Is this thing on?

Surely the third round of the ninth circle of hell would be filled up with the designers and programmers of Chinese Internet banking sites.

This Is Your Brain on Kafka

Absurdist literature, it appears, stimulates our brains.

That's the conclusion of a study recently published in the journal Psychological Science. Psychologists Travis Proulx of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Steven Heine of the University of British Columbia report our ability to find patterns is stimulated when we are faced with the task of making sense of an absurd tale. What's more, this heightened capability carries over to unrelated tasks.

In the first of two experiments, 40 participants (all Canadian college undergraduates) read one of two versions of a Franz Kafka story, The Country Doctor. In the first version, which was only slightly modified from the original, "the narrative gradually breaks down and ends abruptly after a series of non sequiturs," the researchers write. "We also included a series of bizarre illustrations that were unrelated to the story."

The second version contained extensive revisions to the original. The non sequiturs were removed, and a "conventional narrative" was added, along with relevant illustrations.

In other news, Reader's Digest files for bankrupcy. Hope for the human mind?

Denne uken kom det et opprop fra kunstnerdypet, iallfall noen av dem, som sa seg forfordelt, eller var det forforstjelt? At bransjeorganisasjonene ikke er velvillig innstilt til fildeling er knapt nytt, men denne gangen var kampanjen frontet av forfattere og utøvere. Gitt det 20. århundres historie gir forfatteropprop meg mange assosiasjoner, ikke alle like gode.

Read more...

During the last few months I have gotten myself another permanent residence (especially after they got WiFi), a Chinese restaurant here in Prague. I spend more waking hours there than I do at home.

Eating, drinking, socialising, and being on the Internet has occupied large parts of my life anyway, but I enjoy organising as well. Today the first major event I've helped with, a night at the Opera, will be live this night. For Opera employees in Oslo this may be familiar, the Underwater pub nearby the Opera HQ has opera nights Tuesdays and Thursdays, and have had it for years, and it is a favourite Opera hangout.

Still, the Chinese-Czech musical connection is fascinating and appealing, we'll see how it works out tonight. See you there?

There have been many language threads and digressions; I should know, I have participated in most of them. Maybe it's time to start talking about talking: What is language, where did it come from and for what reason? How do languages compete, cooperate, coopt each other? Where are they going? Is one language better than another? What about dialects, sociolects, idiolects, jargon?

Follow the discussion here

I got a well-appreciated birthday gift from myself a few days ago, the Rome series 1 DVDs. The second, and probably last season, will air in a few days. The time slice covered by this TV series will thus (assumedly) be from the fall of Gaul to the preeminence of the first Roman Emperor. A small gripe is why does it always have to be Caesar and Augustus, and not for instance the republic a couple centuries earlier.

While the backdrop story is one often told and retold, the historical characters are not the stars in the series, but the city of Rome itself. This fictional account of the end of the Republic, and history is always fictional, is the best one I've seen so far. Given the high cost and usually moderate income from historical soaps, dramas, and documentaries, it is likely to remain so for some time to come. The creators have said that current Calcutta, err Kolkata, has been an inspiration for the recreation of the Rome as was, and the city is as believable as the story is enjoyable.

A Debates & Discussions forum thread:

How has the Internet changed (or changed your life)? How will it change in you lifetime?

I can recall as a kid in the seventh grade, in Montreal Quebec, in our computer science class we had access to a time-sharing computer based somewhere else in the country. The method of data input/output was an enormous Telex teletype machine that sounded like a jackhammer when printing. [...] My vision of the future for Internet is not all rosy. [...] What I'm sure of is that the Internet will continue to become part of our lifestyle and those who are Internet illiterate will slowly be left behind as progress marches steadily on. [...] I invite any and all to send their ideas.