Mapping Emotions in the Body: A Finnish Neuroscience Study Reveals Where We Feel Emotions in Our Bodies

in Biology, Neuroscience, Psychology | May 8th, 2019

“East­ern med­i­cine” and “West­ern medicine”—the dis­tinc­tion is a crude one, often used to mis­in­form, mis­lead, or grind cul­tur­al axes rather than make sub­stan­tive claims about dif­fer­ent the­o­ries of the human organ­ism. Thank­ful­ly, the med­ical estab­lish­ment has large­ly giv­en up demo­niz­ing or ignor­ing yog­ic and med­i­ta­tive mind-body prac­tices, incor­po­rat­ing many of them into con­tem­po­rary pain relief, men­tal health care, and pre­ven­ta­tive and reha­bil­i­ta­tive treat­ments.

Hin­du and Bud­dhist crit­ics may find much not to like in the sec­u­lar appro­pri­a­tion of prac­tices like mind­ful­ness and yoga, and they may find it odd that such a fun­da­men­tal insight as the rela­tion­ship between mind and body should ever have been in doubt. But we know from even a slight famil­iar­i­ty with Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy (“I think, there­fore I am”) that it was from the Enlight­en­ment into the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Now, says Riit­ta Hari, co-author of a 2014 Fin­ish study on the bod­i­ly loca­tions of emo­tion, “We have obtained sol­id evi­dence that shows the body is involved in all types of cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al func­tions. In oth­er words, the human mind is strong­ly embod­ied.” We are not brains in vats. All those col­or­ful old expressions—“cold feet,” “but­ter­flies in the stom­ach,” “chill up my spine”—named qual­i­ta­tive data, just a hand­ful of the embod­ied emo­tions mapped by neu­ro­sci­en­tist Lau­ri Num­men­maa and co-authors Riit­ta Hari, Enri­co Glere­an, and Jari K. Hieta­nen.

In their study, the researchers “recruit­ed more than 1,000 par­tic­i­pants” for three exper­i­ments, reports Ash­ley Hamer at Curios­i­ty. These includ­ed hav­ing peo­ple “rate how much they expe­ri­ence each feel­ing in their body vs. in their mind, how good each one feels, and how much they can con­trol it.” Par­tic­i­pants were also asked to sort their feel­ings, pro­duc­ing “five clus­ters: pos­i­tive feel­ings, neg­a­tive feel­ings, cog­ni­tive process­es, somat­ic (or bod­i­ly) states and ill­ness­es, and home­o­sta­t­ic states (bod­i­ly func­tions).”

After mak­ing care­ful dis­tinc­tions between not only emo­tion­al states, but also between think­ing and sen­sa­tion, the study par­tic­i­pants col­ored blank out­lines of the human body on a com­put­er when asked where they felt spe­cif­ic feel­ings. As the video above from the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry explains, the researchers “used sto­ries, video, and pic­tures to pro­voke emo­tion­al respons­es,” which reg­is­tered onscreen as warmer or cool­er col­ors.

Sim­i­lar kinds of emo­tions clus­tered in sim­i­lar places, with anger, fear, and dis­gust con­cen­trat­ing in the upper body, around the organs and mus­cles that most react to such feel­ings. But “oth­ers were far more sur­pris­ing, even if they made sense intu­itive­ly,” writes Hamer “The pos­i­tive emo­tions of grate­ful­ness and togeth­er­ness and the neg­a­tive emo­tions of guilt and despair all looked remark­ably sim­i­lar, with feel­ings mapped pri­mar­i­ly in the heart, fol­lowed by the head and stom­ach. Mania and exhaus­tion, anoth­er two oppos­ing emo­tions, were both felt all over the body.”

The researchers con­trolled for dif­fer­ences in fig­u­ra­tive expres­sions (i.e. “heartache”) across two lan­guages, Swedish and Finnish. They also make ref­er­ence to oth­er mind-body the­o­ries, such as using “somatosen­so­ry feed­back… to trig­ger con­scious emo­tion­al expe­ri­ences” and the idea that “we under­stand oth­ers’ emo­tions by sim­u­lat­ing them in our own bod­ies.” Read the full, and ful­ly illus­trat­ed, study results in “Bod­i­ly Maps of Emo­tions,” pub­lished by the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Inter­ac­tive Map of the 2,000+ Sounds Humans Use to Com­mu­ni­cate With­out Words: Grunts, Sobs, Sighs, Laughs & More

How Med­i­ta­tion Can Change Your Brain: The Neu­ro­science of Bud­dhist Prac­tice

A Dic­tio­nary of Words Invent­ed to Name Emo­tions We All Feel, But Don’t Yet Have a Name For: Vemö­dalen, Son­der, Chrysal­ism & Much More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Is the Leonardo da Vinci Painting “Salvator Mundi” (Which Sold for $450 Million in 2017) Actually Authentic?: Michael Lewis Explores the Question in His New Podcast

in Art, Podcasts | May 8th, 2019

Jour­nal­ist and best­selling author Michael Lewis (Liar’s Pok­er, Mon­ey­ball, The Big Short) has a new pod­cast, Against the Rules, that “takes a sear­ing look at what’s hap­pened to fairness—in finan­cial mar­kets, news­rooms, bas­ket­ball games, courts of law, and much more. And he asks what’s hap­pen­ing to a world where every­one loves to hate the ref­er­ee.” That is, what hap­pens when we, as a soci­ety, lose con­fi­dence in the arbiters of truth and fair­ness?

In Episode 5, Lewis focus­es on “Sal­va­tor Mun­di,” a paint­ing of Jesus Christ attrib­uted to Leonar­do da Vin­ci, which famous­ly sold at auc­tion for $450 mil­lion in 2017. Pret­ty remark­able, con­sid­er­ing that some ques­tion whether “Sal­va­tor Mun­di,” is real­ly a Leonar­do paint­ing at all. Or, if it is, whether the high­ly-restored paint­ing still retains any brush­strokes from Leonar­do him­self. This leads Lewis to ask some intrigu­ing ques­tions about the authen­tic­i­ty of art, and to explore the pres­sure placed on the ref­er­ees of art–namely, art historians–to con­firm the authen­tic­i­ty of poten­tial­ly valu­able paint­ings. Below, you can stream the episode, “The Hand of Leonar­do.”

As a bonus, we’ve also added an episode that exam­ines how sketchy “cus­tomer ser­vice” com­pa­nies mis­lead peo­ple try­ing to repay their stu­dent loans, and how the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has under­mined gov­ern­ment agen­cies designed to pro­tect debt-strapped Amer­i­cans.

Michael Lewis’ Against the Rules is list­ed in our new col­lec­tion, The 150 Best Pod­casts to Enrich Your Mind.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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What the Theory?: Watch Short Introductions to Postmodernism, Semiotics, Phenomenology, Marxist Literary Criticism and More

in Philosophy | May 8th, 2019

The­o­ry. The word alone can intim­i­date, and it can espe­cial­ly intim­i­date those of us out­side the aca­d­e­m­ic human­i­ties. The rig­or and com­plex­i­ty of sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry is for­bid­ding enough, but cul­tur­al the­o­ry, with its thick­ets of mul­ti­va­lent mean­ing and thinkers with their cultish­ly devot­ed and ter­ri­to­r­i­al fol­low­ings, has sure­ly made many a hope­ful learn­er turn back before they’ve even stepped in. But help has arrived in this age of explain­ers, most recent­ly in the form of a Uni­ver­si­ty of Exeter PhD stu­dent and Youtu­ber named Tom Nicholas who has tak­en it upon him­self to explain such tricky sub­jects as post­mod­ernism, semi­otics, phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy, and many oth­ers besides in his series “What the The­o­ry?”

Nico­las has put his aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground into videos on every­thing from how to read jour­nal arti­cles and write essays to sub­jects like his own research and how Bojack Horse­man cri­tiques the 1990s. But it’s “What the The­o­ry?” that most direct­ly con­fronts the intel­lec­tu­al frame­works that his oth­er videos put to more implic­it use.

In it he breaks down the nature of the most abstruse-sound­ing dis­ci­plines in all the mod­ern human­i­ties as well as the ideas of the the­o­rists who devel­oped them — semi­otics and Fer­di­nand de Saus­sure, phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy and Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, cul­tur­al mate­ri­al­ism and Ray­mond Williams, as well as broad­er con­cepts like post­mod­ernism and even the mod­ernism that pre­ced­ed it — illu­mi­nat­ing them by draw­ing upon a set of less-rar­efied works, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to Dunkirk and The Lego Movie.

In more recent “What the The­o­ry?” videos, Nicholas takes on indi­vid­ual ideas as pop­u­lar­ized (at least with­in the acad­e­my) by cer­tain writ­ers, the­o­rists, and philoso­phers. He explains, for exam­ple, what Roland Barthes meant when he pro­claimed “the death of the author” in 1967, as well as what Barthes’ coun­try­man Guy Debord meant when he described human­i­ty as liv­ing in a “soci­ety of the spec­ta­cle” that same year. Watch through the entire “What the The­o­ry?” playlist so far, and there’s a chance you might come away with an inter­est in launch­ing an aca­d­e­m­ic career of your own in order to dig deep­er into these and oth­er ideas. But there’s a much greater chance that you’ll come away believ­ing that these crit­i­cal texts actu­al­ly do have insights to offer our world, the soci­eties that make up our world, and the cul­ture that dri­ves those soci­eties — bare­ly intel­li­gi­ble though many of them may still look.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Quick Intro­duc­tion to Lit­er­ary The­o­ry: Watch Ani­mat­ed Videos from the Open Uni­ver­si­ty

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Roland Barthes’s Mytholo­gies and How He Used Semi­otics to Decode Pop­u­lar Cul­ture

Yale Presents a Free Online Course on Lit­er­ary The­o­ry, Cov­er­ing Struc­tural­ism, Decon­struc­tion & More

David Fos­ter Wal­lace on What’s Wrong with Post­mod­ernism: A Video Essay

Noam Chom­sky Explains What’s Wrong with Post­mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy & French Intel­lec­tu­als, and How They End Up Sup­port­ing Oppres­sive Pow­er Struc­tures

The CIA Assess­es the Pow­er of French Post-Mod­ern Philoso­phers: Read a New­ly Declas­si­fied CIA Report from 1985

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How David Bowie Used William S. Burroughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unforgettable Lyrics

in Art, Music | May 7th, 2019

Why do David Bowie’s songs sounds like no one else’s, right down to the words that turn up in their lyrics? Nov­el­ist Rick Moody, who has been privy more than once to details of Bowie’s song­writ­ing process, wrote about it in his col­umn on Bowie’s 2013 album The Next Day: “David Bowie mis­di­rects auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion, often, by lay­ing claim to reportage and fic­tion as song­writ­ing method­olo­gies, and he cloaks him­self, fur­ther, in the cut-up.” Any­one acquaint­ed with the work of William S. Bur­roughs will rec­og­nize that term, which refers to the process of lit­er­al­ly cut­ting up exist­ing texts in order to gen­er­ate new mean­ings with their rearranged pieces.

You can see how Bowie per­formed his cut-up com­po­si­tion in the 1970s in the clip above, in which he demon­strates and explains his ver­sion of the method. “What I’ve used it for, more than any­thing else, is ignit­ing any­thing that might be in my imag­i­na­tion,” he says. “It can often come up with very inter­est­ing atti­tudes to look into. I tried doing it with diaries and things, and I was find­ing out amaz­ing things about me and what I’d done and where I was going.”


Giv­en what he sees as its abil­i­ty to shed light on both the future and the past, he describes the cut-up method as “a very West­ern tarot” — and one that can pro­vide just the right unex­pect­ed com­bi­na­tion of sen­tences, phras­es, or words to inspire a song.

As dra­mat­i­cal­ly as Bowie’s self-pre­sen­ta­tion and musi­cal style would change over the sub­se­quent decades, the cut-up method would only become more fruit­ful for him. When Moody inter­viewed Bowie in 1995, Bowie “observed that he worked some­where near to half the time as a lyri­cist in the cut-up tra­di­tion, and he even had, in those days, a com­put­er pro­gram that would eat the words and spit them back in some less ref­er­en­tial form.” Bowie describes how he uses that com­put­er pro­gram in the 1997 BBC clip above: “I’ll take arti­cles out of news­pa­pers, poems that I’ve writ­ten, pieces of oth­er peo­ple’s books, and put them all into this lit­tle ware­house, this con­tain­er of infor­ma­tion, and then hit the ran­dom but­ton and it will ran­dom­ize every­thing.”

Amid that ran­dom­ness, Bowie says, “if you put three or four dis­so­ci­at­ed ideas togeth­er and cre­ate awk­ward rela­tion­ships with them, the uncon­scious intel­li­gence that comes from those pair­ings is real­ly quite star­tling some­times, quite provoca­tive.” Six­teen years lat­er, Moody received a star­tling and provoca­tive set of seem­ing­ly dis­so­ci­at­ed words in response to a long-shot e‑mail he sent to Bowie in search of a deep­er under­stand­ing of The Next Day. It ran as fol­lows, with no fur­ther com­ment from the artist:

Effi­gies

Indul­gences

Anar­chist

Vio­lence

Chthon­ic

Intim­i­da­tion

Vampyric

Pan­theon

Suc­cubus

Hostage

Trans­fer­ence

Iden­ti­ty

Mauer

Inter­face

Flit­ting

Iso­la­tion

Revenge

Osmo­sis

Cru­sade

Tyrant

Dom­i­na­tion

Indif­fer­ence

Mias­ma

Press­gang

Dis­placed

Flight

Reset­tle­ment

Fune­re­al

Glide

Trace

Balkan

Bur­ial

Reverse

Manip­u­late

Ori­gin

Text

Trai­tor

Urban

Come­up­pance

Trag­ic

Nerve

Mys­ti­fi­ca­tion

“Chthon­ic is a great word,” Moody writes, “and all art that is chthon­ic is excel­lent art.” He adds that “when Bowie says chthon­ic, it’s obvi­ous he’s not just aspir­ing to chthon­ic, the album has death in near­ly every song” — a theme that would wax on Bowie’s next and final album, though The Next Day came after an emer­gency heart surgery end­ed his live-per­for­mance career. “Chthon­ic has per­son­al heft behind it, as does iso­la­tion, which is a word a lot like Iso­lar, the name of David Bowie’s man­age­ment enter­prise.” Moody scru­ti­nizes each and every one of the words on the list in his col­umn, find­ing mean­ings in them that, what­ev­er their involve­ment in the cre­ation of the album, very much enrich its lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence. By using tech­niques like the cut-up method, Bowie ensured that his songs can nev­er tru­ly be inter­pret­ed — not that it will keep gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of intrigued lis­ten­ers from try­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Process with William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

How David Bowie, Kurt Cobain & Thom Yorke Write Songs With William Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

How Jim Jar­musch Gets Cre­ative Ideas from William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method and Bri­an Eno’s Oblique Strate­gies

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Mr. Rogers’ Nine Rules for Speaking to Children (1977)

in Education, K-12, Life, Psychology, Television | May 7th, 2019

The max­im “chil­dren need rules” does not nec­es­sar­i­ly describe either a right-wing posi­tion or a left­ist one; either a polit­i­cal or a reli­gious idea. Ide­al­ly, it points to observ­able facts about the biol­o­gy of devel­op­ing brains and psy­chol­o­gy of devel­op­ing per­son­al­i­ties. It means cre­at­ing struc­tures that respect kids’ intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ties and sup­port their phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al growth. Sub­sti­tut­ing “struc­ture” for rules sug­gests even more strong­ly that the “rules” are main­ly require­ments for adults, those who build and main­tain the world in which kids live.

Grown-ups must, to the best of their abil­i­ties, try and under­stand what chil­dren need at their stage of devel­op­ment, and try to meet those needs. When Susan Sontag’s son David was 7 years old, for exam­ple, the writer and film­mak­er made a list of ten rules for her­self to fol­low, touch­ing on con­cerns about his self-con­cept, rela­tion­ship with his father, indi­vid­ual pref­er­ences, and need for rou­tine. Her first rule serves as a gen­er­al head­ing for the pre­scrip­tions in the oth­er nine: “Be con­sis­tent.”

Sontag’s rules only emerged from her jour­nals after her death. She did not turn them into pub­lic par­ent­ing tips. But near­ly ten years after she wrote them, a man appeared on tele­vi­sion who seemed to embody their exac­ti­tude and sim­plic­i­ty. From the very begin­ning in 1968, Fred Rogers insist­ed that his show be built on strict rules. “There were no acci­dents on Mr. Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood,” says for­mer pro­duc­er Arthur Green­wald. Or as Maxwell King, author of a recent biog­ra­phy on Rogers, writes at The Atlantic:

He insist­ed that every word, whether spo­ken by a per­son or a pup­pet, be scru­ti­nized close­ly, because he knew that children—the preschool-age boys and girls who made up the core of his audience—tend to hear things lit­er­al­ly…. He took great pains not to mis­lead or con­fuse chil­dren, and his team of writ­ers joked that his on-air man­ner of speak­ing amount­ed to a dis­tinct lan­guage they called “Fred­dish.”

In addi­tion to his con­sis­ten­cy, almost to the point of self-par­o­dy, Rogers made sure to always be absolute­ly crys­tal clear in his speech. He under­stood that young kids do not under­stand metaphors, most­ly because they haven’t learned the com­mon­ly agreed-upon mean­ings. Preschool-age chil­dren also have trou­ble under­stand­ing the same uses of words in dif­fer­ent con­texts. In one seg­ment on the show, for exam­ple, a nurse says to a child wear­ing a blood-pres­sure cuff, “I’m going to blow this up.”

Rogers had the crew redub the line with “’I’m going to puff this up with some air.’ ’Blow up’ might sound like there’s an explo­sion,” Green­wald remem­bers, “and he didn’t want kids to cov­er their ears and miss what would hap­pen next.” In anoth­er exam­ple, Rogers wrote a song called “You Can Nev­er Go Down the Drain,” to assuage a com­mon fear that very young chil­dren have. There is a cer­tain log­ic to the think­ing. Drains take things away, why not them?

Rogers “was extra­or­di­nar­i­ly good at imag­in­ing where children’s minds might go,” writes King, explain­ing to them, for exam­ple, that an oph­thal­mol­o­gist could not look into his mind and see his thoughts. His care with lan­guage so amused and awed the show’s cre­ative team that in 1977, Green­wald and writer Bar­ry Head cre­at­ed an illus­trat­ed satir­i­cal man­u­al called “Let’s Talk About Fred­dish.” Any­one who’s seen the doc­u­men­tary Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor? knows Rogers could take a good-natured joke at his expense, like­ly includ­ing the imag­i­na­tive recon­struc­tion of his meth­ods below.

  1. “State the idea you wish to express as clear­ly as pos­si­ble, and in terms preschool­ers can under­stand.” Exam­ple: It is dan­ger­ous to play in the street.
  2. “Rephrase in a pos­i­tive man­ner,” as in It is good to play where it is safe.
  3. “Rephrase the idea, bear­ing in mind that preschool­ers can­not yet make sub­tle dis­tinc­tions and need to be redi­rect­ed to author­i­ties they trust.” As in, “Ask your par­ents where it is safe to play.”
  4. “Rephrase your idea to elim­i­nate all ele­ments that could be con­sid­ered pre­scrip­tive, direc­tive, or instruc­tive.” In the exam­ple, that’d mean get­ting rid of “ask”: Your par­ents will tell you where it is safe to play.
  5. “Rephrase any ele­ment that sug­gests cer­tain­ty.” That’d be “will”: Your par­ents can tell you where it is safe to play.
  6. “Rephrase your idea to elim­i­nate any ele­ment that may not apply to all chil­dren.” Not all chil­dren know their par­ents, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play.
  7. “Add a sim­ple moti­va­tion­al idea that gives preschool­ers a rea­son to fol­low your advice.” Per­haps: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is good to lis­ten to them.
  8. “Rephrase your new state­ment, repeat­ing the first step.” “Good” rep­re­sents a val­ue judg­ment, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is impor­tant to try to lis­ten to them.
  9. “Rephrase your idea a final time, relat­ing it to some phase of devel­op­ment a preschool­er can under­stand.” Maybe: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is impor­tant to try to lis­ten to them, and lis­ten­ing is an impor­tant part of grow­ing.

His crew respect­ed him so much that even their par­o­dies serve as slight­ly exag­ger­at­ed trib­utes to his con­cerns. Rogers adapt­ed his philo­soph­i­cal guide­lines from the top psy­chol­o­gists and child-devel­op­ment experts of the time. The 9 Rules (or maybe 9 Stages) of “Fred­dish” above, as imag­ined by Green­wald and Head, reflect their work. Maybe implied in the joke is that his metic­u­lous pro­ce­dure, con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­ble effects of every word, would be impos­si­ble to emu­late out­side of his script­ed encoun­ters with chil­dren, prepped for by hours of con­ver­sa­tion with child-devel­op­ment spe­cial­ist Mar­garet McFar­land.

Such is the kind of expe­ri­ence par­ents, teach­ers, and oth­er care­tak­ers nev­er have. But Rogers under­stood and acknowl­edged the unique pow­er and priv­i­lege of his role, more so than most every oth­er children’s TV pro­gram­mer. He made sure to get it right, as best he could, each time, not only so that kids could bet­ter take in the infor­ma­tion, but so the grown-ups in their lives could make them­selves bet­ter under­stood. Rogers want­ed us to know, says Green­wald, “that the inner life of chil­dren was dead­ly seri­ous to them,” and thus deserv­ing of care and recog­ni­tion.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Marathon Stream­ing of All 856 Episodes of Mis­ter Rogers Neigh­bor­hood, and the Mov­ing Trail­er for the New Doc­u­men­tary, Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor?

Mis­ter Rogers Accepts a Life­time Achieve­ment Award, and Helps You Thank Every­one Who Has Made a Dif­fer­ence in Your Life

When Fred Rogers and Fran­cois Clem­mons Broke Down Race Bar­ri­ers on a His­toric Episode of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Why the World’s Best Mathematicians Are Hoarding Japanese Chalk

in Math | May 7th, 2019

Here’s the lat­est from Great Big Sto­ry: “Once upon a time, not long ago, the math world fell in love … with a chalk. But not just any chalk! This was Hagoro­mo: a Japan­ese brand so smooth, so per­fect that some won­dered if it was made from the tears of angels. Pen­cils down, please, as we tell the tale of a writ­ing imple­ment so irre­place­able, pro­fes­sors stock­piled it.”

Head over to Ama­zon and try to buy it, and all you get is: “Cur­rent­ly unavail­able. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.” Indeed, they’ve stock­piled it all.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Hawking’s Lec­tures on Black Holes Now Ful­ly Ani­mat­ed with Chalk­board Illus­tra­tions

The Map of Math­e­mat­ics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Math Fit Togeth­er

Free Online Math Cours­es

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Pioneering Computer Scientist Grace Hopper Shows Us How to Visualize a Nanosecond (1983)

in Computer Science, Math, Physics | May 7th, 2019

Human imag­i­na­tion seems seri­ous­ly lim­it­ed when faced with the cos­mic scope of time and space. We can imag­ine, through stop-motion ani­ma­tion and CGI, what it might be like to walk the earth with crea­tures the size of office build­ings. But how to wrap our heads around the fact that they lived hun­dreds of mil­lions of years ago, on a plan­et some four and a half bil­lion years old? We trust the sci­ence, but can’t rely on intu­ition alone to guide us to such mind-bog­gling knowl­edge.

At the oth­er end of the scale, events mea­sured in nanosec­onds, or bil­lionths of a sec­ond, seem incon­ceiv­able, even to some­one as smart as Grace Hop­per, the Navy math­e­mati­cian who invent­ed COBOL and helped built the first com­put­er. Or so she says in the 1983 video clip above from one of her many lec­tures in her role as a guest lec­tur­er at uni­ver­si­ties, muse­ums, mil­i­tary bod­ies, and cor­po­ra­tions.

When she first heard of “cir­cuits that act­ed in nanosec­onds,” she says, “bil­lionths of a sec­ond… Well, I didn’t know what a bil­lion was…. And if you don’t know what a bil­lion is, how on earth do you know what a bil­lionth is? Final­ly, one morn­ing in total des­per­a­tion, I called over the engi­neer­ing build­ing, and I said, ‘Please cut off a nanosec­ond and send it to me.” What she asked for, she explains, and shows the class, was a piece of wire rep­re­sent­ing the dis­tance a sig­nal could trav­el in a nanosec­ond.

Now of course it wouldn’t real­ly be through wire — it’d be out in space, the veloc­i­ty of light. So if we start with a veloc­i­ty of light and use your friend­ly com­put­er, you’ll dis­cov­er that a nanosec­ond is 11.8 inch­es long, the max­i­mum lim­it­ing dis­tance that elec­tric­i­ty can trav­el in a bil­lionth of a sec­ond.

Fol­low the rest of her expla­na­tion, with wire props, and see if you can bet­ter under­stand a mea­sure of time beyond the reach­es of con­scious expe­ri­ence. The expla­na­tion was imme­di­ate­ly suc­cess­ful when she began using it in the late 1960s “to demon­strate how design­ing small­er com­po­nents would pro­duce faster com­put­ers,” writes the Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry. The bun­dle of wires below, each about 30cm (11.8 inch­es) long, comes from a lec­ture Hop­per gave muse­um docents in March 1985.

Pho­to via the Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry

Like the age of the dinosaurs, the nanosec­ond may only rep­re­sent a small frac­tion of the incom­pre­hen­si­bly small units of time sci­en­tists are even­tu­al­ly able to measure—and com­put­er sci­en­tists able to access. “Lat­er,” notes the NMAH, “as com­po­nents shrank and com­put­er speeds increased, Hop­per used grains of pep­per to rep­re­sent the dis­tance elec­tric­i­ty trav­eled in a picosec­ond, one tril­lionth of a sec­ond.”

At this point, the map becomes no more reveal­ing than the unknown ter­ri­to­ry, invis­i­ble to the naked eye, incon­ceiv­able but through wild leaps of imag­i­na­tion. But if any­one could explain the increas­ing­ly inex­plic­a­ble in terms most any­one could under­stand, it was the bril­liant but down-to-earth Hop­per.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Grace Hop­per, the Pio­neer­ing Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Who Helped Invent COBOL and Build the His­toric Mark I Com­put­er (1906–1992)

The Map of Com­put­er Sci­ence: New Ani­ma­tion Presents a Sur­vey of Com­put­er Sci­ence, from Alan Tur­ing to “Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty”

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Venerable Female Artists, Musicians & Authors Give Advice to the Young: Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson & More

in Art, Film, Life, Literature | May 6th, 2019

To the Louisiana Chan­nel and the Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, on behalf of mature women every­where: Thank you. You have excel­lent taste.

We’ve weath­ered invis­i­bil­i­ty and Mom jeans jokes, as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from our demo­graph­ic are judged more harsh­ly in cat­e­gories that nev­er seem to apply to their male coun­ter­parts in pol­i­tics and the per­form­ing arts.

You’ll find plen­ty of cel­e­brat­ed male artists con­tribut­ing advice to emerg­ing artists in the Louisiana Project’s video series, but the Gueril­la Girls will be grat­i­fied to see how robust­ly rep­re­sent­ed these work­ing women are.

Noth­ing beats author­i­ty con­ferred by decades of pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence.

And while young women are sure to be inspired by these ven­er­a­ble inter­vie­wees, let’s not sell any­one short.

We may have assem­bled a playlist titled Women Artists’ Advice to the Young (watch it from front to back at the bot­tom of the post), but let’s agree that their advice is good for emerg­ing artists of all gen­ders.

Author, poet, and God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith (born 1946) serves up her ver­sion of to thine own self be true.

Avant-garde com­pos­er and musi­cian Lau­rie Ander­son (born 1947) coun­sels against the sort of nar­row self-def­i­n­i­tion that dis­cour­ages artis­tic explo­ration. Be loose, like a goose.

Author Her­b­jørg Wass­mo (born 1942) wants young artists to pre­pare for the inevitable days of low moti­va­tion and self-doubt by resolv­ing to work regard­less.

Oth­er nota­bles include film­mak­er Shirin Neshat (born 1957), author Lydia Davis (born 1947), artist Joyce Pen­sato (born 1941), and per­for­mance artist Mari­na Abramović (born 1946).

The old­est inter­vie­wee in the col­lec­tion, artist Yay­oi Kusama (born 1929), refus­es to sad­dle up and come up with any teacher­ly  advice, but could cer­tain­ly be con­sid­ered a walk­ing exam­ple of what it means to be “liv­ing as an artist with a wish to cre­ate a beau­ti­ful world with human love.”

Enjoy the full playlist here:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Toni Mor­ri­son Dis­pens­es Sound Writ­ing Advice: Tips You Can Apply to Your Own Work

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

A Space of Their Own, a New Online Data­base, Will Fea­ture Works by 600+ Over­looked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Cen­turies

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in New York City May 13 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her@AyunHalliday.

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