#but also the articles are fascinating! did you know archival studies groups are looking into ao3 and vtubers as ways of transforming

[polaraffect]

why must god give his toughest battles (an essay) to his strongest soldiers (a very sleepy boy)

#damien.txt #it's my final essay and it's due today but i haven't started any of it because i'm lowkey an idiot sjkdfhgsjk #nah it's like a 3 page essay it's really not hard i just have to like... actually read stuff and that's kinda rough #but also the articles are fascinating! did you know archival studies groups are looking into ao3 and vtubers as ways of transforming #information science and the ways in which we save our data? i didn't! i think it's really cool! #but i can't just talk about what i think is cool in the essay lol #but ahhh i'm so sleepy. i've yawned like 6 times in the past 10 minutes #and then after this i need to write my essay on d&d for my history class lol but that's not due until tomorrow and is arguably way easier #i'm really not even gonna have a finals week tbh it's just a finals weekend comprising of today and tomorrow and then i am finished

[writeinspiration]

There are a lot of differences between self-published authors and those working with a publishing house, but when it comes to book marketing, we’re all in the same boat. At a time when many authors find their marketing stipend barely covers the basics, writers of every stripe need to know how to market their own work effectively. If you have some money to splash around, you have a few options (such as marketing services and book trailers), but if your funds are limited, you need to know about guerrilla marketing.

That’s why, in this two-part article, I’ll be taking a look at exactly that. Here in part 1, we’ll talk about what guerrilla marketing is and how it works, while in part 2, we’ll look at the tips and specific techniques you can employ as a guerrilla marketer. So, apply your camouflage, keep low, and let’s get started.

What is guerrilla marketing?

A guerrilla fighter is someone fighting a lopsided war with limited equipment and little backup from any larger organization. Self-publishing authors are definitely guerrillas entering the fight for readers, but authors working with publishing houses can also find that they’re handed limited resources and left to sort things out for themselves.

Guerrilla marketing is all about doing a lot with a little, and for authors that means an approach built on two core concepts:

Spending time and effort instead of money,

Choosing tactics that offer maximum reward for limited input.

When it comes to the first concept, there isn’t much to say that we didn’t cover in Nobody Beats The Triangle, But You Can Be Prepared For It: you can use time and effort to make up for a small budget, but you have to plan ahead to do so well. Of course, time and effort are limited, and that’s where we come to the second core concept.

Guerrilla marketing uses sparse resources to incredible effect.CLICK TO TWEET

It’s not enough to just plug away at your marketing. You can only do so much, and at a certain level, money can achieve a reach that one person’s maximum effort just can’t. That means that you need to be pouring the resources you do have into the actions that will give you the biggest reward. For example, getting forty random people to read your book is nothing compared to putting it in the hands of one prominent book blogger. Likewise, a marketing campaign targeted at a group likely to be interested in your subject matter has far more value than a bigger campaign with a more general focus.

In this way, it’s not enough to keep working and hope for the best; you have to work smart and hard, and neither really works without the other. But that assumes that guerrilla marketing works at all, so the question is… does it?

What guerrilla marketing does

Marketing doesn’t work quite how many people think, especially at different levels. For the biggest sellers, advertising isn’t about persuading someone to buy a product. When Coke advertise, they’re usually not trying to make you think Coke is a good product; they’re already big enough that they achieved that, so their advertising is geared more towards remaining ubiquitous. The big sellers just need to keep reminding customers that they exist – that they’re available for whoever wants them. Then, whenever the customer goes to buy that type of product, it’s their brand that comes to mind. Get big enough and potential customers don’t think ‘I want a soda’, they think ‘I want a Coke’.

This may sound specific to a certain type of product, but it’s also true for fiction. At this point, J.K. Rowling doesn’t need to advertise how good her work is. The brand is so big that it’s more effective to simply focus on telling people there’s something new under its umbrella (and if they can also attract potential new readers, that’s a good secondary goal). Rowling sold a huge number of scripts for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, even though it’s a medium with which many readers have no familiarity. As long as she keeps up a stream of new ‘products’ and the standard doesn’t dip enough to drive away her base, her marketing only ever has to say ‘remember me?’ This is why so many book adverts for established authors are along the lines of ‘The NEW book by X’; the brand is big enough that it’s doing the selling for them.

Different products rely on different types of marketing, and self-published authors shouldn’t be using the same tactics as bestsellers.CLICK TO TWEET

That’s not what guerrilla marketing is about, and it’s not something you’re going to be able to achieve on your own. Likewise, guerrilla marketing isn’t – and stick with me here – about finding individual readers.

This is the domain of mid-size marketing; people see your advert and they know your book is for sale, maybe they’ll buy it. This is the type of marketing where it’s worth putting billboards in train stations – with enough money, widespread marketing brings in enough readers to pay for itself.

This type of marketing isn’t usually that effective for books (unless they have a specific, unique role that lodges in people’s heads), and it’s not really feasible for guerrilla marketers. It’s hard for one person to advertise their book so widely that the number of readers they get back justifies the effort.

Instead, guerrilla marketing is effective as a cumulative effort. It doesn’t just net individual readers (though, again, that’s a good secondary goal), it creates an environment in which your book is being discussed. Ideally, it turns the people who encounter the marketing directly into your salespeople.

In marketing his book The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, the titular author held a reading in a train station bathroom. The aim wasn’t to advertise to the few people who attended, but rather to create the type of story that news outlets would be hungry to report, and report they did. Pollack reached a huge audience with his work, communicating its irreverent nature and setting it up as a talking point; a level of marketing success far in excess of his budget or even time commitment.

Modern marketing has more than one audience, and the first isn’t always the biggest.CLICK TO TWEET

A less creative example might be a carefully calculated competition. Offer an interesting prize, extend the competition long enough to get people talking about it (and your work), and you reach a host of people for the cost of rewarding one. Ideally, you’ll also have a compelling website to direct them to and be collecting the email addresses of entrants to form a mailing list. Maybe your prize, or the conditions of the competition, are even unique enough to get you some press.

This is where guerrilla marketing works; carefully considered, meticulously executed moves that make the most of your time, money, and effort. I’ll get on to exactly how you can apply that logic in part 2 of this article, but for now, let’s close by looking at a case study of great guerrilla marketing in action.

The success of Masquerade

In 1979, Kit Williams published Masquerade, a book of art that tells the story of a hare delivering a splendid necklace to the sun. Concerned that people didn’t focus on the details in art books, and challenged by publisher Tom Maschler to do something new, Williams created a book that was also a treasure hunt. With the release of the book, Williams declared that he had also created the golden necklace from the story, and that the book contained all the information anyone could need to find it.

The story of the treasure hunt itself, and how the book worked as a set of clues, is fascinating (and skillfully related here), but suffice to say that Williams’ announcement was a staggering piece of guerrilla marketing. Williams couldn’t have foreseen the interest that would be aroused or how long the story would remain in the public consciousness, with news reports (and thus more advertising) breaking out whenever someone had a wild theory. Indeed, even the controversy surrounding how the treasure hunt was eventually resolved catapulted it back into public consciousness. For his time, effort, and skill, Williams sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, and books (like Bamber Gascoigne’s Quest for the Golden Hare) have even been written about the process itself.

Creativity doesn’t have to stop with the book itself – artistic marketing is both possible and effective.CLICK TO TWEET

In the computer age, this type of marketing is even more effective. Since fans can now communicate across great distance, ‘game’ marketing can create communities and arouse huge interest for comparatively little input, as was the case with Alex Hirsch’s Gravity Falls: Journal 3, which relied on a variety of code-breaking and treasure-hunting activities to create a vocal, close-knit community of fans. (Something I talked about in Want A Cult Following? Hide Secrets In Your Writing.)

With blogs, Youtube channels, and even major news outlets hungry for content, the right piece of guerrilla marketing can be an absolute game changer.

Guerrilla warfare

So, that’s why you should consider guerrilla marketing and the logic behind some of the most successful tactics in the marketplace. Next, check out Everything You Need To Know About Guerrilla Book Marketing – Part 2, in which we’ll dive into how you can design and carry out your own successful guerrilla marketing.

What’s the hardest part of marketing our book, and how have you worked around marketing constraints in the past? Let me know in the comments below, and check out our extensive marketing archive for more great advice.

#writing #writer #write #writeinspiration #writeblr #link post

[maniclemons]

The Polyglot Vampire: The Politics of Translation in Bram Stoker's Dracula

Katy Brundan, The Polyglot Vampire: The Politics of Translation in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 52, Issue 1, January 2016, Pages 1–21.

________________________________________________________________

I’ve been fascinated lately with Count Dracula’s ability to absorb through blood his victims’ language and personal traits as well as one might say their identity. So I googled this phenomenon and the closest I could find (yet) was this article.

I quote it extensively below.  

By situating Dracula's origins in the linguistic ‘whirlpool’ of Transylvania, Stoker deliberately exploits the potential of a disputed territory occupied by multiple national-linguistic groups during its turbulent history. Dracula's inevitable mastery of languages over the centuries suggests that being undead gives one unique linguistic advantages. Indeed, Dracula provides a solution to the problem voiced by Benedict Anderson: ‘[W]hat limits one's access to other languages is not their imperviousness, but one's own mortality.’ Dracula's preternatural linguistic skills gained from defying mortality complement his embodiment of paradigms signified by the Latin prefix trans, meaning ‘across’, ‘beyond’ and ‘from one state to another’. 

Dracula's fundamental purpose is one of translation: translating (transferring across) bodies from one state to another, taking them beyond the reaches of Christianity ­and beyond death itself. 

Dracula even has himself ‘translated’ in earth-filled coffins from place to place, since one of the definitions of ‘to translate’ in English is, precisely, to move the dead body of a ‘hero or great man’ from one place to another (OED). The premise of Stoker's novel thus presents us with a polyglot vampire who exerts control over his victims through his unique abilities of bodily and linguistic translation, resisting the forces of monolingualism as he resists mortality. The afterlife of Stoker's undead Count finds its epitome in relationships mediated not simply through blood, but through polyglossia, linguistic mastery, and the translated text.

Dracula's battle for bodies is waged through language(s) and through his superior translation abilities.

Quite pointedly, Dracula makes his first appearance accompanied by a phrase in German, translated into English. One of the coach passengers whispers the famous line ‘“Denn die Todten reiten schnell.” – (“For the dead travel fast”)’ (p. 10) from Gottfried August Bürger's Gothic ballad ‘Lenore’ (1773). While Harker correctly recognizes this line, he fails to translate his own position into this quotation, in which a ghostly rider appears as a dead soldier anxious to take his lover to her marriage bed/grave. The translated phrase constructs Harker's relationship to Dracula in erotic terms, since Harker clearly occupies the position of the female victim about to be swept away by Dracula, the undead ‘lover’. Dracula has already written to tell Harker he is ‘anxiously expecting’ him (p. 4) and arrives early at the rendezvous to hasten the Englishman away in his carriage. Dracula's homoerotic inclination towards Harker in the first part of the novel simply follows the logic of Bürger's text. Indeed, ‘the Count must have carried’ Harker to bed after the Englishman faints on being approached by the female vampires (p. 40), as if taking him to the ballad's marriage bed and potential grave. Dracula's power over Harker thus begins with a translated text that implies an intimacy between the two men. Bürger's ballad was particularly popular in translation, and arguably ‘no German poem has been so repeatedly translated into English as Ellenore’ (it was translated by Sir Walter Scott and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, among others), implying that the text itself provoked English desire. Stoker's use of this poem suggests not only that Dracula brings with him a German Gothic aesthetic but also that he heralds the desire and intimacy inherent in translation. Meanwhile, the English Harker is desperately deficient in his ability to translate the implications of this German text constructing him as the passive beloved.

Dracula's position of power is solidified by his ‘excellent’ German, which makes an unsettling contrast with the difficulty others have speaking the lingua franca, such as the Bistritz coach driver whose German is ‘worse’ even than Harker's (pp. 11, 9). Once in the castle, Harker's submissive, feminized relationship to Dracula (‘I am so absolutely in his power;’ p. 40) is heightened by Dracula's remarkable linguistic versatility. The Count speaks German, orders the Szgany gypsies apparently in Romany (Harker cannot even understand their sign language ‘any more than I could their spoken language’), commands the Slovaks who move his boxes of earth (presumably in Slovak), and discourses rather pompously with Harker in English (p. 41). If Dracula is indeed ‘that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk’ (p. 240) in the fifteenth century, as Van Helsing believes, then he has had centuries to hone his linguistic skills. Living as a boyar in Transylvania throughout this period would make Dracula a speaker of probably a dozen languages.The fact that we overlook Dracula's linguistic mastery reflects a projection of our own relatively monolingual environment back onto Stoker's novel.

Harker notes that Dracula speaks ‘excellent English, but with a strange intonation’ (p. 15), an uncanny effect caused by the vampire having taught himself by importing books and newspapers. Dracula's own avidity in studying English indicates the slippage of the language-learner into the linguist-spy:

I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. But alas! as yet I only know your tongue through books. To you, my friend, I look that I know it to speak. […] Well I know that, did I move and speak in your London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger. That is not enough for me […]. I am content if I am like the rest, so that no man stops if he sees me, or pause in his speaking if he hear my words, to say, ‘Ha, ha! a stranger!’ […] I would that you tell me when I make error, even of the smallest, in my speaking. (p. 20)

Dracula does not wish to be marked by his accent as a ‘stranger’ (this word alone makes it clear he is a foreigner), since mastering the English language is key to seizing English bodies. This speech itself is ‘marked’ by inaccurate grammar, since the linguist-spy has much to learn from Harker, who is now forced into the treacherous position of language teacher by virtue of his inability to speak any other language.

Dracula the polyglot and spy may have found a model in Arminius Vambéry (1832–1913), celebrated linguist and professor of Oriental languages at Budapest University. Vambéry was described by The Spectator in 1884 as ‘one of the most remarkable polyglots of our time’, who was known for his flamboyant lectures. However, Vambéry puts a new twist on the Italian pun traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor) by combining the skills of translator and linguist with those of spy and double agent. Stoker met Vambéry on two occasions and used his first name in Dracula when Van Helsing explains that he has ‘asked my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University, to make [Dracula's] record’ (p. 240). Stoker wrote of the real Vambéry: ‘He is a wonderful linguist, writes twelve languages, speaks freely sixteen, and knows over twenty.’ Vambéry taught himself languages without a teacher, and sometimes without even a dictionary, strangely resembling Dracula's method of language-learning from books alone. Stoker recalled Vambéry telling him: ‘[I]n Central Asia we travel not on the feet but on the tongue.’This might make us think of Dracula's position as a man who does not travel by ‘feet’ as much as by wings and his own linguistic versatility. Vambéry made a career by his tongue, famously travelling along the Silk Road to Afghanistan disguised as a lowly Muslim dervish. He then spent decades working as a British spy in Turkey, as recently released archival material confirms, his professorship in linguistics ‘merely a cover’ for his spying activities. Vambéry's vaunted nationalist goal of analysing Turkish dialects to prove an ancient and glorifying relationship with Hungarian ended in the service not of Hungary, but of Britain. However, the premise of the linguist-spy subordinating his preternatural skill with languages to aid the British imperial cause becomes reversed in Dracula. Instead, Stoker turns the model of the Orientalist linguist back against the West.

#bbc dracula #dracula #the polyglot vampire #the linguist-spy

[lucyt0601]

Research Paper Draft #1

Katie Paterson and the Concept of Memory 

The purpose of my research is to study the work and practice of the artist Katie Paterson and to see how her work relates to the concept of memory- how she replicated her memories into her art works and takes what is inside of her to create her visible mediums, which include texts, monographs, videos, sculptures, images, numbers, etc. She used light and dark colors together and separately, how she employed simplicity and a clean style. According to Ollivier Dyens in his article The Sadness of the Machine, “Memories of pleasure, pain, sadness and joy, are the common thread that unites all human beings. Memories are our existence, and art is their system of replication” (Dyens 2001, 77).

Basic biographical information/identity as an artist and a person:  

Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1981, one of the leading artists in her generation. Received her BA from Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, United Kingdom in 2004 and her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London, United Kingdom in 2007. She has since been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions, recipient of the John Florent Stone Fellowship at Edinburgh College of Art, and was the Leverhulme Artist in Residence in the Astrophysics Group at the University College London in 2010-2011. In collaboration with scientists and researchers from around the world, her projects consider the place of humans on planet Earth in the context of geological time and change. Her words utilize advanced technologies and expertise to display the engagements between people and the natural environment. Approach is Romantic and research-based, rigorous conceptualism and minimalist, shortens the distance between the viewer and the edges of time and the cosmos. She has broadcast the sounds of a melting glacier live, mapped dead stars, compiled a slide archive of darkness from the depths of the Universe, created a light bulb to simulate the experience of moonlight, and sent a recast meteorite back into space. “Eliciting feelings of humility, wonder and melancholy akin to the experience of the Romantic sublime, Paterson's work is at once understated in gesture and yet monumental in scope.” Paterson has exhibited internationally, from London to New York, Berlin to Seoul, and her works have been included in major exhibitions including Hayward Gallery, Tate Britain, Kunsthalle Wien, MCA Sydney, Guggenheim Museum, New York, and The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. She was the winner of the Visual Arts category of the 2014 South Bank Awards, and is an Honorary Fellow of Edinburgh University. Her poetic installations have been the result of intensive research and collaboration with specialists as diverse as astronomers, geneticists, nanotechnologists, jewelers and firework manufacturers. As Erica Burton, curator at Modern Art Oxford, wrote at a solo exhibition in 2008, “Katie Paterson’s work engages with the landscape, as a physical entity and as an idea. Drawing on our experience of the natural world, she creates an expanded sense of reality beyond the purely visible.”

Her artistic creations:

Among recent works are: Totality (2016), a mirrorball reflecting every solar eclipse seen from earth; Hollow (2016), a commission for University of Bristol, made in collaboration with architects Zeller & Moye, permanently installed in the historic Royal Fort Gardens: a miniature forest of all the world’s forests, including over 10,000 unique tree species spanning millions of years telling the history of the planet through the immensity of tree specimens in microcosm; Fossil Necklace (2013), a necklace comprised of 170 carved, rounded fossils, spanning geological time; Second Moon (2013), a work that tracks the cyclical journey of a fragment of the moon as it circles the Earth, via airfreight courier, on a man-made year-long commercial orbit; All the Dead Stars (2009), a large map documenting the locations of 27,000 dead stars known to humanity; Light bulb to Simulate Moonlight (2009), an incandescent bulb designed to transmit wavelength properties identical to those of moonlight; and History of Darkness (ongoing), a slide archive of darkness captured at different times and places throughout the universe and spanning billions of years.

“Paterson created Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon) (2007). With the assistance of radio operators Peter Blair in Southampton, England, and Peter Sundberg in Lulea, Sweden, Paterson bounced Morse code Signals of the score of the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata off the moon and then transcribed the echoed information back into notation, which was then played back in exhibition on a player piano” (204). 

“Paterson employs a novel subtractive sonification based on ever-present loss. Regular radar scans of the surface would employ much higher power and include repetitions to override error producing a refined data set that a conventional sonification strategy would then transform into music or another art of sound. Paterson’s approach is different. Just as one hears the Pacific Ocean leak into the off-timings of Nam June Paik’s version of Bach, in Earth-Moon-Earth you hear the moon in what Beethoven does not sound like” (208). 

Musicalization of dead silences- Sound recordings of three Icelandic glaciers on records made of frozen meltwater from these glaciers are played until the records melt, mimicking the loss and silencing of their source.

History of Darkness, 2010: “...essays a cosmically laconic take on astro physical discovery of the protocols of its recording. For the Dying Star Letters, Paterson is sent an email each time scientists note a star has been expired; she then writes a letter of condolence” (31). 

Paterson praises the book,“Stone Mattress,” by Margaret Atwood, our first author for “Future Library.” (Paterson herself says) I love her work because she can speak through generations and time. I’m also reading “Invisible Cities,” by Italo Calvino, which is a collection of texts that imagines cities of all varieties made of bizarre materials. And “The Blue Fox,” by the Icelandic author Sjon. You follow a blue fox through a hunted journey. It’s like a fairy tale. All three books travel through time and space. And they all have very poetic language as well.

Paterson addresses her political standpoint by saying, “I was following the Scottish referendum on BBC Scotland, Yes Scotland and the Wee Blue Book Mobile Edition. I submitted my vote: Yes for an independent Scotland. I think we will see positive results from the referendum, even though the result is not what I had hoped for.” 

Inspirations/influences:

Her experience living in Iceland felt like living on another planet- traveling to drastically different places feels like going to different planets, which is what sparked her fascination with outer space and the cosmos. 

Reputation as an artist:  

She is fascinated by science and is known for her multidisciplinary and conceptually-driven work with an emphasis on nature, ecology, geology and cosmology. Her conceptual art finds everyday analogies for profound cosmological themes, is consistent in exploring scientific themes through contemporary art: her works have ranged from sending a "second moon" around the earth by courier service, to playing a record at the speed of the earth's rotation. Institutions approve of  her art because it fits some deep need they have for art that is conceptual and intellectual. That combination allows museums and respectable prize givers to feel they are “down with the kids,” while also furthering their liberal mission to educate the public.“The Works of Katie Paterson go sailing off the scale of civilization. Using technologies normally applied to the speed and scope of human experience, the Scottish artist zooms out or tunnels in to other, more alien dimensions, reframing natural and cosmic phenomena… anthropocentric worldviews are dissipated in favor of a different kind of consciousness, one keyed to evolutionary systems and rooted in contact with igneous chaos.”

Working and collaborating with others:

"You, at least, believe that the human race will still be around in a hundred years!" enthused the acclaimed writer and environmental activist Margaret Atwood when she was asked to be the first contributor to Paterson's centennial project, Future Library, 2014-2114, a work of art that is essentially a form of time travel.” 

Focusing on a single work and how it ties to our FSEM/memory: 

Fossil Necklace, a giant circular string displaying the development of life on Earth. It is made of 170 carved fossil beads representing the Earth’s memory of a major occurrence in evolution through geological time. According to Paterson, “Fossil hunting is a new hobby of mine. It happened because I made a necklace of 170 beads carved from fossils and it charts all of geological time on Earth. The first bead is 3 1/2 billion years old and contains the first cellular life on earth and it goes on from there. I had no experience in paleontology and it took ages to work out what I was looking for. Scotland has got an amazing coast where you can find fossils just on the beach. I didn’t know this at all. I also got fossils from fairs, eBay and auctions.” 

Campo del Cielo, Field of the Sky, 2012- may work with memory concept better (see video on James Cohan site). 

Suggestions from the writing fellow: I met with Emma Consoli this past Sunday and 5pm. I had a positive experience in the CTL with her because she liked the way I outlined my first draft, but she did tell me to cut down on the raw quotations and use more of my own voice. She had me change my wording of phrases here and there and pointed out some grammatical errors from when I first typed out the draft. 

Bibliography 

Murphy, Kate. "Katie Paterson." The New York Times Sunday Review. Last modified September 20, 2014. Accessed October 20, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/ 09/21/opinion/sunday/katie-paterson.html?searchResultPosition=1. 

Larsen, Lars Bang. 2014. 1000 WORDS: Katie paterson and margaret atwood. Artforum International. 11, https://ezproxy.hws.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1625101398?accountid=27680 (accessed October 16, 2019).

McKinnon, Dugal. "Dead Silence: Ecological Silencing and Environmentally Engaged Sound Art." Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013): 71-74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43832509.

Dillon, Brian. "Attention! Photography and Sidelong Discovery." In Aperture, No.

     211, Curiosity (Summer 2013), pp. 25-31. Published in JSTOR.

     Accessed October 29, 2019. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24473799. 

Kahn, Douglas. Earth Sound Earth Signal : Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Accessed October 29, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central.

[juniorformulamotorsport]

Saturday, 5th October 2019 – Mary Quant: The V&A; Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing: The Queen’s Gallery, London

We had a day in London with the emphasis on exhibitions. The plan had started with an intention to visit the Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace, and once I’d bought timed tickets for that, I noticed that there was an exhibition of the work of Mary Quant at the V&A. That sounded interesting too, we we made plans to do that in the morning, stop off for lunch somewhere, and then see the drawings. A train to London Euston and a taxi from there to the V&A and we were ready to see what was on show.

The Mary Quant exhibition was billed as “from miniskirts and hot pants to vibrant tights and makeup, discover how Mary Quant launched a fashion revolution on the British high street, with over 200 garments and accessories, including unseen pieces from the designer’s personal archive”. It could have been a dull collection of items in glass cases, no matter how interesting the items themselves. It was anything but with he addition of film and sound recordings, newspaper and magazine articles, and tangential details here, there and everywhere. The museum holds a lot of items in its collection, and had also been loaned clothing by people who owned and wore them, and that added to the interest.

Quant came from south London, of solid Welsh stock in the form of two schoolteachers who would not permit their daughter to embark on a fashion course, instead pushing her into studying illustration at Goldsmiths College. While she was there she met her husband, Alexander Plunket Greene, who was very involved in the business alongside his wife.

After graduation in 1953 Quant went to work as an apprentice at the milliner’s, Erik of Brook Street. Two year’s later, she was in business on her own account after she and her husband bought Markham House on the King’s Road in Chelsea, and opened a restaurant in the basement and a boutique, Bazaar, on the ground floor, working along with the photographer, and former lawyer, Archie McNair. Although they worked together, Quant concentrated on design, Plunket Greene looked after sales and marketing, and McNair contributed legal expertise and business sense.

The young designer wasn’t really a designer at this point, buying in stock, but when seh didn’t like what she could by, she started training, going to evening classes on cutting and adjusting bought patterns to make the clothes she really wanted. There followed a phase of making stock overnight and selling it in the shop the following day. The shop became a hit with the young, offering alternatives to the “mature” styles of other designers, and providing a much livelier shopping experience, marked lack of formality.

Offering modern “relaxed clothes suited to the actions of normal life” in bright, bold colours, nothing seemed to be off limits and the store did well. By 1957 a second Bazaar store opened on the King’s Road, in a space designed by Terence Conran. In the 1960s she may not have invented the mini-skirt, but she certainly popularised it with the aid of that era’s most high-profile model, Twiggy. The high hemline went with the new Mary Quant tights and underwear range, which were produced under license and came in a vast range of colours.

She was also the first designer to use PVC, no matter how impractical it was to wear!

Expansion was the thing in the 1960s with a design contract with American department store JC Penney, and the launch of a the mass market Ginger Group line in the UK that put the clothes within reach of most women. there was also an OBE, an autobiography and a third shop on New Bond Street. With an estimated seven million women owning at least one of her products, and many more using the Daisy cosmetics range, she could truly be called a mainstay of British fashion.

In the late 70s the range expanded, with bed linen, carpets, paint and wallpaper through ICI, swimwear, hosiery, jewellery, the Daisy fashion doll, and make up and skincare products. Not unreasonably she was finally made a Dame in the 2015 New Year’s Honours list, and published a second autobiography.

It was an absorbing exhibition with plenty to enjoy. If you are at all interested in design and you find yourself in London, it runs until February 2020.

In the afternoon, after a rather good lunch at the nearby restaurant Lorne, we walked down to Buckingham Palace and queued up to get into the Leonardo exhibition, held to marking the 500th anniversary of his death. The Royal Collection contains a large number of da Vinci’s drawings and around 200 of them were on display, after a travelling exhibition during the first part of the year where groups of drawings were exhibited in different cities in the UK.

These drawings have been kept together since the artist’s death in 1519 and were acquired by the Crown during the reign of Charles II. It’s fair to say that they really do point to a mind that absorbed everything, and was fascinated by everything as they include drawings that cover painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, engineering, cartography, geology and botany. We decided that if we could refer to Augustus the Strong as Augustus the “Ooh, Shiny! Must have!” then Leonardo was very much “Ooh, shiny! Interesting! How does that work? What was I doing before…”

An excellent free audio guide was provided so we had plenty of information to hand, and to the relief of both of us, although it was busy it wasn’t hellish and you could actually get near the works without having to wait 20 minutes and then elbow a massive bloke out of the way to let you see anything! After some exhibitions we’ve been to, this was a major improvement. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born in 1452 and died on 2nd May 1519, and was the textbook definition of a polymath, with an interest in pretty much everything including invention, drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, paleontology, and cartography. This exhibition provided a comprehensive overview of those interests, with preparatory drawings for paintings, notebooks, sketches, scientific diagrams and thoughts on the nature of painting. It seems a wonder, given how much of a grasshopper mind he appears to have had, that anything every got finished before he was off on some other avenue of enquiry, though I suppose this may explain why there are so few paintings in existence.

With little in the way of formal education, he seems to have spent the rest of his life learning and his curiosity appears to have known no bounds. In the mid-1460s, his family moved to Florence and he became a “studio boy” in the workshop of Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his time. By the age of 17 he was an apprentice, a role that lasted seven years in a workshop that was also associated with Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. Here he would have had theoretical and practical training including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, and wood-work, as well as artistic skills.

By 1472 Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, and his father set him up in his own workshop. He may have been in the employ of the Medici by the end of the decade, and in March 1481 he was commissioned by the monks of San Donato to paint The Adoration of the Magi. However, he abandoned that and in 1982 offered his services to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. He stayed in Milan for the rest of the decade, painting the Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper during that time. He was also employed on many other projects including floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral, and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza. Equestrian monuments would become a running theme, with at least three being commissioned and none of them being made.  I suspect an approach to create one might have caused a certain amount of resistance in da Vinci by the end! This was the first and it didn’t happen because in November 1494 Ludovico gave the bronze that would have been used for it to his brother-in-law to be used for a cannon to defend the city from Charles VIII.

When Sforza was overthrown, Leonardo fled to Venice where he worked as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack. When he was able to return to Florence in 1500 he and his household stayed at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where it is said that Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist. A further phase in Leonardo’s life came in 1502, when he went to work as a military architect and engineer for Cesare Borgia. This was when he created one of the works I particularly liked, a town plan of Borgia’s stronghold of Imola, a city I know. Given the rarity of maps at that time, it impressed Borgia enough to get Leonardo the job as his chief military engineer and architect. A later map of the nearby countryside was part of a project to construct a dam from the sea to Florence, in keep the canal usable all year round.

In 1503 Leonardo was back in Florence and working on his portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the Mona Lisa. In 1506, Leonardo was summoned to Milan by Charles II d’Amboise, the acting French governor of the city, and may have commenced a project for another equestrian figure, this one of d’Amboise. He was otherwise left to pursue his scientific interests, which was probably just as well because this was another equestrian work that never happened. The third and final equestrian monument was commissioned in 1512 for Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, but an invasion of a confederation of Swiss, Spanish and Venetian forces put a stop to that by driving the French from Milan. Leonardo remained in the city despite the turmoil, only leaving the following year when Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son Giovanni became Pope (Leo X) and Leonardo went to Rome, living in the Apostolic Palace, where Michelangelo and Raphael were both active. He was given an allowance of 33 ducats a month, and seems to have again been allowed to do whatever he wanted within reason. He was commissioned to paint a work for the Pope, but the commission was rescinded when he was sidetracked by the quest for a new kind of varnish.  Meanwhile he became fascinated by botany, was involved in a plan to drain the Pontine Marshes, and he began working on a treatise on vocal cords, attending dissections to gain more knowledge.

In 1515, with the French having recaptured Milan, Leonardo was present at a meeting between King Francis I and Leo X in Bologna and a year later he was entered Francis’ service, moving into Clos Lucé, a manor house close to the royal residence, the Château d’Amboise. He created plans for a massive fortified town to be built  at Romorantin, and developed a mechanical lion which was used in a pageant, where it walked towards the king, and when struck opened its chest to reveal a cluster of heraldic lilies. Also during this time, his apprentice, Francesco Melzi, drew a portrait of Leonardo which was included in the exhibition, and when Leonardo died Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving, as well as money, Leonardo’s paintings, tools, library and personal effects, including the collection of drawings on display here.

Francis I was later reported to have said: “There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher”.

Travel 2019 – The V&A, The Queen’s Gallery, London Saturday, 5th October 2019 - Mary Quant: The V&A; Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing: The Queen's Gallery, London…

#2019 #Arts #Buckingham Palace #Europe #Events #Fashion #History #Leonardo da Vinci #London #MAry Quant #Museums #Sightseeing #The Queen&039;s Gallery #Travel #UK #V&A

[biofunmy]

Sydney Is for the Birds. The Bigger and Bolder, the Better.

SYDNEY — The bushy pair of laughing kookaburras that used to show up outside my daughter’s bedroom window disappeared a few months ago.

The birds simply vanished — after rudely waking us every morning with their maniacal “koo-koo-kah-KAH-KAH” call, after my kids named them Ferrari and Lamborghini, after we learned that kookaburras mate for life.

And here’s the odd thing: I missed them.

This is not normal, at least not for me, but Sydney has a rare superpower: It turns urbanites into bird people, and birds into urbanites. Few other cities of its size (five million and counting) can even come close to matching Sydney’s still-growing population of bold, adaptable and brightly colored squawkers.

“We’ve got a lot of large conspicuous native birds that are doing well and that is very unusual globally,” said Richard Major, the principal research scientist in ornithology for the Australian Museum in Sydney. “It’s quite different in other cities around the world.”

The reasons — some natural, others man-made — are fascinating, and we’ll get to them. But lest anyone doubt Mr. Major’s assertion, at a time when the bird population of North America is suffering a steep decline, compare a typical day of avian interactions in Sydney with anywhere else.

Morning here begins with a chorus. Relentlessly chirpy, the noisy miner blasts the alarm before dawn alongside the screeching and flapping of rainbow lorikeets, parrots brighter than Magic Markers and that argue like toddlers. And of course, there are the kookaburras, with their cackles carrying across neighborhoods declaring: “This is MY territory!”

A walk to the car or train may require dodging attacking magpies — in spring, they swoop down on your head to protect their young — and rarely does a week go by without seeing a sulphur-crested cockatoo, or a dozen, spinning on a wire like an escaped circus act.

Even the local scavenger is extraordinary. As grubby as any New York pigeon but much grander, the white ibis, known here as a “bin chicken,” is a hefty, prehistoric-looking creature with a curved beak.

It’s a remarkable mix.

Even as ornithologists point out that some small birds are struggling in the city, they note that a generation or two ago, Sydney didn’t have nearly as much avian diversity as it does today, nor as many flocks of birds that have mastered what city living requires: competitiveness, an obsession with real estate and the ability to adapt.

Why so many birds are thriving here is increasingly a subject of international study. Scientists believe it is due in part to how Sydney was settled — relatively recently, compared with many global cities, with less intrusion into wildlife habitats.

The luck of local terrain has helped. Sydney’s rocky coastline didn’t lend itself to clearing land for agriculture, which slowed development and left lots of native plants untouched. Australia’s early leaders also set up large national parks near Sydney, protecting bushland for animals of all kinds.

But making the city a bird capital was probably not on their agenda. The British colonialists in charge hated the sound of Sydney’s birds enough to import songbirds like common starlings to soothe their tender ears.

Today, some early examples of those imports, from the 1860s, are stuffed and tagged in the Australian Museum’s collection room. When I stopped by one recent morning, Leah Tsang, the museum’s ornithology collection manager, sifted through the white metal cabinets containing the taxidermy archives to show me the supposed improvement sent from Europe.

The juvenile starlings in the tray looked small, dark and … dull.

A few cabinets over, Dr. Tsang showed me her own favorite bird — the princess parrot, a lovely Australian specimen of soft pastels, in pink, blue and green.

If the young starling’s feathers evoked the lackluster mood of a Benjamin Disraeli portrait, the princess parrot was Elton John.

“I had one as a pet when I was a kid,” said Dr. Tsang, 40, who sported some bold plumage herself, a shock of electric blue hair in a ponytail. “Its name was Cheeky.”

She told me she came to birds late in life, at least as a career. She worked in technology for nearly a decade before ditching it for the birds.

“You want to do something that fulfills you and makes you happy,” she said, standing near a display of little penguins (yes, balmy Sydney has penguins, too). She paused, and later told me she worried about sounding like a cliché.

But there’s no need to ashamed of bird-loving. Not in Sydney.

That afternoon, I went for a walk in the city’s Centennial Parklands with John Martin, an ornithologist with the University of New South Wales who is working on a project looking at how Sydney’s cockatoos have adapted, learning to open garbage bins and knock on windows to ask people for food.

We stopped near a wetland in the park’s center. In less than an hour, we saw 20 species of birds — and old friends, Ann Birrell and Carol Bunton, who are park regulars.

They surprised me with their knowledge of not just kinds of birds, but individual ones — two owls that had nested in an oak; a tawny frogmouth they had gotten to know; and the corellas flying overhead, pecking, wrestling and mating in the trees.

“There are ménage à troises,” observed Ms. Bunton, a retiree walking with a cane, nodding toward the corellas. “We’re interested in their behavior.”

Dr. Martin walked us over to one of the ponds where ducks and other birds gather. He pointed out a white ibis with a yellow plastic number tag on its wing. “That’s Lennie,” he said.

Lennie had been tagged as part of a study aiming to understand why Sydney seemed to have so many of these so-called bin chickens. The public sees them as a nuisance, but according to Dr. Major at the Australian Museum, they only started to appear in Sydney in the 1970s.

Researchers eventually discovered that the white ibis loves carbohydrates, making it a match for a city of fish and chips. But the big birds were also refugees of a sort; they had moved to Sydney because their natural wetland habitat further inland had been dried out by drought and heavy-handed water management.

“We’re not sure if it’s climate change or not, but what we do know is that the coast has always been a refuge,” Dr. Martin said.

Sydney is not ideal for all. Tiny birds like the superb fairy-wren, with its bright blue markings, seem to be declining because they need brambles and weeds to hide in, and urbanization tends to cut that away.

But for larger and more territorial birds, Sydney is quite comfortably home.

At one point in the park, we walked by a group of parrots with bright pink heads. They were galahs, which has become slang for lovable doofus. They didn’t make a sound, nor did they mind me getting within inches of them.

Many of Sydney’s birds seem to like their human neighbors. Scientists have determined magpies can form friendships with people. Cockatoos are highly social too.

I was wondering if the same was true for kookaburras, and then, as I was finishing this article, Ferrari and Lamborghini returned. They showed up just before dark and took their perch near my daughter’s window. They nuzzled. They screeched their unique good night and good morning. It’s quite a racket. But we’re hoping they stay.

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[hitachihanoi]

5 Tricks for Writing any Self-Help Reserve Backed by Robust Research

5 Tricks for Writing any Self-Help Reserve Backed by Robust Research

Now i’m not exactly a fresh England Patriot’s fan. Not necessarily that I really have anything up against the Patriots, other than my vague annoyance the past 10 years of Very Bowl video game titles has started to take a look a bit repetitive thanks to Ben Brady in addition to Bill Belichick. In fact Now i’m only the NFL supporter in the most generous application of the term-that is, Therefore i’m usually within the room during maximum football year when my husband has commandeered most of our own illuminated window screens in order to show as many contingency games as is possible.

But I actually do tend to keep on reading than the person with average skills, and Now i am also the sort of one that has this peculiar weakness for the lose of marathons and other energy sports. And once I check out The TB12 Method , a diet in addition to fitness publication released recently by a male who handles to on a regular basis eviscerate his or her more-than-worthy enemy even at the relatively early (in footballing player years) age of 45, I thought it may teach us something applicable to my own, personal health and fitness targets.

As far as gross sales go, typically the phrase “roaring success” basically inaccurate. It has become a New york city Times bestseller and still holds the #1 bestselling i’m all over this Amazon intended for Sports & Outdoors. That received very good reader evaluations too, and-perhaps most importantly-Brady’s strict weight loss and extending regimen can appear to give loan to his mind-blowing longevity, agility and strength.

So I surely can’t problem him for sharing (albeit with the help of ghostwriter Peter Smith) his achievement with the most us which will never become five-time Very Bowl champs. Plus, lots of what the reserve says jibes with other health and fitness advice a person run into: Cut down on caffeine, booze, processed foods along with other delicious habits; stretch like it’s your career; drink much more water; eat more whole foods as well as fresh make.

But many of the reviews-from typically the New York Occasions inches characteristically dry overview to help SB Place’s biting smirk-pointed out the fact that science driving the book wasn’t completely, well, methodical, especially for any book rich in claims you would assume needs to really rely fairly seriously on biochemistry and chemistry and biology. It wasn’t all completely wrong , impressive advice will make you better (except possibly for the hyponatremia-inducing total reduction of sodium), but as solutions including Vox noticed, “There’s no good technological evidence the diet does the specific points Brady claims-neutralize the body’s pH level as well as improve muscle recovery. ”

Does which make it an unhelpful self-help publication? Not at all. A lot of people might find health benefits throughout Brady’s tips, and it has undoubtedly been successful. Objective accomplished.

But , if you’re the writer thinking about composing your personal self-help, fitness, motivation, or not satisfying you advice-based book-and particularly if you aren’t a globally-recognized pro footballing player whose face in addition to name solely can sell 1000s of copies-I’d notify that you make sure your claims are usually fact-based along with appropriately supported by reliable options and study.

Here are a few research tips to keep your work is the best better next to a critical eye than this method did:

your five Tips for Creating a Self-Help Book Backed by Strong Research

Don’t Low fat Too Intensely on Testimonies

If you’re writing a self-help book, anyone surely include knowledge to talk about on the topic of your choice. Yet there’s a distinct difference concerning backing up your own personal claims with fact-based information and counting upon individual anecdotes in order to your history. Anecdotal facts is accumulated informally-from your current limited activities, stories might heard, and so on -while fact-based evidence depends upon small sample data and thorough research.

Much of the proof that Brady cites within the self-help guide, for example , will be based upon his own success with his exercise and dieting plan. It doesn’t make the information untrue, or perhaps unhelpful, but it isn’t backed by statistics as well as scientific studies, and as a consequence there is no guarantee-and, indeed, absolutely no data sample to support-that the results described in the guide will be people who every human being experiences.

Profiting well-researched data and files instead of anecdotes will loan your reserve more believability, improve the reliability of outcomes for your readers, and ensure that it holds up under scrutiny.

Degrees of anecdotes versus empirical (fact-based) evidence:

Anecdote: “The individuals in my meditation class located that the regimen improved their own balance, posture and peace of mind. ” Empirical statement: “According with a study from the National Middle for Complementary and Integrative Health, those with chronic lower back pain had even less disability, discomfort and major depression after training yoga regarding six months. micron

Anecdote: “Author Samuel Smiles types said, “he who by no means made a mistake, never created a discovery. ‘” Empirical affirmation: “Research by Stanford University professor Hazel Dweck seems to indicate that helping kids acknowledge all their mistakes while praising these individuals for their efforts results in superior test lots. ”

Research Tips for Creating Nonfiction

Carefully Vet Your own Experts

Alex Guerrero, Brady’s “body coach” whose methods provided the foundation for The TB12 Method , has been investigated by the National Trade Commission rate twice for creating claims regarding his wellness products which turned out to be unsubstantiated.

If you plan to utilize one or more experts’ advice as being the core within your book, which advice has to hold up to rigorous analysis. You could carefully look at their qualifications, history, kind of work and the own methods that triggered their data. Ideally you will want to include things like information coming from more than one skilled. If you’re meeting with ann specialist, make sure to require the research or maybe evidence guiding her says.

If you are your expert-e. gary the gadget guy., you have a complicated degree with your field regarding study and possess conducted intensive research into your topic-call upon peers whoever work possesses preceded or maybe complemented your own for aiding opinions.

Qualities to watch out for in experts:

Doctorates as well as advanced levels in a relevant field connected with study through accredited universities.

Credibly printed papers, books and study, preferably from past several years.

Extensive skilled experience using the topic open to them.

Appropriate qualifications, where pertinent. For instance, anyone making claims regarding accounting is definitely a CPA.

Infractions in other studies. That is certainly, has this particular expert recently been cited frequently by your girlfriend peers who may have researched related topics?

Writer’s Market 2018

Mix up Your Sources

Using the insights of your person do you know questionable products have got him inside hot water with all the federal government is certainly one thing, but leaning consequently heavily on that one individual’s expertise is compared to building a house supported by just one (precarious) expoliar.

If you want your thesis to hold up against crucial assaults, start make their supports as stable as it can be, and that implies using a variety of sources that point to a similar conclusion. Mixture a robust number of primary and secondary solutions for the best outcomes. This approach could also add fascination to your overarching narrative.

Here are a few different varieties of primary methods:

Scientific studies, essentially from respected universities, businesses and companies (preferably definitely not associated with for-profit businesses or even activist groups).

Statistical information. (Keep reading through for a number of helpful solutions for studies. )

Historic accounts and archival content such as manuscripts and journals.

Legal and also financial papers.

Interviews together with experts and/or people who have experienced relevant activities.

And a few types of secondary options:

Newspaper and magazine articles or blog posts.

Scholarly articles that street address someone else’s first research.

Nearly all books for a given nonfiction topic.

Use Verifiable Data

When coming up with empirical promises, make sure that somebody else researching exactly the same topic would certainly find the similar information by employing reliable, 3rd party data resources. Government agencies, educational institutions, hospitals as well as global study organizations fantastic places to start out for specifics, statistics along with data.

Observe that many studies by for-profit organizations, think fish tanks and activist organizations cherry-pick data, which will result in deceit of data and unsupported results, so make sure to take a look at who funded the research as well.

Recommended info sources to apply when producing a self-help book:

Business & Finance:

World Bank Data

Section Study of Income Mechanics

Consumer Behaviour Data

EconData. net

Motivation & Psychology:

The American Psychological Association

The General Public Survey

The Institute intended for Quantitative Social Science

Health & Fitness:

The World Wellbeing Organization

Often the Centers to get Disease Command & Elimination

Statistics with Sports

Man Mortality Data bank

Nurturing:

Baby Language Records Exchange Technique (CHILDES)

Typical Core of information

National Company of Child Health and Human Development

National Info Archive about Child Maltreatment and Ignore (NDACAN)

Faith:

The Association of Religion Files Archives

Hartford Institute intended for Religion Investigation

Association associated with Statisticians of yankee Religious Systems (ASARB)

All-Purpose:

The US Census Bureau

Integrated Public Utilize Microdata Collection

Pew Study Center

Nationwide Center for Statistics and also Analysis (NCSA) | NHTSA

Look at your Facts

Upon having the research, interview and bottom information on your book jointly (or because you’re assmbling it), make sure you fact-check. Below are a few fact-checking strategies that I have used in inspective journalism perform in the past.

Fact-checking guidelines:

Make sure your hard facts are covered by at least 2 credible resources.

Collect origin materials from any specialists you employment interview.

Independently validate names, date ranges and amounts.

If you find details online, comply with links along with citations on the raw reference. (This pays to when fact-checking news articles or blog posts you’re examining as well. )

Evaluate the effect of your own bias. If you domyhomework pro feel clearly about the subject you’re creating on, be sure to haven’t cherry-picked information that will supports your personal conclusions, nevertheless that another person could draw the same summary based on your.

Work with a actuality checker. There are freelance fact-checking experts on the market (and your potential manager may have many as well) who can be certain that your information will be strong, thorough and accurate.

The post 5 Tricks for Writing any Self-Help Reserve Backed by Robust Research appeared first on Hitachi Hà Nội.

[ashleyshropshiregands-blog]

Gender and Sexuality Portfolio One Post: Introduction to Special Interest Topic

As a psychology major, mental health has always been something that has been of interest to me. Throughout my time at Augustana, understanding the ways that culture, societal norms, and other outside factors affect mental health has become the most exciting part of psychology for me. After taking Gender Studies courses and courses in psychology related to poverty, development, and cross-cultural examinations in mental health, I have begun to see many overlaps in my classes, specifically related to my interests in the ways that outside factors influence one’s mental health. One of the most fascinating overlaps I see involves mental illness and masculinity; specifically, the way that hegemonic or traditional masculinity affects the mental health of men who strive to achieve ideals that are essentially impossible to achieve. I will be exploring this relationship within this paper and throughout the term.

There are many different types of masculinity and many different ways to achieve the characteristics that society deems desirable. Hegemonic masculinity is the most talked about type of masculinity because it is seen as the standard or default form within a certain culture or society. In the United States, hegemonic masculinity involves maleness, whiteness, straightness, able-bodiedness, financial success, strength, control (in situations or over emotions), athleticism, and many other characteristics. Whether men know it or not, they are always being compared to this unrealistic ideal and it affects almost every avenue of their lives, throughout every stage of their lives. Mental health goes hand-in-hand with this topic, as it has been seen in studies that a man’s mental health often can relate to his masculinity. One of the articles I referenced describes the relationship quite well: “Masculinity can be a problem when it is attained, when it is not attained, and when a man does not want to attain it” (Valkonen & Hanninen, 177). Basically, because men are always being measured on the hegemonic masculinity yard stick, their mental health can be affected by the teachings of masculinity whether they perfectly fit the mold, they work to achieve the mold, or they deny the mold altogether. I chose to look at this relationship because, as I mentioned, I find it important to understand the workings behind mental illness. Biology plays a huge role in mental illness, but it cannot be denied that a person’s environment plays just as big of a role. As a future social worker, I want to understand what it is about a person’s environment that causes these illnesses, because, while we can’t change a person’s biology, there is always room to improve a person’s environment in order to encourage positive mental health. In the next few paragraphs, I will explore the literature on masculinity and mental health issues, looking to find answers about what causes these issues and what issues specifically are most prevalent.

Researching this topic was not an easy task. Entering the terms “masculinity” and “mental health” lead to a decent amount of information, but not nearly as much as expected. It seems that this topic is up and coming in the field of psychology, which is addressed in many of the articles examined for this post. After refining the search, using more terms such as “depression”, “gender”, “hegemonic masculinity”, “mental health”, “men”, and others一in many different combinations一 patterns began arising, specifically relating masculinity to depression and/ or suicide/ suicidal ideation. With help from Academic Search Complete and PsychInfo, I was able to pull together an entire list of studies (at least twelve) that addressed the issue of masculinity and depression. I picked five studies that covered this topic in a variety of ways, allowing for examination of  masculinity and depression from multiple viewpoints, including differences in age, geographic location, and even gender. While the studies all had different spins on the exact research question or the population being studied, there were many overarching themes that came from their research and many interesting ideas for future research and intervention.

The five studies I examined asked a variety of questions about this relationship between masculinity and mental illness. Researchers, both male and female, questioned relationships between traditional masculinity and suicidal ideation, the relationship between men’s position in relation to hegemonic masculinity and their level of perceived depression, the effects of conformity to traditional masculinity on depressive symptoms and academic involvement, and many more. It was evident when looking at the studies that these issues are prevalent across all age groups.

One study in particular, by Rogers, DeLay and Martin, looked at the way conformity to masculine norms has an effects on both male and female middle-school age students in regards to their mental health and their academic achievement. They found that boys, while adjusting to the switch from elementary school to middle school, increased in their conformity to traditional masculinity (Rogers, DeLay, & Martin, 2016). They also found that this increase in traditional masculinity was positively related to increase in depression and negatively related to academic achievement. While girl’s often did not change in level of conformity, their levels of depression and academic achievement were also affected by the enforcement of masculinity. This study was related to Price, Gregg, Smith, and Fiske’s study that looked at masculine traits of depression expression in men and women of older age groups. These researchers found that both men and women that endorse masculine traits exhibited depressive symptoms in ways that differ from the typical symptoms exhibited, making it less likely to be realized as depression (Price, Gregg, Smith, & Fiske, 2015). These two studies were very interesting because they explored the role of masculinity in both men and women’s lives. They both found evidence that endorsement of masculinity lead to negative outcomes in mental health. In the Price article, the authors acknowledged the importance of this information, as women are not often considered when it comes to studying the effects of masculinity. The information in both of these articles could be used to enrich clinical settings by encouraging psychologists to consider the effects of masculinity on how individuals exhibit depressive behaviors. It also suggests the idea that masculinity takes a prevalent role in people’s lives around the middle school age, which could lead to creating interventions that work with children to help them  deal with the mental health issues that arise during that time, such as depression, or prevention methods that could help students from developing these issues as they navigate this developmental time. It is important that these studies included age and gender as other factors because it shows the detrimental effects of masculinity across many different levels.

The other three studies focused heavily on just men’s experience with masculinity and the ways it plays a role in their lives. These studies found many relationships between masculinity, depression, and suicidal ideation. One study interviewed nine different men on the ways that their position or relationship with hegemonic masculinity effects their reported depression. This study found that the ideals of masculinity had an effect on the men who lived up to the standards but eventually cracked under pressure, for whom the standard was completely unattainable, and the effect when masculinity impacted their lives socially despite the attempt to resist the norm (Valkonen & Hanninen, 2012). This study showed that masculinity has a negative impact on men’s mental health across a variety of situations. Even when men reject the norms of masculinity, their lives are affected by the weight that masculinity has in everyday life. One group in this study found that acting out masculine ideals had a positive effect on their mental health: this group was the anomaly, and my question for these men would be, “how long are you willing to actively demonstrate these characteristics before you become too tired of being something you are not or shouldn’t have to be?” This study looked at men in both rural and urban settings, which is important because there are different ideas about masculinity between those two groups, even within the same geographic area. Another study done looked specifically at men in rural areas that had died from suicide. Family members were interviewed about the men that had died and many mentioned that hegemonic masculinity ideals could have had some effect on the deaths of their loved ones. Many mentioned substance use, which is often a form of self-medicating when depression is present, while others mentioned the possibility of their loved one deviating from the “norm” of heterosexuality as being a possible cause. Despite the individual differences in reasoning, all of the families commented on the fact that society discourages men from addressing their feelings and how this had a negative effect on their loved ones’ life (Creighton, Oliffe, Ogrodniczuk, & Frank, 2017). The last study also looked at the way traditional masculinity affects men’s lives related to suicide. Coleman analyzed archival data and found evidence that suggests an association between masculinity and suicidal ideation. This data was different than others because Coleman did not find a significant relationship between depression and masculinity. In fact, he found that most men that died of suicide did not have reported depression at all: whether that is due to lack of help-seeking or not is not explored. Instead, he found that the cases of suicide may have involved something called “escape suicide”, which would involve suicide as a result of trying to escape a stressful situation or period in one’s life (Coleman, 2015). This is related to the Rural Men study mentioned above because many of those men did not have reported depression but may have completed suicide as an attempt to escape a something that classified them as less masculine. The relationship between depression, suicidality, and masculinity is not a concrete one, but these three studies look at the ways men are affected by the possible relationships in their everyday life, whether it be in the form of depression or other a-typical behaviors that hint at these feelings.

These studies look at the relationship between masculinity and mental health across many dimensions, and they give insight on the ways masculinity affects both men and women. Masculinity affects young boys and girls in their transition in middle school, leading to higher levels of depression and lower levels of academic engagement, and it affects older men and women in their outward symptoms or displays of depression. It also has been seen to be related to higher levels of suicidal ideation among men as well as higher levels of depression in men that endorse hegemonic masculinity and its ideals. The studies, when examined together, show an alarming relationship between masculinity and mental health in our culture and in other cultures. It does not just affect men; masculinity has negative effects on all members of a society, as hegemonic masculinity is the standard comparison for everyone, no matter what sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, race, ability, etc. My hope is to learn more about different intervention techniques and education programs that exist to teach youth about hegemonic masculinity today. With the knowledge we have gained and are continuing to gain, it would be a shame if no one took advantage of the opportunity to help our youth in an attempt to better their lives down the road.

References

Coleman, D. (2015). Traditional masculinity as a risk factor for suicidal ideation: cross-sectional and prospective evidence from a study of young adults. Archives of Suicide Research, 19, 366-384. doi:10.1080/13811118.2014.957453

Creighton, G., Oliffe, J., Ogrodniczuk, J., Frank, B. (2017). “You’ve gotta be that tough crust exterior man”: depression and suicide in rural-based men. Qualitative Health Research, na, 1-10. doi: 10.1177/1049732317718148

Price, E. C., Gregg, J. J., Smith, M. D., Fiske, A. (2015). Masculine traits and depressive symptoms in older and younger men and women. American Journal of Men’s Health, 12, 19-29. doi:10.1177/1557988315619676

Rogers, A. A., DeLay, D., Martin, C. L. (2016). Traditional masculinity during the middle school transition: associations with depressive symptoms and academic engagement. J Youth Adolescence, 46, 709-724. doi:10.1007/s10964-016-0545-8

Valkonen, J., Hanninen, V. (2012). Narratives of masculinity and depression. Men and Masculinities, 16, 160-180. doi:10.1177/1097184X12464377

[sherristockman]

The Healing Power of Nature Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola For most people in the U.S., life is easier than it was 50 years ago. Automation, transportation, communication and information are much more sophisticated now than they were then. At the touch of a button or the sound of your voice, nearly anything considered imperative for survival is available, instantly. But there are plenty who will tell you that, in comparison, life today isn't better; it's simply faster. Behavioral scientists of every stripe are becoming more vocal in the observation that at the same rate that efficiency has been increased, something else has been lost. More than a few people will say they experience a vague feeling of unease and even anxiety with anything too far removed from their creature comforts. Florence Williams, author of "The Nature Fix," contends that part of the angst stems from a disconnectedness from nature. People often choose what's familiar and nature has become a foreign commodity. A century ago, and even half that, people had a much greater opportunity to explore nature, or at least be outdoors more often and for longer periods than they do today. Then, people shopped in stores instead of online. For many people under the age of 30, you'll notice a certain unwillingness to detach from the "familiar" known as technology (or at least cell service). After-school activities once involved outdoor recreation with others, rather than engaging in solitary bouts of online isolation. Williams observes that one of the symptoms of "mass generational amnesia enabled by urbanization and digital creep" is that kids in both the U.S. and the U.K. spend about half the time outdoors that their parents did a few generations ago. Today, even out of school, about seven hours of kids' days are spent head down, staring at a screen. Where We've Come From and Where We're Going As a result of what she termed our "epidemic dislocation from the outdoors," Williams listed problems like vitamin D deficiency, obesity, depression, loneliness and anxiety. But there are other, unforeseen and increasingly common consequences, according to MinnPost's Earth Journal: "These include the disorders mentioned above and a wide range of others — mostly mental but some physiological — with roots in the particular stresses of the modern, high-pressure, ever-accelerating lifestyle, which is pursued largely indoors and may be especially problematic for the youngest among us."1 It's hard to believe that so few health authorities have been able to project where the fascination with technology in its many forms would take society as a whole. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with technology; the bigger problem is that so few people realize what it's replacing. But if you've never had something, it's hard to know what you're missing. Our collective myopic drive to succeed and sometimes just survive can blur our focus. We've become, C.S. Lewis noted, "like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea."2 Exacerbating the problem is that with every high school graduating class, we're that much further away from what our parents, grandparents and generations before us knew — that nature, the essence of the living world and the wonders it holds — may be far more crucial for our physical, spiritual and emotional survival than we realize. Modern Life: The Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Toll Williams noted a link between what's become an almost absent drive to connect with nature and the onset of the aforementioned chronic ailments (and unfortunately, that's just the short list). She asserts that while most of us are busy making the proverbial mud pies: "We don't experience natural environments enough to realize how restored they can make us feel, nor are we aware that studies also show they make us healthier, more creative, more empathetic and more apt to engage with the world and with each other. Nature, it turns out, is good for civilization."3 Put another way, the ease and comfort generally recognized as a residual of "success" has come with a price, but unless individuals, families, towns and whatever entity "management" represents see the trend for what it is and do something to slow the leak, it will only get worse. For some among us who've experienced some of the worst of what the world can throw at them, such as combat veterans who may or may not exhibit visible injuries, the power of nature is being used as one of the most restorative therapies — far better than drugs and, in some cases, more effective than counseling. An Idaho-based nonprofit group called Higher Ground4 offers veterans suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) opportunities to experience "therapeutic adventure," believing the sensory elements of nature can reduce trauma. But the scientific explanations are imprecise. Williams quoted Stacy Bare, one of Higher Ground's coordinators: "I think we all believe in the power and mystery of the great outdoors, but these are difficult things to quantify by science. Is it difficult to do a double-blind control study in nature? Very. I don't think we have to hit that standard, but we have to have a more systematic approach to how we evaluate the effects of the outdoors."5 How Can Nature Fix What's Broken? Rather than going on about the detriments of modern life on the human psyche, suffice it to say that all over the world, the disconnect between modern life and the great outdoors hasn't gone unnoticed. In some areas, researchers, naturalists and city planners are remedying the shortfalls in novel ways, Williams observed, such as in: Scotland, where poor people in Glasgow slums have been studied in regard to the harm suffered as a result of their disconnect from nature. Japan, a therapeutic practice called "forest bathing" is designed to reduce stress, increase immunity and even help manage diabetes.6 One study explains how being in or viewing plants, flowers, urban green spaces and natural wooden materials helps people relax, lower heart rates and blood pressure.7 Even in the U.S., forest bathing clubs have popped up, including in areas such as San Francisco, where members convene to slowly make their way through forests and indulge fully in the natural world.8 Finland, showing that parks designed to arouse visitors' connection to the natural world with ancient woodland settings helps arouse intense encounters called metsänpeitto, which means "covered by the forest." Singapore, which has the third-highest population density in the world, is being upscaled by urban planners to create a green infrastructure using green walls and vertical gardens, some of which produce food. Sweden, where a unique therapy "nature-based rehabilitation" garden in an all-weather, glass greenhouse was made available for patients disabled by work-related stress. The nature-based rehabilitation program affects the outcome with regard to return to work one year after.9 There are even volatile compounds called phytoncides released from trees10 that have been shown to reduce stress hormones and anxiety while improving blood pressure and immunity, according to Dr. Eva Selhub, a lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School and a clinical associate of the Massachusetts General Hospital.11 The Healing Power of Gardens, Even in Hospitals Embracing nature is therapeutic in ways that can't be explained. Scientific American cites a 1984 study conducted by environmental psychologist Roger Ulrich,12 the first to use scientific measurements to show how powerful something as seemingly innocuous as a hospital garden can be in speeding patients' healing time, no matter the illness: "Ulrich and his team reviewed the medical records of people recovering from gallbladder surgery at a suburban Pennsylvania hospital. All other things being equal, patients with bedside windows looking out on leafy trees healed, on average, a day faster, needed significantly less pain medication and had fewer postsurgical complications than patients who instead saw a brick wall."13 Whereas most physicians saw the noisy, smelly, notoriously distressing "disorienting mazes" as an unfortunate and unalterable reality in most hospitals prior to the study, Ulrich's research was deemed groundbreaking. Since then, it's been proven that even a few minutes of viewing trees, flowers and water can improve patients physiologically. In fact, garden views and garden-like alcoves strategically placed throughout hospital settings were shown to reduce anger, anxiety and pain and help patients, visitors and hospital employees relax. Improvements were noted in peoples' blood pressure, muscle tension, heart and electrical brain activity. Also, according to Scientific American,14 research shows that incorporating a design with hospital patients in mind calls for a number of factors to help bring the "healing" into garden settings: Keeping it green, ensuring that layered landscapes including shade trees, flowers and shrubs at various heights take up 70 percent of the space, with 30 percent as concrete walkways and plazas. Keep it real, as "Abstract sculptures do not soothe people who are sick or worried." Easy accessibility, with easy-to-open doors, and being located in close proximity to patients. Engaging multiple senses so that garden elements can be not just viewed but touched, smelled and heard, but in the background and not too overwhelming. Navigable walkways that wheelchairs and people accompanied by IV poles can walk though comfortably, with paving seams no further than one-eighth of an inch apart to prevent tripping. The Science of Grounding: Getting Down to Earth When your skin comes into contact with the Earth, such as when you walk barefoot through a lush meadow or on a sandy beach, there's more to the experience than just a sense of relaxation and well-being. It's a scientific study in the way your body is wired to be electrical. Research is emerging in some of the most surprising places, indicating that there's more to "earthing" or "grounding" than meets the eye. Because the Earth carries an electron-rich, negative charge, it provides a powerful and abundant supply of antioxidant electrons that effectively zap free radicals. When your bare feet come into contact with the ground, you absorb large amounts of negative electrons through your soles that's sufficient enough to maintain your body at the same negatively charged electrical potential as the Earth. In this way, your contact with nature is more than emotional or spiritual, although it can be those things; coming into close physical contact with the Earth — the essence of nature — is also physiological. It brings healing in ways that are quantifiable. How to Go 'Earthing' for Health Benefits James Oschman, an expert in the field of energy medicine, with a bachelor's degree in biophysics and a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, observed that grounding is especially beneficial for fighting inflammation, which is at the root of nearly every disease and disorder. Oschman and his colleagues listed a number of ways grounding imparts dramatic health advantages, including: Improved sleep More rapid wound healing Reduced stress Reduced pain Reduced blood viscosity Maybe your schedule somehow makes it impossible to take a three-week vacation to the Bahamas, or even a one-week excursion to the nearest mountains or wooded areas, but if you value your health and the health of your family, you should give nature a better chance at being a part of your lifestyle. An hour after work, a half-hour during lunch time, a day off or weekends spent in close contact with trees, flowers, flowing water and the sound of birds will lead to improvements in your psyche, your attitude and your overall health that may surprise you. In addition, Selhub recommends being mindful when you're in nature and bringing more nature into your life by:15 "Go[ing] crazy with the plants," adding them to your office, home or anywhere you spend a lot of time Finding a room with a view of nature whenever possible, and when it's not, adding photos of nature to your space Considering a meditation retreat that involves spending time in nature, which has been found to be "moderately to largely effective in reducing depression, anxiety, stress and in ameliorating the quality of life of participants"16 Combining your workouts with nature by doing them outdoors; exercising in the woods, for instance, decreases fatigue and increases positive mental thoughts and feelings of invigoration compared to exercising on a treadmill17 Connecting with nature via your diet. "Think about bringing nature into your body, especially if you can't get out into nature on a regular basis. Eat foods that are naturally available on this earth … Even better, plant your own vegetables if you can — you'll get the combined benefits of eating healthy, spending time in nature, and getting some exercise."18 You can also try starting a journal to track how you feel when you start and make a concerted effort to get in touch with nature. You may find yourself recording improvements that go far beyond the physical, positively influencing your work environment, relationships and above all, inner peace.

#VitalityPath

[sherristockman]

Automatic Brain: The Magic of the Unconscious Mind Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola “Automatic Brain: The Magic of the Unconscious Mind” is a fascinating first segment of a two-part documentary about the brain. The 52-minute film is based on the belief that your subconscious mind manages about 90 percent of everything you do whether you are asleep or awake. Through a series of interviews and entertaining demonstrations, neuroscientists and magicians team up to explain — and vividly demonstrate — the relationship between your conscious and unconscious brain. You may be surprised to discover your conscious mind plays only a minor role in guiding your life. In fact, most of what you think, say and do every day is a function of your “automatic,” or unconscious brain (also known as your subconscious). As such, much of the time, your brain is running your life on autopilot. For example, think about brushing your teeth or even driving, and how often you perform those and other routine tasks without being fully conscious of them. The movie is seasoned with plenty of sleight of hand tricks and visual experiments designed to both educate and entertain you. If you have children at home, you might want to share some of the trick segments with them. Watching with others or alone, I think you will benefit from taking a closer look at the inner workings of your brain. What Do Scientists Know About the Unconscious Mind? Given that your brain weighs just 3 pounds and has been the subject of countless scientific studies, you might think we’ve already learned all we can about it. To the contrary, the brain is remarkably complex and we have much, much more to discover. This film suggests your unconscious mind drives most of your daily routines and habits. “The brain decides things before we can consciously think about it,” says Allan Snyder, D.Sc., director of the University of Sydney’s Center for the Mind. “Decisions are almost dictated to us.” For starters, consider how your brain can handle this mixed-up sentence: “Wyh sohuld yuo wacth tihs flim atbou yoru barin?” Without much effort or conscious thought, your brain fills in the gaps of perception, enabling you to understand the question to be: “Why should you watch this film about your brain?” Psychology professor John Bargh, Ph.D., founder of the automaticity in cognition, motivation and evaluation laboratory at Yale University, suggests the unconscious mind is asserting itself more and more as researchers continue to study the human brain. He states: “Unconscious influences are … everywhere, and as research progresses, it's never going the other way. We’re not saying ‘oh, we used to think these things were all unconscious, but now we find out they're conscious.’ It's exactly the opposite. All these things we thought [were conscious] — because we thought everything was conscious — [are getting] smaller and smaller.” Matt James, Ph.D., president of The Empowerment Partnership and master trainer of neuro linguistic programming, writing in Psychology Today, assigns seven qualities to your unconscious brain. These qualities may help you understand the vital role your subconscious plays in orchestrating a significant portion of your life. Your unconscious brain, says James:1 Acts like a young child: Similar to a young child, your unconscious mind needs clear, detailed directions and it takes instructions literally. This means you may experience neck pain at work if you are prone to saying, “This job is a pain in the neck!” If you want to be successful, you must give your unconscious mind specific, literal (and positive) instructions to follow. Communicates through emotion and symbols: Your unconscious mind can get your attention quickly by using feelings and symbols. If you are suddenly overcome with fear, for example, your unconscious mind has discerned (correctly or incorrectly) that your survival may be at risk. Deals with positives only: Negative words like “don’t,” “no” or “not” are largely ignored by your unconscious mind. For this reason, it is better to avoid statements like “I don’t want to procrastinate,” which very likely will result in your subconscious creating a picture of procrastination and drawing you toward that behavior. It would be better to state your intention in a positive form such as “I am going to tackle the project now.” Creative imaging is another way to settle your mind on positive thoughts. Makes associations and learns quickly: To protect you, your unconscious mind is always on alert, gleaning lessons from every experience you have. One bad experience in the classroom at school might translate into a core belief that anything related to education “won’t be fun,” causing you to become anxious whenever you have to try something new in an academic setting. If you do well in sports, though, your subconscious will note that “sports equals success” and you will feel energized and positive whenever physical activity is called for at school. (This may explain why so many school-aged children claim lunch or recess as his/her favorite subjects. This is likely because lunch and recess have more possibilities for success and, therefore, more positive associations than some of the other activities taking place during the school day.) Preserves your body: Because a primary objective of your subconscious is the survival of your physical body, it will fight anything that appears to be a risk or threat of hurting you. Runs your body: Since your unconscious mind is responsible for your basic physical functions, such as breathing, heart rate and immune function, it can be an excellent source of information regarding what your body needs and how it can achieve optimal health. When people tell you to “listen to your body,” it is actually your unconscious mind you need to tap into. Stores and organizes your memories: Your subconscious determines where and how to store your memories. It also decides whether to hide unpleasant emotions and trauma from your conscious mind or bring it to the surface so you can deal with it. As such, it is also in charge of determining the timing for certain memories to surface. Even if you don’t feel ready to deal with something — like unresolved aspects of your past, including trauma — your unconscious mind knows when you are ready. Magic Tricks Work by Cleverly Manipulating Your Unconscious Mind Magician Apollo Robbins, known as “the gentleman thief,” who first made national news as the man who pick-pocketed a Secret Service agent while entertaining former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, is well-known for exploiting the automatic mode your brain uses to navigate you through life. About magic, Robbins said: “Magic is about what's happening inside the head. It's about how we can manipulate the attention. It's about how [the unconscious mind] can be taken advantage of … to take people on a journey.” When Robbins performs a sleight of hand trick to make a coin disappear in one place and mysteriously appear in another, he says the trick works because your automatic brain makes a false assumption about his hand. For example, Robbins could easily make you think the coin is moving from place to place simply by distracting your attention. By inviting your conscious brain to focus on one particular area, Robbins can quickly make changes in another, giving the appearance of something magical transpiring. In scientific terms, Stephen Macknik, Ph.D., neuroscientist and director of the State University of New York’s laboratory of translational neuroscience, explains what you experience during a magic trick is a series of “electrochemical signals going around a bunch of circuits in your brain.” Because there are no windows in your skull, he says, the only way you can get information into your brain is through your five senses. From there, your brain draws on past memories and then uses cognition to fill in the details — essentially forming what Macknik calls “a grand simulation of reality.” He states: “It's not that the world around you isn't there. It's there, but you've never lived there. You've never even been there for a visit. The only place you've ever been is inside your mind.” Overloading Your Working Memory Is Part of Creating an Illusion Many tricks performed by magicians work on the principle that your mind can cope with no more than four to five units of information at the same time. As such, when asked to choose and focus on one particular card out of a group of six cards, you will very likely take little notice of the other five cards. Let’s say you chose the king of hearts. As the trick advances, you will eventually notice the king of hearts has disappeared from the group of six, which gives you the false impression the magician has successfully identified your card. The truth is, he may have simply showed you a group of six entirely new cards. As such, regardless of the card you chose earlier on, it would not have appeared in the final sequence, leading you to believe the illusionist did something magical to uncover your card. In reality, the magician did very little to identify your card. All he did was cleverly manipulate your unconscious brain to support a “magical” outcome. Because your brain’s working memory was overloaded, it did not notice the wholesale change of the cards. The Marshmallow Test and the Unconscious Mind In the late 1960s and early 1970s, researchers from Stanford University initiated the “marshmallow test” at Bing Nursery School near San Francisco to explore how the conscious mind can subdue the unconscious mind. Repeated in the film, this experiment endures as one of the most important tests related to self-control and motivation. It involves seating a 4-year-old child in front of a table on which has been placed a plate with one marshmallow and a small hand bell. Before a trusted adult leaves the room to “take care of something,” he invites the child to choose if he/she would like to receive a second marshmallow, which is produced from a package of marshmallows the adult has on hand. To earn the second marshmallow, prior to the adult’s return, the child is told he/she must avoid doing the following: Eating the first marshmallow Ringing the bell to summon the adult to return earlier than planned Over the years this test has been used, it is evident each child had previously developed his/her personal strategy to resist temptation and exercise self-control well before participating in the experiment. As such, participant brains were effectively on autopilot during the test, which would suggest the outcomes had very little to do with situational willpower. Walter Mischel, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Columbia University and hailed inventor of the marshmallow test, said: “The conception of willpower as a stoic thing, where you essentially bite your lip, will it and make it happen. [This] is a terrific way to have resolutions that don't work out. It's just too hard, it's just too impossible. You have to in some way engage the environment, change it and transform it. The only other thing you can do [to overcome temptation] is change your perceptions, and change where you put your attention.” The children who waited for the adult to return on his own were shown to be successful in redirecting themselves to other activities while they were waiting. These other activities apparently helped them overcome temptation by choosing to distract or redirect their focus away from the marshmallow. “Four-year-olds can be brilliantly imaginative about distracting themselves: turning their toes into piano keyboards, singing little songs, exploring their nasal orifices,” stated Mischel.2 Your Ability to Exercise Self-Control at Age 4 Influences Your Adult Life Notably, researchers have kept tabs on the original children who participated in the marshmallow test in the early 1970s. Through ongoing interviews, scientists have found that compared to subjects who immediately devoured the marshmallow, those who at the age of 4 were able to wait, went on to: Achieve higher scores on college entry exams3 Earn significantly more money Experience happier marriages Maintain a lower body mass index (BMI)4 Related to BMI, researchers noted that each additional minute the preschooler delayed gratification predicted a 0.2-point reduction in adult BMI. The study authors stated:5 “Longer delay of gratification at age 4 years was associated with a lower BMI three decades later. Identifying children with greater difficulty in delaying gratification could help detect children at risk of becoming overweight or obese. Interventions that improve self-control in young children have been developed and might reduce children's risk of becoming overweight.” Six Actions You Can Take to Harness Your Unconscious Mind Clearly, as the producers of “Automatic Brain” assert, your unconscious mind has a strong, powerful influence in your life. For obvious reasons, you want to harness its power and direct its influence in positive, life-giving ways. Operation Meditation suggests six actions you can take to more fully leverage and direct the potential of your unconscious mind:6 Express yourself artistically: Any type of artistic endeavors, like coloring, drawing or painting, makes use of the subconscious by allowing the creative work to surface and help you express your true feelings. If you are unsure how to get started, you might consider taking an art class, even if you have little artistic talent or interest. Because the goal is to tap into your subconscious mind, you don’t necessarily need to be a great artist, just open to the process of creating. Meditate: Of all of the ways to connect with and influence your subconscious mind, meditation may be the most powerful. During meditation, you are becoming more relaxed, thereby setting aside conscious thinking. In a relaxed, open-minded state, you are able to access deeper feelings and thoughts that are normally suppressed. (See below for details on mindfulness, a form of meditation.) Rehearse desired outcomes: A great way to program a new activity, skill or thought into your unconscious mind is to rehearse it and repeat it until it takes root. Countless songs are lodged in your subconscious, and you can sing them mindlessly, simply because you repeated them at some earlier point in your life. Similarly, you can rehearse new attitudes, ideas, outcomes and thoughts. By repeating what you want several times in a row on a daily basis, you will help your subconscious mind catch on and help you achieve your desired outcomes. Review before bed: Especially as it relates to learning new material, reviewing it just before you go to sleep may help you transfer it to your subconscious. Reading over key portions of goals, presentations or speeches as the last thing you do before bed ensures the information is in the forefront of your mind as you drift off to sleep. This technique also has the potential to influence the content of your dreams. Think and speak positively: Speaking out positive affirmations is a great way to plant positive thoughts and ideas into your unconscious mind. By adopting a consistent habit of positive “self-talk,” you will notice more upbeat thoughts beginning to gradually counteract previously negative thinking. Starting with simple phrases such as “I can do this” or “I am doing a fantastic job” will lift your spirits and begin to influence how you think and feel about yourself, even if others around you continue to criticize and be negative. As mentioned earlier, avoid using negative phraseology such as “I won’t use harsh words.” Instead, rephrase the thought into a positive form such as, “I will speak only kind, encouraging words.” Write it down: Getting your thoughts down on paper can help you remove “mind clutter.” Take out a pad of paper and a pen, set a timer for five to 10 minutes and begin writing whatever comes to mind. Avoid editing yourself. Write literally anything and everything that comes to mind. Over time, as you stick with this habit — ideally as a weekly and even daily activity — your brain will work its way into your subconscious, uncovering and surfacing valuable insights and thoughts you may not have even realized you had. If you are in the habit of keeping a diary or journal, you probably already experience the many benefits related to this practice. Practicing Mindfulness: Another Means of Training Your Mind Mindfulness is a form of meditation, and you can practice it anytime, anywhere. To do so, you simply choose to actively pay attention to the moment you're in right now with a nonjudgmental attitude. Instead of letting your mind wander, when mindful, you live in the present moment, letting any distracting thoughts and judgments pass through your mind without getting caught up in emotional implications and negativity, which have the potential to distract you and pull you away from the here and now. A great advantage of mindfulness is the ease with which you can incorporate it into any aspect of your day. You can employ mindfulness while you’re doing household chores like washing dishes, when you are eating, going for a walk or working. The goal is to simply pay attention to the sensations you are experiencing in the present moment. According to The Atlantic,7 many school teachers are now beginning their classes with short mindfulness exercises involving activities such as counting breaths, focusing on the sensations of breathing, and visualizing thoughts and feelings. The goal is to help students prepare for academic lectures and lessons by: Focusing and training their attention Quieting their thoughts Regulating their emotions Mindfulness in Medicine Mindfulness, especially the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, has also made its way into medical settings. For example, MBSR uses specific exercises to support patients who are dealing with chronic pain. In recent years, mindfulness has been used to ease stress on Capitol Hill,8 boost athletic and business performance for the Seattle Seahawks9 and Google,10 respectively, and drive results in the U.S. military.11 While the move toward mindfulness has spurred an industry involved in the promotion of all sorts of books, courses, magazines and smartphone apps, you can bring mindfulness into your everyday world without any special equipment or training. Here are some tips to help you get started: Begin your day mindfully by focusing on your breathing for five minutes before you get out of bed. Tune in to the flow of your breath and the rise and fall of your belly. By regulating your breathing first thing after you wake up, you can bring more clarity and focus to the rest of your day. Minimize multitasking, which works in direct opposition to mindfulness. If you find yourself trying to complete many tasks at once, stop yourself and focus your attention back to the one task at hand. Disable emotionally distracting thoughts by reminding yourself they are only "projections," not a guaranteed future reality. As such, you can allow those thoughts to pass rather than giving them permission to stress you out. Sit quietly for a time, perhaps in the company of soothing music. Breathe rhythmically, and focus on something such as your breathing, a soothing image or object, a breath prayer or mantra, or simply being aware of the present moment. Applying Buteyko breathing can also help calm your mind and get you into deep states of relaxation at any time during the day. Whatever method you choose to become more aware of and engaged with your brain will most certainly pay dividends across your entire life — physically, emotionally and spiritually. Your mind is powerful and, as the producers of “Automatic Brain” have suggested, you are very likely only connected to and leveraging a very small portion of all the wonderful benefits your brain has to offer.

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