Viraj's Weblog

Music has always had a strange effect on me. A song can sometimes put me in a trance-like state, where I feel like I am one with the music. I sometimes wonder if others feel that too, but to me listening to music is like being close to God. It's like the artist's emotions come through the music and I feel everything they felt. It's strange, but the song could be classical or heavy metal. Certain songs click with me and there is a feeling common between them. That's why I have tremendous respect for musicians. They give joy to their listeners.

I've always wondered what it would look like to aliens observing us, to see us singing and dancing. What would they think of us? Think about if you saw a bunch of ants appearing to dance in some formation. Would you think they were doing anything special? Would we even recognize their music as music? A dog's howl is not musically pleasing to us, but do listening dogs feel that same feeling as if they were listening to music?

From Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions:

When the theorem is proved, or the house built, or the painting completed, or the music interpreted, or the phrase uttered - when some sought-after abstract goal is experienced - it feels almost like a drug, or maybe more like a fainter version of the satisfaction from food or sex. Nevertheless, it really feels like something. Of course painting, architecture, music, poetry, and mathematics are not primary rewards. They are not required to survive and reproduce, but they can feel that way and we act so as to give them meaning. We will often rearrange our lives to pursue them as though our lives depended on them. And for those of us not inclined to be artists or mathematicians, there is something similar that hits our personal sweet spot. And yet these things don't feed us or give us more progeny. How did these culturally dependent goals gain such value? The goals became rewards. One can see how this mechanism could ruin an individual's chance of reproducing, and that's why there must be a lot of control over this process if such a mechanism is to fit in with the requirements of survival.

Pretty good talk. Watch the video. Some funny references to old cartoons.

http://static.vsocial.com/flash/ups.swf?d=75313&a=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOYfG0QGG0

http://emuse.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/377

http://www.gofish.com/player.gfp?gfid=30-1084728

From Discover's Peer Review column:

Had Time pronounced us Person of the Year back in 1995 - before the Internet had been reduced to an electronic strip mall and market survey - it might have been daring, or even self-fulfilling. Back then, however, the magazine was busy deriding the Internet with a sensationalist and inaccurate online child pornography cover story. In the intervening years, Walt Disney and its fellow media conglomerates may have cleaned up Time Square, but now our kids are whoring themselves for attention on News Corp-owned MySpace. Corporate America is secure enough in its victory that it's now selling it back to us as a supposed shift in media power.

Yes, we are using media differently, sitting in chairs and uploading stuff instead of sitting on couches and downloading stuff. But in the end we're still glued to a tube, watching mostly crap, arguing like angry idiots, surrendering the last remains of our privacy, and paying a whole lot more to large corporations for the privilege.