the best thing i learned today – The Mathematics in Music I went to a very interesting performance today: “The Mathematics in Music: a concert-conversation with Elaine Chew”, in Killian Hall at MIT. Elaine is visiting Harvard for the year from USC, where she is a professor. She has an amazingly broad background that is super-pleasing… having studied math, computer science, music performance, and operations research. Elaine performed four piano pieces, three of which were composed just for her, that use playful tricks in math as compositional inspiration. Composing with a meter determined by the numbers in a row (or column) of a completed Sudoku puzzle. Elaine and her colleague, Alexandre Francois, developed a way of visualizing tonality called MuSA.RT, which accompanied her during two of the pieces. No Comments Be the first to comment! Trackback URI
"squares" meaning A fine article. But as a resident of Japan who's spent over half his life speaking Japanese, let me take this chance to address one common myth. "Kaizen" in Japanese does NOT mean "continual improvement", or have any mystical managerial significance. It's a mundane, generic word meaning "improvement" - any improvement, continual or not. If you step up to something, make a quick, one-shot improvement, and walk away forever saying "All done! (An aside: Leading Japanese companies like Toyota make continual improvement a core practice. Toyota and some of its contemporaries have indeed developed advanced, powerful methods for continuous operational improvement, within the context of their industries. Of course, if modern management gurus in the US (or wherever) want to latch on to the word "kaizen" as the new name for "continuous improvement", they're welcome to do so; words gain new meanings all the time.
Envy is a stronger motivator than admiration Admiration is happy self-surrender; envy is unhappy self-assertion. Søren Kierkegaard Mind Hacks, Not Exactly Rocket Science, The Frontal Cortex ... there are so many successful blogs out there for the Digest to admire. Or envy. In fact envy might be better. Although considered a sin, envy rather than admiration, drives us toward self-improvement. For a preliminary study, 17 undergrads were asked to describe someone they knew who was better at something than they were. It was a similar story when 82 participants were asked to recall a time they'd felt either benign envy, malicious envy or admiration (there was also a control group who didn't do the recall task). For a third study, a further 96 participants read about a fellow student called Hans de Groot, who'd just won a prize for his excellent scholarship. Having established the contrasting effects of admiration and envy, the researchers turned to the circumstances that tend to elicit one emotion more than the other.
Music theory and art aesthetics. Can melody be rated? I'm not exactly sure of the general consensus, but I have often heard the opinion that with music for example: "There can be no final, or definitive judgement" or that "One person's subjective opinion is just as valid as another - and that it's only a matter of personal preference". In other words, many believe that music is only good because our minds are individually (and in different ways) - 'programmed' or 'geared' (for whatever reasons) to enjoy it from their perspective. This is called the "Subjective or Relative Aesthetics View" Well, no doubt people's 'taste' is biased (to varying degrees) due to a number of reasons:- what they're 'used to' hearing, 'cultural trend', simply their quality of taste in music, or even 'nostalgia' (though obviously a tune could still be nostalgic to someone and good). For the sake of argument, I'm going to focus on music with a mini-section on what makes the best graphics/pictures near the end of this article. Maybe. Take chess. Difficult question.
Christianisme ancien Un article de Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre. Ichtus, symbole des premiers chrétiens. Parler de christianisme primitif pose déjà un débat quant aux dates de commencement et de fin de la période selon qu'on adopte : une perspective théologique ;la synthèse historique selon l'école européenne ;la nouvelle analyse historique selon l'école anglo-saxonne. Les visions théologiques ayant été traitées dans divers articles, celui-ci se limite aux propos historiques concernant les christianismes anciens. Il traite donc du milieu culturel qui donne naissance au christianisme, du débat historique entre les deux écoles de part et d'autre de l'Atlantique et du vocabulaire dont il est usuel de nommer les éléments des christianismes anciens. Le milieu de naissance du christianisme[modifier | modifier le code] Cartographie[modifier | modifier le code] Le croquis ci-dessus représente les schémas de filiation des diverses sectes judéo-chrétiennes[5] dans la version du consensus actuel parmi les chercheurs.
Can't feel the rhythm? You may be 'beat-deaf' By Cari Nierenberg Mathieu takes dorky dancing to a whole new level. Not only does the Canadian graduate student not get into the groove, he can't even clap in time to the music. Beat-deafness is when your arms, legs and body can't move in sync to music -- and you can't tell if another dancer isn't in the groove, either. Scientists recently wrote up Mathieu's musical misfortunes in a paper considered the first documented case of beat-deafness. The researchers believe that beat-deafness is a newly-discovered form of congenital amusia -- the most well-known form of this condition is tone-deafness. This research, to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Neuropsychologia, recruited volunteers who felt they can't keep a musical beat. In one experiment, the researchers looked at how well 34 adults, including Mathieu, could bounce up and down to a Merengue beat, and they compared these results to keeping tempo with a metronome, a ticking device that marks musical time.
Grammatika by Troy A Peterson We're making an app, 3 videos and a poster that will help you turn your guitar, bass, piano or ukelele into a musical light saber by connecting it to the Force. Well, the Circle of Fifths and Nashville #'s. You'll still need a music teacher to become a Jedi but the app, vids and poster are guaranteed to raise your musiclorean levels. By backing this Kickstarter you'll help cover the costs for: Video 1 How to Play the Grammatika/Music Theory in Plain English 1. Video 2 Turn plain English into Musical Nomenclature 1. Video 3 1. The app itself combines the Circle of Fifths and Scale Scale Degrees and creates and a fingering chart that will turn your instrument into a light saber.
La Commission renonce à faire main basse sur le service diplomat L’architecture du futur service, qui sera placé sous l’autorité de Catherine Asthon, la chef de la diplomatie européenne et vice-présidente de la Commission, n’est pas encore fixée, mais on sait déjà qu’il sera composé de la majeure partie de la DG relations extérieures de la Commission (et des délégations de la Commission dans les pays tiers devenus depuis le 1er décembre, délégations de l’Union), de la direction générale équivalente du Conseil des ministres que dirige le Britannique Robert Cooper, et de diplomates venus des États membres (pour un tiers). Soit en tout un maximum de 5 à 6000 personnes. Si Ashton, comme cela est probable, retient la même organisation qu’en France et en Grande-Bretagne, les deux puissances diplomatiques européennes, le service diplomatique sera dirigé par un secrétaire général (essentiellement tourné vers l’administration et la gestion quotidienne) et un directeur politique (sorte de sherpa du ministre des Affaires étrangères).
The mathematics of being nice - life - 21 March 2011 Read full article Continue reading page |1|2 Using mathematics to tackle some of biology's biggest questions, Martin Nowak has concluded that an ability to cooperate is the secret of humanity's success. He talks to Michael Marshall about drawing fire from Richard Dawkins, the perils of punishment, and devising the mathematical equivalent of the rules of religion Why are you so fascinated by our ability to help each other out?Cooperation is interesting because it essentially means that you help someone else, someone who is a potential competitor. You say there are five different ways in which we cooperate that give us an edge, in terms of natural selection. The third mechanism is when neighbours help each other - cooperators survive in clusters. Group selection has had a tricky reputation, and has been attacked by evolutionary biologists. Unless I've lost count, there should be one mechanism left.The last one is kin selection, which can occur when you help a close relative. Can you explain?
Body language Communication through body language has been going on for over a million years but has only been scientifically studied to any extent in the last twenty years or so; it became popular during the 1970s. By the end of this century it will have been ‘discovered’ by people throughout the world and I predict that its impact and meaning in human communication will be part of formal education. This book has served as an introduction to body language and I encourage you to seek further knowledge through your own research and experience and through the examples given. Ultimately, society will be your best research and testing ground. Conscious observation of your own actions and those of others is the best way for each person to gain a better understanding of the communication methods of the earth’s most complex and interesting beast - man himself. Clusters, Circumstances and Gestures in Daily Encounters Figure 165 A good example of an openness cluster. Allan Pease