Columbia lecture turns into a Broadway show

Who says Columbia kids don't know how to have fun? (thank you Kage for the link)

Qui Bono?

It's interesting you bring up the subject of evolutionary model of developement of music. I've been reading Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett and finally getting to juicy parts about the evolutionary model of cultures.

It's hard to immediately come up with an explanation for how music could make human beings more survivable. But the question of whether music makes human beings more survivable is not quite relevant to proving or disproving the evolutionary model. How is that you say? Let's quickly go back to some basics about the biological evolutionary model involving the DNA and expand on the idea with the concept of memes.

Important thing to remember from biological evolutionary model is that what matters is the survivability of the information in the DNA, not neccesarily the well being of the creature that contains the DNA. The classic mistake in thinking about biological evolutionary model is that what matters is the survivability of the creatures. The actual entity that survives from generation to generation is the molecular patterns in the DNA that constitudes genetic information. Various genetic patterns compete to continue their existence by copying themselves as often as possible inside the DNA. Of course if there is too much junk genetic patterns in the DNA it makes the creature that contain it weaker and less survivable, so they might be less likely to mate and have off springs. Eventually mechanisms that control such rampant distructive proliferation of such genes will eventually get in place, genes will keep each other in check. This sort of phenomena can be observed in real time (versus evolutionary time of millions or years) in creatures like fruit flies. In 1950s a lineage of fruit flies naturally developed through normal mutation what is popularly called the "p element" in its DNA. P element is a parasitic gene that copies itself rampantly across the DNA. P element itself did not add anything to the survivability of the fruit flies, in fact it hampered the survivability of fruit fly creatures, but it was extremely prolific within the DNA because it was so good at copying itself inside there from generation to generation. Eventually rest of the fruit fly genomes have adapted and found ways to supress the P element (as DNAsthat did not adapt was "infected" by P elements beyond survivability). However P element still exists widely inside fruit fly DNA to this day.

The latin phrase people use when asking questions like this is "Qui Bono?". (who benefits?) Did the fruit flies benefit from the P elements? The answer is no. Proliferation of P elements is irrelevant to the well-being of the fruit flies (until it reaches a point where fruit flies are being bogged down by so much junk P element genes that they become significantly less survivable and thus less likely to procreate and pass on the genes).

Now, I like to content that human biological evolution has halted a long time ago. We no longer allow the biology weak to perish. In fact our unique ingenuity has allowed us to become free of such a relentless system and we now figure out ways to keep the physically weaker alive and allow them to procreate. The consequence of this is that our DNA pool is objectively becoming worse and less survivable. The reason why this can happen in an evolutionary model is that DNA is no longer the method of choice for communicating information that contributes to survivability of humanity from generation to generation. Before human beings, generations of creatures would have to die for that species to "learn" (through process of elimination) how to handle a new situation. Now that is no longer neccesary. We communicate in real time through words, pictures, videos, etc. Human beings have biologically evolved to a point where information most vital to survival can be stored and transmitted from generation to generation from and to our brains. Human evolution is now no longer a genetic evolution. To use a term coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976), our mode of evolution is through memes - memory genes - fragments of information that is stored in our brains like genes are stored in the DNA.

Evolution of memes can happen much faster than that of genes. In the span of a few years (or even days) vast numbers of new patterns will emerge, proliferate, then disappear. Some will provide genuine benefit to the well being of mankind. Others will be free loaders much like P element is inside fruit flies.

Where does music fit into this? I think the benefit of music for human kind is a complex thing to measure. I think it creates a commonality that can enhance social cohesion that can improve the survivability of that society. Creative tendencies such as one involved in making music could be the same as ones that yield more tangible benefits for human beings. But a catchy tune that just turns out to "get stuck" in people head easily such that we infect one another through humming, and en masse over the radio waves, could simply be free loaders like the P elements.

Should music be abolished if it adds nothing to human survivability? Of course not. I think the problem happens when people mistake evolutionary science as a social philosophy. We can better understandd how the world works and so far it appears to run under an evolutionary model. The natural world is ruthless. But human beings have experience of happiness that is independant of that. Our challenge is to use everything we know about the world to further our goal of enhancing our human experience.

Chelsea Safe?

Well, it looks like our neighborhood is pretty safe if you're worried about getting murdered. Do you have one for men getting raped? Actually, I don't wanna know.
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For the 3 of you Xbox 360 owners out there that managed to snag one, keep an eye out for the marketplace (the download section on the X360) during E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo, March 10th). Microsoft is, in a surprise first, going to be uploading demos and videos of the games that will be shown there WHILE E3 is going on. Rumor has it, Halo 3 will be shown at E3. 720P Halo 3 video? Sounds pretty good to me. Also sounds like they are asking to have their servers killed by the bandwidth overload. I wish them luck.
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So, one of the arguments posed to me once upon a time in another life, was... "the reason why evolution can't be true is because..." "music."

Of course, there were many reasons, but the one that stumped me all those years ago was the music question.

Why do we enjoy music? How could evolution be the cause of our enjoyment of this art (or any art for that matter)? ...Basically challenging the notion that evolution could not possibly be responsible for our ability to be creative.

At the time I had to think on my feet. I am not sure what I said back then, but I'm sure I tried my best to deflect it, since I didn't really have an answer.

So, why do we enjoy music? What evolutionary purpose would it serve? Any ideas Cat?

NYC Murders Plotted over Google Map

I was reading an New York Times article on murders in NYC. The general trend as you know is that murder rate has been dropping and that if you do not engage in criminal activity your chance to death by homicide is extremely low.

In anycase, what I thought was really interesting is how they used Google Map to plot all the murders in recent times over NYC.

Murders in NYC on Google Map

8 Bit Art

Holy crap dude. Legitimate 8-Bit art. This stuff is amazing.

http://www.fort90.com/journal/?p=205

http://www.iam8bit.net/preview/

http://www.iam8bit.net/gallery/gallery.htm

Please hold my Wii Wii

Is that superman sign real or photoshopped? It's true that you do super human amount of work at your job. (or is it subhuman? hahaha) Oh yeah, while we're talking about your work, where's our damned microwave oven!!

But let's talk about Wii. (pronounced "We") You guys probably heard of Nintendo: Revolution, the next generation console coming out from Nintendo with funky controllers. Revolution was a code name of course, like the Game Cube was called Dolphin initially. Nintendo announced that the real name of the Revolution will be Wii. Weeeee. We? I think this link pretty sums it up for me:

(sound required)
http://nintendorevolutionnamed.ytmnd.com/

I feel like this is a product of having gone through too many marketting task groups that it lost touch with reality. I mean, I understand where they are coming from. It's a neat idea for a name, I like the symbolisms, but Weeeee? Can you imagine telling your friends. "Hey guys, come over tonight and let's all play with my Weee." Come on, it makes you sound like a pedophile. But hey, it's generating all this media buzz, so maybe it's not a bad thing. No publicity is bad publicity right?

I can just see the Japanese reviews coming in. "American XBox sooooo much bigga den Japanese Wee."

Second!

Damn! Just wasn't fast enough. I'm "game" just please, no polls about who's posts are better... I can't bear the humiliation! =P

So, this morning when I was eating breakfast, I was soooo sad because my little doggied died yesterday, and all I could think about was how I broke up with my true love 3 weeks ago, and that got me wondering about true love and when I'm ever going to find someone... oh none of that allowed here? Ah.. got it!

Well, to start off, here is a picture that should demonstrate how important I am at my place of employment:













Another day. Another damsel in distress. Curtesy of the new wardrobe from OMalekan's sis... and coworkers that will take every opportunity to poke fun.

So Cat, what do you think of the new

Wii? I can't wait, cause then I can say things like, "Wii can go play with our Wii Wii's"

Nintendo... sometimes I wonder if they TRY to get people to make fun of them.

First!

This is Cataclyst claiming the first post! Victory is mine. Of course it's unfair since I just sent out the invitation to Gig, there's no way he could register in time to beat me to the first post.

Gig and I've been talking about doing a collaborative blog for a while. I think this will be an ideal way for us to exchange news and have discussions and share it with the rest of the world. With the emphasis on information worthy of sharing and discussing with each other, we'll also cut out a lot of ambiguous personal crap. Our goal is to make a blog worth coming back to regularly. We are going to entertain ourselves and entertain you.

So what say you Gig?