold, the Tetris dude, has a hunch.
Instead of having his subjects play Tetris, he now had a group play "Alpine Racer 2".
A full body game. Also, a stressful type of game. Stickgold has the theory that as you go through your day, your brain will put a sticky note on memories with emotional content and involvement. The brain will flag those things that are significantly involving and that are important to be able to bring them up afterward in dreams. Then, all the brain has to do while in REM is go back and grab sticky notes.
Stickgold had his test subjests play AR 2 during the day, put them to sleep in a sleep lab, then woke them up after about 2 minutes of sleep and found that about 40% reported dreaming about skiing. Like, right away it seems the brain starts thinking about and processing the days events, the sticky notes.
Then, he let his test subjects sleep a little longer; he didn't wake them until 2 hours into their sleep. After sleeping for two hours, he found almost no replay of the sticky events at all. The replays seems to have dissolved... into a re-mix. He started to get reports like "I was sliding down a hill", or "Rolling".. or "skateboarding".. or, "doing yoga on a ski slope"... So, as the dream goes on the brain seems to start to free associate.
What do I have in my past (so the brain may think) in all my other significant memories that seems to fit thematically or schematically with this major event from today. Sometimes weird stuff happens, sometimes things seem to make sense.
Dreaming then, seems like a time when you can work on the problems you have, allow your brain to start free associating these major significant events in your life, pull them apart, mash them together, and see if any of these almost random connections of important events that you normally wouldn't make during the day, make sense.
Hence, Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz's benzene-snake ring. And my cottage cheese-gummy worm breakfast delight. (I actually woke up the next morning and opened up my container of cottage cheese expecting there to be gummy worms. I was disappointed and I may have been half-asleep.)
Meh, you win some, you lose some. Just gotta keep dreaming it seems like. And reinforcing certain thoughts and dreams during the day to keep them learned! Cool how the mechanisms describing the theory and the practice match up.
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So, take home messages:
Sleep is really important. Crucially important. It helps you clear your mind, quite literally, of unimportant thoughts and connections, jumbled ideas, and jumbled, broken clumped proteins. It's evolutionarily binding; no animal goes without this stuff. It is fundamental to survival and to learning. However, there is a fear of predation element involved, and hence the push and pull of evolution. Because most animals need to spend a third of their day sleeping, it seems like a pretty importnat thing.
Dreaming seems to be a free association of important emotional events. The longer you sleep, the more free association with past events takes place. However, this is probably a good thing as new connections can and will be formed, and eventually reinforced if thought about significantly and sufficiently throughout the next day. If they are garbage associations, they may not be thought about again. However, my cottage cheese-gummy worm idea is obviously not a garbage idea, so I will obviously continue to have this seed grow stronger and more salient in my mind, day after day, night after night, whether I like it (lucky I like it) or not.
Also, sleep and dreaming are both like housemaids looking after different parts of your brain. The sleep houemaid is responsible for removing clumps,the dream housemaid is responsible for eroding synapses and memories.
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Here's Sloan - Keep on Thinkin', from the totally underrated Navy Blues.
Also, of note in this clip, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright cooking with Sloan?!?! Awesome. I'm not even being cool; they are actually cooking.
So I checked out the Leonids, and with a clear sky in the middle of nowhere, I managed to get a few shots, which I posted below... really, really nothing bad shots though, mind you.
The Leonids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellationLeo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky.
Earth moves through the meteoroid stream of particles left from the passages of a comet. The stream comprises solid particles, known as meteoroids, ejected by the comet as its frozen gases evaporate under the heat of the Sun when it is close enough – typically closer than Jupiter's orbit.
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So, last night there was a Clerkship informational session with Justice Gilles, and beyond that it was really interesting (and something I'm thinking of trying for), the idea of SPACE LAW came up. Yeah, there is such a thing, and it is sounds awesome. "Yeah, I work at the The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs." I also love their first side-bar link, casually (and incorrectly, I guess...) "Whats new".
Space law encompasses national and international law governing activities in outer space. International lawyers have been unable to agree on a uniform definition of the term "outer space," although most lawyers agree that outer space generally begins at the lowest altitude above sea level at which objects can orbit the Earth, approximately 100 km. The inception of the field of space law began with the launch of the world's first artificial satellite by the Soviet Union in October 1957, named Sputnik 1.
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Ok, then I started reading a bunch of articles on the moon (one thing lead to another) and I got onto helium 3.
Scientists estimate there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years.
As reported in an Artemis Project paper, about 25 tonnes of helium-3 -- or a fully-loaded Space Shuttle cargo bay's worth -- could power the United States for a year. This means that helium 3 has a potential economic value in the order of $3bn a tonne -- making it the only thing remotely economically viable to consider mining from the Moon given current and likely-near-future space travel technologies and capabilities.
There's a pretty great and highly recommended 5 minute video here which will make you an expert on helium 3 mining on the moon.
In 2006 Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Russian space corporation Energia, was reported to have said that Russia is planning to mine lunar helium-3, with a permanent Moon base to be established by 2015 and industrial-scale helium-3 production to commence by 2020. The Americans also have plans, with NASA having announced its intention to establish a permanent base on one of the Moon's poles by 2024, and with helium-3 signalled as one of the reasons behind this mission.
A few weeks ago China launch a moon orbiter that has already sent back pictures. As reported by China View (because I obviously read China View), China is also in the race, and plans to put a man Moon by 2017. One of the goals of the mission will be to measure the thickness of the lunar soil and the amount of helium-3 on the Moon. There have also been reports that India, Japan and Germany are taking an interest in lunar exploration linked to helium-3 as a potential future nuclear fuel.
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Anyway, apparently I'm already too late to the party; however, there is an actually fantastic Discovery Channel videogame -- that I blew about 2 hours playing last night waiting for the moon to fully set to watch those Leonids -- about rival nations mining Helium 3 on the moon.
\Ok, on with the Leonid pictures!
Out to see the stars!
Originally I thought I'd be able to see them from McBurney Park just down the street, but didn't realize it was so lit up.
Walked down by the water to Douglas Fluhrer (yup, that's how you spell it) Park... much more remote and darker, but as you'll see, probably not quite dark enough.
Ok, so in this test shot (down by the lake), you should be able to make out the big dipper.
Alright, the circled area above is the bottom end of Leo, where all the action happens. Compare the above and below images in that area...
See the difference? There's an meteor in there!
Here's a closer look.
Ok, so, maybe I had my camera settings off, maybe the "shower" was a bit/quite underwhelming, and just maybe it was too bright to take any decent photos. But, that's a meteor!
I ended up seeing maybe 15-20 shooting stars: 6-7 bright ones, 6-7 medium, 4-5 faint/non-existant/floaters. Basically a few less than what you would see on a summer cottage night.
pUniverse's augmented reality blows me away everytime. Basically, you point it at the sky and it tells you exactly what you're looking it, you name it. As long as you name stars, constellations, and the odd planet.
This isn't the augmented reality part, but it will still move the image as you move around the phone... really, really great.
Remember this building Changer?
Alright, well, that's it for now, but look for posts on John Mighton, 4'33", and hummus making this weekend. Or not... you never know.
So, recently I got an acceptance letter from Queen's law, after all that LSAT prep. They had an orientation get together this weekend in Kingston, so I ended up driving there Friday morning for the meet and greet. With a free breakfast and lunch, along with the Kingston Film Festival going on over the weekend it really was a no brainer to go back to the place of formal/former education. Moreover, Jer was going up as well, and this was another opportunity to visit with my cousin Justyna who is schooling in her final year at RMC.
I got into Kingston around 9 and walked down to MacDonald Hall (Queen's law building) -- after changing my floor hockey shirt/brushing my teeth in the car -- early, and introduced myself to about 4 prospective students, 6 upper year students, and 3 coffees, not necessarily in that order. So far, all good news.
Musical interlude time! Decide, decide, it's decision time, so make up your mind and move along.
D People do good, people do bad A Open up the church to see what they had D Pine, pine all of the time A D That's the story of our lives
D There's the steeple, but where's the catch? A It's underneath the highway overpass D Pine, pine, pine all the time A That's the special of the day
G D You meet, you cheat, and you lay down a beat G D You reap what you sow and you are what you eat Bm A G D And you go where you go on your own two feet Bm A G D You go where you go on your own two feet
D People do wrong, people do right A I've done both in the same damn night D Pine, pine, pine all the time A D I'm tired of hearing it myself
D You can go left or you can go right A You can get dim or you can get bright D Decide, decide, it's decision time A D So make up your mind and move along
G D You meet, you cheat, and you might drop the beat G D You reap what you sow and you are what you eat Bm A G D And you go where you go on your own two feet Bm A G E You go where you go on your own two feet
E You can make hay or you can a mess B You can make hell on earth I guess E Misery, misery, company store B E I owe my soul and more
A E Footloose and fancy free A E Don't come callin' cause you can't catch me C#m B A E I go where I go on my own two feet C#m B A E I go where I go on my own two feet
Um, I wanna say this as well; I loved my time at Queen's and in Kingston. I have always felt an association to the small town feeling there. Everything, simply EVERYTHING you need is within walking distance. When you rent a place to live at Queen's it is practically impossible to be more than a 15 minute walk away from your 8:30am classes. Distance doesn't make for a good community, and makes you miss your classes.
I don't really want to go to a university where there's an hour or two between classes and you need to 'hang out' or drive/bus to and from. I think part of the reason for this feeling (amongst so. many. other. things.) is my job at PHD. It's far. It's a 25 km commute, and not easy by any means of transport to get to, nevermind bike. But, I found a family there. Robert has always treated me like a member of his family. He lives approximately 5 meters from the office (his house was built on the premises), so 80% of the time I take my lunch with him, his family, his mother, and his children at his place. There is a fridge, a couch and a tv, there are kids running around, and there is a loving, home cooked meal by his mother on most days. It is pretty awesome, and a feeling that is so intertwined with work that for me it has pretty much become a spoiled, downtime requirement.
Somewhere like Osgoode Law can't really compete on that level. I don't want to commute if there is no reason to. I love/need that community feel; a home. I want/like to know that everyone is working toward a common, unifying, a relatively easy achievable, mutually beneficial goal. Small spread out group projects are fine, but key large projects within a focused tight group is where I get off.
Justyna and I talked about this; in some ways I'd fit right into the military lifestyle. I remember discussing this with Andrew, a high school friend who enrolled in the military. The regimentation and goal orientation is something that I think I lack in life a bit. But, I like only certain aspects of that; the structure, the common goal, cooperation, small, focused groupings. There is also too much structure; rebelling comes to mind. I feel one is always working under someone's command and not necessarily within a guidance role, cooperation or partnership. I fully admit, can adhere to, and endorse the idea of partnership and/or mentorship and the need for that, but it gets complicated sometimes. Anyway, this is the story of anyone's life I guess, and I can wax on about this but won't.
SO, back at the law orientation. After an introduction to the Dean of Law and some other sales stuff we had a sample lecture by Associate Prof Michael Pratt, who also has a cross-appointment at the Philosophy department.
So, Mike Pratt is (seems?) pretty awesome. He has a philosophy degree, and math degree, and a law degree. With full realization that he's just one prof, the man did did give'r, and it really was quite a great sample lecture. First, I remember him mentioned the name Isabel and Alfred Badel. Most Torontoians will recognize the name from the Isabel Bader Theatre.
Alfred Bader escaped Austria at 14 (from the German invasion) to England, was suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer and deported to an internment camp in Canada, released a year later, attended Queen's and Harvard, started his own chemical company, got kicked out, then got asked to come back, becoming quite wealthy in the process.
When asked his greatest achievement, Bader answered that it was twofold, one for his business achievement, and the other was meeting and marrying Isabel.[12] His romance is detailed in his second autobiographical book; it involved a shipboard meeting and courtship, some 400 love letters, a twenty-five year separation, and finally a happy and fruitful marriage.[13] (Wiki)
Anyway, Bader is just another one of those names that seem to connect Toronto and Kingston, UofT and Queen's... I can't quite remember why Pratt mentioned them though.. haha... whateves.
Ok, second musical interlude.
Both album versions are fantastic. All chords are relative to a capo on the 2nd fret.
G-Riff G G Gadd9 Gadd9 +==+=========+=========+=========+=========+ | 1 ' 2 ' 3 ' 4 ' | +==+=========+=========+=========+=========+ e |--3---------3---------x---------x---------| B |--0---------0---------0---------0---------| G |--0---------0---------2----h4---2----p0---| D |--0---------0---------0---------0------h2-| A |--2---------2---------0---------0---------| E |--3---------3---------3---------3---------|
The final hammer on this riff is only played on even numbered riffs when they're done in pairs.
VERSE 1: G Well I know we don't talk much C C D But you're such a good talker, oh whoa G Well I know we should take a walk C C D But you're such a fast walker, oh whoa G-Riff G-Riff Well, all right
CHORUS: C D G-Riff G-Riff I know where I'll be tonight, all right C D Outta mind, outta sight
VERSE 2: G Well okay, I know you don't love me C C D But you've still been thinking of me, oh whoa G Well all right, I know you probably hate me C C D That's okay with me G-Riff G-Riff Well, all right
CHORUS: C D G-Riff G-Riff I know where I'll be tonight, all right C Em Outta mind, outta sight Bm C7 Outta mind, outta sight G-Riff G-Riff
BRIDGE: Am G-Riff G-Riff You don't see me now D C G-Riff G-Riff G-Riff G-Riff You don't want to any-----how
VERSE 3: G Look out, here I come again C C D And I'm bringing my friends G Look out, here I come again C C D I'm bringing my friends, okay, all right, okay, all right G-Riff G-Riff
CHORUS: C D G-Riff G-Riff I know where I'll be tonight, all right C D Outta mind, outta sight C D Outta mind, outta sight C D Outta mind, outta sight
FINALE: G-Riff (4x)
So, Prof. Mike Pratt. He continued his lecture with a brief explanation of common law. I'm guessing you do, but I have no idea what the difference is between common and civil law. He broke it down this way: Common Law is based on precedent, Civil Law is based on the rules. Canadians practice Common Law except for in Quebec. So, what the means, and I'm really not paraphrasing him much here, the law we practice in Ontario is based basically on two things: story telling and reason. Two of my favourite things; I got sucked in a bit here...
The defendants, the proprietors of a medical preparation called "The Carbolic Smoke Ball," ran an ad in which they offered to pay 100 pounds to any person who contracted influenza after having used one of their "smoke balls" in a specified manner and for a specified period. The plaintiff, on the faith of the asvertised claims bought one of the balls, and used it in the manner and for the period specified, but nevertheless contracted influenza (Wiki).
Anyway, without boring the shit out of you, this seems to be the classic precedent within contract law, of binding law, and of moral vs. contractual obligations. The class went on from there discussing the differences between the two obligations, and what happens when they don't align. Also, what the main purpose of a contract is, the cooperation involved, and the distinction between it and the (social contracts) laws imposed on us by the government. I'm pretty damn sure that not all of law school is gonna be this interesting, but the man sold it here.
As an aside, I think the only reason I got into Queen's Law is because of the recommendation letter from my Queen's cognitive psyc prof, Dr. Merlin Donald (Merlin Donald is widely known as the author of two books on human cognition, Origins of the Modern Mind and A Mind So Rare.) Wiki. He's the brilliant man who came up with the theory that human language developed primarily within the realm of gossip; people, mostly women first, needed to discuss what was happening within their cohort - current coordinations of food and people in a group dynamic, where everyone was within the group at certain times, what (and who) everyone was doing at the time (I'm obviously paraphrasing and minimizing). To minimize further, basically, language came about because there was a need to organize and gossip. On top of that, language gave birth to the consciousness, the mother load of humanity, through language first(!), because of the organizational requirements involved.
This had very little to do with my study; Merlin was/is also involved in visual perception, and that's where my focus came into play, but that's all coming in a later post about perception that I've been working on lazily for about a month now...
More to the point, I explicitly acknowledge, and thank him endlessly, that without his help and guidance I would not be how/who/where I am today.
So, back to the weekend. I really enjoyed everything I pulled from that orientation, and now have no hesitation about going there, or any other law school for that matter (easily convinced?). I know this may sound like cheese, but it almost feels like a second opportunity to go through university without the constant drinking binge/hangover. I'm talking shit really, but yeah... First through third year were a blur for too many reasons.
Anyway, who the fuck knows. More discussion left to an actual discussion, ummm, over beer.
Ok, back again to the weekend for real this time. After the orientation I walked around Queen's campus a bit, and then met up with Justyna, who gave me a tour of the RMC campus. During my years in Kingston I never visited RMC, and it is quite nice!
Vic Hall, 1st year residence.
Physics building; 1st year crappy marks.
Pulling into the res at RMC, there were boys and girls in uniform training for a parade!
Until recently, all students at RMC were forced to room on campus. They have opened it up a bit to fourth years, but still most live on campus. This is what an RMC dorm room looks like.
They had a 24-hour cycling competition on that weekend, not unlike the one at the Toronto Spring Bike Show.
On campus pub.
View of downtown Kingston.
Just in case.
Justyna mentioned that pranks were a big part of leaving class rituals. One year the students placed remote charges in the river along with blank charges in the cannons. They then began to 'fire' on the island ferry until it apparently u-turned back to the opposite shore. Awesome.
More walking and talking...
As mentioned, The Kingston Film festival was on as well that weekend, and my friend Ryan had two movies playing. The first one, The National Parks Project: Gros Morne played Friday night. We showed up about 5 minutes before the film and found it was sold out. So, we missed it... ugh... Incidentally, The National Parks Project got picked up by Discovery Channel Canada and the boys will be going across the country this summer filming a national park in each province and territory! I'm currently trying to sneak my way into production.
On the Saturday night, No Heart Feelings played, which I hadn't seen yet. Jer lined up early to ensure we all got tickets, and it was a great movie.
Both nights Ryan and Geoff got us into the KFF hospitality suite (free booze), where we chatted and chatted. Also, one of the nights included an almost emotional discussion on the merits of the TTC at Simon's (Jer's brother, who is doing his PHD up there), but I'll leave those kinds of details for later...
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No, this post isn't done yet (I'm not sure why I didn't split it up. One weekend I suppose.. anyway) Sunday morning rolls around, and Jer and I take off for Toronto to catch his under-14 team play in the North Toronto Championships! If you'll remember to last weekend, his fourth placed team beat up on the first overalls just before Canada won their Olympic hockey gold.
The Big Game!
The National Anthem was sung beforehand...
... and a pep-talk to rally the troops was given.
Despite scoring the first goal of the game, the Spokes seemed overmatched by the Agency 59 boys on this day.
The final was unfortunately a 3-1 loss, but the Spokes were still smiling.
The last walk around.
Sunday night then rolled around, and I headed over to Chris and Donna's place for dinner and Oscars. After nearly falling asleep I met up with Adam at the Cadillac Lounge where we topped off the weekend with The Rattles (first seen here), a Beatles cover band that plays every Sunday night at the Cadillac.
They were pretty good, and a perfect cap to a great weekend.
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