TED talks, Weekend Aesthetics

[tcpip]

During the last trip to Aotearoa New Zealand, I stayed a couple of nights in Cambridge with a certain Matthew Simmons, whom I've known since he was CEO of a GPU-based storage company called Nyriad. Prior to that he had his own audio engineering business, mainly for high-end speakers, which is still doing plenty. And he even had the opportunity to do a TED talk on the subject of infrasound applications. Following this, I have started the actual content for the final unit in my psychology degree and it also, in the first week of readings, also includes a couple of very interesting TED talks. One is James Flynn on why our IQ levels are so much higher than our grandparents (he blames the increased prevalence of abstract reasoning). The second one is Lera Boroditsky explaining on how language really does alter thought-processes, now that the data is available. It's not quite a strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis on a deterministic level, but it's certainly among the stronger arguments I've encountered.

The past few days have not been all work and study however; I was delighted to receive a message from my old friend Des J. on Saturday and we decided to venture to the National Gallery of Victoria; not that there was anything special on, we just want to look at art. The pair of us, both prone to a sense of the absurd, started describing the motives of characters in various artworks and it wasn't long before we'd gone completely Pythonesque in our assessments. Today, in a different manner, I was joined by Erica H., for a few episodes of The Sandman TV series. As an old fan of the comics ("graphic novels") from the late 1980s, I was, of course, concerned that a mess could be made of it, and thankfully it is doing very well so far. I think it's fair to say that The Sandman series, having been part of popular culture for over thirty years, looks destined to enter the realm of high culture as well. And no, I don't think it's a contradiction to say that something can be "popular" and "high" culture simultaneously.

Comments

[motg]

I have had the honour of hearing Jim Flynn talk about IQ. He is a marvellous man. I like his dedication to The Data, and following wherever it leads.

[tcpip]

Yes, and he really hit the nail on the head when he identified that generational change to IQ, whilst it may have been influenced by better diet and healthcare, really came down to the fact that we are in a world where abstract and logical reasoning is more prevalent in daily life.