David Lynch Visualizes How Transcendental Meditation Works, Using a Sharpie & Big Pad of Paper

in Science | November 18th, 2019

Sec­ond only to the Bea­t­les, David Lynch has become syn­ony­mous with the prac­tice of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion. And while the results were cer­tain­ly mixed for the Fab Four, Lynch, in all his idio­syn­crasies, has become the face of TM. He didn’t dab­ble with it mid-career. Instead, med­i­ta­tion helped cre­ate his career, as both his prac­tice and the film­ing of Eraser­head start­ed around 1972.

“…[L]ooking back,” he said in a Dai­ly Beast inter­view in 2014, “I was filled with anger and took it out on my first wife and made her life mis­er­able. I had a low-grade depres­sion, and wasn’t real­ly self-assured. If I’d gone for­ward with­out the abil­i­ty to tran­scend every day, I think the pres­sures of the busi­ness could’ve got­ten me.”

His career has been tran­scen­dent for sure, and as head of his epony­mous foun­da­tion, he’s spread­ing the word, bring­ing TM to schools and call­ing in fel­low cre­atives to extol its virtues.

But how does Lynch him­self explain Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion? In this video, Lynch, armed with a pad of paper and a Sharpie, takes us on a sci­en­tif­ic jour­ney down past atoms and pro­tons, and down to the uni­fied field the­o­ry of quan­tum physics. A “no-thing” out of which all mat­ter emerges. Sci­en­tists can’t take us into the uni­fied field…but the mind can. Hence, med­i­ta­tion.

“The mantra is the key that opens the door,” he explains. (What is that mantra? It’s a per­son­al one that the Mahar­ishi, or some­one high on the TM chain will give you after training…if you believe the TM pitch. Not every­body believes it needs be so pro­pri­etary, or expen­sive.)

With a mantra the mind can dive deep and then deep­er: “Each deep­er lev­el of mind and each deep­er lev­el of intel­lect has more hap­pi­ness,” he says. Go deep enough and the mind hits the equiv­a­lent of the uni­fied field, and there…transcendence.

“Pure, unbound­ed, infi­nite con­scious­ness…” he promis­es. “Tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion is just the vehi­cle to get you here.”

This can’t be the first time Lynch has drawn this dia­gram, but it real­ly is one of the best visu­al­iza­tions of how sci­ence and med­i­ta­tion have arrived at the same con­clu­sion. And it’s also why sci­ence is now study­ing the effects of med­i­ta­tion on the brain. For those look­ing for more on Lynch and med­i­ta­tion, we have you cov­ered.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

David Lynch Mus­es About the Mag­ic of Cin­e­ma & Med­i­ta­tion in a New Abstract Short Film

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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What to Wear to a Successful PhD Thesis Defense? A Skirt’s Worth of Academic Rejection Letters

in Creativity, Education, Fashion, Life, Science | November 8th, 2019

Some peo­ple are par­a­lyzed by rejec­tion.

Oth­ers, like Michi­gan State University’s Earth and Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences PhD can­di­date, Caitlin Kir­by, sport rejec­tion like a man­tle of hon­or… or more accu­rate­ly, a pleat­ed skirt falling to just below mid-thigh.

“Suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed my PhD dis­ser­ta­tion today!” Kir­by wrote in a Tweet that has since gar­nered over 25,000 likes. “In the spir­it of acknowl­edg­ing & nor­mal­iz­ing fail­ure in the process, I defend­ed in a skirt made of rejec­tion let­ters from the course of my PhD.”

The cus­tom gar­ment, which Kir­by teamed with a dark blaz­er and red waist­band, was orga­nized in two tiers, with a tulle ruf­fle peep­ing out beneath.

MSU’s Career Ser­vices Network’s Direc­tor of Employ­er Rela­tions, Karin Han­son, told the Lans­ing State Jour­nal that rejec­tion comes as a shock to many high achiev­ing MSU stu­dents.

Kirby’s deci­sion to upcy­cle 17 dis­ap­point­ing let­ters received over the course of her aca­d­e­m­ic career was par­tial­ly inspired by a Parks and Recre­ation episode in which the skirt of Leslie Knope’s wed­ding dress is a wear­able col­lage of news­pa­per arti­cles about the char­ac­ter, drawn from ear­li­er episodes

More to the point, Kirby’s skirt is part of an ongo­ing cam­paign to acknowl­edge rejec­tion as a nec­es­sary, if painful, part of aca­d­e­m­ic growth.

The whole process of revis­it­ing those old let­ters and mak­ing that skirt sort of remind­ed me that you have to apply to a lot of things to suc­ceed. It seems coun­ter­in­tu­itive to wear your rejec­tions to your last test in your Ph.D, but we talked about our rejec­tions every week and I want­ed them to be a part of it.

And, as she lat­er not­ed in a tweet:

Accep­tances and rejec­tions are often based on the tra­di­tion­al val­ues of acad­e­mia, which excludes POC by not valu­ing the approach­es, research ques­tions, and expe­ri­ences that POC tend to bring to their work.

Kirby’s let­ters were culled from a vari­ety of sources—scholarship appli­ca­tions, sub­mis­sions to aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals, and pro­pos­als for con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly and We regret to inform you are recur­rent motifs. About 8 let­ters were left on the cut­ting room floor.

But she is pre­pared to low­er her hem­line, when she starts apply­ing for jobs, fol­low­ing a stint at the Research Insti­tute for Urban and Region­al Devel­op­ment in Dort­mund, Ger­many, the result of a suc­cess­ful Ful­bright appli­ca­tion.

Fol­low Kirby’s exam­ple and turn your tem­po­rary set­backs into a pow­er skirt, using the tuto­r­i­al above.

via Boing Boing 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

T.S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, res­ur­rects Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Women Scientists Launch a Database Featuring the Work of 9,000 Women Working in the Sciences

in Gender, Science | November 5th, 2019

“Why are there so few women in sci­ence?” has almost become a tire­some refrain over the years, giv­en how lit­tle the answers engage with the thou­sands of female sci­en­tists work­ing all over the world. “Too often,” writes the project 500 Women Sci­en­tists, “high-pro­file arti­cles, con­fer­ence pan­els, and boards are filled with a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of male voic­es. News sto­ries are report­ed by more men by a huge mar­gin, and this imbal­ance is reflect­ed in how fre­quent­ly women are quot­ed in news sto­ries unless jour­nal­ists make a con­scious effort to reach out.

“Most keynote speak­ers at con­fer­ences are men. Pan­els are so fre­quent­ly all-male that a new word evolved to describe the phe­nom­e­non: manels. These imbal­ances add up and rein­force the inac­cu­rate per­cep­tion that sci­ence is stale, pale and male.” The next time the ques­tion arises—“why are there so few women in science?”—or any oth­er ques­tion need­ing sci­en­tif­ic exper­tise, one need only ges­ture silent­ly to 500 Women Sci­en­tists, a grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion con­sist­ing of far more sci­en­tists than its title sug­gests.

Described as “a resource for jour­nal­ists, edu­ca­tors, pol­i­cy mak­ers, sci­en­tists and any­one need­ing sci­en­tif­ic exper­tise,” the project began in 2016 as an open let­ter penned by its founders, then grad­u­ate stu­dents at Col­orado Uni­ver­si­ty, Boul­der, who decid­ed to re-affirm their val­ues against reac­tionary attacks by amass­ing 500 sig­na­tures on an open let­ter. They’ve since built a search­able data­base of over 9,000 women researchers from around the world, and a resource that helps build local sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ties.

Since launch­ing last year, their Request a Sci­en­tist data­base has shown “the excuse that you can’t find a qual­i­fied woman just does­n’t hold,” says co-founder and micro­bial ecol­o­gist Dr. Kel­ly Ramirez-Don­ders. It has also pro­vid­ed much more detailed data on women in sci­ence, which was pub­lished in a paper at PLOS Biol­o­gy in April. “The group has ambi­tious plans to keep expand­ing its reach,” writes STAT. “They’re rais­ing mon­ey to start a fel­low­ship for women of col­or… and they have already launched an affil­i­ate group, 500 Women in Med­i­cine.”

“We’re sci­en­tists. We’re lovers of evi­dence and data points,” says co-founder Maryam Zaring­ha­lam, a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist. “And so now any­time some­body tells us they couldn’t find some­one or there just aren’t enough women in STEM fields, we can point them to [the data­base] and say, ‘Well, actu­al­ly, this is the tip of the ice­berg, and there’s over 8,000.’… ensur­ing that women’s voic­es are rep­re­sent­ed in the media nar­ra­tives is real­ly essen­tial for show­ing that, ‘No, we are here, it’s just that peo­ple haven’t nec­es­sar­i­ly been aware of us or done the work to find us.’”

Cor­rect­ing mis­per­cep­tions not only helps reduce bias­es with­in sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ties; it also encour­ages bud­ding sci­en­tists who might oth­er­wise be dis­cour­aged from the pur­suit. “It’s not that girls are not inter­est­ed in sci­ence,” co-founder Jane Zeliko­va tells Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca. “Some­thing hap­pens where they don’t see women or girls rep­re­sent­ed as sci­en­tists and they don’t think it’s for them.” 500 Women in Sci­ence proves that notion wrong—science is for them, and for every­one who wants to devote their lives to sci­en­tif­ic research. Just look at the data.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Women’s Hid­den Con­tri­bu­tions to Mod­ern Genet­ics Get Revealed by New Study: No Longer Will They Be Buried in the Foot­notes

“The Matil­da Effect”: How Pio­neer­ing Women Sci­en­tists Have Been Denied Recog­ni­tion and Writ­ten Out of Sci­ence His­to­ry

Real Women Talk About Their Careers in Sci­ence

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

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Discover the Persian 11th Century Canon of Medicine, “The Most Famous Medical Textbook Ever Written”

in History, Science | October 24th, 2019

It may nev­er lend a catchy title to a steamy TV hos­pi­tal dra­ma, but Avicenna’s 11th-cen­tu­ry Canon of Med­i­cine has the dis­tinc­tion of being “the most famous med­ical text­book ever writ­ten.” It has remained, as William Osler wrote in a 1918 Yale lec­ture, “a med­ical bible for a longer time than any oth­er work.” Com­plet­ed in 1025, the com­pendi­um drew Greek, Roman, Ara­bic, Indi­an, and Chi­nese med­ical sci­ence togeth­er in five dense vol­umes of mate­r­i­al informed by the the­o­ries of Galen and struc­tured by the sys­tem­at­ic phi­los­o­phy of Aris­to­tle, whom Avi­cen­na (Abū-ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn-ʿAb­dal­lāh Ibn-Sīnā) called “The First Teacher.”

Trans­lat­ed into Latin in the 12th cen­tu­ry and “often revised,” the Canon, notes the Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy, “formed the basis of med­ical instruc­tion in Euro­pean Uni­ver­si­ties until the 17th cen­tu­ry.” A copy of excerpts from the text has even been found trans­lat­ed into 15th-cen­tu­ry Irish, demon­strat­ing a link between medieval Ire­land and the Islam­ic world. Avicenna’s influ­ence gen­er­al­ly on the intel­lec­tu­al cul­ture of medieval and ear­ly mod­ern Europe and the Arab-speak­ing world can hard­ly be over­stat­ed.

Born in 980 A.D., the Per­sian philoso­pher and physi­cian was instru­men­tal in the recov­ery of Hel­lenic thought, first in the Islam­ic world, then lat­er in Europe. He took to the study of med­i­cine very ear­ly in his extra­or­di­nary career. “I became pro­fi­cient in it in the short­est time,” he says, “until the excel­lent schol­ars of med­i­cine began to study under me.” He also became a prac­tic­ing physi­cian, inspired by a desire to put his learn­ing to the test. “Through my expe­ri­ences I acquired an amaz­ing prac­ti­cal knowl­edge and abil­i­ty in meth­ods of treat­ment.”

The prac­ti­cal knowl­edge in The Canon of Med­i­cine was large­ly the basis for its con­tin­ued use for cen­turies. It lays out rules for drug test­ing, which include an insis­tence on human tri­als and the impor­tance of con­duct­ing mul­ti­ple exper­i­ments and show­ing con­sis­tent results across cas­es. Like most clas­si­cal sci­en­tif­ic texts, it weaves empir­i­cal obser­va­tion with meta­physics, the­ol­o­gy, scholas­tic spec­u­la­tion, and cul­tur­al bias­es par­tic­u­lar to its time and place. But the prac­ti­cal out­lines of its med­ical knowl­edge tran­scend its archaisms.

The work presents “an inte­grat­ed view of surgery and med­i­cine,” notes the Jour­nal of the Roy­al Soci­ety of Med­i­cine. In addi­tion to his immi­nent­ly use­ful guide for assess­ing the effects of drugs, Ibn Sina tells his read­ers “how to judge the mar­gin of healthy tis­sue to remove with an ampu­ta­tion,” an inter­ven­tion that has saved count­less num­bers of lives. “The endur­ing respect in the 21st cen­tu­ry for a book writ­ten a mil­len­ni­um ear­li­er is tes­ti­mo­ny to Ibn Sina’s achieve­ment.”

One of the defin­ing fea­tures of the text is its insis­tence on the prac­tice of med­i­cine as a sys­tem­at­ic sci­en­tif­ic pur­suit of equal mer­it to the the­o­riz­ing of it:

Some­one might say to us that med­i­cine is divid­ed into the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal parts and that, by call­ing it a sci­ence, we have con­sid­ered it as being all the­o­ret­i­cal. To this we respond by say­ing that some arts and phi­los­o­phy have the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal parts, and med­i­cine, too, has its the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal parts. The divi­sion into the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal parts dif­fers from case to case, but we need not dis­cuss these divi­sions in dis­ci­plines oth­er than med­i­cine. If it is said that some parts of med­i­cine are the­o­ret­i­cal and oth­er parts are prac­ti­cal, this does not mean that one part teach­es med­i­cine and the oth­er puts it into prac­tice – as many researchers in this sub­ject believe. One should be aware that the inten­tion is some­thing else: it is that both parts of med­i­cine are sci­ence, but one part is the sci­ence deal­ing with the prin­ci­ples of med­i­cine, and the oth­er with how to put those prin­ci­ples into prac­tice.

Of course, much of the med­ical the­o­ry in the Canon has been dis­proven, but it remains of keen inter­est to stu­dents of the his­to­ry of med­i­cine and of Euro­pean and Islam­ic intel­lec­tu­al cul­tur­al his­to­ry more gen­er­al­ly. Avi­cen­na tow­ers above his con­tem­po­raries, yet his work also bears wit­ness to the larg­er “intel­lec­tu­al cli­mate of his time,” as the site Med­ical His­to­ry Tour points out. He emerged from a milieu “shaped by cen­turies of trans­la­tion and cross-cul­tur­al schol­ar­ship” of Greek, Roman, Indi­an, Chi­nese, Per­sian, and Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture. “A rich Per­sian med­ical tra­di­tion began 200 years before Avi­cen­na.”

Nonethe­less, “how­ev­er the world came by the genius of Avi­cen­na, his influ­ence was last­ing,” with The Canon of Med­i­cine remain­ing a defin­i­tive “best prac­tices” guide to med­i­cine for cen­turies after its com­po­si­tion. See full scans of sev­er­al Ara­bic copies of the text at the Library of Congress’s World Dig­i­tal Library and read a full Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the mas­sive 5‑volume work, with its exten­sive chap­ters on def­i­n­i­tions, anato­my, eti­ol­o­gy, and treat­ments, at the Inter­net Archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

How Ara­bic Trans­la­tors Helped Pre­serve Greek Phi­los­o­phy … and the Clas­si­cal Tra­di­tion

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

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Chill Out to 70 Hours of Oceanscape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth

in Biology, Environment, Life, Nature, Science, Television | October 18th, 2019

Those who har­bor a deep-seat­ed fear of the water may want to look for oth­er meth­ods of stress relief than BBC Earth’s relax­ing 10-hour video loops, but every­one else is encour­aged to take a dip in these stun­ning nat­ur­al worlds, pre­sent­ed with­out com­men­tary or back­ground music.

All sev­en 10-hour playlists are salt-water based: coral reefs, coast­lines, deep ocean, open ocean, frozen seas, ocean sur­faces, and sea forests.

As in most com­pelling nature doc­u­men­taries, non-human crea­tures loom large, but unlike such BBC Earth offer­ings as Creepi­est Insect Moments or Ants Attack Ter­mite Mounds, there’s a benign, live-and-let-live vibe to the pro­ceed­ings.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the pho­tog­ra­phy is breath­tak­ing, and the uses of these marathon-length por­traits are man­i­fold: med­i­ta­tion tool, sleep aid, child soother, social media decom­pres­sor, trav­el­ogue, and—less calmingly—call to action.

Sci­ence tells us that many of these life forms, and the ocean in which they dwell, are in seri­ous dan­ger, thanks to decades of human dis­re­gard for the envi­ron­ment. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to immerse our­selves in what we stand to lose while it’s still pos­si­ble to do some­thing about it.

If that thought seems too depress­ing, there’s also strong sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that nature doc­u­men­taries such as these pro­mote increased feel­ings of well­be­ing

What are you wait­ing for?

Click here to trav­el the oceans with polar bears, jel­ly­fish, dol­phins, sea­hors­es, bright­ly col­ored trop­i­cal fish and oth­er crea­tures of the deep, com­pli­ments of BBC’s Earth’s Ocean­scapes playlists.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch­ing Nature Doc­u­men­taries Can Pro­duce “Real Hap­pi­ness,” Finds a Study from the BBC and UC-Berke­ley

Bob Odenkirk & Errol Mor­ris Cre­ate Comedic Shorts to Help You Take Action Against Glob­al Warm­ing: Watch Them Online

Do Octopi Dream? An Aston­ish­ing Nature Doc­u­men­tary Sug­gests They Do

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watching Nature Documentaries Can Produce “Real Happiness,” Finds a Study from the BBC and UC-Berkeley

in Environment, Nature, Science, Television | October 15th, 2019

Hol­ly­wood sci­ence fic­tion films imag­ine future humans in worlds that are no longer green, or nev­er were—from Soy­lent Green’s dying Earth to that of Inter­stel­lar. And from Soy­lent Green to Ad Astra, humans in the future expe­ri­ence plant and ani­mal life as sim­u­la­tions on a screen, in hyper­re­al pho­tog­ra­phy and video meant to paci­fy and com­fort. Maybe we live in that world already, to some extent, with apoc­a­lyp­tic films and sci­ence fic­tion express­ing a col­lec­tive mourn­ing for the extinc­tions brought on by cli­mate change.

“Over the course of my lifetime—I’m 46,” writes Wash­ing­ton Post art crit­ic Sebas­t­ian Smee, “the plan­et has lost more than half of its wildlife pop­u­la­tions, accord­ing to the World Wildlife Fund.” Sure­ly this brute fact explains the immense pop­u­lar­i­ty of high pro­duc­tion-val­ue nature doc­u­men­taries, the anti­dote to apoc­a­lyp­tic futur­ism. They have become “block­buster events,” argues Ed Yong at The Atlantic, with fan­doms as fierce as any.

Viewed “from the per­spec­tive of the future,” writes Smee, nature doc­u­men­taries “are great art. Maybe the great­est of our time.” But can view­ing film and pho­tographs of nature pro­duce in us the feel­ings of awe and won­der that poets, artists, and philoso­phers have described feel­ing in actu­al nature for cen­turies? BBC Earth, pro­duc­er of sev­er­al major block­buster nature doc­u­men­tary series, under­took some psy­cho­log­i­cal research to find out, part­ner­ing with researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.

The team exam­ined the effects of watch­ing the BBC’s Plan­et Earth II doc­u­men­tary series rel­a­tive to oth­er kinds of pro­grams. “It is a deep human intu­ition that view­ing nature and being in nature is good for the mind and body,” they write in the study, titled “Explor­ing the Emo­tion­al State of ‘Real Hap­pi­ness.’” (Socio­bi­ol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son coined the term “bio­phil­ia” to describe the evolved pref­er­ence for nat­ur­al beau­ty.) Does screen­time equal phys­i­cal time spent out­doors? Not exact­ly, but nature doc­u­men­taries can low­er stress lev­els and, yes, pro­duce feel­ings of “real hap­pi­ness.”

There have been sev­er­al pre­vi­ous such stud­ies. The authors cite one in which a few min­utes of the orig­i­nal series Plan­et Earth “led peo­ple, com­pared to con­trol par­tic­i­pants, to feel 45.6% more awe and 31.4% more grat­i­tude, but no shifts in feel­ings of neg­a­tive emo­tions such as fear and sad­ness.” The Plan­et Earth II study may be the largest of its kind, with almost 3,500 par­tic­i­pants in the U.S., around a thou­sand in the U.K., India, and Aus­tralia, each, and around 500 in both South Africa and Sin­ga­pore for a total of approx­i­mate­ly 7,500 view­ers.

Par­tic­i­pants across a range of age groups, from 16 to 55 and over, were shown short clips of a vari­ety of TV pro­grams, includ­ing clips from Plan­et Earth II. They were sur­veyed on an array of emo­tion­al respons­es before and after each view­ing. The study also mea­sured stress lev­els using the Per­ceived Stress Scale (PSS), and used a facial map­ping tech­nol­o­gy called CrowdE­mo­tion to track phys­i­cal respons­es. The researchers aggre­gat­ed the data and con­trolled for pop­u­la­tion size in each coun­try.

The find­ings are fas­ci­nat­ing. Across the scale, Plan­et Earth II clips gen­er­at­ed more feel­ings of hap­pi­ness and awe, with clips from news and enter­tain­ment shows caus­ing more fear. In most of the study’s mea­sures, these good feel­ings peaked high­est at the low­er demo­graph­ic age range of 16–24. Younger view­ers showed greater pos­i­tive emo­tion­al respons­es in facial map­ping and sur­vey data, a fact con­sis­tent with BBC rat­ings data show­ing that 16–34 year-olds make up around 41% of the audi­ence share for Plan­et Earth II.

“This younger group,” note the authors, “was more like­ly to expe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive shifts in emo­tion.” They also start­ed out, before view­ing the clips, with sig­nif­i­cant­ly more envi­ron­men­tal anx­i­ety, scor­ing high­ly on the stress scale. 71% described them­selves as “extreme­ly wor­ried about the state of the world’s envi­ron­ment and what it will mean for my future.” A small­er per­cent­age showed the low­est lev­el of agree­ment with the state­ment “I reg­u­lar­ly get out­side and enjoy spend­ing time with nature.”

For near­ly all of the study’s view­ers, nature doc­u­men­taries seemed to pro­duce at least fleet­ing feel­ings of “real hap­pi­ness.” For many, they may also be a way of coun­ter­ing fears of the future, and com­pen­sat­ing in advance for a loss of the nat­ur­al beau­ty that remains. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the study did not mea­sure the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants who viewed Plan­et Earth II and oth­er “block­buster” nature doc­u­men­taries as a call to action against envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion. Maybe that’s a sub­ject for anoth­er study. Read the full Plan­et Earth II study results here. And if you’re feel­ing stressed, watch thir­ty min­utes of “Visu­al Sound­scapes,” pre­sent­ed by Plan­et Earth II, above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

Becom­ing: A Short Time­lapse Film Shows a Sin­gle Cell Mor­ph­ing Into a Com­plete, Com­plex Liv­ing Organ­ism

Do Octopi Dream? An Aston­ish­ing Nature Doc­u­men­tary Sug­gests They Do

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

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Novelist Cormac McCarthy Gives Writing Advice to Scientists … and Anyone Who Wants to Write Clear, Compelling Prose

in Literature, Science, Writing | October 3rd, 2019

As we point­ed out back in 2017, Cor­mac McCarthy, author of such grit­ty, blood-drenched nov­els as Blood Merid­i­an, Child of God, The Road, and No Coun­try for Old Men, prefers the com­pa­ny of sci­en­tists to fel­low writ­ers. Since the mid-nineties, he has main­tained a desk at the San­ta Fe Insti­tute, an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary sci­en­tif­ic think tank, and has served as a vol­un­teer copy-edi­tor for sev­er­al sci­en­tists, includ­ing Lisa Ran­dall, Harvard’s first female tenured the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, and physi­cist Geof­frey West, author of the pop­u­lar sci­ence book Scale.

One of McCarthy’s first such aca­d­e­m­ic col­lab­o­ra­tions came after a friend, econ­o­mist W. Bri­an Arthur, mailed him an arti­cle in 1996. McCarthy helped Arthur com­plete­ly revise it, which sent the edi­tor of the Har­vard Busi­ness Review into a “slight pan­ic,” the econ­o­mist remem­bers. I can’t imag­ine why, but then I’d rather read any of McCarthy’s nov­els than most aca­d­e­m­ic papers. Not that I don’t love to be exposed to new ideas, but it’s all about the qual­i­ty of the writ­ing.

Schol­ar­ly writ­ing has, after all, a rep­u­ta­tion for obscu­ri­ty, and obfus­ca­tion for a rea­son, and not only in post­mod­ern phi­los­o­phy. Sci­en­tif­ic papers also rely heav­i­ly on jar­gon, over­ly long, incom­pre­hen­si­ble sen­tences, and dis­ci­pli­nary for­mal­i­ties that can feel cold and alien­at­ing to the non-spe­cial­ist. McCarthy iden­ti­fied these prob­lems in the work of asso­ciates like biol­o­gist and ecol­o­gist Van Sav­age, who has “received invalu­able edit­ing advice from McCarthy,” notes Nature, “on sev­er­al sci­ence papers pub­lished over the past 20 years.”

Dur­ing “live­ly week­ly lunch­es” with the author dur­ing the win­ter of 2018, Sav­age dis­cussed the fin­er points of McCarthy’s edit­ing advice. Then Sav­age and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Pamela Yeh present­ed the con­densed ver­sion at Nature for a wider audi­ence. Below, we’ve excerpt­ed some of the most strik­ing of “McCarthy’s words of wis­dom.” Find the com­plete com­pi­la­tion of McCarthy’s advice over at Nature.

  • Use min­i­mal­ism to achieve clar­i­ty…. Remove extra words or com­mas when­ev­er you can.
  • Decide on your paper’s theme and two or three points you want every read­er to remem­ber…. If some­thing isn’t need­ed to help the read­er to under­stand the main theme, omit it.
  • Lim­it each para­graph to a sin­gle mes­sage.
  • Keep sen­tences short, sim­ply con­struct­ed and direct.
  • Try to avoid jar­gon, buzz­words or over­ly tech­ni­cal lan­guage. And don’t use the same word repeatedly—it’s bor­ing.
  • Don’t over-elab­o­rate. Only use an adjec­tive if it’s rel­e­vant…. Don’t say the same thing in three dif­fer­ent ways in any sin­gle sec­tion.
  • Choose con­crete lan­guage and exam­ples.
  • When you think you’re done, read your work aloud to your­self or a friend. Find a good edi­tor you can trust and who will spend real time and thought on your work.
  • Final­ly, try to write the best ver­sion of your paper—the one that you like. You can’t please an anony­mous read­er, but you should be able to please your­self.
  • When you make your writ­ing more live­ly and eas­i­er to under­stand, peo­ple will want to invest their time in read­ing your work.

As Kot­tke points out, “most of this is good advice for writ­ing in gen­er­al.” This is hard­ly a sur­prise giv­en the source, though, as McCarthy’s pri­ma­ry body of work demon­strates, lit­er­ary writ­ers are free to tread all over these guide­lines as long as they can get away with it. Still, his straight­for­ward advice is an invi­ta­tion for writ­ers of all kinds—academic, pop­u­lar, aspir­ing, and professional—to remind them­selves of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of clear, com­pelling com­mu­nica­tive prose.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Cor­mac McCarthy Became a Copy-Edi­tor for Sci­en­tif­ic Books and One of the Most Influ­en­tial Arti­cles in Eco­nom­ics

Cor­mac McCarthy’s Three Punc­tu­a­tion Rules, and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

Cor­mac McCarthy Explains Why He Worked Hard at Not Work­ing: How 9‑to‑5 Jobs Lim­it Your Cre­ative Poten­tial

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

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Bob Odenkirk & Errol Morris Create Comedic Shorts to Help You Take Action Against Global Warming: Watch Them Online

in Comedy, Environment, Film, Life, Nature, Science | September 6th, 2019

My beach house must be some­where around here. I used to be able to see the ocean from it. I should be able to see it from the ocean. Ooo, that looks famil­iar. Lady Lib­er­ty. Ha ha! Hel­looo! All the best to you.     —Admi­ral Hor­a­tio Horn­tow­er

Are there any Bet­ter Call Saul fans among the glob­al warm­ing deniers?

A sce­nario in which one can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pooh pooh the melt­ing of the polar ice caps and embrace The Thin Blue Line?

Direc­tor Errol Mor­ris and his star, Bob Odenkirk, may not change any minds with their Glob­al Melt­down spots they pro­duced in part­ner­ship with the Insti­tute for the Future, but hope­ful­ly the emphat­ic end cards will stir some fans to action.

The absur­dist 30-sec­ond shorts fea­ture Odenkirk, encrust­ed in epaulets and naval insignia, as the fic­tion­al Horn­tow­er, “an admi­ral of a fleet of one and per­haps the last man on Earth.” Marooned on a small block of ice, he rails against the inex­pert­ly ani­mat­ed wildlife encroach­ing on his domain.

(“You don’t even have the facil­i­ty of lan­guage!” he tells a pen­guin, and lat­er threat­ens a wal­rus that it will “get paint­ed out” of the final cut for “com­plain­ing all the time…”)

Cer­tain­ly a doc­u­men­tar­i­an of Mor­ris’ stature could have tak­en a length­i­er, more seri­ous approach to the sub­ject, but as he notes:

Log­ic rarely con­vinces any­body of any­thing. Cli­mate change has become yet anoth­er vehi­cle for polit­i­cal polar­iza­tion. If Al Gore said the Earth was round there would be polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion insist­ing that the Earth was flat. It’s all so pre­pos­ter­ous, so con­temptible.

Odenkirk also has some out-of-uni­form con­cerns about cli­mate change, as expressed in “Where I Got These Abs,” a 2011 Shouts & Mur­murs piece for The New York­er:

The mid­dle ab on the left (not my left, your left, if you are look­ing at me) is called Ter­rence. It’s a dig­ni­fied ab. It tens­es each time I read an op-ed arti­cle about glob­al warm­ing. The article’s point of view is imma­te­r­i­al; sim­ply being remind­ed that I can do noth­ing to stop the hor­rif­ic future of floods and cat­a­stro­phe gives this ab a taut yank that lingers, burn­ing calo­ries in my well-creased fore­head at the same time. 

Watch all of Mor­ris and Odenkirk’s Admi­ral Horn­tow­er spots, cur­rent­ly total­ing nine, with ten more to come, on Glob­al Melt­down’s YouTube chan­nel.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cli­mate Change Gets Strik­ing­ly Visu­al­ized by a Scot­tish Art Instal­la­tion

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

NASA Cap­tures the World on Fire

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC this Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for the new season’s kick­off of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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