Frankenstein's Monster -Spike Milligan

YouTube - Spike Milligans Frankensteins Monster

November Spawned a Monster

These Charming Men have been playing the music of The Smiths and Morrissey for the past decade and more. With uncanny similarities and superb live performances the Dublin four-piece has gone from strength to strength, playing sell-out gigs throughout Ireland and beyond. They grace the Button Factory in Temple Bar, Dublin, tonight.



November Spawned a Monster -These Charming Men

Oliver Cromwell|MySpace Videos

More info at: These Charming Men on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos

And the original:

November Spawned A Monster - Morrissey

♥Loobyloo|MySpace Videos

Exhibition of Edvard Munch Art, Dublin

The National Irish Gallery in Dublin currently curates a powerfully moving selection of the works of the beloved Norwegian artist Edvard Munch:

"...Opening this September is an exhibition devoted to the prints of Edvard Munch (1863-1944). It will feature 40 works spanning the artist's career, most notably Death and the Woman (1894), The Scream (1895), Madonna (1895) and The Sick Child (1896). Portraits of the poet, Stéphane Mallarmé, Swedish playwright, August Strindberg, and the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche will hang alongside one of Munch's great self-portraits of 1895. Munch was an artist who continually pondered, revised and repeated his compositions, and the print versions of these iconic images are frequently regarded as his most powerful and accomplished. Other highlights of the exhibition will include examples of his unique woodcuts, a medium in which he was an innovator, most especially The Girls on the Bridge (1918)..."

More details at Exhibitions

All About Ardipithecus ramidus, Our Human Ancestor

In its 2 October 2009 issue, Science presents 11 papers, authored by a diverse international team, describing an early hominid species, Ardipithecus ramidus, and its environment. These 4.4 million year old hominid fossils sit within a critical early part of human evolution, and cast new and sometimes surprising light on the evolution of human limbs and locomotion, the habitats occupied by early hominids, and the nature of our last common ancestor with chimps.

Science is making access to this extraordinary set of materials FREE (non-subscribers require a simple registration). The complete collection, and abridged versions, are available FREE as PDF downloads for AAAS members, or may be purchased as reprints.

Goto: Online Extras: Ardipithecus ramidus

Bartleby Books Free for All

Bartleby.com is an electronic text archive, headquartered in New York and named after Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener. It was founded under the name "Project Bartleby" in January 1993 by Steven H. van Leeuwen as a personal, non-profit collection of classic literature on the website of Columbia University. In February 1994 he published the first classic book in html, Whitman's Leaves of Grass. In 1997 it moved to its own domain, bartleby.com, and was called "The New Bartleby Library", where it continued to publish highly accurate transcriptions.

In September 1999 Bartleby.com was incorporated and started to focus on reference works, including the contemporary 6th edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia. In June 2009, licensed referenced works were removed due to competition. The original founder is now chairman and president of the privately held company.
The wide quality range on offer is here - Bartleby.com: Great Books Online -- Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and hundreds more

The economy: Galbraith on Krugman

James Galbraith talks about Paul Krugman's NYT article, "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?", the academic discipline after the crash, the forgotten traditions in economics, the economics and law of fraud and much else over breakfast at the Goodenough Club. Hear the interview hosted by www.opendemocracy.net -

Interview with James Galbraith | open Democracy News Analysis

Can America be Salvaged?

The political e-zine www.counterpunch.com published article this past September by David Michael Green which provoked a sizeable reaction:

"I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which proposing a new and better version of corporate-plunder masquerading as national healthcare gets you burned in effigy for being a socialist stooge by gun-toting angry mobs.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which the same people who hate you for being a socialist simultaneously hate you for being a fascist.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which angry mobs of supposed anti-socialist demonstrators scream at their congressional representatives to “keep your government hands off my Medicare”.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which claims that the government is going to start killing off seniors are taken seriously by tens of millions of people...

...The entire premise of a self-ruling democracy rests on some reasonable degree of rationality and some reasonable degree of an ability to discriminate between real information and falsehoods. Today’s American democracy seems to lack these qualities in increasingly abundant amounts.

And yet it goes deeper than that still. The entire premise of a society – any society, democracy or not – is that it possesses a certain degree of shared community, a ‘we-ness’ that transcends narrower tribalisms and self-interest in critical ways and at critical moments. That too has unraveled of late. Think of the nice white men with shotguns blocking the exit from flooded New Orleans during the worst moments of Hurricane Katrina...

...It takes a willful act of ignorance (something we see a lot of these days) not to perceive the United States as the latest in history’s falling empires. Like Rome, the true contribution of its sometimes great ideas has ultimately been substantially buried under the rubble of its ill-fated decision to greedily grasp the nettle of empire. Unlike Rome, this puppy is taking decades, rather than centuries, to collapse..."

The full essay is at : David Michael Green: Can America be Salvaged?

EEC Ruling - Victoria Wood

YouTube - Victoria Wood (eec ruling)

George Orwell: Politics and the English Language

George Orwell wrote this essay in 1946 and it remains relevant today:

"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer...

...I think the following rules will cover most cases:

i.Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
ii.Never use a long word where a short one will do.
iii.If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv.Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v.Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi.Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous..."

Read all at: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language

Blood Letter From Besieged Bat Nha Monastery

"...However, facing all the incidents that happened at Bat Nha monastery on the 26, 27, and 28 of September 2009, we learned that the young monastics there have been attacked by violent mobs seeking to evict them out of the monastery. These young innocent monastics have been forced out of their home in heavy rain and storms without raincoats, food or shelter. They have been insulted and beaten, and subjected to the most terribly obscene acts. All these things happened right before the very eyes of the policemen and local authorities. Therefore, this is not just the “internal problem” of Bat Nha monastery; these acts clearly have been orchestrated by the government. Having seen our Dharma brothers and sisters violently terrorized, attacked, and brutally dragged out of their temple, we cannot just pretend that nothing is happening. The bond between us as monastic brothers and sisters is sacred and indestructible. We cannot just sit here witnessing our monastic brothers and sisters being oppressed like that, so we write this letter with our own blood to request that all levels of government do the following:

1.If this is an internal issue of the Buddhist organization, then please let the Buddhist organization resolve the matter.
2.Bring a complete stop to all forms of aggression and hostility against the monks and nuns practicing in the Plum Village tradition (who are now taking refuge in Phuoc Hue temple).
3.Let the 400 monks and nuns continue to practice their monastic code of precepts, within the protection of the Venerable monks and nuns in the province.
4.Stop all acts of force, threat, obstruction and pressure against the monastics from outside forces..."

Full letter at Blood Letter From Monastics of Lam Dong Province | Help Bat Nha Monastery

Postsecularism: Mike King

The review of Postsecularism: The Hidden Challenge to Extremism in the paper magazine EnlightenNext tells us that Mike King is an artist, graphic designer, and animator; a jnani (knower of truth); a Reader at London Metropolitan University, and a director of the Scientific and Medical Network. Busy, then...

Modernity could only replace medievalism when science and religion agreed that each domain would be treated as 'non-overlapping magisteria'. King feels that since 9/11, the 'détente' has been replaced by face-offs between cultures, largely due to denial in the West of the dualistic mind/body split. He even claims that the Enlightenment period was a failed "religious revolution...rather than the success of a secular revolution" to move society from religious subservience to directly-experienced mysticism/spirituality. Devotional traditionalism and 'autistic' secular scientism passed like ships in the night back onto their own separate courses. King reckons that it's time across disciplines to consider a more holistic integrated approach.

"Spirituality in the post-9/11 world is a complex topic. The détente between secular culture and religious faith that characterised the 20th century, the ‘mutual ignorance pact’, has been shattered. From the rise of Islamic extremism to the American Christian Right to the fiercely anti-religious writings of staunch atheists such as Richard Dawkins, the controversy over what role the spiritual can or should play in our lives, public and private, has never been more widely discussed or hotly contended.

In Postsecularism, Mike King posits that out of this conflict between socially dominant secular thinkers and the ‘new defenders of faith’ is arising a distinct way of thinking that is neither a return to pre-Enlightenment beliefs nor a continued hegemony of the secular – the postsecular. At once a retention of secular critical attitudes and a return in all seriousness to questions of the spirit, the postsecular provides a framework within which to move beyond the extremism of faithful and atheists alike.

Drawing on contemporary thinkers from across the spiritual spectrum including Dawkins, Antony Flew, Christopher Hitchens, Alister McGrath, Daniel Dennett, Keith Ward, Richard Swinburne and Martin Amis, King carefully constructs a new mode of thought and explores its relevance to everything from physics to the arts, postmodernism, and feminism. What emerges is a thoughtful and persuasive discussion of the route to reconciliation between the combative worlds of the religious and the secular. "

Postsecularism: The Hidden Challenge to Extremism / Mike King

The Narcissism Epidemic

The Narcissism Epidemic:Living in the Age of Entitlement was published in April 2009 by Free Press. In it, psychologists and professors Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell draw from empirical research and cultural analysis to expose the presumed destructive spread of narcissism. They also discuss treatment – what each of us can do to stop the epidemic of narcissism they claim is so corrosive to society.

Their website presents various pages of information, one of which is a list of FAQ, e.g.:

"Q: What is narcissism?

Narcissism means having an inflated or grandiose sense of self. A narcissist thinks she is special, unique, and entitled to better treatment than others. Narcissists aren’t particularly interested in warmth and caring in their relationships. They might enjoy being around people — and certainly can be charming, flattering, exciting and likable — but they are in relationships for their own narcissistic needs. Narcissists also spend a good deal of their time and energy doing things to make themselves look and feel good and pumping up their egos. A narcissist might brag, turn all conversations back to himself, try to associate only with important people, want to have the best and newest of everything, or steal credit from others. When things don't go his way, the narcissist might get angry or even violent. Narcissists can be fun to be around in the short term, but awful to work for or be in a close relationship with in the long term.

Much of the research we discuss in the book measures narcissism as a personality trait – some people are higher in narcissistic traits than others. There is no agreed-upon "cut-off" for narcissism, so when we use the term “narcissist” we mean someone who is very narcissistic — just like an "extravert" is someone who is very extraverted. There is no absolute point where someone crosses the line from normal to narcissistic.

There is a cut-off, however, for narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), the clinical disorder that includes high levels of narcissism. Someone with NPD has at least 5 of 9 documented narcissistic traits that occur over an extended period of time and cause significant problems for the person or others. Only a trained professional can make a clinical diagnosis of NPD.

Q: How do we know there is a narcissism epidemic?

The narcissism epidemic involves two related processes. The first is the rise in narcissism among individuals, and the second is the change in the larger culture’s values, beliefs, and practices. We address the cultural-level change later on the page.

An epidemic is usually declared when more individuals are affected than would be expected in a population. If we use the recent past to formulate those expectations, there is clearly an epidemic of narcissism.

We know that narcissism has increased over time among individuals based on several datasets. College students now endorse more narcissistic traits than college students did in the 1980s and 1990s; in one large sample the change seemed to be accelerating after 2002. An Internet sample of the general population also showed higher narcissism scores among younger people than older people. Perhaps most disturbing, a 2005 study using a large, randomly selected sample of Americans found that nearly 1 out of 10 people in their twenties had experienced NPD — the more severe, clinical-level form of the trait. Only 1 out of 30 people over 64 had experienced NPD in their lifetime — even though they had lived 40 more years than the people in their twenties and thus had that much more time to experience the disorder. This suggests a large increase in NPD over time."

More at: The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement — Book

Individualism

Deep ruminations, older and more recent, on individualism.

In this engaging 1959 interview, her first on television, Ayn Rand capsulizes her philosophy for CBS's Mike Wallace. The discussion ranges from the nature of morality to the economic and historical distortions disseminated about the "robber barons." She also comments on her relationship with Frank O'Connor, provides some autobiographical information and gives her perspective on the future of America.


Part II:


More about Ayn Rand at:

The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

and, some different more recent views -
Democracy and the individual | open Democracy News Analysis

Modern Women: Liberated & Unhappy, NYTimes

Ross Douthat's column last May in the New York Times probed the ambiguities of a new study that showed that women are less happy than they were 30 years ago.

..."But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness...

...This is “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” the subject of a provocative paper from the economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers...

...Feminists and traditionalists should be able to agree, for instance, that the structures of American society don’t make enough allowances for the particular challenges of motherhood. We can squabble forever about the choices that mothers ought to make, but the difficult work-parenthood juggle is here to stay. (Just ask Sarah and Todd Palin.) And there are all kinds of ways — from a more family-friendly tax code to a more accommodating educational system — that public policy can make that juggle easier. Conservatives and liberals won’t agree on the means, but they ought to agree on the end: a nation where it’s easier to balance work and child-rearing, however you think that balance should be struck.

They should also be able to agree that the steady advance of single motherhood threatens the interests and happiness of women. Here the public-policy options are limited; some kind of social stigma is a necessity. But a new-model stigma shouldn’t (and couldn’t) look like the old sexism. There’s no necessary reason why feminists and cultural conservatives can’t join forces — in the same way that they made common cause during the pornography wars of the 1980s — behind a social revolution that ostracizes serial baby-daddies and trophy-wife collectors as thoroughly as the “fallen women” of a more patriarchal age.

No reason, of course, save the fact that contemporary America doesn’t seem willing to accept sexual stigma, period. We simply don’t have the stomach for permanently ostracizing the sexually irresponsible — be they a pregnant starlet, a thrice-divorced tycoon, or even a prostitute-hiring politician.

In this sense, ours is a kinder, gentler, more forgiving country than it was 40 years ago. But for half the public, it’s an unhappier country as well."

Op-Ed Columnist - Liberated and Unhappy - NYTimes.com

Interview with Dan Brown about Coping with Criticisim

In this clip Dan Brown, whose new book The Lost Symbol has just been released to a phenomenal reception, talks about how he deals with all the criticism he gets about The Da Vinci Code and his writing style.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Writer's Blog: Dan Brown Talks to Matt Lauer About Dealing With Criticism

Science is Culture: SeedMagazine

Roll up for daily science news!

"About SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
Science is changing our world. It is behind the transformations—social, economic, artistic, intellectual, and political—that are defining the 21st century. Through this lens, and with the newest tools of media and journalism, we aim to tell the fundamental story of our world today and to provide information and knowledge to help you prepare for the story tomorrow.

Our departments and sections demarcate the universe as we will cover it on a daily basis. There's Development, Politics, Environment, Design, Business, Technology, Theory, Findings, and more. There's a Studio where we will experiment with visualization and information design and media to convey our reporting. We've developed an editorial tagging system that works as a train-of-thought gauge for the ideas and issues we cover, and as a new way for you to explore our content. And there's our top-flight writers, photographers, videographers, columnists, and correspondents spread out across the globe.

This is an experiment in media, and yet an old cause in journalism. We have a world to explore and a story to tell you. The culture and constant innovation of science naturally inspires us to test and reinvent the ways we go about doing it..."

Seed Magazine

Is This Your Brain on God?

This site shows how the brain reacts to a variety of spiritual experiences, including near-death experiences, hallucinogenic drug trips, and deep meditation.

"More than half of adult Americans report they have had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. Now, scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered in this controversial field, as the science of spirituality continues to evolve."

Is This Your Brain On God? : NPR

Global Spirit TV

"Global Spirit is an unprecedented inquiry into the universe of human consciousness, across the exciting interface of television and the internet.

We are delighted to have launched this new original series, which is airing nationally on Link TV and selected PBS stations, and internationally via the internet. Each program focuses on a universal theme of global and timeless significance, themes that concern us all on the most basic human level: Forgiveness, Oneness, Ecstasy, Earth Wisdom, Art and the creative process, and more.

Programs feature riveting conversations between our host Phil Cousineau, and a selection of inspiring guests who speak from first-hand experience about their own personal journeys into the realms of human consciousness and transformation.

These conversations are unlike anything you've heard before on national television. They are complimented by amazing documentary film segments from around the world. These experiential film segments both inspire our guests and ignite their conversations.

Global Spirit also features extraordinary full-length documentaries, which are framed and deepened by engaging interviews with the filmmakers or related guests. Most of the programs are also streamed right here on our GlobalSpirit.tv website.

Why this series now? It’s no secret that we are currently in a time of deep global economic and environmental crisis. And yet, amidst this crisis, many of us are aware that something new is happening, that a certain sense of change is in the air. But "change" is not something that just happens from the outside. Real change happens on a human, personal level, and most often involves an internal journey.

Here is where viewers enter the universe of the Global Spirit — the universe of personal and social transformation. And so we call Global Spirit the first "internal travel series", because we believe that real change starts within. Watch our new series and we think you will agree."

Global Spirit | Link TV

Political Psychology, by D. P. Houghton

"What shapes political behavior more: the situations in which individuals find themselves, or the internal psychological makeup—beliefs, values, and so on—of those individuals? This is perhaps the leading division within the psychological study of politics today. This text provides a concise, readable, and conceptually-organized introduction to the topic of political psychology by examining this very question.

Using this situationism-dispositionism framework—which roughly parallels the concerns of social and cognitive psychology—this book focuses on such key explanatory mechanisms as behaviorism, obedience, personality, groupthink, cognition, affect, emotion, and neuroscience to explore topics ranging from voting behavior and racism to terrorism and international relations.

Houghton's clear and engaging examples directly challenge students to place themselves in both real and hypothetical situations which involve intense moral and political dilemmas..."

Political Psychology: Situations, Individuals, and Cases

The Power of a Smile

How people listen to you has a strong effect on what you say, according to a study by Camiel Beukeboom.

"We interpret the smiles and nods of a positive listener as a sign of agreement and understanding, encouraging us to provide a more interpretative account. By contrast, negative listeners provoke in the speaker a more cautious and descriptive thinking style".

A summary is here - Wiley InterScience :: JOURNALS :: European Journal of Social Psychology