Top 10 Songs of 2007

Faves this year... and just plain listened to a lot this year:

1. Leo and Leona - Butch Hancock
2. Badder Badder Schwing (featuring Fatboy Slim) Freddy Fresh
3. Think - Aretha Franklin
4. Spanish Grease - Willie Bobo
5. The World is on Fire - Billy Harvey
6. 23 Minutes in Brussels - Luna
7. Namaste - Beastie Boys
8. Kapt'n Kirk - Bob Schneider
9. Gymnopedie No. 1 - Erik Satie
10. Higher Ground - Red Hot Chili Peppers (Stevie Wonder cover)

Happy New Year!


This one is funny with the bad counting and after the drop chatter.

Writer's Strike Link

Help a writer. Help someone escape the crush of big business. Help a union.

http://firedoglake.com/wga/index.php/write/compose/

Got run...

Babies gravitate toward Good Samaritans

Today I studied two topics... 'why humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others' and 'baby social behaviors.' When I stumbled on to this new baby study it made me happy, so that's what we're going with today. (I also studied the theory that all emotions boil down to happy/sad/scared/mad and I'm trying to apply it to daily life to help get to the heart of things and cut through the noise.)

So, babies are like totally smart… it’s a survival thing. (Also, I read an article on cooperation that states that humans and apes have 'happy' hormone releases from cooperating and helping others, but I can't find it again. If anyone has read it, link it to me please.)

Six- and 10-month-old babies are much more capable judges of character than previously thought. Not only can infants pick out a Good Samaritan, they tend to identify with them, according to a Yale University study published in the journal Nature.

The study released last month presented babies with a diorama-like display of an anthropomorphic circle struggling to make it up a hill. Just when it appeared that all hope was lost, a heroic triangle appeared, and pushed the circle to the top. The round climber bounces, clearly elated to have reached the summit. The same scenario is played out again, only this time a square appears at the top of the hill and pushes the circle to the bottom.

The babies were then asked to pick a toy – the helper or the hinderer, as scientists called them. One hundred percent of 6-month-olds and 87.5 percent of 10-month-olds chose the helper. The results were consistent even when the triangle and the square swapped places as good guy and bad guy. In several other iterations of the experiment, the helper, regardless of shape or color, won out.

"Babies are very competent socially," says Kiley Hamlin, lead author of the study. "They can figure this kind of stuff out without people explicitly teaching what's nice and not nice and who's nice and who's not nice."

In another component of the study, researchers showed the circle choosing to sit with the helper or the hinderer. In this instance they found that 10-month-old babies were far more adept at noticing something seemed strange when the circle decided to sit with the hinderer. (They figured this out by how long the baby watched the helper or hinderer pair up with the circle, working under the assumption that babies, like adults, study something that appears out of the ordinary.)

While other research has shown that babies make assessments about people based on their physical appearance – they gravitate toward attractive people – these new findings show more complex levels of judgment.

"In any species that needs to cooperate as much as humans do … we always need to know who might be a good cooperator and who might not," says Ms. Hamlin.

Thank you Tom A. Peter.

Why Do You Keep This Hideous Photograph?

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Childhood fancies

When I was a child one of my fantasies was to move to nyc, marry Mikhail Baryshnikov and be tutored by Twyla Tharp and Diane Von Furstenberg on moving gracefully from girlhood to ladyhood to womanhood all the while being incredibly sexy and smart.

I still desire to transition from one frame of my life to the next with grace and elegance. I still look to strong older women for guidance and inspiration.

Mikhail Baryshnikov


Twyla Tharp


Diane Von Furstenberg

Very Short Novels

A blog has caught my interest. I've read it with fervor... I'm a bit addicted even and try to only read one story per day. It is hard. The stories are compelling and only 299 words long. I submit to you, Very Short Novels. It is not unlike organizing a small space; only the essentials, but with style and aesthetic.

http://davidbdale.wordpress.com