Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
SCIENCE OF MUSIC
Science of Music: _____ “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” is a song sung by actress and singer Marilyn Monroe on May 19, 1962, for President John F. Kennedy at a celebration of his 45th birthday, 10 days before the actual date (May 29). The event marked one of Monroe’s final public appearances; she was found dead in August 1962 at the age of 36, and JFK was assassinated the following year. _____ Prologue: The fascinating thing about music is that technically- in a very literal way- it doesn’t exist. A painting, a sculpture or a photograph can physically exist, while music is just air hitting the eardrum in a slightly different way than it would randomly. Somehow that air- which has almost no substance whatsoever- when vibrated and when made to hit the eardrum in tiny subtle ways- can make people dance, love, cry, enjoy, move across country, go to war […]
ENTERTAINMENT
ENTERTAINMENT: _ _ Prologue: Most of us have, at some point, become so immersed in a book or game or movie that the activity temporarily assumes a profound significance and the importance of the outside world begins to fade. Although we are likely to enjoy these experiences in the realm of entertainment, we rarely stop and think about what effect they might be having on us. But maybe we should. For all that has been written about individual pop icons, movie stars, sport stars and sitcoms, and the liberating or oppressive power of popular culture, basic questions remain unanswered. What do we know about the overall effect of living in a society in which entertainment is so central? What do we know about how entertainment affects society and the people who participate in it? Why entertainment activities are so important to us, yet frequently dismissed as being unworthy of […]
CREATIVITY
CREATIVITY: _ Have a look at a picture below. What do you think? A non-creative brain sees only a hodgepodge of disconnected shapes, but a creative brain can go beyond common sense and find the connecting concept that makes sense of the shapes. The picture is of a dog drinking from a stream, with its head in the middle of the picture facing down to the water and its tail off to the right. _ The picture above shows how your brain can even create things that don’t exist. If you can see the white triangle – the one with its apex pointing up – it’s because your brain has created that triangle to unify what is otherwise simply a collection of angles and Pac-Man shapes. There is, in fact, no white triangle there. _ If you measure these two tables with a ruler, you will see that they […]
