james reilly

Paper Geography by Letha Colleen We have another fantastic issue of Escape into Life for your entertainment and enlightenment this weekend. You'll find two excellent art essays, a poetry and illustration double feature, and a musical blend. What is Genius? . . . . Tony Thomas examines the question of genius in the arts and science. Creativity, Institutions, and Outsider Art . . . David Maclagan, author of Outsider Art: from the margins to the marketplace, discusses defiant creativity and the use of the term "outsider art”. Poetry by Emari DiGiorgio . . . In this double feature, the poetry of Emari DiGiorgio is presented alongside the illustration art of Raphael Vicenzi. Jam Tape 2: A Musical Mix . . . Experience a musical blend of blues, electronic, jazz, and Irish music by Jamreilly, the Official Escape into Life DJ. - james reilly

"When talking about the impact of Web 2.0 on the newsmedia and journalism, there is a tendency to view blogs, search engines, wikis etc as disruptive technologies that have shaken up an age old order. I would argue that is not at all true, in fact, I would argue that the now commonplace blogs, wiki and citizen journalism concepts are Web 2.0 tools that are returning journalism to where it began…the crowd." - james reilly

"The release this month of Roland Emmerich's latest apocalypse-porn big-screen spectacular, 2012, is the latest evidence that Hollywood in particular and America in general believes we will end our often troubled relationship with Mother Earth with a wham and a bam, if not a thankyou, ma'am.... But will it all really end with a bang, rather than a whimper? A sub-genre of apocalyptic fiction that has largely been practised by British writers over the past half-century has suggested not – and has earned, as a result, the tag "cosy catastrophe"..." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"The blueprint of a small organism's cellular machinery has been unveiled, offering the most comprehensive view yet of the molecular essentials of life. But the research also shows just how far biologists have to go before they understand the complete biochemical basis of even the simplest of creatures.. "Our whole attempt was to establish a model organism for systems biology," says Peer Bork, a bioinformaticist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, and one of the coordinators of the project which surveyed Mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterium that causes respiratory infections..." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a figure of continued importance for us, and for the problems – social, political, cultural, personal – that we face today, even though he died over a quarter of a millennium ago. He had an insight into the problems of living and of living well in competitive, hierarchical and status-conscious societies such as his own and the ones we still live in today. He also had some solutions, both individual and political, to the problems of modern life. Those solutions have struck many people, and not altogether wrongly, as dangerous and impractical. Still, they continue to inform, either directly or indirectly, a great deal of modern thinking on legitimacy, freedom, justice and social order.." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"A recent review of research into rational decision making, led by Dr. Norbert Schwarz of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, has once again illustrated the extraordinary fallibility of human judgment..." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"A similar situation occurs in another popular strategy used to counter false beliefs: using contradictory evidence. Given its use in public information campaigns, this is perhaps the most widespread mechanism for countering erroneous beliefs. It is perhaps also the most dangerous, given that it often doesn’t work. ... “This is the familiar pattern of illusion-of-truth effects: once... more... - james reilly

"By far the largest category of words in HTOED denoting the traditional five senses is the one for Hearing, including the sounds that we hear. It has around 7350 headings and meanings compared with 4800 for Sight, 1100 each for Taste and Smell, and a mere 500 for Touch. Perhaps this reflects the importance of hearing to our ancestors: sight was useful mainly during the daylight hours, but sound could warn of danger at any time. A trawl through section 01.03.08 Hearing certainly reveals the care with which we describe the noises made both by our environment and by ourselves. Noises can be loud (fervent, perstreperous, clamant, strepitous, dinsome) or soft (murmurous, whistering, susurrant). They can be resonant or ringing (sonorous, tinging, clanging) or dull (thud, thrump, pob, whump). They represent sounds in nature such as the suffling of the wind, the buzzing of bees, the splashing, sloshing, and sploshing of water, and even what HTOED discreetly describes as ‘Sounds heard in... more... - james reilly from Bookmarklet

It is never too late. The brain is amazing. - bellegarde-webb

"My recent efforts at speaking French whilst in the French-speaking part of Switzerland mostly provoked derisory laughter from the natives, so I know all about difficulties with accent and pronunciation. According to a new study, I could benefit from watching French films with French, but not English, subtitles. Like the boundaries between colours, the boundaries between verbal sounds (or "phonemes") are somewhat arbitrary, and they can especially vary according to regional accent. Now the psycholinguists Holger Mitterer and James McQueen have shown that foreign-language subtitles can help us retune our perception of these phonetic boundaries thus aiding our comprehension of a foreign language spoken with an unfamiliar accent. - james reilly from Bookmarklet

So beautiful. At least our galaxie is beautiful since we are making life so ugly on earth, it is consoling. - bellegarde-webb

"Millions of customers hoping for refunds on overdraft charges were left disappointed today after Britain's high street banks won a landmark case. The Supreme Court upheld the banks' argument that assessing the "unfairness" of overdraft charges is beyond the scope of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), the consumer watchdog, which has been trying to use its powers to force banks to lower the penalties and repay the charges to customers. About one million people have already filed legal claims for refunds. Those cases may now be dismissed. " - james reilly from Bookmarklet

When my parents found themselves in financial trouble a few years back I managed to arrange to get back over a grand for them by taking their bank to court over unfair charges (the bank didn't attend and they were awarded summary judgement). - Mark H

The anti-war MIT linguist and the Rutgers evolutionary biologist to discuss social evolution. - james reilly

"Werner Herzog's approach to "the truth" has always been fascinating, fearless, at times ferocious and to continue in this alliterative vein, faithful. Faithful to life -- to its wonderful or horrifying craziness, to its lyrical splendor, and to its appalling ugliness that in turn, can often reveal a deep, multi-faceted beauty. Life is unclean. Life is violent. Life is corrupt. Life is fantastical. Life is chaos. Life is, yes, beautiful ... And now he’s taken on Nicolas Cage.With his un-hinged, gloriously debauched, hilarious, and uniquely gorgeous The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (one of the best films of the year so far), he’s dazzlingly in synch with his subject -- the portrait of a man, a crooked cop (Cage) rotting and raving in a decimated land. That’s post-Katrina New Orleans, a place that well covers Herzogian themes .." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

Using electron microcopy to find the evolutionary history of so-called "book lungs" in scorpions took Carsten Kamenz across an alien landscape of miniature caverns, canyons, and beaches. - james reilly

"Fresh from a painting spree in a small Breton town named Pont-Aven, a group of young artist friends hoped take advantage of the Universal Exposition in Paris to display - and sell - their work. Their time far from Paris in the provinces had been exhilarating and productive. Two of them, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and Emile Bernard (1868-1941) had made creative breakthroughs in the past year. But they knew their new style without a name would be unwelcome to the judges who acted as gatekeepers to the official exhibitions. It was another friend, Emile Schueffenecker (1851-1934) who found a place for their work at an eatery near the fair grounds, the Grand Café des Beaux-Arts. The owner, M. Volpini had empty wall space that he had intended to mirror for the big event, but the mirrors had not arrived, so Schuffenecker persuaded him that a show of new art was just what he needed to attract customers.." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"Is more choice better? Ten years ago the answer seemed obvious: Yes. Now the conventional wisdom is the opposite: lots of choice makes people less likely to choose anything, and less happy when they do choose... an objection to the “choice is bad” thesis is that the psychological effect may not actually exist at all. It is hard to find much evidence that retailers are ferociously simplifying their offerings in an effort to boost sales. Starbucks boasts about its “87,000 drink combinations”; supermarkets are packed with options. This suggests that “choice demotivates” is not a universal human truth, but an effect that emerges under special circumstances.." - james reilly from Bookmarklet

"In past posts I have explored various ways consumers can make more informed decisions about the products they buy. It seems that we are slowly emerging from the dark ages. For instance, companies like GoodGuide are compiling detailed environmental and social impact information on thousands of products. Similarly Wal-Mart is rolling out a Sustainability Index ... While all these efforts are commendable, and perhaps indicative of emerging consumer demands for more information, none are widespread or accurate enough to make a significant impact. Part of the problem is that the market for consumer information still lacks standards." - james reilly

"ONE of the driving political developments of the last decade in America, particularly in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11th, has been the reopening of intellectual hostilities between religious believers and non-believers. It's an engagement that feels, to the non-believers, largely tedious, repetitive and ridiculous. The opening passage of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's new book "36 Arguments for the Existence of God," excerpted in this week's Edge, gets this feeling exactly right. The book is actually a novel about an atheist psychology professor who writes a book called "36 Arguments for the Existence of God," which conscientiously demolishes each of the major ones that have circulated over the past 1,000 or so years of intellectual history..." - james reilly from Bookmarklet