Here Comes Good Health! is a new exhibit in the Lightbox (Wellcome Collection, Euston Road until 3 June) which showcases some of the health propaganda films and other health promotional activities devised by Bermondsey Borough Council during its hey-day of civic activity between 1920-1939. Originally, the films were taken out into the streets of Bermondsey and back projected from a specially customised “cinemotor” van. The films were also shown repeatedly in schools, clubs and other institutions so they became familiar fixtures. However, after the Second World War, the films became relatively obscure. The display includes the rear of a recreated cinemotor together with seating so that the films can be viewed in a sympathetic environment. The films are also available to view online via Wellcome Film and YouTube. The four digitised films in the exhibition have been acquired with permission from the Southwark Local History Library and Archive and the British Film Institute where the film masters are held.
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
There is no God and no free will. Right and wrong don’t exist. Nor does love. There is, in fact, nothing Alex Rosenberg is unsure about... more... more
Who’s More Creative? Introverts or Extroverts? via Big Think by Orion Jones
Extroverts and introverts are not different in the ways we usually consider them to be. Introverts want lower-stimulation environments – less noise, less action – while extroverts crave stimulation to feel their best. Introverts may be very outgoing people, just as an extrovert may be shy.
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25 Things Learned From Opening a Bookstore via Reading Copy Book Blog by elizabethc
As someone who has often wistfully dreamed of opening my own bookstore (with a lovely soft couch-and-cushion section with story hour for kids, free coffee for grown-ups, and a leave-a-book-take-a-book section for swaps..), I enoyed reading this blog post called “25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore”. It further confirmed my suspicion that not only have I been wistfully dreaming of opening a bookstore, I've also been unrealistically romanticising the hell out of the idea. Still, for all the pitfalls and drawbacks and foibles and pain, it sounds like something I'd like to do.
Here is the list, funny and insightful:
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
When the Berlin Wall fell, a myth arose: Humanity - or at least Europe - had converged on a shared set of institutions and values. Well, every utopian project comes to grief in the end... more
Psychedelic drugs: more a case of 'turn off, tune in, drop out' | Johnjoe McFadden via SocietyGuardian
Magic mushrooms work by shutting down parts of the brain, not expanding the mind, according to new research
Six thousand years ago palaeolithic hunters painted images on the walls of the Selva Pascuala caves in Spain that look remarkably similar to locally abundant Psilocybe hispanica, one of the many “magic mushrooms” that contains the hallucinogen psilocybin. The same or similar mushrooms have been used throughout the ages to induce states of religious ecstasy, spiritual enlightenment, mystical meanderings or simply to have a great time. But how do they work?
Timothy Leary, who famously told a generation of Americans to “turn on, tune in, drop out”, claimed these “mind-expanding chemicals … acts as a chemical key – it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures”.
But a few weeks ago an Imperial College-based research group headed by Professor David Nutt (who was sacked as the government’s chief drug adviser in 2009 after claiming that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol) reported a study that appears to show that, far from expanding the mind, psilocybin shuts it down.
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Tallest mountains in the solar system via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Mount Everest’s got nothing on Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in our solar system. At 15.5 miles high, it’s also the largest volcano on Mars, covering the size of Arizona. Smithsonian listed the the top ten tallest mountains in the solar system. Earth barely made the list with Mauna Loa. And you thought Everest was our tallest? It’s the highest peak, but mountain height is actually measured from base to peak and Everest's base is way above sea level. “The Tallest Mountains in the Solar System”
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The multiverse idea. Let's face it, says Alan Lightman, physics has hit a dead end. We are living in a universe incalculable by science... more
Social graph analysis reveals criminal conspiracy of slumlords via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
OrgNet, a data-mining consultancy, describes how it mined the social graph of the interlocking, every changing owners of several slum-buildings to show that they were all in a criminal conspiracy to avoid having to do the legally required maintenance necessary to keeping their buildings habitable and safe.
Uncloaking a Slumlord Conspiracy with Social Network Analysis (via Kottke)
Electronic pioneer Daphne Oram recordings now available via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Daphne Oram (1925-2003) was a pioneering electronic musician and sound engineer at the famed BBC Radiophonic Workshop. I've posted previously (link, link) about her amazing creativity and invention of Oramics, an electronic musical instrument based on converting drawings on 35mm film into sound textures. The Young Americans label has just issued a luxurious 4 LP vinyl collection drawn from Oram's massive sound archives. "The Daphne Oram Tapes" includes 46 tracks, a total of 2.5 hours of previously unreleased material. And this is just volume one!
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You can purchase it from Amazon in the US and Boomkat in the UK
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