Oscar Wilde: Documentary p. 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwaEcRFFS9o&feature=player_embedded

Oscar Wilde: Documentary p. 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvWROI8OulI&feature=player_embedded

Oscar Wilde: Documentary p. 1

A rather fine documentary of observations offered by many of the figures involved in the making of the acclaimed 1997 film 'Wilde' is available in 3 parts to view on YouTube. Stephen Fry starred, and his insights particularly emphasise the human side.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av9F_zdMR8w&feature=player_embedded

YouTube - Jesca Hoop - Hunting My Dress

YouTube - Jesca Hoop - Hunting My Dress

Anne Enright · Sinking by Inches

"...One of the strangest feelings, living through a housing boom, is that you are rich or poor not because of the money you earn, but the year you started earning it. It is not a question of effort, but of luck. This was part of the impotence and panic that drove Irish people to buy overvalued houses towards the end of the boom; it was the feeling that we were running up a down escalator and had to grab hold of whatever we could, to stop being swept away. There is very little pleasure in buying a house. Perhaps this fact is not mentioned often enough. For a while, house auctions were a kind of blood sport in South Dublin. There were women who spent their lives going to them, to get high on the smell of money and other people’s pain. It was like living in a casino: the insanity of the sums involved; that blank, ecstatic misery on the faces of the people who won.

Telling the truth was, in the circumstances, not just boring, it was also unlucky, hexed, taboo. It might even be unclean. Careless talk costs jobs. If the bubble burst it would be your fault for calling it a bubble, because, at the end of the day, it’s not an economy, it’s a mood.

I am not a Freudian about this money shit, especially these days when it is so notional, so rarely handled or seen. I do think money is a magical substance, which makes the phrase ‘frozen desire’ a little too … frozen, for me. These days I play with the idea of money as mother’s love; her body, her attention, the blessing of her gaze. It is the thing you fight your siblings for, because to be poor is to be so unloved. But money changes when you multiply it by millions of families, and that is the shift that I can not understand.

Anyway. What does well in a downturn? Security systems, fast food, medical supplies. It has taken Ireland more than two years to get real. The private sector discovered it in 2008, but in 2009 the public sector really learned what a €3 billion, followed by a €3.5 billion readjustment in the national finances does to your pay cheque, your grant, your welfare slip. ‘And remember, kids,’ says the chat show host at the end of the annual Toy Show on television, ‘Manage Your Expectations.’

On 12 December, everyone in Smyths toyshop in Bray is on the phone, either to the internet or to a spouse. One person is talking in Polish, another couple in German. It looks the same as any other year – maybe a bit quieter – but if you bump into someone you know in the aisle you do not stay to see them weigh one piece of plastic tat against another, or how long it takes them to decide. The place is full of buggies. I love these children with their wise eyes: the ones who are allowed to see it all, because they are still too young for Santa Claus."

The entire article was published by the London Review of Books on 7 January 2010 and can be viewed here - LRB · Anne Enright · Sinking by Inches

Myths of globalisation

Writing for 'OpenDemocracy.net', in a recent article entitled 'Living in a world of make-believe: the mythmakers of the globalising age', Gerry Hassan argues that...

"...Despite the failings of the free market model and its associated ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘new economy’ paradigms, the dominant spokespeople used in the media to explain and analyse the crisis are from City institutions, financial bodies and agencies associated with them: banks, hedge funds and independent analysts who work in the City. Alternative voices, whether they be from academia, trade unions, NGOs or other independent bases are time and again marginalised, ignored and excluded.

This cannot be allowed to go on unchecked and unchallenged, and as a start should be monitored and analysed. This points to the need for a contemporary Glasgow University Media Group of our age to map the biases, judgements and values which are at play in how the modern media cover our politics and economics. Surely this is a project worthy of trade union or university research?"

From: Living in a world of make-believe: the mythmakers of the globalising age | openDemocracy

Smile or Die - Barbara Ehrenreich

Sub-titled 'How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World', Barbara Ehrenreich's new book 'Smile or Die' looks at how...

"...Promoting the idea that happiness is within your grasp is in the interests of corporations trying to bamboozle an overworked and underpaid workforce. It's also favoured by churches trying to get rich quick off the American dream. Ehrenreich traces the fad from Calvinist self-control through Christian Science to blatant assumptions of the holiness of cash. Informing the uneducated and unmedicated that their plight is all their own fault is followed up by instructions for making anything you desire – from a new TV screen to a trip to Mexico – "materialise" through mind control. The censorship of negative opinion combines perfectly with the American policy of each man for himself in the best of all possible worlds.

This is the philosophy that gave us the smart bomb, the space programme, sub-prime mortgages, plenty of psychopaths and Sarah Palin. Every dumb American idea we've all had to stomach and die for can be attributed to this devotion to fantasy and self-satisfaction. Ehrenreich writes that America is unsurpassed in one area: "the reflexive capacity for dismissing disturbing news". Current American euphemisms for getting fired include "releases of resources", "career-change opportunities" and "growth experience".

It's when writing about the cancer industry that she's at her most eloquent. When she got breast cancer, Ehrenreich found that not only did she have to confront a life-threatening illness but also a whole bunch of idiotic pink products, from proud cancer-defying sweatshirts and breast cancer candles, to a teddy bear with a breast-cancer ribbon sewn on its chest...

Read the book review at: Smile or Die by Barbara Ehrenreich | Book review | Books | The Guardian

The Selvedge Yard

The Selvedge Yard is a website where images are collated around a theme by 'J.P.' - "a menswear product, presentation & branding guy with a passion for people, places things & ideas of enduring heritage, quality, authenticity & character. But I’m not all old school all the time– I appreciate innovation & technology in all things.

Today’s innovators give us tomorrow’s timeless classics..."

The exhibits show evidence of someone with a very good eye for quality prints and a sharp sense of cultural relevance. Take a look at:
The Selvedge Yard

I Wish You Love

Dusty Springfield sings I Wish You Love on her TV show in 12 September 1967:



YouTube - Dusty Springfield - I Wish You Love

Are dolphins really 'non-human persons'? - Times Online

"Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons”.

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

“Many dolphin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when corrected for body size,” said Lori Marino, a zoologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who has used magnetic resonance imaging scans to map the brains of dolphin species and compare them with those of primates.

“The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions,” she added.

Dolphins have long been recognised as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps, which some studies have found can reach the intelligence levels of three-year-old children. Recently, however, a series of behavioural studies has suggested that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, could be the brighter of the two. The studies show how dolphins have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and can think about the future.

It has also become clear that they are “cultural” animals, meaning that new types of behaviour can quickly be picked up by one dolphin from another..."

Full article is at: Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons' - Times Online

Authors Contest Google Book Settlement

WritersBlog covers the story -

...Quill and Quire has an excerpt from the letter:
The ramifications of the amended settlement for any one author and any one book are exceptionally complex. We've talked to our members, authors like yourself. The ones who got the notice found it incomprehensible and just shook their heads in confusion. Go to the settlement website's poorly implemented database and see for yourself how tricky this is -- has your book been scanned? Is it commercially available? Should you opt out? If you do nothing, you're automatically included in the settlement. If you opt out, Google doesn't even guarantee that it won't steal your work in the future...

See - Authors' Groups Write Congress About Google Book Settlement

Erwin James, Prison Writer

The Guardian has run regular columns and articles by a convicted murderer identified only as Erwin James over this past decade. In an interview published last April he talks for the first time about his real identity, his life before, during and after the 20 years he spent in jail - and why he told lies about his time in the French Foreign Legion:

This time five years ago I had served 19 years and eight months of a life sentence and was waiting for the answer to my application to be released from the parole board. I had a lurking anxiety about what the answer was going to be. I had been in "open conditions", as a low-security Category D prisoner for more than two years and had been going in and out of the prison regularly for a year and a half, first to undertake community work, then paid work and social visits in the local neighbourhood. As far as I could see, there was no reason why the answer should be negative. But I had seen incomprehensible answers handed to lifers by the parole board too many times to be anything near complacent about my own chances.

Looking back now I remember feeling no anxiety about what life was going to be like if they released me, however. I had people close to me who cared about me. I had a home to go to and regular work. For the previous four years I had been writing about prison life in the Guardian in a column entitled "A life inside" and already had a book with the same title published to some acclaim. I had also just started a well-paid job as a development manager for a national charity. All the elements necessary for a successful transition from prisoner to citizen and more were in place. It should have been a breeze. And for a short time it was.

I walked out of the prison gate for the last time on the brightest, sunniest August day in 2004, exactly 20 years after I had been taken into custody. The euphoria was overwhelming. For two incredible weeks it felt as if I was walking on air. Then, out of nowhere, I was hit by an almighty sense of despair and emptiness. It did not seem to matter that I was free, fit and healthy and was surrounded by an abundance of opportunities. Despite having thought about it often during the months leading up to it, planning and preparing carefully for it, there was something so odd about the reality of it. Guilt was the emotion that hit me the most powerfully, a strong sense that I did not deserve to be out here enjoying the pleasures that free people enjoy...

From:Erwin James: The real me | Society | The Guardian

Placebo Effect can be Part of Treatment

Drug and Placebo: Study Redefines Placebo Effect as Part of Effective Treatment:
ScienceDaily (Dec. 23, 2009)

"Researchers used the placebo effect to successfully treat psoriasis patients with one quarter to one half of their usual dose of a widely used steroid medication, according to an early study published online in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Early results in human patients suggest that the new technique could improve treatment for several chronic diseases that involve mental state or the immune system, including asthma, multiple sclerosis and chronic pain...

...A description of the current findings requires expanding the definition of placebo effects to include phenomena that are not fully understood by modern medicine, Ader said. Although placebos, "dummy pills" that have no therapeutic effect by themselves, are prescribed by many physicians today, their use still carries a stigma. It's as if the effect of a pill containing no medication is not "real," part magic and part deception.

To accurately define and study the placebo effect, Ader and colleagues chose to frame it as an example of a well established psychological phenomenon: the conditioned response. Nineteenth century Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was the first to study the phenomenon of conditioning. By ringing a bell (a conditioned stimulus) each day before giving his dogs food (an unconditioned stimulus), Pavlov found that the dogs would eventually salivate (a conditioned response) at the sound of the bell alone.

In the current study, Ader and colleagues sought to determine if a drug's therapeutic effect could be triggered by qualities associated with the drug, like its shape, color, smell and packaging, as well as by its administration by an authority figure in a white lab coat. These repeated associations, Ader argues, create conditioned responses, drug-like therapeutic effects of treatment caused, not by a drug's ingredients alone, but elicited by stimuli associated with the effects of active drug treatment. The results provide the first evidence that conditioned responses might be harnessed to influence the design of drug regimens in humans...

..."The pharmaceutical industry may choose to ignore the conditioning component of drug treatment regimens," Ader said. "Alternatively, they may now consider exploring ways to exploit conditioning in the design of drug treatment protocols, especially in chronic conditions where patients acquire conditioned responses over time. I believe industry will eventually support this approach because it promises to increase safety and reduce production costs."'

Drug and placebo: Study redefines placebo effect as part of effective treatment

Rehabilitating fear memories.

Noninvasive Technique to Rewrite Fear Memories Developed: ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2009) —

"Researchers at New York University have developed a non-invasive technique to block the return of fear memories in humans. The technique, reported in the latest issue of the journal Nature, may change how we view the storage processes of memory and could lead to new ways to treat anxiety disorders...

...While researchers have traditionally seen long-term memory as fixed and resistant, it is now becoming clear that memory is, in fact, dynamic and flexible. As a result, the act of remembering makes the memory vulnerable until it is stored again -- a process called reconsolidation. During this instability period, new information could be incorporated into the old memory. This was the phase during which the NYU researchers sought to employ a technique to block the return of fear memories.

The NYU researchers showed that reactivating fear memories in humans allows them to be updated with non-fearful information, a finding that was previously demonstrated in rodents. As a result, fear responses no longer return...

...Phelps added, "Previous attempts to disrupt fear memories have relied on pharmacological interventions. Our results suggest such invasive techniques may not be necessary. Using a more natural intervention that captures the adaptive purpose of reconsolidation allows a safe way to prevent the return of fear."

The research was funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the National Institutes of Health."

Noninvasive technique to rewrite fear memories developed

The sinister powers of crowdsourcing - New Scientist

MacGregor Campbell wrote an article entitled The sinister powers of crowdsourcing for the tech/innovation section of the New Scientist, on 22 December 2009.

"When an ad hoc team of 5000 people who assembled in just two hours found 10 weather balloons hidden across the US by the Pentagon's research agency earlier this month, it was just another demonstration of the power of crowdsourcing – solving a task by appealing to a large undefined group of web users to each do a small chunk of it.

So far crowdsourcing has been associated with well-meaning altruism, such as the creation and maintenance of Wikipedia or searching for lost aviators. But crowdsourcing of a different flavour has started to emerge.

Law enforcement officials in Texas have installed a network of CCTV cameras to monitor key areas along that state's 1900-kilometre-long border with Mexico. To help screen the footage, a website lets anyone log in to watch a live feed from a border camera and report suspicious activity. A similar system called Internet Eyes, which pays online viewers to spot shoplifters from in-store camera feeds, is set to launch in the UK in 2010. An Iranian website is offering rewards for identifying people in photos taken during protests over June's elections...

...Crowdsourcing's power to compartmentalise and abstract away the true meaning of tasks turns human intelligence into a commodity. Zittrain's thought experiment shows how it could potentially entice people into participating in a project that they otherwise wouldn't support."

Innovation: The sinister powers of crowdsourcing - tech - 22 December 2009 - New Scientist