http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sat, 11 Feb 2006 22:24:57 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/02/11/222457.php Bruce EisnerWhen Timothy Leary was dying, his long-time friend Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) went to see him. The two had always disagreed on the important philosophical question of mind and body. In Alpert's opinion, we are not our bodies. So when we die, our mind can continue on in a spiritual dimension. Leary disagreed, believing that our mind is the memories and other senses of self which are stored in the brain. He believed that when we die, our brain dies with us and all our memories are destroyed with it. So in this view, death was the end of who we are.So when Leary told Alpert,"You know Richard, I was thinking the other day and I suddenly realized that we are more than just our memories." Alpert suddenly sat up in his chair, hearing Leary making what seemed like a concession to his views. He said, "So what is it that we are that is more than our memories?" he asked, nodding and smiling.Leary (who liked to play around a bit with his friend) said, "I forget."If you are concerned about losing your memory, Scientific Brain Training has developed a great program aimed at stimulating your mind and giving your memory a workout. After using this program for awhile, you'll notice that your memory gets better. But the program itself is more fun than work. It is set up as a series of twelve games. Each game targets and strengthens one or more of the components needed by your memory to work properly. With this set of programs you will pump up every part of your memory: long-term memory, cultural memory, attention, reasoning, and visual and spatial skills.Yet this mental workout is easier than dieting or working out at the gym. It's problem solving that's fun. Test and Improve your Memory DVD Edition is a unique set of programs. You can play Sleight of Hands in Paris, Characters in Egypt and Basketball in New York. Each is a different and unique kind of mind game. Each game has help and advice and a very useful demo that show you what to do. There are different skill levels so you can start off easily and build up slowly. You can take a world tour of the various activities or you can simply roam from one to the other on your own. You can even enter preformatted competitions. The different types and levels of games give you plenty of variety.Test and Improve your Memory: Special DVD Boxed Edition is, according to its developers, "a personal trainer for the mind." There are 12 different interactive exercises and levels of challenge increase as your memory gets better. Here is some other excerpts from the developer's information:"Engage, challenge, and train your memory as it is a crucial area of the brain that is important to your life. Scientifically-based memory games test your logic, language, and attention skills. Monitor your mental workout and track your progress--watch as you become more creative and confident. Three modes of play provide better training flexibility, while coaching tools give you feedback and improve your performance."Test and Improve Your Memory software was developed by a group of neurologists and psychologists. The program uses recently developed technologies proven to improve spatial, recall, perceptual, and other types of memory in three groups of test users. The software is now in a special DVD edition. Its also a lot of fun!More self-improvement software reviews on The Mindware Forum. Sci/Tech43497@blogcritics.org Sat, 11 Feb 2006 22:24:57 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/28/025735.php Bruce Eisner I had read that there was a PBS documentary for airing on American Masters was in the works about Bob Dylan's early years --but discovered that it was on about ten minutes before it aired Pacific Daylight Time by way of a blog post ""No Direction Home: Bob Dylan on PBS Tonight"" on Root.Celler I was prepared to be bored by Dylan doing his usual act -- with glib sarcastic comments and with real feelinsg hidden behind his well-practiced poker face. Well, this time we didn't get the act. Perhaps concerned about his place in history, Dylan opens up about that period of his life when he was so influential to my generation during our youth in the 60's. PBS presented the documentary in two chunks.The first was a full two hours. which is a long time to sit through a documentary. Those first two hours are so good you hardly notice the length. I just called my mother and told her to watch the second part. I just finished watching it before I wrote this and I'm a bit sorry she had not seen the first part. I posted about the first part on my blog but the second part was much different. I had not been aware that director Martin Scorsese did documentaries but I will probably try to see any documentary he does in the future. He restates in an interview done by an over effusive PBS guy his technique for the documentary. He sets a 1966 during a tour that Dylan did of England as the present. During the series of concerts, the American folksinger was consistently jeered by crowds of English folk fans who thought he had departed from propriety by having an electric backup band. He used extensive and sometime unseen footage from D.A. Pennebaker's 1966 film, Don't Look Back which I had seen back when it first came out. I was eighteen when that film came out, and a participant in the psychedelic counterculture. When I saw that film, I was turned off (as we said back then) by Dylan's sarcastic style. Seeing it again as part of Scorsese's film, it became completely understandable. The part of the film my mother saw (the last hour and a half or so) focused more on the "present" of the English tour and was significantly more discordantl than the first two hours. Those hours were spent as a series of flashbacks from the "present" of the 1966 tour -- which told the story of the young Robert Zimmerman from Minnesota's transformation into the superstar Bob Dylan. In the process, the turbulent and transformational events gave the beat and folksy episodes a positive vibe of hope. Dylan and his fellow folkies were significant players in the civil rights movement which hsbr America for a while, a dream of better days.The music and scenes were sweet and interspersed with portions of interviews with Dylan and with others important to the story including beat poet Alan Ginsberg as well as folk singers Pete Seeger and Joan Biaz. The musical selections were each perfect and emphasized both the enormous volume of significant works Dylan produces as well as his poetic eloquence.The second segment ended with sudden catastrophes. Kennedy is killed. Dylan has a bad motorcycles accident and stops touring for eight years. The film ends there making you want things to somehow return to those earlier harmonies and youthful innocence that went before the fall. Video36959@blogcritics.org Wed, 28 Sep 2005 02:57:35 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/07/04/140523.php Bruce EisnerHoward Bloom is one interesting author. On his website is a quote from Richard Metzger, creative director, The Disinformation Company "I have met God, and he lives in Brooklyn. ...Howard Bloom is next in a lineage of seminal thinkers that includes Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Freud, and Buckminster Fuller...he is going to change the way we see ourselves and everything around us." Since I am from Brooklyn myself, the idea that God is from Brooklyn appeals to me in my more egocentric movements. I have to admit that I have sampled a bit from Howard Bloom's books The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain but never devoured them whole. They reveal a man of ideas with a broad sweep."No Gene is an Island" is a recent interview with Bloom by former Mondo 2000 editor RU Sirius.Bloom is both an idealist as a philosopher and an advocate of science. He declares that "Reality is a Shared Hallucination" which makes him as much an idealist as Hegel. But then his emphasis on anatomical information centers such as the brain and the gene would suggest he is a materialistic philosopher of science. The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History, Bloom's first book, is along the lines of the Bloom's inclination toward toward the primacy of biology and science and materiality. The book's thesis is that there is a sociobiological proclivity that humans have for violence which is the "Lucifer principle." In his most recent book Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, Bloom starts with the same kind of emphasis on biological determinism he began with in Lucifer Principle. His basic theme in the book is that the earth and the evolving Internet are developing into a computer the size of the planet, a sort of "global brain" But in describing the entity that the earth is becoming, Bloom jumps from genes to memes. It is in his embrace of memetics&#8212an idea first put forth by socibiologist Richard Dawkins that he also takes the leap from materialism to a sort of emergent idealism. Currently Howard Bloom is working on a new book with the working title: Reinventing Capitalism-Putting Soul In the Machine: A Quick Re-Vision Of Western Civilization which you can read more about here. Books32017@blogcritics.org Mon, 4 Jul 2005 14:05:23 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/01/165711.php Bruce EisnerFantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever by Ray Kurzweil, and Terry Grossman is the most talked about book on the subject of life-extension since Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw's Life Extension, A Practical Scientific Approach climbed its way up the best seller list over two decades ago. However, Kurzwell and Grossman extend the concept of life extension and suggest that if you extend your life long enough, you need never die.Their optimism is based on projected advances in cutting edge science areas such as genomics, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. Critics point out that the hoped for advances may turn out to be only pipe-dreams.The buzz about the book has shown up around the web. "Inventor sets his sights on immortality Will nanotechnology spark breakthrough in 20 years?" by By Jay Lindsay of AP is a character portrait of Ray Kurzweil RU Sirius of counterculture fame as the former editor of the edgy Mondo 2000 magazine just published "Forever Changes" is an interview the books second author, Terry Grossman in his new webzine NeoFiles. The authors also spotlight their ideas in their own Fantatic Voyage website.The bottom line is that if you love life and want to live longer and perhaps prosper, this book is worth taking a look at. Books28888@blogcritics.org Sun, 1 May 2005 16:57:11 EDT