"Sound is touch at a distance."

Sound is touch at a distance. When you think of it. It seems true. When your lonely you seem to want to play or sing sad music. When your happy, you want to play or sing happy music. At parties or dances they usually play loud fast moving music and then have a slow song where the mood in the room cools off a little. In the same way when your happy your voice is usually a bit higher and a bit clearer than when your sad and when you want to comfort someone your voice is usually soft low and soothing. Many people feel like they can relate to the artists writing music when they listen to songs. When I feel lonely, it makes me feel better to put on some music. It makes me feel like someone else is there. Knowing how I feel. Hugging me. Or when I'm happy it makes me feel brave to dance and to be myself when I listen to upbeat music. Like I'm not going to just suddenly start jamming to the beat when there isn't some music in my head. I don't have the support. The invisible person telling me to let go and have a good time. The invisible person holding my hand and swinging it around, holding on to my shoulders and making a train.

You can listen to the real radiolab podcast here
http://www.radiolab.org/2007/sep/24/sound-as-touch/

Men Are Finished

I recently came across an Intelligence Squared debate named Men Are Finished. Here it is:

But, for those of you who don't have an hour and forty minutes of spare time, which I totally get, here's a quick, probably inadequate, summary. The side that says yes, men are finish pull out facts and statistics about how women are surpassing men in the quality of their work, rate of people who go to college, rates of people who get good jobs, and behavior at school. The other side argues that men are not finished. Women are just catching up to them. Although the side that states Men Are Finished did a much better job at arguing and debating (and won), I still believe that men are not finished and women are just catching up to men. I say this because although it has been proven that at least til high school girls are smarter than boys, but boys are  known to be better at math and many good jobs such as engineering, computer programming, economics, designing, architecture, etc. require good math skills. But perhaps this is only because men are "riding on the fumes of sexism".

Muscle Memory

Ever find that you can't remember a telephone number when you just try to say it, but if you have a phone in front of you, you suddenly can? Or, if you've had some code or pin number, that you could always type, but not say? That, is the wonders of muscle memory. That, is also what I just blogged about on my other blog http://classicalmusicandme.blogspot.com/. You rely on muscle memory  a lot more than you realize. For example, when you're walking you use muscle memory. This is the reason you don't fall every few steps like you did as a toddler. I believe this is also the reason why once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget. Unless of course you suffer some sort of brain damage or develop a brain disease like Alzheimer's.