Postcards on the Edge

[LazyBoy]

Re: The Compelling World of A.S.M.R.

Some say the mundane or monotonous quality of the videos lulls us into a much-needed state of serenity.

Hmm. I do fall asleep watching documentaries. Maybe I should check into this.

Or perhaps the assortment of sounds and scenarios taps into pleasing childhood memories. I grew up falling asleep hearing the sounds from my father’s home office:

I grew up falling asleep to talk radio blaring from my hard-of-hearing dad's bedroom. He fell asleep instantly and only woke if someone turned it off. I won't be recreating that. (Although, sometimes I got to hear Dr. Demento, which I wasn't allowed to stay up for.)

[don]

Re: The Compelling World of A.S.M.R.

He fell asleep instantly and only woke if someone turned it off.

That was my Dad, too! Always wondered if he secretly enjoyed torturing the rest of us while he slept . . . ever alert.

[shiny!]

Re: The Compelling World of A.S.M.R.

There might be something to this ASMR stuff. I've felt that tingling sensation in my scalp before; can't remember what triggered it, though. Most days when I'm at the computer I listen to Mozart, esp his string trios, duos and quintets. It's just about the only music that feels good in my brain these days.

I absolutely loath mopping and vacuuming; put it off every chance I get. Couple of weeks ago it suddenly dawned on me that maybe there's an easier mop where I wouldn't have to lug buckets of water, and a lighter, quieter vacuum that didn't break my back and fry my nerves. Got into research mode and went to youtube for reviews and comparisons.

Came across this video of a woman steam mopping her floor. It was hypnotic. I had all the information I needed after a couple of minutes but I felt so soothed by the video that I just kept watching, and watching... In the back of my mind wondering why I was wasting my time watching a woman mop her floor for ten minutes, but I didn't want to turn it off. I was in a trance.

It's a combination of the repetitive motion with the whooshing sound of the steam. One of the viewers also said the video was "strangely therapeutic."

[don]

Best Selfie To Date

Generation Me

"Narcissism falls along the axis of what psychologists call personality disorders, one of a group that includes antisocial, dependent, histrionic, avoidant and borderline personalities.

But by most measures, narcissism is one of the worst, if only because the narcissists themselves are so clueless."

Jeffrey Kluger

The lack of empathy amongst America's privileged, and thereby largely the leadership, class makes for a disturbing tolerance for pain and misery and injustice in others.

Combine this with the profoundly numbing lack of self-awareness and insularity amongst the secular elite, and you have the potential for a disastrous series of reactions, with escalating harshness and cognitive dissonance, of historic consequence and proportions.

Can we draw any other conclusion from the continuing and unabashed commitment to endless war in pursuit of peace, torture in the name of justice, and careless deprivation of the oppressed for the sake of individual freedoms?

Jesse's Cafe Americain

[don]

Re: Best Selfie To Date

headlines we won't see in 2015

[lektrode]

Re: Best Selfie To Date

+1
but wouldnt that be something...

headlines we won't see in 2015

[don]

Peak Intelligence?

Human intelligence may have actually peaked before our ancient predecessors ever left Africa, Gerald Crabtree writes in two new journal articles. Genetic mutations during the past several millennia are causing a decline in overall human intellectual and emotional fitness, he says. Evolutionary pressure no longer favors intellect, so the problem is getting exponentially worse. He is careful to say that this is taking quite a long time, so it's not like your grandparents are paragons of brilliance while your children will be cavemen rivaling Hartman's SNL character. But he does posit that an ancient Athenian, plucked from 1000 BC, would be "among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions."

The School of Athens

By Raphael

Would these people be smarter than all of us today?






Impossible . . . .

[aaron]

Re: Peak Intelligence?

They invented the wheel, right? Or, was it fire?

I know technological progress is not everything, but these cultures were beaten/died out because they lacked intelligence and foresight. I would put Einstein up against any of those yahoos. Hell, they were praying to water gods to fight sun gods to bring back Zeus. No, they were not more intelligent. They were ignorant tards . hell, even the picture makes them look like pieces of useless human scum. They lie on the Senate grounds? Talking about while their arses are hanging out of their sheets cuz they did not invent proper clothing.



Nah, we are the best that humanity has. Stand proud. We survived. They did not. We are the best of the best.

[Woodsman]

Re: Peak Intelligence?

...We are the best of the best.

Sweet Jesus, I pray that isn't true.

[don]

Re: Peak Intelligence?

All tattoos are relative.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Peak Intelligence?

The whole thing is relative to the progress of a line of thought. A few weeks ago I bought a small, tattered, book, (the spine is shredded), dated 1907; Chats on old prints by Arthur Hayden, T. Fisher Unwin. It tells us about the many very highly skilled engravers of the past.

"Preface:
The study of prints begins in the nursery in the contemplation of toy-books with pictures, unaccompanied by any uneasy qualms as to "states".
It is a matter open to question whether the younger units of the present generation, who have grown up in the environment of the pictorial magazine and journal and the thousand-and-one forms of illustration by modern process, quite realise the departure from the older methods of engraving. Finely wrought steel engraving is a lost art, and the wood engraver of middle-Victorian days with his sandbog, his boxwood block, and his graver has gone to the most permanent of all furrows, the grave itself, which time has cut enduringly."

I recommend you each find a copy, it shows us how skillful people were five, even six hundred years ago. I am still reading it and it has caused me to look in a completely new light at the books I intend to buy from now onwards, (I buy old books, pre paper back). Some have been a revelation, not for their illustrations but the quality of the writing; others are now to be seen as a revelation for the immense work they contain from etchings. An excellent example: The Vegetable Garden, Illustrations, descriptions, and culture of the garden vegetables of cold and temperate climates by MM. Vilmorin-Andrieux, of Paris. English edition, published under the direction of W. Robinson. London, John Murray, Albemarle Street, W. 1905. Every single illustration is an etching, created my hand by the skilled hands of what must have been several individuals, for there are many hundreds of such within.

The point I am making is that knowledge evolves, we leave some behind; we create more as we move forward. Where we have gone wrong, (as I see it), is by becoming so enamoured of buying for price; as low a price as possible; we lost sight of the need to retain skill.

Nothing to do with intelligence; everything to do with money. Without wide prosperity, there is no market for high level skills; simply because there are now so few that could pay for them to exist.

[don]

Re: Peak Intelligence?

The whole thing is relative to the progress of a line of thought. A few weeks ago I bought a small, tattered, book, (the spine is shredded), dated 1907; Chats on old prints by Arthur Hayden, T. Fisher Unwin. It tells us about the many very highly skilled engravers of the past.

"Preface:
The study of prints begins in the nursery in the contemplation of toy-books with pictures, unaccompanied by any uneasy qualms as to "states".
It is a matter open to question whether the younger units of the present generation, who have grown up in the environment of the pictorial magazine and journal and the thousand-and-one forms of illustration by modern process, quite realise the departure from the older methods of engraving. Finely wrought steel engraving is a lost art, and the wood engraver of middle-Victorian days with his sandbog, his boxwood block, and his graver has gone to the most permanent of all furrows, the grave itself, which time has cut enduringly."

I recommend you each find a copy, it shows us how skillful people were five, even six hundred years ago. I am still reading it and it has caused me to look in a completely new light at the books I intend to buy from now onwards, (I buy old books, pre paper back). Some have been a revelation, not for their illustrations but the quality of the writing; others are now to be seen as a revelation for the immense work they contain from etchings. An excellent example: The Vegetable Garden, Illustrations, descriptions, and culture of the garden vegetables of cold and temperate climates by MM. Vilmorin-Andrieux, of Paris. English edition, published under the direction of W. Robinson. London, John Murray, Albemarle Street, W. 1905. Every single illustration is an etching, created my hand by the skilled hands of what must have been several individuals, for there are many hundreds of such within.

The point I am making is that knowledge evolves, we leave some behind; we create more as we move forward. Where we have gone wrong, (as I see it), is by becoming so enamoured of buying for price; as low a price as possible; we lost sight of the need to retain skill.

Nothing to do with intelligence; everything to do with money. Without wide prosperity, there is no market for high level skills; simply because there are now so few that could pay for them to exist.

Nice piece, Chris. The old adage, "Knowing the price of everything, the value of nothing" too easily applies.

A note on engraving. During the English Golden Age of Boxing - essentially the Napoleonic War years - paintings of pugilism were engraved, colored a number of ways, and mass circulated, at least compared to the original artwork. There may have been some artistic license beyond color. Did some engravers add other people to crowd scenes? Possibly. There's a Five Courts work that comes in various flavors. By the painter? By the engraver?

I'm finishing a piece on Mozart's Magic Flute, which includes the original program engraved by a fellow Mason. Rich stuff.

Thanks again, Chris

[shiny!]

Re: Peak Intelligence?

Beautifully stated, Chris. Thank you.

Don, can you tell us more about your piece on The Magic Flute? I adore Lucia Popp singing the Queen of the Night!

[don]

Re: Peak Intelligence?

[lektrode]

Re: Peak Intelligence?

sure looks like it...

Peak Intelligence?