Ransen's Blog

 The program Can a machine read my mind? confirmed my opinion that concepts are above, at a higher level, than language.   In the program Marcel Just explains that there is a universal language of the brain, and concepts are stored identically in brains which use different languages. He gave the example of "An old man throws a stone into a lake." That idea activated the same areas of the brain in people who spoke different languages. And this is just the beginning.   See also Concepts before Language .

 There is a ton of podcast/audio dross out there, so be guided by me, search out these programs: KCRW's The Business is about the movie business, mainly in the US, with comments on  Hollywood news and interviews with key artists/producers etc. Always interesting:   Call Jonathan Pie , a BBC podcast, a comedy which uses extremely bad language, is sometimes politically incorrect, and very funny:   The Beef And Dairy Network a BBC comedy podcast. I have to admit that the first time I listened to it I did not "get it." Impossible to describe, so just give it a couple of episodes before deciding if you like it or not.   Last and not least The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry , a science podcast which is actually fun. Wonderful.

 I read On The Spiritual in Art , by Kandinsky interested to see what he meant. He was the first famous abstract painter and I do like his paintings.  The book is as odd as he is. He says (and I agree with him, 100 years later) that: " The observer these days is incapable of emotion when looking at a work of art.  The observer looks for objective reality or interpretation. Thus the observer misses the whole point. "  Elsewhere in the book though he goes into mechanical detail of how to construct colors and images to have this emotional effect. Here is a small selection: Black mixed with any other color evokes tragedy . (Does it? Really?) Green contains yellow and blue as paralyzed forces which can be reactivated. (Here he shows he does not understand light mixing.) Blue evokes the infinite. (That seems true if you only think of skies. But why not black as well? A dark night sky full of stars for example) Yellow never contains a profound meaning. (A bit of an arbitrary stat

 

 Apart from the awful name, this is a good comedy written by Tom Craine and Henry Paker: If you are interested in film history here's one for you: Even if you are not interested in classical music, Mozart in particular, this is a good play: This collection of connected short stories about a talent contest in Belfast is very good. Each story told by a different aspiring star: An interesting adaption of a book in 10 short episodes This seems to be a ghost story, but isn't, it is something stranger:

 Use your fucking indicators you twat.