Tuesday 3 January 2017

persistence of vision

Previously we learnt that the comprehensive picture that we hold in our heads of the world around us is fragmentary and somewhat of a figment of our imaginations, but we didn’t have the vocabulary and the stage-directions to really frame this phenomena of inattention until coming upon this interesting article from ร†on magazine on how film makers and special-effects artists (knowingly or otherwise) take advantage of the gaps in our perception to enthrall audiences and blind us to other continuity errors.
Saccades and saccadic masking describe the mechanisms that cause the eyes to dart around and follow motion and gather information on what’s changing and emergent—rather than what’s stationary and constant and therefore acceptable to be ignored. Without this ability to focus selectively and reconstruct the peripheral environment from memory and recycled footage, our heads would be clogged not with smooth and sharp transitions but rather blurred and smeared images. We’re only able to resolve, on the fly, three or four elements of a scene. “Smooth pursuits” are also possible in reading or tracing out a visual target, but it’s rarer that as observers we aren’t playing catch-up and are mentally re-building the setting and sequence despite the on-screen polish and our memories of the experience, both cinematic and authentic.

Monday 2 January 2017

decency is indecency’s conspiracy of silence

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw declaimed that “the reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Although I thought differently at first and was sure that I knew the message, I honestly can’t say what that quote means anymore after a bit of reflection. How would you un-pack it?

Sunday 1 January 2017

forty-winks or inemuri

From BBC Future’s curated best features of this past year comes an interesting investigation into the rather contradictory Japanese art of not sleeping.
A society that cultivated a respect for sleep-deficit and foregoing rest in order to get ahead in business (as evinced by this jingle for an energy drink referenced in the article) at the same time honed a great tolerance for inemuri (ๅฑ…็œ ใ‚Š) that is not exactly the same as sleeping on duty but rather “sleeping while present.” While not restricted to commuting or other instances where dozing off might be excused but is also seen as a badge of dedication to one’s job to nod off in classes or in meetings or anywhere in public. Some employees even admit to faking inemuri in order to appear just as devoted as their colleagues. Confronted with this distinction that’s other than the traditional ideas of sleeping or napping, the author was admonished of her own difficulties faced in convincing the academic world that repose and its history was a serious scholarly topic. Could one say that this was a power-nap under a name and where does this fall into the spectrum of sleep-hygiene? It seems granting license for to perhaps be off one’s game, a bit absent for otherwise budgeting one’s time seems very different than any moral failings for indolence and a wholly unfamiliar dispensation for work-life balance.

give me that old time disruptor

Collectors’ Weekly has an interesting review of some of the gimmicky, vintage gadgets of the Industrial Revolution that were touted (at least by the tinkerers who had them on offer) as game-changers for industries yet to be established and plied eagerly on early-adopters.
Some of these inventions and interventions—called revelatory due to the times—or their ideas are still with us, like various punch-clocks and time-verifiers, much like those productivity-boosters and service-tickets built into our infrastructure to make sure our utilities aren’t putting their thumbs to the scales, which is sometimes just as much as a time-thief. What do you think? Some inventions create problems to solve.  Will digital-signatures, encryption, kick-starter campaigns, drones and the formalised sharing-economy (in all senses, models built on gigs and renting out one’s time and property as well as platforms for interaction) look like snake-oil and tonic compared to the real innovations of the age to the next generation (perhaps authentically, 3-D printing, gene-editting and immersive virtual reality for therapy and exploration) and are only capitalising on the excitement of the present? Of course, I suppose the trick is in recognising the hucksters from the brokers and engineers and for most of us, that’s usually only gained in hindsight.

cornucopia or fertile crescent

Although I’d like to believe that I would personally be able to recognise the courage and the dedication of the staff at the headquarters of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas completely on its own merit, I think a measure of thanks for the capacity for appreciation and foresight—both in besieged Tal Hadya in Syria and Saint Petersburg—is due to the parallel history and challenge of botanists that remained to protect the Vavilov Institute of All-Russian Plant Industry that I learnt about recently.
The act of determination and defiance, also adapted into podcast form, saved the vast seed banks of Leningrad whilst under Nazi assault and had the staff themselves dying of hunger to stave off mass-starvation that would result if there were no repository of food-crops for planting after the war. The Syrian institute itself is host to refugee cultivars saved from the Iraqi seed vault in Abu Gharaib and other regional combat-zones, however, while these and other reserves are of vital importance in re-establishing a healthy and prosperous populace after fighting has ceased, seeds are not just artefacts—like so much cultural heritage that could not be salvaged and works of art in the former case that were evacuated from the Hermitage, but rather need the farmers (with their institutional knowledge that may or may not already be on the run) to till fields free of fighting. The legacy is for future generations as well but dividends are yielded in one season.

creative-commons

The first of January has been designated Public Domain Day, as the year’s beginning is when under most countries’ intellectual property laws is when copyrights expire and authors’ works make the transition into the realm of public domain and fair-use, especially important for community theatre and local orchestras and the like. The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University lists some of the works from around the world entering into the freely licensed sphere this year as well as some further resources and information behind copyrights and their longevity. Be sure to give our friends at the Public Domain Review a visit as well.

the island of the day before

Year in and year out, as the Earth’s rotation marks the procession of the hours around the globe—although with geo-political license that apportions certain time zones to one area and groups national entities, especially those comprised of disperse archipelago and the divisions aren’t smoothly radiating from pole to pole—one’s given to wonder how it might feel to live in a place that’s off-set from the rest (majority of the population, perhaps, but there are quite a few of these zones and ones that describe great swathes of the Earth’s surface) by a half-hour and even rarer lesser increments.
Any readers in those places, please let us know your thoughts. Would it be strange and jarring to be synchronised at the top of the hour or does it even register? Maybe that is by turns convenient and awkward for scheduling and meeting dead-lines.  Though probably not longer than living memory Tonga (UTC +13:00) and New Zealand’s Chatham Islands (UTC +12:45), places which are sadly usually covered up by the frontispieces of globes, have lied precarious close to the international date line, the edge of tomorrow—by convention—and now are afforded times later than, ahead of the neighbouring, relatively neighbourless waters, which to my mind would push them into tomorrow, instead of just later that day. We’re eager to hear from any residents of Nuku’alofa or Waitangi or anyone else that might have some insight into this perplexing situation.

mmxvii

Happy New Year’s to one and all. Warm greetings to all and hopes that your dreams be fulfilled and that everything starts out on the right footing. For the sake of re-introducing any reductio ad diffidenita into the discourse and colouring our expectations too garishly, we’ll refrain from predictions for the moment—both the expert and the astrological varieties and invite all to take comfort and strength in new beginnings.