Computer-based music production and composition involves the eyes as much as the ears. The representations in audio editors like Pro Tools and Ableton Live are purely informational, waveforms and grids and linear graphs. Some visualization systems are purely decorative, like the psychedelic semi-random graphics produced by iTunes. Some systems lie in between. I see rich …
Category Archives: Science
Why has the human brain evolved so much more than any other animals?
The human brain isn’t “more” evolved. It’s just differently evolved. Our intelligence has its obvious advantages, but it carries some significant costs. Like Joshua Engel says, the big brain is metabolically expensive. It makes childbirth much harder for humans than for other mammals, too. Human babies have to be effectively born prematurely in order to …
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Biggie Biggie Smalls Is The Illest
I always enjoy when hip-hop artists sample themselves. It makes the music recursive, and for me, “recursive” is synonymous with “good.” You can hear self-sampling in “Nas Is Like” by Nas, “The Score” by the Fugees and many songs by Eric B and Rakim. The most recent self-sampling track to cross my radar is “Unbelievable” …
Does teaching Intelligent Design in schools really damage science?
You don’t go to high school biology class to learn particular facts; you go to understand the general framework of evolutionary theory. Rather than contradicting any single fact, Intelligent Design undermines the entire intellectual basis of biology.
What is the relationship between music and math?
Music is richly mathematical, and an understanding of one subject can be a great help in understanding the other. Geometry and angles My masters thesis is devoted in part to a method for teaching math concepts using a drum machine organized on a radial grid. Placing rhythms on a circle gives a good multisensory window …
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How is Earth’s gravity generated?
Gravity is the warping of spacetime by mass or energy. A mass like the Earth warps spacetime so that the shortest path, the “path of least resistance,” for inertial movement is towards the Earth’s center. Using instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope, it’s possible to literally see the warping of spacetime by very massive objects …
Is Richard Dawkins helping science through his attacks on religion?
I would wish for Dawkins to use more emotional sensitivity and compassion when dealing with religious people, because his hostile tone gets in the way of his invaluable message. His condescending attitude toward believers, epitomized by calling atheists “brights,” is seriously counterproductive. I’m concerned that he’s unnecessarily confrontational and inflammatory in his TV appearances, op-eds …
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Building a better dopamine awareness campaign
I’ve been intrigued by Charles Lyell‘s self-described “dopamine awareness campaign,” trying to show how all of our social behaviors boil down to a desire for gratifying dopamine shots. The campaign doesn’t seem to be going so well; see, for example, the collapsing of his recent answer to Why do people contribute reviews of restaurants/theatres/events etc? …
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What does the human brain find exciting about syncopated rhythm and breakbeats?
Predictable unpredictability. The brain is a pattern-recognition machine. We like repetition and symmetry because they engage our pattern-recognizers. But we only like patterns up to a point. Once we’ve recognized and memorized the pattern, we get bored and stop paying attention. If the pattern changes or breaks, it grabs our attention again. And if the …
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Why do fake rumors such as vaccines causing child autism work?
Imagine you’re a parent with a young kid, and you’re hearing all these stories about vaccines and autism. Who do you trust?