Protected: Radio Listening of the Day – Part 2

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Radio Listening of the Day – Part 2

Followed by a program on what disgusts us as a species –

That’s Disgusting!

Blurrrrgh! Cultures the world over express it in the same way – the wrinkling of the nose, the recoiling of the body, a nauseous cry. But why is disgust such a universal emotion? And if its expression has deep evolutionary origins, can any one theory account for why we’re equally repelled by things sticky, seething and smelly – as we are when social or moral boundaries are crossed? Feel a little squeamish, as two leading researchers help Natasha Mitchell probe for a neurobiology of revulsion.

COMPLETE the WORLDWIDE DISGUST SURVEY here:
Worldwide Disgust Survey

Guests on this program:

Dr Val Curtis
Senior Lecturer in Hygiene Promotion
Director of The Hygiene Centre
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Val’s Page

Dr Andy Calder
MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit
University of Cambridge, UK
Andy Calder’s Page

More information:
A global initiative that Dr Val Curtis is involved in
The Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
The Hygiene Centre

Collaborators with Dr Andy Calder
Macquarie University’s Centre for Cognitive Science
Article on the BBC Open University website
Dr Andy Calder
Fear and Loathing in the Human Brain
Article in the British Medical Journal (Student edition)
“Shit scared”
Feature website accompanying a TV series on the UK’s Channel 4. Very detailed.
Anatomy of Disgust

Article by Dr Val Curtis
Dirt, disgust and disease: is hygiene in our genes?

Article (1997) about psychologist Professor Paul Rozin’s leading work on disgust
Food for Thought

An information page by leaders in the field
The Disgust Scale Homepage

Publications:
Disgust
Author: Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. R. (2000).
Publisher: In M. Lewis & J. Haviland (Eds.) Handbook of emotions, 2ndedition,(pp. 637-653). New York: Guilford Press.
Note that this link is a PDF file. An extensive chapter on the emotion by three leaders in the field.
Disgust

Evidence that Disgust evolved to protect from the risk of disease
Author: Val Curtis, Robert Aunger and Tamer Rabie
Publisher: Proceedings of the Royal Society London (Biology Letters); 271, S131-S133 (2004)
Evidence that Disgust evolved to protect from the risk of disease

Dirt, Disgust and Disease: Is hygiene in our genes?
Author: Valerie Curtis and Adam Biran
Publisher: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol 44, number 1 (winter 2001): 17-31
Dirt, Disgust and Disease: Is hygiene in our genes?

Neuropsychology of Fear and Loathing
Author: Andrew J Calder, Andrew J Lawrence, Andrew W Young
Publisher: Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2(5), 352-363)., 2001
NB: This link is a PDF File
Neuropsychology of Fear and Loathing

Impaired recognition and experience of disgust following brain injury.
Author:Andrew J Calder, Jill Keane, Facundo Manes, Nagui Antoun, Andrew W Young
Publisher: Nature Neuroscience, 3, 1077-1078 (2000)
Impaired recognition and experience of disgust following brain injury

Body, Psyche, and Culture: The Relationship Between Disgust and Morality
Author:Jonathan Haidt et al
Publisher: Psychology and Developing Societies, 1997 Vol. 9, p.107-131
Body, Psyche, and Culture: The Relationship Between Disgust and Morality

Audio Link –

That’s Disgusting!

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Protected: Radio Listening of the Day – Part 1

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Radio Listening of the Day – Part 1

First an interesting half-hour discussion on Nietzsche –
Life As Literature…

Summary:

Alexander Nehamas gives a rare insight into Friedrich Nietzsche’s writing life by making it into a form of literature. When life is a kind of art work, then suffering is not so bleak. That’s the optimistic analysis of Nehamas as he passionately traces the intricacies of Nietzsche’s life and thought.

Suffering is inevitable, but not mindless, and leads to becoming what one is. That’s the word from the man who eventually went mad from contracting syphilis.

Presented by Lyn Gallacher.

Audio Link:
Life As Literature

Publications:
Life As Literature
Author: Alexander Nehamas
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Ecce Homo, How One Becomes What One Is.
Author: Freidrich Nietzsche
Translated by R.J. Hollingdale
Publisher: Penguin Books

Musical Items:
Mein Platz vor der Tur
CD Title: Friedrich Neietzsche Lieder Piano Works
Artist: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Label/CD No: Phillips 426 863-2

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Operation Enduring Childhood

Oh dear is Rumsfeld increasingly delusional or what? Or maybe he is simply reverting to second childhood due to the pressures of explaining all the stuff ups in Iraq.

Pick the odd one out … US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld flexes his muscles alongside Marvel comic heroes Spiderman and Captain America at the Pentagon in Washington. More than one million copies of Marvel’s Salute Our Troops comic books will be distributed to US troops in May.
Photo: Reuters

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Operation Enduring Childhood

Oh dear is Rumsfeld increasingly delusional or what? Or maybe he is simply reverting to second childhood due to the pressures of explaining all the stuff ups in Iraq.

Pick the odd one out … US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld flexes his muscles alongside Marvel comic heroes Spiderman and Captain America at the Pentagon in Washington. More than one million copies of Marvel’s Salute Our Troops comic books will be distributed to US troops in May.
Photo: Reuters

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‘It’s not 42!’

Surprisingly heard this interview this evening on Radio National –

Summary:

With the new film Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy comes a book to match: “The Science of Hitchhiker’s”. It’s by journalist Mike Hanlon and canvasses all the technology Douglas Adams foresaw: paranoid androids, galactic bypasses and the significance of 42. Mike Hanlon reveals all.

Here is the audio link (Real Media) –
In Conversation with Mike Hanlon

or here is the transcript, if you would prefer to read it –

In Conversation with Mike Hanlon

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‘It’s not 42!’

Surprisingly heard this interview this evening on Radio National –

Summary:

With the new film Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy comes a book to match: “The Science of Hitchhiker’s”. It’s by journalist Mike Hanlon and canvasses all the technology Douglas Adams foresaw: paranoid androids, galactic bypasses and the significance of 42. Mike Hanlon reveals all.

Here is the audio link (Real Media) –
In Conversation with Mike Hanlon

or here is the transcript, if you would prefer to read it –

In Conversation with Mike Hanlon

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Protected: Great Day

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Great Day

Got up and pottered around, checked e-mail and listened to the morning radio – two programs about bloggers, their influence in the media and in society. Went in to town and considered buying a digital camera but unfortunately the one I want is expensive and I know I can get it cheaper if I wait for next year when I plan to go os for a holiday and I can get it without all the taxes on it. I could get an el cheapo one but decided to wait.

I then went down to Darling Harbour to have a look-see at HM Bark Endeavour. Sparkling day, perfectly beautiful, almost summer but without the exhausting humidity. My god is that ship small. I would have had an attack of the screaming meemies at the claustrophobic living conditions if I were aboard for a cruise. The headroom below decks shown in the Surprise was reasonable in comparison to the Midshipmen’s mess and the Officer’s Cabins for’ard on the Mess Deck. I’m short but I had to walk doubled down to avoid hitting my head. I think all the officers and if there were tall midshipmen would have suffered from bad backs from walking doubled over when below. They list in the little guide the officers’ names and the Master, the 2nd Lieutenant and the Ship’s Surgeon all died I assume on that one trip out to Australia. A marine committed suicide by jumping overboard the night after being “sent to Coventry” by his fellow marines for stealing(inspiration perhaps for the scene in M&C).

The Officers’ Mess and Gentlemen’s Cabins were more airy and I could stand upright. The Gentlemen who were sailing as part of Sir Joseph Banks’ research team must have been a sickly lot as well. Charles Green, the astronomer and Herman Sporing secretary to Sir Joseph and Sydney Parkinson, artist died of dysentery and the other artist, Alexander Buchan died of epilepsy. It seems only Solander and Banks survived.

The Great Cabin in truth is very small with a cute little stove to keep the room warm on cold nights, modelled after one recovered from the wreck of HMS Pandora. Various letters and botanical specimens, diaries were on the table, copies I assume of the originals. Cook had to share the cabin with Banks and his group. Cook’s sleeping place was a little forward of the Great Cabin and was not much bigger than any of the other officers’ little hidey-holes.

The guides were knowledgeable and helpful and it amazed me that it took a full hour and a bit for me to get through and see such a tiny ship. Sorry about no photos but you’ll receive something in the mail in the next few weeks (depending on the speed of Australia Post and Germany’s Postal Service) which I think you will like.

This is the web page for the Australian National Maritime Museum’s temporary exhibitions –

Australian National Maritime Museum

which includes a link to the Endeavour website –

HMB Endeavour

I then went back to the main part of the Maritime Museum to look at the exhibit, Les Génies de la Mer – Masterpieces of French Naval Sculpture to look at the figureheads and the very ornate statuary and other decorations of French Ships from the time of Louis XIV to that of Napoleon. It was absolutely sumptuous some of the stuff they carved and designed and the size of the pieces were surprising, much bigger than life size, truly monumental. I wondered that they were so big. It must have effected the efficiency of the sailing of the ship and wondered why they permitted them. It’s probably why they were phased out in the 19th Century when ship design became much more utilitarian.

After the Maritime Museum I wandered through Darling Harbour back to the city for lunch and went to see Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a very enjoyable wryly witty film. Not a fall down laughing hysterical type movie just a whimsical and very dry British type of wit. There were some new sequences not from the radio show or the books but it was good and loved Marvin the depressed robot (voiced by Alan Rickman)in comparison to the super-optimistic ship’s computer of the Heart of Gold starship. Got to hear some Vogon poetry and loved the original opening sequence, a sort of Busby Berkeley musical number thingy but with dolphins as the chief performers leaping around to the singing of So Long and Thanks for the Fish.
Stephen Fry’s voice was perfect for informatory voice overs. Just the right tone and Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast, designer of fjords and award-winning ones in Norway was good too, as was the actor who played the hyper-manic Zaphod Beeblebrox. Interesting cameo with John Malkovich as Humma Kavula, a character I don’t remember from the books. I think this character has been created for the movie.

Then got home and my copy of Persons, Animals, Ships and Cannon in the Aubrey-Maturin Sea Novels of PO’B was waiting for me at the post office. So a good day all round.

To end on a nautical note here is a cartoon from Leunig sending up the US attempts to stymie our wheat trade with Iraq in order to take it over, falsely claiming that we contaminated our wheat with iron and pressuring the Iraqis to refuse the shipments –

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