Day: June 29, 2001

Are you a classical music snob? You may have a right to gloat. Neuroscientists begin to suspect that appreciating classical music takes more grey matter. As aficionados develop dementing disease, one study shows, they lose their appreciation of classical music and begin to like pop; apparently it never goes the other way ’round. One expert concedes, however, that there are some ‘highly academic’ people who like pop music,

I have to say, however, that this goes against the grain of my own clinical experience. In my work with demented patients, most still appreciate and take comfort in classical music if that was previously their musical choice. Mere force of habit? Perhaps the emergence of new tastes in senescence is not a sign of diminished capacities but, in a paradoxical way, capacities enhanced by dementia, another study suggests. BBC

Netizens: On the History and Impact of the Net, Michael Hauben’s and Ronda Hauben’s on-line and paper book, coined the term netizen and “presents the history and impact of various aspects of the Net: the Internet, ARPANET, Usenet, etc. We hope to provide information which will help readers to understand where the Net has come from so as to help preserve its value throughout future developments and changes.” I learned on MetaFilter that Michael Hauben has just died at 27.

Kendall Clark: The Global Privileges of Whiteness — “White racism, and the White supremacist ideology it reflects, and the network of White privilege it maintains, are alive and well.

Racist expressions of White supremacist ideology maintain three particular nodes in the vast network of White privilege: White empire, White corporate profits, and aggrieved White victimhood…” monkeyfist

“The studies are very significant in that we have a group of people with no brain function … who have well-structured, lucid thought processes with reasoning and memory formation at a time when their brains are shown not to function.” Scientist Says Mind Continues After Brain Dies — “A British scientist studying heart attack patients says he is finding evidence that suggests that consciousness may continue after the brain has stopped functioning and a patient is clinically dead.

The research, presented to scientists last week at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), resurrects the debate over whether there is life after death and whether there is such a thing as the human soul.” Reuters

Japan rape report worries US: ‘The United States says it is taking reports that American soldiers may have been involved in the rape of a woman on the Japanese island of Okinawa “very seriously” ‘… yet again. BBC