Getting Started (better late than never, right?) :)

Ok. So, now that I'm all settled in, I've started reading The Well Educated Mind. Lots to think about so far. I'm liking where she's going with the focused thinking. And by the way I totally support learning from her experience. The story she told about being a grad student with a family.. not so fun.

So I've read the first two chapters. I got the impression that she has no love for television or the Internet and she seems to fear the demise of print. (which I think is a little over dramatic) On page 16 she says, "Much has been written about our present move away from texts, toward an image-based visual culture: Schools no longer teach reading and writing properly. Television, movies and now the Web have decreased the importance of the written word. We are moving into a postliterate age. Print culture is doomed. Alas." Yes, the typical tv show is a lot of brain numbing nonsense, and Internet information is not generally printed and bound, but I really don't think that books are going anywhere.

However, I do like her idea that "reading is a discipline" very much. On page 17 she says reading is "like running regularly, or meditating... Any able adult can run across the backyard, but this ability to put one foot in front of another shouldn't make him think that he can tackle a marathon without serious, time-consuming training."

This idea that "serious reading" is to be worked up to gives me hope. When I graduated from college I set out on a quest to read more classic books. I read a few, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, but then went back to the nice and easy fantasy that I've always liked so much, sort of resigned that classical books weren't for me. And non-fiction.. spare me the pain.

However, I like that Susan Wise Bauer has set out this plan, an outline, to aid in the process of immersing one's self in literature.

Now, to acquire a journal to organize my thoughts better, gotta get on that..........

A Lot to Talk About: the Introduction

So, I'm munching my way through the introduction to our new Music book, and there's a lot to talk about here! Mr. Levitin starts with his own story - or rather, with the story of the book, how he came to mix science and music. Sounds like he's done some fascinating things in his time. But after he tells a little about his background, he begins drawing you into his vision. He points out the view that drew him in so compellingly that he wrote a book about it. And it is a fascinating view.

Americans spend more money on music than on sex or prescription drugs. Given this voracious consumption, I would say that most Americans qualify as expert music listeners. We have the cognitive capacity to detect wrong notes, to find music we enjoy, and to tap our feet in time with the music - an activity that involves a process of meter extraction so complected that most computers cannot do it. Why do we listen to music, and why are we willing to spend so much money on music listening? Two concert tickets can easily cost as much as a week's food allowance for a family of four, and one CD costs about the same as a work shirt, eight loaves of bread, or basic phone service for a month. (Page 7)

First of all, I find the fact that computers have such a hard time finding the beat to be fascinating! It's such an intuitive, second nature thing for me, I'd never really thought about it as a complected thing. I teach 5 year olds how to create their own beat in our piano lessons. They usually come to me more than able to bop along with the beat in our listening exercises. When I teach them about keeping a beat we talk about simple things - ticking clocks, heartbeats, that sort of thing. I've yet to come across a child who didn't pick it up quickly, although some do struggle more than others to internalize the ability to keep it consistently even and steady.

Andy and I haven't done so much concert attending lately - with regret, we've decided it's not in the budget right now. But some of our best, most memorable dates have been to either concerts, or music and dance performances such as Lord of the Dance. We counted the cost of tickets to see Kodo well spent when they came to town while we were at Purdue when we were poor college students. I'd not thought previously about the relative cost of music. Interesting.


Mr. Levitin goes on:

To ask questions about a basic, and omnipresent human ability is to implicitly ask questions about evolution. (page 7)

I think I'm going to have to disagree with the author here. I think it much more invites inquiry into the nature of God, as we are his offspring. The page and a half discussion of evolution and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology is simply irrelivant in my eyes. Fortunately it appears he doesn't linger long on the topic too much in the book.


This part I liked:

The power of music to evoke emotions is harnessed by advertising executives, filmmakers, military commanders, and mothers. ... Mothers throughout the world, as far back in time as we can imagine, have used soft singing to soothe their babies to sleep, or to distract them from something that has made him cry. (Page 9)

When so many people are running down Motherhood as an unworthy occupation, too trivial for a modern, educated woman, it pleased me to see Mothers listed in such company. I skipped some of the paragraph in which he talks about how various profession use music to tell us how to feel (because I'm typing one-handed while my baby sleeps on my lap), ending with how Moms use it to calm their children. It's probably a little off his topic, but I think Moms & other caregivers use it for much more than soothing an upset child. Music is used for learning (A, B, C, D.... Fifty nifty United States from thirteen original colonies...) and playing games (Ring around the rosie...) and providing motivation for work (say, cleaning a bathroom to William Tell or Bon Jovi) to name a few.

Your brain on music is a way to understand the deepest mysteries of human nature. That is why I wrote this book. (Page 11-12)

Big goal! I'm excited to see how he does!

Because it amuses me :)

Ok, so here's my contribution :

Title: Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates

Sentence: SJs lend stability to a school, are themselves responsible representatives of society, and expect both their students and their colleagues to be the same.

Nearest Book, Fifth Full Sentence Meme

From a Random Blog:

Grab the nearest book.

1. Open it to page 161.
2. Find the fifth full sentence.
3. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
4. Don’t search around looking for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

I actually have 4 books on my desk, and they're pretty much all equidistant from me: that is, they touch me as I type. So, I guess I get to do all 4.

From "A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations:"

The Fujiwara were a family of civilian aristocrats who preferred intrigue to war and shared the disdain for the military that was prevalent among the Heian aristocracy.

From "Around the World in 80 Days:"

A quarter of an hour later he stopped before a large cabin, adorned with several clusters of streamers, the exterior walls of which were designed to represent, in violent colors and without perspective, a company of jugglers.

From "How to Photograph Absolutely Everything:"

The best results are achieved when clouds partially obscure the sun or when the sun is at the edge of a cloud.

From "This is Your Brain on Music:"

Have you ever been walking down the stree and suddenly smelled an odor that you hadn't smelled in a long time, and that triggered a memory of some long-ago event?

If you're participating in this blog, make another post! Those of you without blogs, just post your 5th your sentence in our comments! And those of you with blogs – tag, you’re it!

Got the Book!

OK. I got the book today! Tried at the library, but they have only got 3 copies. All three were gone and there were 4 outstanding holds. No joy. Went to Barnes & Nobel. No problem. They had a nice big section of them, so I bought one. Gonna get started with it here pretty quick.

Also: I'm gonna start a "Books Under Consideration" section to our sidebar, where we cankeep a list of possible books to read. While I was at B&N, I saw one called 1421: the year China discovered the world. I guess the Chinese landed ib the americas quite a while before Columbus, that they circumnavigated the globe quite a while before Magellin. The book's got a website. Anyway, it looked really interesting, so I thought we might want to consider it for a future selection. I don't know if you guys can do things with the template, but if you can, jump right in & add anything that looks interesting to you & we'll decide later.

While I was ar B&N I picked up a thing on sparking discussion in your reading groups, so I think that in addition to the books under consideration, I'll probably add a section of questions to ask the book. Gonna have to get The Well Educated Mind from the library again & add some of the questions she suggested: she had some good ones. If you wanna add some, go right ahead. If the blog won't let you, leave them as comments & I'll get 'em on the list!

That Other Book

Alright, I haven't actually gotten ahold of the book that we're supposed to be reading just yet, but apparently neither has anyone else. Not that that's a good excuse! :P However, I have been making slow progress through The Scientists, which is still a fascinating book. I've been putting some of the highlights into my Book of Centuries. I'm just starting the chapter called "The Newtonian Revolution" that starts with a guy named Hooke. Apparently Newton (the guy in the painting) didn't like Hooke very well. I wouldn't know: I'd never heard of the guy before when I was reading about him this afternoon. Sounds like these two & another guy were in serious - and not so friendly - competition with each other.

The three people who between them established both the scientific method itself and the pre-eminence of British science at the end of the seventeenth century were Robert Hooke, Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton. It is some measure of the towering achievements of the other two that Halley clearly ranks third out of the trio in terms of his direct contribution to science; but in spite of the Newton bandwagon that has now been rolling for 300 years (and was given its initial push by Newton himself after Hooke had died), it is impossible for the unbiased historian to say whether Newton or Hooke made the more significant contribution. Newton was a loner who worked in isolation and established the single, profound truth that the Universe works on mathematical principles; Hooke was a gregarious and wide-ranging scientist who came up with a dazzling variety of new ideas, but also did more than anyone else to turn the Royal Society from a gentleman's gossip shop into the archtypical scientific society. His misfortune was to incur the enmity of Newton, and to die before Newton, giving his old enemy a chance to rewrite history - which he did so effectively that Hooke has only really been rehabilitated in the past few decades.
-The Scientists, page 149

Anyway, as we get further into the book, the author is starting to insert his opinions a little more as he tells the story. It'll be interesting to see how this affects my enjoyment as we get into the Darwin stuff: I'm thinking he's going to treat evolution as Fact, rather than unproven Theory. (You can see my opinion on evolution here.)

New Book

Well, lacking any argument, looks like we'll be reading about the effects of music on the brain! I'm looking forward to it - how about we check in with either a post or at least a comment when we've managed to aquire a copy of the book? I get paid again soon, so that's when I'll see if I can't find a copy for myself.

Choose

Alright guys, I think we should read This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession that MissKate suggested. Anyone who objects should say so within, say, a week from today (by the 24th of March). Otherwise we can start working on that book.

Also, right now it looks like I can only set up the actual blog to send notices to one person at a time (currently that person is MissKate), but there is an rss feed, or if others want we could set up some kind of list to get folks an email when there's action on our blog.

So I finally stopped with the slacking and ordered the book, The Well-Educated Mind, once I get that I will be a much more active participant. So the plan is to decide on a book and all read and discuss together? I was thinking Abraham Lincoln would be interesting. Or another thought, not really a biography but an eye catching title I saw the other day, This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel Levitin.

I am so excited about the email alerts for when people post.. that is definitely key :)

Trying It Out

The Sneetches was a fun test run, but not really a very serious one. I decided to try Susan's method out on a one of the "bargain books" I grabbed last time I was at Barnes & Noble: The Scientists, by John Gribbin. Fascinating book, and the note-taking she recommends keeps me Thinking as I go along, rather than just enjoying a good read.