Eberhard Weber on ECM: Primary Colours
3 hours ago
Monday, 20 February 2012
Kirby Ferguson: Everything is a Remix (Part 4)
Our system of law doesn't acknowledge the derivative nature of creativity. Instead, ideas are regarded as property, as unique and original lots with distinct boundaries. But ideas aren't so tidy. They're layered, they’re interwoven, they're tangled. And when the system conflicts with the reality... the system starts to fail.
Parts 1 - 3
Parts 1 - 3
Sunday, 19 February 2012
Once Upon a Time in Tehran
Photos of a swinging Iran when the skirts were short, the dance was the twist, and America wasn't Enemy No. 1.
The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever
Jeffrey Mitchell, a volunteer firefighter in the suburbs of Baltimore, came across the accident by chance: A car had smashed into a pickup truck loaded with metal pipes. Mitchell tried to help, but he saw at once that he was too late.
The car had rear-ended the truck at high speed, sending a pipe through the windshield and into the chest of the passenger—a young bride returning home from her wedding. There was blood everywhere, staining her white dress crimson.
Mitchell couldn’t get the dead woman out of his mind; the tableau was stuck before his eyes. He tried to tough it out, but after months of suffering, he couldn’t take it anymore. He finally told his brother, a fellow firefighter, about it.
Miraculously, that worked. No more trauma; Mitchell felt free. This dramatic recovery, along with the experiences of fellow first responders, led Mitchell to do some research into recovery from trauma. He eventually concluded that he had stumbled upon a powerful treatment. In 1983, nearly a decade after the car accident, Mitchell wrote an influential paper in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services that transformed his experience into a seven-step practice, which he called critical incident stress debriefing, or CISD. The central idea: People who survive a painful event should express their feelings soon after so the memory isn’t “sealed over” and repressed, which could lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.
In recent years, CISD has become exceedingly popular, used by the US Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Israeli army, the United Nations, and the American Red Cross. Each year, more than 30,000 people are trained in the technique. (After the September 11 attacks, 2,000 facilitators descended on New York City.)
Even though PTSD is triggered by a stressful incident, it is really a disease of memory. The problem isn’t the trauma—it’s that the trauma can’t be forgotten. Most memories, and their associated emotions, fade with time. But PTSD memories remain horribly intense, bleeding into the present and ruining the future. So, in theory, the act of sharing those memories is an act of forgetting them.
A typical CISD session lasts about three hours and involves a trained facilitator who encourages people involved to describe the event from their perspective in as much detail as possible. Facilitators are trained to probe deeply and directly, asking questions such as, what was the worst part of the incident for you personally? The underlying assumption is that a way to ease a traumatic memory is to express it...
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Jonah Lehrer @'Wired'
McKenzie Wark: A Minimum of Serious Seduction - The Legend of the Situationist Ιnternational
2011-2012 Speaker Series, Seventh Session, Friday February 17.
McKenzie Wark, 'A Minimum of Serious Seduction:
The Legend of the Situationist International'
(and yes, Ken was in a squeaky chair:
this became a kind of improvized accompaniment,
the Furniture Version of Ubu's Allen Ravenstine - UBU@UWO)
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McKenzie Wark
Saturday, 18 February 2012
Ad Break: Hmmm...
The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) said that image was 'too shocking' to be shown. But Barnardo's said it was highly effective in highlighting the plight of abused or disadvantaged children.
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