From the monthly archives:

April 2007

No Mozart Effect

by Michael Roach on April 17, 2007

in News

ShareIt’s long been touted that listening to Mozart promotes learning, I must admit though that I’ve always found it distracting or annoying. Last week the German research ministry published a report analysing all the scientific research on music and intelligence concluding that passive listening to Mozart or indeed any other music you enjoy, does not [...]

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ShareHere’s a news release from Temple University about the article a couple of their professors have published in the April issue of the journal: “Current Directions in Psychological Science”.  It talks about the biological basis of why most of the educational efforts to persuade kids not to smoke or to not use drugs or alcohol, [...]

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ShareThere’s an interesting article on Castaneda today at Salon.com that’s worth reading see: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/04/12/castaneda/index.html
It makes me think of Joseph Campbell’s point that people confuse story with reality. But then what is real? I’ve found Castaneda’s work beautifully poetic. Many people are happy to live in the fiction they’ve made up for themselves of their every [...]

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The Future – more Bladerunner than Neuromancer

by Michael Roach on April 10, 2007

in MythoSelf

ShareYesterdays Guardian newspaper here in the UK has an article about the Ministry of Defences “future strategic context” or their pessimistic ideas for what is going to happen in the next 30 years: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2053020,00.html the part that interested me was the “by 2035 an implantable information chip could be directly wired into the brain”. Clearly [...]

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Happy Easter and yes the world is getting better

by Michael Roach on April 4, 2007

in Personal

ShareYou’ve probably heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment, if you’ve an interest in human behaviour that is… Here’s an article published in the March issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education where the creator of that experiment Philip G. Zimbardo talks about how we’re not learning from the mistakes we’ve made and the current relevance [...]

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