mishkanazapade

Somewhat soporific narration accompanies the most amazing footage filmed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his team. That's the project that he mentions in his TED talk. Don't forget to click on HD button (if bandwidth allows) to watch the movie in higher definition.


If video doesn't work, here is the link to English version with subtitles.
С переводом на русский язык


Books by Yann Arthus-Bertrand from Amazon.com:

Earth from Above, Third Edition
The New Earth From Above: 365 Days

Speaking of the obsession with the music, just finished a book called "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" written by a Professor of Clinical Neurology and Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, Oliver Sacks. I hoped that he would talk about different theories regarding the mechanism by which music affects our mood, emotions, etc., instead he described different cases of music obsession, hallucinations, dreams, talked about several music savants and people with amusia, unable to perceive music at all. The first chapter was the most entertaining, the rest - I mostly flipped through the pages. The book overall is probably not worth your time, unless you have particular interest in that topic. The book opening, however, was intriguing. You can see for yourself below.

Tony Cicoria was forty-two, very fit and robust, a former college football player who had become a well-regarded orthopedic surgeon in a small city in upstate New York. He was at a lakeside pavilion for a family gathering one fall afternoon. It was pleasant and breezy, but he noticed a few storm clouds in the distance; it looked like rain.

He went to a pay phone outside the pavilion to make a quick call to his mother (this was in 1994, before the age of cell phones). He still remembers every single second of what happened next: "I was talking to my mother on the phone. There was a little bit of rain, thunder in the distance. My mother hung up. The phone was a foot away from where I was standing when I got struck. I remember a flash of light coming out of the phone. It hit me in the face. Next thing I remember, I was flying backwards."

Then — he seemed to hesitate before telling me this — "I was flying forwards. Bewildered. I looked around. I saw my own body on the ground. I said to myself, 'Oh shit, I'm dead.' I saw people converging on the body. I saw a woman — she had been standing waiting to use the phone right behind me — position herself over my body, give it CPR. . . . I floated up the stairs — my consciousness came with me. I saw my kids, had the realization that they would be okay. Then I was surrounded by a bluish-white light . . . an enormous feeling of well-being and peace. The highest and lowest points of my life raced by me. No emotion associated with these … pure thought, pure ecstasy. I had the perception of accelerating, being drawn up .. there was speed and direction. Then, as I was saying to myself, 'This is the most glorious feeling I have ever had' — SLAM! ( Read more... )

Если бы не моя бабушка, которая согласно семейной легенде была одна из менее чем дюжины (?) людей, сбежавших из Борисовского гетто, не было бы сегодня mishkanazapade. Сейчас это тяжело представить. Вечная благодарность дедушкам и бабушкам. Вечная память погибшим (список погибших в Борисовском гетто).

Одна из лучших прочитанных мною книг на эту тему и не только - "Тяжелый песок".

" ... Что было особенного в моем отце? Ничего. Правда, он родился в Швейцарии, в Базеле. В нашем городке не так уж много уроженцев Швейцарии. Говоря точнее, им был только мой отец. В остальном — обыкновенный сапожник. Плохой сапожник. Его отец, мой дедушка, был в Базеле профессором медицины, а братья, мои дяди, — докторами медицины. И моему отцу тоже следовало стать доктором медицины. Но он стал сапожником, и, как я уже сказал, неважным сапожником.

Мою фамилию вы знаете —Ивановский. Мой отец тоже был Ивановский, дедушка из Базеля — Ивановский, дяди— Ивановские и кузены, те, что сейчас живут в Базеле, — тоже Ивановские. Может быть, там они не просто Ивановские, а какие‑нибудь перелицованные на немецкий лад, скажем Ивановски. Но, как ни поворачивать, остается Ивановский. Мой прадедушка родился в селе Ивановке, а тогда был обычай давать фамилию по названию города, деревни или местечка, откуда ты родом. Прадедушка был человек состоятельный и, когда его единственный сын, то есть мой дедушка, окончил гимназию, послал его учиться в Швейцарию. Дедушка окончил университет в Базеле и там же, в Базеле, женился. Женился на дочери врача, владельца большой клиники. Тесть умер, клиника перешла к моему деду, а после него к его ..."

I was a very curious boy growing up. I read pretty much everything I could get my hands on and was especially fascinated with the science - physics, chemistry, astronomy, you name it. The ultimate physics books that we had at home were famous Feynman's "Lectures on Physics". If I remember correctly we had all 9 volumes proudly standing on the bookshelf. I cannot tell you how many times I picked one of those books off the shelf only to put it shortly back unfinished. To my chagrin, many secrets of nature still remained a mystery to me. I remember vaguely the story about Schroedinger's cat, but failed to understand Lorenz transformations, special relativity and don't get me started with twins paradox.

Few days ago I decided that it is never too late to learn and went to a library. There I saw Feynman's books. The childhood memories came back to me at once, but being a busy professional living in XXI century I thought to myself "Who has time to read all these books. Moreover, it is probably so last century by now". So, as it often happens nowadays, I decided to get myself some kind of Cliff's notes of Feynman's lectures. I found the book called "Classic Feynman" and being certain that it is likely to be a collection of his best lectures under one cover checked the book out without even opening it.

Boy, could I be more wrong! I was so surprised (and deep down probably relieved) that book has nothing to do with physics and a lot to do with Feynman himself. I am reading it now and enjoying it immensely. I am sure had it been a real physics book, this post wouldn't exist. So for you, my friends, who into this kind of stuff, my best recommendations for this tome - Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character. (I totally missed "the Adventures of a Curious Character" part of a title when I saw the book).

( Below is the excerpt from the book )

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

by Isaac Asimov

After years of delays, Ayn Rand's famous novel "Atlas Shrugged" is being made into a feature film starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, according to media reports. Lionsgate Films bought the rights to the film version of the 1957 novel, considered in many polls to be one of the most influential books in history.

According to Hollywood trade paper Variety, the Mr. And Mrs. Smith co-stars, who are both fans of the Russian novelist, would play the lead roles of Dagny Taggart and John Gault. The story revolves around the economic collapse of the United States sometime in the future and espouses Rand's philosophy of objectivism.