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.

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

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:

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.

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.

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

A remarkable mime/magician.

Online Literacy at Chronicle. One quote:

In the eye-tracking test, only one in six subjects read Web pages linearly, sentence by sentence. The rest jumped around chasing keywords, bullet points, visuals, and color and typeface variations. In another experiment on how people read e-newsletters, informational e-mail messages, and news feeds, Nielsen exclaimed, "'Reading' is not even the right word." The subjects usually read only the first two words in headlines, and they ignored the introductory sections. They wanted the "nut" and nothing else. A 2003 Nielsen warning asserted that a PDF file strikes users as a "content blob," and they won't read it unless they print it out. A "booklike" page on screen, it seems, turns them off and sends them away.

I think I agree that people do not read online material the same way they read books. However, that could be because so much online stuff is thinner in content than books.

Prior was an itinerant folk artist from Maine. Some of his work here. This is The Burnish Sisters, 1854:

Farms aren't really farms anymore, are they? They have become meat, egg, and milk factories.

California's Proposition 2 seeks to regulate the confinement of these factory animals.

h/t, Theo

We may be a Yankee website, but we love the South - and the West. The Mid-west too. 

We are a bit ambivalent about California, however, except for their wines, because it seems they put something strange in the water out there. THC or LSD or something. Luckily, it doesn't get into their grape juice.

A reader alerts us to this site for interesting stuff: Southern Culture and History. "Veritate Superare."

By the way, there is nothing racist about that flag. That was the battle flag of a proud but short-lived nation. "Insurgents," as the MSM might term them today.