Aye, if there were three glasses and he "was able to correctly identify which drink had been 'tuned' approximately one-third of the time", then he was getting about the same result as he would have got by just guessing which was 'tuned' without even tasting them. That would suggest that he really wasn't able to tell any difference at all.
Being able to grasp things quickly, even quite complex concepts and arguments, is doubtless an extremely good thing. But I don't think that this is what is generally being referred to, when people say that attention spans are shortening.
The general sense of the idea, is that ideas are being simplified and made less challenging, in order to maintain the speed of change that we see in some of today's culture - not that the concepts presented are as complex as before... but now somehow compressed.
For example, it is now the case that TV shows often tend to tell us what we are going to see, show us what we were to see, recap what we have just seen, break and then remind us of what we had just seen, before being reminded of what we are still to see - all in small bite sized chunks. Indeed, if you fast forward between the actual content, you can sometimes watch 1 hour shows in less than 15 minutes these days. Or the often mentioned 24 hour rolling news format, where tiny little bites of quite sensationalist news with very little analysis or depth of investigation is presented as journalism.
There is still the question of whether we are actually culturally beginning to lack the ability to engage with more complex and extended culture as a result of this. It is quite possible, that these approaches have more to do with the commercial pressures of content development, than with satisfying our needs in terms of presentation. That is to say, that we are being fed pap even though we're actually still quite capable of chewing on hearty meals.
It's not well known, but H.R. Giger was originally approached to do some design work for Star Wars back in the the mid-1970's. Pictured above is an early 'concept design' that Giger produced for the Millennium Falcon. Not many people are aware that he was also a sculptor and often used metal as his medium.
Of course, the early relationship between George Lucas and Giger began to falter as Giger's designs for the film became increasingly disturbing and eventually, Lucas decided that the designs were just a little too 'bleeding edge' for what he hoped to be a commercial family film.
One of the early computer animators on the Star Wars project, was in fact Dan O'Bannon who was lucky enough to meet with Giger as he was working on his unsuccessful Star Wars designs. The two became quite friendly and O'Bannon was keen to make a film at some time, that could really take advantage of the disturbing images that sprang from Giger's mind.
O'Bannon achieved this later of course, together with Ridley Scott in creating the amazing "Alien" film.
Yeah... doesn't look like a fake cheese to me. Nice, nutty bit of Leerdammer. I was intrigued that he'd clearly put something like a red wax rind as a lining to his tunnel too...
Really... they're like the Twitter users of the animal world aren't they? Wanting to share their own stuff with complete strangers and trying to extend their friendship network as much as possible - even at the cost of relationships that they already have.
I too am a musician and sing with a well known symphony chorus too. Orchestras really do need conductors - but not just for keeping tempo (which this study seemed to have been primarily looking at). The manner of how the conductor moves communicates what tone colours and dynamics the music should have too - as well as highlighting key moments of interchange between different sections.
I'd also worry about the one-to-one kind of relationship that the study looks at in connecting violin bow movements to the baton movements. Orchestras/Choirs are made up of groups of human beings and the different players interact together in different ways. A good conductor will adjust his movements to take advantage of those interactions - or may actually physically move different sections around in order to control them.
There's a lot more to it than simply players following the conductor's beat for tempo.
Absolutely. Definitely the SUV was being overly aggressive in trying to push in - and then drove extremely badly and quite dangerously in order to take 'revenge'.
Yeah, Khomeii Borbangnadyr was the stand-out. Is it just me or was he actually singing 3 different notes? The bass note, a harmonic an octave above *and* a melody too.
The dutch do lay a lot of brick roads, as they cope well with all the subsidence and shifting you get, when you're building on reclaimed land that's principally sand.
No surprise to me that they have such a machine... :)
"600 years, maybe 22 years per generation = ~27 generations. 2^27 = ~134 million."
This underestimates things doesn't it? You're only tracing a direct maternal/paternal line - i.e. his grandparents and great grandparents etc. The article bases the relationship on cousin relationships too.
When you include cousin relationships - i.e. his aunts/uncles and their spouses and their parental and cousin lines, you need much less than 600 years to be statistically related to everybody on the planet.
Everybody alive today is probably related somehow to Vlad the impaler. When you go back far enough then statistically there will always be somebody that links your family tree to everybody else's.
It's marginally more impressive that he's a distant cousin of the princes... but even that includes a very large number of people and the chances are much greater than most people would imagine.
The general sense of the idea, is that ideas are being simplified and made less challenging, in order to maintain the speed of change that we see in some of today's culture - not that the concepts presented are as complex as before... but now somehow compressed.
For example, it is now the case that TV shows often tend to tell us what we are going to see, show us what we were to see, recap what we have just seen, break and then remind us of what we had just seen, before being reminded of what we are still to see - all in small bite sized chunks. Indeed, if you fast forward between the actual content, you can sometimes watch 1 hour shows in less than 15 minutes these days. Or the often mentioned 24 hour rolling news format, where tiny little bites of quite sensationalist news with very little analysis or depth of investigation is presented as journalism.
There is still the question of whether we are actually culturally beginning to lack the ability to engage with more complex and extended culture as a result of this. It is quite possible, that these approaches have more to do with the commercial pressures of content development, than with satisfying our needs in terms of presentation. That is to say, that we are being fed pap even though we're actually still quite capable of chewing on hearty meals.
Of course, the early relationship between George Lucas and Giger began to falter as Giger's designs for the film became increasingly disturbing and eventually, Lucas decided that the designs were just a little too 'bleeding edge' for what he hoped to be a commercial family film.
One of the early computer animators on the Star Wars project, was in fact Dan O'Bannon who was lucky enough to meet with Giger as he was working on his unsuccessful Star Wars designs. The two became quite friendly and O'Bannon was keen to make a film at some time, that could really take advantage of the disturbing images that sprang from Giger's mind.
O'Bannon achieved this later of course, together with Ridley Scott in creating the amazing "Alien" film.
(I survived the Mayan Apocalypse, XL)
It's just a Z-scale train set isn't it?
I'd also worry about the one-to-one kind of relationship that the study looks at in connecting violin bow movements to the baton movements. Orchestras/Choirs are made up of groups of human beings and the different players interact together in different ways. A good conductor will adjust his movements to take advantage of those interactions - or may actually physically move different sections around in order to control them.
There's a lot more to it than simply players following the conductor's beat for tempo.
Un-be-lie-vable.
No surprise to me that they have such a machine... :)
A
This underestimates things doesn't it? You're only tracing a direct maternal/paternal line - i.e. his grandparents and great grandparents etc. The article bases the relationship on cousin relationships too.
When you include cousin relationships - i.e. his aunts/uncles and their spouses and their parental and cousin lines, you need much less than 600 years to be statistically related to everybody on the planet.
It's marginally more impressive that he's a distant cousin of the princes... but even that includes a very large number of people and the chances are much greater than most people would imagine.