2.24.2011

Second time in a few months I've got an out of space warning on gmail. The first time I dealt with it by deleting all forwards from my parents....
So much for the "never need to delete your emails" promise. I guess that means if you are willing to pay.

2.21.2011


harry demoing his first song for the monkees

2.17.2011

Alex brought up the point that if when thinking we "hear a voice" in our head - what is the experience for someone who is deaf from birth.
This episode of Radiolab is completely relevant and mentions the possibility in schizophrenia research that that type of hearing voices might have to do with the symptom of not recognizing your internal voice.
My feeling (without diong any investigation into the matter) is that we can't confine the internal voice to a passive auditory like modality (perhaps there is FMRI research on thinking and parts of the auditory cortex lighting up); there must be an active/motor component as well of forming the words (must check FMRI stuff again). So I wonder if the whole experience for someone deaf from birth is akin to whatever sensory/motor experience that that same someone feels when talking normally (eg. motor/tactile act of signing). I will have to check if there is any literature on this.
Final thought - I wonder if there is reduced incidence of "hearing voices" type psychosis for the deaf population compared to the rest of the population. Must check.

2.13.2011

i love the inernets. suffering from some intermittent but severe vertigo these past couple of days - used this site to diagnose and it seems successfully treat it.
benign positional vertigo affecting the left posterior semi-circular canal diagnosed using the hallpike test and treated using the modified epley manoeuvre. So far so good. i am still astonsihed at how simple it was...and apparently the inventor was ridiculed for years.

2.07.2011

it ocurred to me that i would like to hear the zombies record a full version of the beach boys' pet sounds....which is weird because i've never listened to pet sounds.
i'm not a fan of the beach boys although i know that technically i *should* be. i think it has something to do with the quality of their voices (not in the sense of good and bad but in the sense ot timbre etc) - it just doesn't do it for me. also something about the songwriting has always seemed "technical" to me rather than "organic"...if that makes any sense. just my impressions, while i know hordes of music enthusiasts (including many i agree with otherwise) will think i am just plain wrong. e.g - paul mccartney is a big fan of the album and describes it as having influenced him to write melodic bass lines. i have always told aspiring bassists to listen to the beatles to get an idea of how interesting, melodic bass lines should be written. so there you go - i *have* to check out the album. but then recently i thought (while listening to the zombies) that i would like THEM to play it for me. so...i guess...get on it zombies.