LOVE STORY (Taylor Swift) meets VIVA LA VIDA (Coldplay) – Piano Cello – by Jon Schmidt
My buddy Rob just brought this Jon Schmidt YouTube to my attention. It’s terrific!
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Rufus Hussey: The Bean Shooter Man
It’s been a while since I posted pure zing, but here’s one that I just ran across and love. I want Rufus in one of my stories. These kind of things make life great.
According to Remembering Randolph County, North Carolina, Rufus appeared on the Johnny Carson show. If anyone has links to that video, please post. In the meantime, get zinged, Baby.
Terminator, the musical?
The Titan Robot Show
The first part scared the crap out of me. More here on their cool website: http://www.cyberstein.co.uk/
Oh, and remember the last monster created with a named that ended in stein? Not an auspicious beginning…
Story insights from the director of Pixar’s Up
How would you like to listen to a master story teller for almost an hour? You can. Radio West recently interviewed Pete Docter who directed Pixar’s recent motion picture Up.Docter has been with Pixar since the beginning and he shares a number of insights into story telling. He talks about the importance of emotional hooks, getting ideas and developing them via the creative Q&A process, and editing a story from schlock to greatness, and much more. What a wonderful interview.
You’ve heard of the nocebo effect, right?
We all know about the placebo effect. Well, here’s its ugly brother.
nocebo (no-SEE-bo) noun: A substance producing harmful effects in someone because it is believed to be harmful, but which in reality is harmless. [From Latin nocebo (I will harm), from nocere (to harm). Modeled after placebo (I will please).]
Both groups who received nocebos showed elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood.” James Morgan; Is Your Pain a Trick of the Mind? The Herald (Glasgow, UK); Jan 12, 2007.
An article with many interesting examples of nocebo effect.
From words at wordsmith.org
Emotion…
Zing!
P.S. This is one thing I love about English–it’s alive and growing, stealing from any language it can.
Intelligence and Genetics
Albert Einstein, an Ashkenazim Jew I know that discussing genetic factors of intelligence is something many do not want to do because such notions have been used horribly in the past. And because there are groups who would like to continue such horrible abuses today.
However, it makes no sense to me to avoid such discussions. There are so many things, from mental illness to physical strength, that have genetic factors that it’s just stupid to ignore data that suggest intelligence also has such factors.
And so I offer you this paper from three folks at the University of Utah which “elaborates the hypothesis that the unique demography and sociology of Ashkenazim in medieval Europe [Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities of the Rhineland in the west of Germany] selected for intelligence.”
It may turn out the hypothesis of these researchers is wrong. But you’ll never know even what they’re proposing without giving it a gander.
http://homepage.mac.com/harpend/.Public/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf
