Consider the way a human face speaks

Consider the way a human face speaks with silent eloquence. In the view of Raymond Tallis, an eminent British doctor and a talented writer, the face of a man or woman constitutes “the most sign-packed surface in the universe.” Nothing else we see carries more meaning. Every face displays a pattern of dense emotional responses in the present and an archive of its owner’s experience in the past. And each one is both unique and mysterious.

via National Post

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1. Dennett argues that the 'hard problem' is a red herring - the whole question of how conscious first person experience arises from the biological function of the brain assumes that consciousness is a single thing that needs explaining. He suggests that there isn't a single thing that is consciousness, just a collection of mental components, but the fact we've named it as a single thing fools us. In his article Explaining the "Magic" of Consciousness, he gives a great analogy of how the use of the word 'the' was used in a card trick to make it seem completely mysterious even to fellow professional magicians. Article continues here. via Mind Hackers
2. The Naropa University Archive Project is preserving and providing access to over 5000 hours of recordings made at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The library was developed under the auspices of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (the university's Department of Writing and Poetics) founded in 1974 by poets Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg. It contains readings, lectures, performances, seminars, panels and workshops conducted at Naropa by many of the leading figures of the U.S.literary avant-garde. via Internet Archive:  Naropa Poetics Audio Archive
3. The Human Typewriter Project. Exactly what you think it is. via Quipsologies
4. You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss A few days ago I was sitting in a cafe in Palo Alto and a group of programmers came in on some kind of scavenger hunt. It was obviously one of those corporate "team-building" exercises. They looked familiar. I spend nearly all my time working with programmers in their twenties and early thirties. But something seemed wrong about these. There was something missing. And yet the company they worked for is considered a good one, and from what I overheard of their conversation, they seemed smart enough. In fact, they seemed to be from one of the more prestigious groups within the company. So why did it seem there was something odd about them? I have a uniquely warped perspective, because nearly all the programmers I know are startup founders. We've now funded 80 startups with a total of about 200 founders, nearly all of them programmers. I spend a lot of time with them, and not much with other programmers. So my mental image of a young programmer is a startup founder. The guys on the scavenger hunt looked like the programmers I was used to, but they were employees instead of founders. And it was startling how different they seemed. So what, you may say. So I happen to know a subset of programmers who are especially ambitious. Of course less ambitious people will seem different. But the difference between the programmers I saw in the cafe and the ones I was used to wasn't just a difference of degree. Something seemed wrong. I think it's not so much that there's something special about founders as that there's something missing in the lives of employees. I think startup founders, though statistically outliers, are actually living in a way that's more natural for humans. I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I'd only seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They're like different animals. And seeing those guys on their scavenger hunt was like seeing lions in a zoo after spending several years watching them in the wild. Read the rest of the article here. via Paul Graham | hat tip Hugh MacLeod [gapingvoid.com]
5. "The British-based Poetry Archive has released statistics that visitors to its website are now viewing a total of more than one million pages a month. More than 125,000 individuals - or 'unique visitors' in web jargon - have visited the site, which hosts poems and audio readings by the poets themselves." via The Telegraph (UK)

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