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POPSDigital Sound Separator The new tool promises to give musicians and producers powerful new ways to manipulate recordings both old and new.It might let studio engineers peer inside a chord-heavy rhythm-guitar part and nudge individual notes into tune. Or it could let them salvage unheard takes by classic musicians like Duke Ellington or Jimi Hendrix, left unreleased due to out-of-tune instruments or misplayed notes. It will certainly give musicians new ability to sculpt sound, such as prerecorded samples or loops, as if they were modeling clay.
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POPSWho Are We? Coming of Age on Antidepressants The reason has to do with the way drugs are tested and approved. To get F.D.A. approval, a drug has to beat a placebo in two randomized clinical trials that typically involve a few hundred subjects who are treated for relatively short periods, usually 4 to 12 weeks.So drugs are approved based on short-term studies for what turns out to be long-term — often lifelong — use in the world of clinical practice. What do I say to a depressed patient who is doing well after five years on such a drug but can’t stop without a depressive relapse and who wants reassurance that the drug has no long-term adverse effects?I usually say that we have no evidence that the drug poses a risk with long-term use; and since the risk of untreated depression is much greater than the hypothetical risk of the drug, it makes sense to stay on it.
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POPSTop 10 Linux Games Athough Linux is not a gaming platform there are quite some good games available. Below we list the Top 10 of the "Top 25 Linux Games" reviewed in the 'because you value your mind' weblog.
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POPSColor Psychology Color psychology is concerned with the effects of color on mood, emotion, behavior.Colors are not only used for decorations or adding beauty to an object, but they can be used to determine personality traits to affect people’s mood and to effect on other people around you. Each colour is connected to various areas of our body and will affect us differently emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Several ancient cultures, including the Egyptians and Chinese, practiced chromotherapy, or using colors to heal. Chromotherapy is sometimes referred to as light therapy or colourology and is still used today as a holistic or alternative treatment. In this treatment: * Red was used to stimulate the body and mind and to increase circulation. * Yellow was thought to stimulate the nerves and purify the body. * Orange was used to heal the lungs and to increase energy levels. * Blue was believed to soothe illnesses and treat pain. I'll take red :-)
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POPSCommonly overused words "When you write, use the most precise word for your meaning, not the word that comes to mind first. Consult this thesaurus to find alternatives for some commonly overused words. Consult a full-length thesaurus to find alternatives to words that do not appear here. Keep in mind that the choices offered in a thesaurus do not all mean exactly the same thing. Review all the options, and choose the one that best expresses your meaning."
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POPSEveryone is a book of blood
...until he realizes that there are greater forces at work than he had ever thought. And there, I think, is a story with a perfect happy ending - he goes through hell and he comes through on the other side, utterly changed, utterly transformed.... At the end of 'In The Hills, The Cities', both protagonists die, but they gain meaning, extraordinary meaning. Perhaps not a meaning that one would want to celebrate... It's ambiguous. But when they see the beasts in the hills, some new vision is presented to them which hitherto they wouldn't even have been capable of imagining.... I very much like the ambiguity or the ambivalence of a moment which can be terrible and significant simultaneously, the way that many of the pivotal moments in our lives are very often rites of passage moments in which things are lost which can never be claimed again. Yet the territory ahead is, by virtue of the fact that it is new, also exciting and extraordinary." Clive Barker on the books of blood
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POPSThe Singularity The technological singularity is a hypothesized point in the future variously characterized by the technological creation of self-improving intelligence, unprecedentedly rapid technological progress, or some combination of the two. Below clips about the book and a film "The Singularity is Near".
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POPSTechnological advances in the next 25 year PC World predictions about technological advances in the next 25 years, including devices that deliver information and entertainment to our homes and our pockets, sensors that monitor our environment and chips that deliver augment reality inside our bodies.
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POPSImaginary friends While it's generally perfectly fine to humor your child and go along with her claims about the existence of an imaginary friend, there are a few ground rules: -Don't let the "friend" be your child's only companion. -Don't let your child shift responsibility for everything bad to the friend. -Treat the friend with respect. -Don't use the friend to manipulate your child. Most kids lose their imaginary friends between their third and fifth birthdays. Sometimes the friends are forgotten, sometimes they're sent on a distant and permanent trip, and other times they "die" in a horrible accident. (from familyresource.com) Pretend friends rarely are a sign of emotional problems.If a child claims a friend is controlling her and making her do things she doesn't want to do, parents should seek psychological help.But if a child isn't depressed and has real-life friends too, pretend pals shouldn't cause concern. In fact, parents should look for day care and preschool programs that
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POPSMusic-Induced Epilepsy Cured I have heard of lots of strange medical illnesses (and had a few of them) ... but this one is really unusual. Seizures caused by music. The surgeon had to remove the part of her brain that was reacting to the musical stimulation. I wonder if she still experiences music the same way now? The article doesn't say.
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POPSSappho's poetry Her style was sensual and melodic; primarily songs of love, yearning, and reflection. Most commonly the target of her affections was female, often one of the many women sent to her for education in the arts. She nurtured these women, wrote poems of love and adoration to them, and when they eventually left the island to be married, she composed their wedding songs. That Sappho's poetry was not condemned in her time for its homoerotic content (though it was disparaged by scholars in later centuries) suggests that perhaps love between women was not persecuted then as it has been in more recent times. Especially in the last century, Sappho has become so synonymous with woman-love that two of the most popular words to describe female homosexuality--lesbian and sapphic have derived from her. Plato elevated her from the status of great lyric poet to one of the muses.
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POPSLed Zeppelin let the 'Good Times' roll The new member is Jason Bonham, son of legendary drummer, John Bonham. 20 million fans vying for 18,000 tickets, including a fan that paid $168,000 for a pair, most are hoping for more tour dates
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POPSAI Singularity: The Next Stage of Human Evolution? "Technology is heading here. It will predictably get to the point of making artificial intelligence," Yudkowsky said. "The mere fact that you cannot predict exactly when it will happen down to the day is no excuse for closing your eyes and refusing to think about it."
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POPSOur Earth as Art Welcome to the Earth as Art Gallery.Here you can view our planet through the beautiful images taken by the Landsat-7 satellite - and most recently, the Terra Satellite's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER). This gallery of images uses the visceral avenue of art to convey the thrilling perspective of the Earth that satellites provide to the viewer.
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