Maggie's Farm

What's up with Beauty Studies (ie Neuroaesthetics) these days?

A quote from Beauty and the Brain (by the proprietor of Neurophilosophy) in Seed (h/t, Dr. X):

...recent work by several researchers at University College London?—?including the establishment of the first major grant-driven research program for the neurobiological investigation of aesthetics, or neuroaesthetics?—?has made the first steps toward a unified biocultural theory of art.

An object's beauty may not be universal, but the neural basis for appreciating beauty probably is. The researchers' initial discoveries and the increasing formalization of the field promise to open the way for the first time to an understanding of beauty based on something other than speculation.

Can things of the soul and spirit be understood in terms of neurotransmitters and neural wiring? Count me a skeptic. Different levels of organization have different rules and patterns which do not transfer one to the other. For example, you could know everything about atoms but never predict a living cell, and you could understand everything about a cortical network without predicting Moby Dick. (And, for me, on a good day I see beauty everywhere but on a bad day I see it nowhere.)

Still, they may as well give it a try. I get skeptical when they call it a bio-cultural model, however. It makes it too clear that they seek to detour around the psychology part.

Rich Lowry discusses why we need something like the Paulson plan. I think people like "Kill the bailout" Michelle are way off base on both economic and political grounds: frozen credit will create a huge slowdown which will hurt everybody and turn Bush, unwillingly, into another Herbert Hoover. Furthermore, I do not believe that the Feds intend to keep these assets forever. We aren't bailing out rich bankers - we're bailing out the US economy. It's a hangover cure for the housing bubble.

Buffett: It's an economic Pearl Harbor.

Mayor Bloomberg explains how the Dems caused the financial meltdown via a corrupted and politicized Fannie and Freddie.

From Willisms:

Still Life with Apples, Bottle, and Chairback (1902)

The Wall Street woes reminded me of this scene from The Producers, but the best part is, of course, Ulla:

And I dare not leave our readers without Springtime For Hitler:

If we have any such readers, would you guys please consider showing up for work once in a while? I mean, like, even if you have messy lives, and addictions, and multiple divorces, and kids from numerous females with school problems and police problems, and sick relatives, and broken transmissions, and court dates, and side-jobs, and cash-flow emergencies, and bowling practice and softball practice, or a kid with a tooth-ache or stomach-ache, or your helper is out sick with a hangover or a bad head-cold, or whatever, how about considering working like normal people? Like normal Yankee people who do not have an excuse du jour, and view their work as a serious committment to another person? 

You know, like beginning work early in the morning, showing up when you say you will, working a solid 8-hr day, and all that sort of regular steady American thing. It just might do you guys some good.

Most people need structure to their lives if they are to thrive. I think these guys just don't need the money.

I still have no master bathroom, since early August. Tiling is half-done. No, 1/4 done, and this guy is supposed to be the best guy around. He shows up for two or three hours, gets a phone call from one of his ex-wives or a lawyer or a dealer or a friend who wants to go out drinking or fishing or an hysterical girlfriend who says he's cheating on her and who needs calming down, or a friend he has to take to rehab in Ohio, or whatever, then disappears for two days and turns off his cell phone.

The shower door guy seems reliable, and our carpenter is the shiznits.

Contrarian wisdom from Robin Hanson:

Food isn't about Nutrition
Clothes aren't about Comfort
Bedrooms aren't about Sleep
Marriage isn't about Romance
Talk isn't about Info
Laughter isn't about Jokes
Charity isn't about Helping
Church isn't about God
Art isn't about Insight
Medicine isn't about Health
Consulting isn't about Advice
School isn't about Learning
Research isn't about Progress
Politics isn't about Policy

The new camo, from the NYT. (Yes, the NYT.) Be sure to click to change the image from human view to deer view. h/t, Insty.

Of course, if you are in a tree stand it hardly matters, since deer never look up.

Had the pleasure of hearing Roberta Flack perform a charity concert this weekend. She has knocked me out since the early 70s, and does a lot of work for autism. Here's my cell phone quality photo:

The guy on the right is the jazz reed virtuoso Arturo Tappin. Also in her band, Ralph MacDonald (who plays in Jimmy Buffet's band), guitarist David Spinozza, and Buddy Williams on drums. Dennis Collins joined in on a few tunes, and sang his Every Soldier Has One Prayer. Great band. My only regret is that she didn't do Bridge Over Troubled Waters.

Here's Roberta in 1972:

Ace: Why I hate the media

Biden has his message all screwed up. He is a screwball loose cannon, and the Obama people cannot rein him in. More Obama vs. Biden.

Obama finding empty houses, but not Sarah.

Some New York women on Palin:

A posting on a New York-based Web site for women, Jezebel.com, spoke of unbridled anger. "What I feel for her privately could be described as violent, nay, murderous, rage," an associate editor at Jezebel, Jessica Grose, wrote just after the Republican convention wrapped up. "When Palin spoke on Wednesday night, my head almost exploded from the incandescent anger boiling in my skull."

And here's Naomi Wolf:

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

What did Obama and Ayers do for the Chicago schools? Not much about education.

A quote from a powerful piece in the J Post yesterday (h/t, reader):

IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally, she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America's national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally would have done more to steel Americans - across the political spectrum - to the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could do.

It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the top of the US's national security agenda.

Read the whole thing. We linked this morning to a piece that reveals a Soros org. behind the Palin cancellation.

As readers may have noticed, with the beginning of Apple Season in Yankeeland we are making a point of having at least one Apple post daily.

Here's Apple Trees: Where and how to plant.

Image is by Nicholas of Verdun (c. 1180)

Re our Yankee Stadium post yesterday, here's a photo of the "Old Met" from 1905, looking uptown. The yellow brick building stood at 1411 Broadway, occupying the block between 39th and 40th street. The Met moved to its new home in Lincoln Center in 1966, after which the Old Met, built in 1880, was torn down.

Besides implying that Hillary didn't really want the VP slot, he says some interesting things about voting. He is a smart politician.

Yankee Stadium has seen its last game.  It will take a long time for the new stadium to acquire some soul. It feels sort of like when they tore down the old Metropolitan Opera House where Caruso sang and Toscanini conducted.

The media have done only a fair-to-middlin' job of creating the impression that Obama's main personal and political contacts have been people other than Ayers and Dohrne and Rev. Wright and Tony Rezko, but if he has any other pals or close associates, I've never heard of them. Does he have any?

On the other hand, the media has done an excellent job keeping Obama's growing-up mentor and surrogate father Frank Marshall Davis in the closet. Obama may have learned his Alinsky from books, but he grew up at the feet of his red-diaper Mother... and Davis. (As I understand the story, Obama's Kenyan/Moslem father knocked up Obama's single mother, married her in Hawaii to make the kid legit - despite having a wife or wives in Africa - and then hit the road.)

Those are the reasons that I am not convinced it's paranoid to have Manchurian Candidate thoughts about Obama. Maybe it's hysterical and fear-mongering - but who really knows this guy Obama, besides his wife? Who is in a position to deny it? Did a single person who has known him personally witness to his real self, to his character, at the Dem convention? Or anywhere else?

No. Isn't that odd? Most 40+ year-old guys have at least one colleague and friend who has known them and has worked with them over many years, played sports with them, hunted or hiked or rock-climbed or sailed or fished with them, confided in them, gotten half-drunk with them, smoked late-night cigars with them, prayed with them, done projects with them - and who can credibly witness publicly to their character, depth, collegiality, work ethic, hobbies and interests, habits, struggles, intelligence and perceptiveness, personality, and core beliefs.

Who speaks for Obama besides Obama, and a few Hollywood airheads? I realize I know very little about this guy, nor does anybody else. He's a media-made icon. He is a Mystery Man, a blank slate, unless you look carefully for the facts the media never mentions.

Here's an Accuracy in Media piece on Frank Davis, with the AP's efforts to minimize the relevance of the relationship. Davis' reported homosexuality and pornographic avocation may be irrelevant, but his committment to Communism is not.

At any rate, it's not what you would call an American Story.

This is Camille Pissaro's Apple Picking (1886).

Matthew 9: 9-13

A remarkable mime/magician.

Cocker Spaniels

Apparently not everyone is aware that Cockers were bred as Woodcock hunters, thus "cocker". It was not until the turn of the century that they became known as a separate breed from Springers; smaller, but with similar spaniel talents and deficiencies: bouncy and energetic, but not overly-endowed with brains and with a tendency to pee on rugs when excited.

Wonderful small flushing dogs and retrievers, they are great cheerful family dogs which cannot reach the kitchen counter, and that can, with the difficulty of any spaniel, be trained to do a fine job in the field.

And a dog that cannot do work to find food in the field is a decadent waste of dog food, is it not? The English cocker is considered a better hunter than the American, but I am not certain that that is a fact. Plus I have never hunted over a Cocker.

At some point, we will do a piece on Woodcock hunting, which is fine 20 ga. sport because they are tiny targets which twist and turn in seemingly-random directions. A relevant detail is that the European Woodcock is a larger bird that the American, with more meat on it.