A Topic Ago: The Senses

Now that I've moved from Memoirs and Histories to Medical Controversy it's time to take a look back at the topic before both of those. Hence the name "A Topic Ago".

I started this blog by taking a look at the Senses. I thought I'd start with how we experience the world.

The Senses (March - April 2010)

• Listening and Language: 
• Spirals to Unravel a Mystery
• The New Colours of Summer?: 
• Teal and Orange - Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness
• Memory Colors
• Got Me a Side Job
• I Love the Smell of History in the Morning: 
• Jenne Heise / Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
• Two Genera of Living Earworms: 
• Recording Cher's 'Believe'
• Can I Get An Amen?
• Spices of Life: 
• Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages
• Sailu's Kitchen
• Revising Nonsensical Colour Theory: 
• color vision
• Something Smells Fishy: 
• Olfaction
• Fooling Our Ears: 
• Speaker Wire - A History
• Cables, Interconnects & Other Stuff - The Truth
• The Full Body Sense: 
• The Sense of Touch and How It Affects Development
• Can't Touch This
• "Monkey See Monkey Do" Neurons: 
• The Dancing Mind
• Not Just a Matter of Taste: 
• Tracking a Century of American Eating
• Major Trends in U.S. Food Supply, 1909-1999 (pdf)
• Technical Details: 
• The Physiology of the Senses: Transformations for Perception and Action
• Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling the World
• The One We Don't Want to Feel: 
• The Seated View

My New Word of the Day: Organoleptically

When writing about the senses I didn't stumble across the term organoleptically. Which is unfortunate because it's a lovely word.

I found it in an article on How to Make Brownies, Pentagon Style. The article details the Pentagon's brownie recipe which is document MIL-C-447072C (pdf). Which as recipes goes is a nightmare that fills 26 pages.

Yes... 26 pages. For brownies. It contains details on the the ingredients:

3.2 Ingredients. All ingredients shall be clean, sound, wholesome, and free from foreign material, evidence of rodent or insect infestation, extraneous material, off-odors, off-flavors, and off-colors.

So remember when cooking brownies for the Pentagon hide any evidence of rodent or insect infestation. The infestation can be there. It just can't be evident.

And details such as the exact steps to prepare the brownies:

3.3.2 Brownie preparation. (NOTE: The contractor is not required to follow the exact procedure shown below provided that the brownies conform to all finished product requirements in 3.4)

And even the details of section 3.4 that tell you how your brownies have to turn out such as:

a. There shall be no foreign material such as, but not limited to, dirt, insect parts, hair, wood, glass, or metal.

b. There shall be no foreign odor or flavor such as, but not limited to, burnt, scorched, stale, sour, rancid, musty, or moldy.

But my new word comes in at section 4.5.1.1 (Ingredient and component examination). In which the instructions say (take a deep breath... this is a big one):

If necessary, each ingredient shall be examined organoleptically or inspected according to generally recognized test methods such as the standard methods described in the Official Methods of Analysis of the Association of Analytical Chemists and in the Approved Methods of the American Association of Cereal Chemists, to determine conformance to the requirements.

Admit it. You didn't even know there was an American Association of Cereal Chemists.

So what ranks as a method along side those of the Association of Analytical Chemists and the American Association of Cereal Chemists? Organoleptically simply means using your senses. Looking, smelling, tasting, and touching (and when it comes to ingredients in brownies I hope we don't need to use hearing too often).

In other words you can inspect them visually or with your other senses.

I'm so glad there's a word for that. Any ideas on how to work the word in during random chit chat at the office?

Follow Up: Monkey See... What Should We Do?

When I was looking at the senses I wrote about monkey see monkey do neurons. How the brain, in monkeys and in humans, follows along when we watch actions. The same neurons that fire when a monkey opens a nut fire when the monkey watches someone else open a nut. Hence the name. Though they are also called mirror neurons instead of monkey see monkey do neurons. Mirror neurons probably looks better in the scientific literature.

There are some interesting implications on what the existence of mirror neurons in our brains imply. After all if we act out what we see... then that may be the basis for empathy. If we can literally 'feel' in our minds what others are doing and experiencing then... is that how empathy forms?

Now I haven't been following up the science in detail so I don't know what the latest consensus is. And just because we can go through the motions doesn't mean that mirror neurons are the basis of emotional empathic responses. And even if that's shown to be true... it doesn't invalidate the other aspects of our nature and somehow just turn us into empathic beings.

Which is why a presentation from RSA Animate irks me so much. The Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has put online a number of presentations and lectures given at events they've held. It's a fascinating series of talks on all sorts of topics. RSA Animate is a series of videos in which some of the lectures are played along with a sped up drawing of the key points, phrases, and ideas in the lecture. The 'animated' part is created using a large whiteboard. The effect is rather good. Lectures (or it seems edited versions of some lectures) are enhanced by watching someone draw notes for you as you watch.

One of the RSA Animate presentations is The Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin. Now the main substance is an interesting idea. Maybe even a very important one. But....

Part of the presentation is a few more details on the actual experiment that first showed mirror neurons. A few seconds later and he's telling us that research tells us we aren't wired for aggression or anger or violence but for sociability and affection and companionship.

Now I never thought human beings were 'just' violent at our cores. But I'm not sure we're 'just' empathic at heart either. As in much of science I suspect the reality is much more nuanced and grey than a black or white look at the world.

I'm not throwing out the overall idea of the talk. I'm not saying some of what he's proposing and talking about doesn't sound like a good idea. What I am saying is: Why do people take a little bit of research and assume that all the previous research and findings were completely wrong? I understand it's nicer to think of us as polite empathic creatures instead of violent self actualizers... but again... isn't probably more complicated than one or the other?

I like to think we all have better angels in our nature (to badly paraphrase) but I also know we aren't always angels. Humans are much more interesting than just angels or just devils. That's what I like about people.

The Senses: The One We Don't Want To Feel

I've already pointed out that there are more than five senses. Balance, or equilibrioception, and the sense of our own body, or proprioception, are other senses we have besides the usual five.

The human body has other senses as well. Senses that tell us how our body is feeling. I tend to simplify things a bit too much but I think there are three general ways in which our body can tell our conscious mind how things are going.

We feel nothing, we feel pleasure, or we feel pain.

Pain is the way we know something isn't right. The way our body can get our attention.

Many people only feel pain when they hurt ourselves. For them pain is just a warning mechanism. Some of us feel pain on occasion. Whether headaches or lower back pain or something similar, we feel pain not just when we injure ourselves. Pain encroaches. Pills and painkillers help it pass. We look after ourselves and then it goes away again.

Others feel pain all the time. I've come to know one person with chronic pain very well. Lene Andersen is an award winning author and blogger, advocate, and exhibited photographer. The Seated View is where you can read her "opinionated ramblings about almost everything".

From audio book reviews that make you realize how important it is to have a good reader, through movie reviews, amazing photographs, and her end of the month random posts, The Seated View is well written, funny, insightful, and I highly recommend reading it.

As an accomplished writer Lene is also able to share her experiences living with pain. The Seated View gives insight into living with chronic pain for those of us who can't begin to imagine it. If you want to try to understand what it's like to live with fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, or even with chronic pain in general, The Seated View is a good place to start.

• Don't understand fibromyalgia? Here's what it's like to have a fibro flare. Not sure what affects pain can have on the mind as well as the body? The term is fibro fog.
• Have you had a family member or friend in great pain? Pain not only isolates but it can be very hard to watch. Even for those who can personally relate it's hard to watch someone suffer.
• Having chronic pain isn't necessarily depressing. Life can be good even with pain. It can even lead to personal growth apparently. Even after downturns and setbacks the future can open up again.

Don't think The Seated View is only about disability or pain. Lene's blog is like life. There are ups and downs, laughs and tears, moments of frivolity and moments of deep reflection. I've learned a great deal reading her blog. It's made me not just aware of how lucky I am to be relatively pain free, but also how lucky I am to know her.

The Senses: Technical Details

Last I checked human beings don't come with owner's manual, a support guide, or even a brochure on what the human body is capable of. We can't even surf to the vendor's website and track down the technical specs. We humans are ingenious creatures and some people have spent a lot of time reverse engineering the human body to understand how all works.

The details on how our senses work is covered in detail in the course The Physiology of the Senses: Transformations for Perception and Action by Tutis Vilis from the University of Western Ontario. It's billed as a brief and simple undergraduate level course but don't get scared away by that. The flash animated versions of each section are easy to get through even if many of the details escape you (as many escaped me) but the gist of how sensations get to the mind is easy to grasp. If textbooks were written more like these flash animations and pdfs I'd have had a much easier time in school. In places it is dense and technical but it isn't dry and full of small print.

Even if a university level course on the details of the senses isn't your idea of how spend a few hours don't pass this site by. Each course section also has a short page of links. There is so much to explore that is much less technical. There are links to TED videos, to an article on how the brain processes jokes, and even to a NeuroReport paper on Why can't you tickle yourself? (pdf). Make sure you have some time on your hands before you head to the links pages.

There are other overviews of the senses that are less detailed but just as interesting. Seeing, Hearing and Smelling the World is a report from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Less technical it doesn't get into the minutiae of the senses. Instead it works at a higher level. Mixing some details with descriptions of how three of the senses work, explanations of the research that's been done, and descriptions of areas where more research is required.


What I haven't found in one place recently is the technical specs for human beings. Years ago Stan Kelly-Bootle (the first person to receive a postgraduate diploma on computer science back in 1954) wrote a monthly column for a magazine aimed at computer programmers. I can't recall if the magazine was Software Development or Computer Programmer, or another that came before those two.

At one point he wrote a series of columns about how humans and computers could interact. He didn't talk about windows or mice or anything technical on the computer side of the things. Instead he focused on the limitations of our senses. Limitations such as:

• How much detail can we see right in front of us compared to our peripheral vision? 
• How many colours can we perceive? 
• How many images need to flicker in front of our eyes before we see seamless motion? 
• What range of sound can we hear? 
• How much information can we make out in an sound?
• How many words can we read in a second?

It was a fascinating summary of the limits of our ability to sense and understand information. It turns out there are known limits to how much information we can take in. Also there is only so much we can do to transfer information from within our minds into a computer. At a certain point we can't interact any faster and the only choice we have is to be more efficient.

We may not have the complete tech specs for the human senses provided for us but we do have several good after market maintenance manuals. Dr. Vilis' animations are a good place to start.

The Senses: Not Just a Matter of Taste

I've posted about taste before. Writing about the spices we use in our foods. Spices are just the additions to what we eat. From a nutritional point of view they have almost no value. The bulk of our nutrition comes from the staple foods that make up our diet.

What we eat now and how our collective diets have changed over time is a fascinating topic. Many issues that we face are tied to what we eat. There is controversy at the moment as to whether or not corn sweeteners are a cause of the "obesity epidemic". People are also worried about sustainability and the food we eat. There are many issues concerning our eating habits.

Policy and planning decisions are better informed when there is a way to look into the details of what we eat. Especially when we can see trends over time.

There are resources that have some of these details. The US Department of Agriculture publishes a periodical appropriately named Amber Waves and in the March 2010 issue there is an article looking at the last 100 years of food availability data from the Economic Research Service. Tracking a Century of American Eating gives an overview of the wealth of data that's been collected.

The trends dramatically show how dietary habits have changed. For example:

• In 1910 only 12% of fruit consumed was processed. In 2008 that increased to 49% of all fruit. At the same time the number of pounds of fruit per person per year increased from 177 to 251. Who says we aren't eating our fruit.
• The growth in the amount of cheese consumed per capita has increased dramatically. From 11.4 pounds per person per year in 1970 to over 31 pounds in 2008.
• Chicken consumption has almost risen above beef consumption. Chicken is so cheap and plentiful that it's difficult to understand that it was a luxury item before factory farms and modern agriculture. "A chicken in every pot" was a promise of better times. Now chicken is not considered anything special. It's a staple.

A slightly more detailed look at the last 100 years of food data in the US was written up in 2000 in another USDA periodical - Food Review. The dryly named Major Trends in U.S. Food Supply, 1909-1999 (pdf) is not a description of changing food habits. Instead it is a collection of graphs. From the drop in the percentage of disposable income spent on food (from 24% down to under 12%), to a comparison of the decline of milk drinking and the increase in soda consumption, the graphs can start endless discussions.

What conclusions do the number present? What changed? Which trends are positive and which are negative? Food consumption has changed radically, is there any way of influencing and altering the trends moving forward? The discussions can go on ad infinitum.

If an overview isn't enough the USDA has created a website of the Data Sets where you can chart, compare, and download the Information on Food Availability and other topics to analyze yourself.

Of course even with all this information at our disposal there will still be disagreements about what we should do concerning food. But I'd rather have an informed discussion where we disagree on what the numbers mean than an uninformed one where we can't even agree on the numbers.

The Senses: "Monkey See Monkey Do" Neurons

I found myself going from listening to an Australia Broadcasting Company program about the brain, movement, and dancers, to thinking that contrary to my expectations watching sports may be a cerebral activity.

It started with an episode of All in The Mind called The Dancing Mind. I don't think the audio of the episode is online. It helps to hear the conversation happening but we do get a complete transcript. So all is not lost. It's an eye opening read.

How did I get from The Dancing Mind to the cerebral nature of watching sports? Follow along and see.

Ever find yourself tilting and weaving with the action on television? Do you have a visceral reaction when watching dancers or acrobats? Do you jump out of your chair while watching sports? Especially sports you play yourself?

Maybe you get to blame your brain.

In school we're told we have five senses. Sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. The senses are used to introduce us to how we understand the world. It can lead students towards science and an understanding of the world around them. We're told the senses are how we perceive the world around us.

Like many things we're taught in school that's a grand oversimplification. We don't just have five senses and we perceive more than the world around us.

Our world includes ourselves. We have senses that help us perceive ourselves and our place in the world. We have the senses of equilibrioception and proprioception to help us understand our place and ourselves.

Here's an snippet from Jerome K Jerome's novel Three Men in a Boat on how some people don't admit they can sense their place in the world.

It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.

We get seasick (sorry... sea-sick to borrow Jerome's spelling from 1889) when the world around us moves in ways we don't expect. We expect gravity to pull us straight down. We can sense it. We can also sense turning and acceleration. Balance and acceleration makes up the sense of equilibrioception.

If you close your eyes you can lift your arm without looking at it. You can touch your nose with your eyes closed. You know where your limbs are without staring at them. Imagine trying to walk if you had to look at your legs. Body awareness is the sense of proprioception. Sometimes also called the kinesthetic sense.

The kinesthetic sense is an interesting one. Our ability to understand the position of our bodies and the ability to coordinate complex actions is amazing. We can move from consciously thinking about our actions to making them automatic. We can perform complex tasks "without thinking". The term is muscle memory. It's why you can type without thinking of each key or drive a car without coordinating your feet on the pedals consciously. It's how we walk and run without working out each step in advance. It takes a while to learn. Just watch infants work out how to go from rugrats to toddlers.

It turns out research into muscle memory has found something quite interesting. When monkeys performed a task (picking up peanuts) certain neurons in their brains became active. When the monkeys watched another monkey picking up peanuts the same neurons became active. They acted out the task in their own mind while they watched it.

Hence the name "Monkey See Monkey Do" Neurons. It turns out we humans have the same sort of reactions to watching actions. The Dancing Mind covers this concept within the mind of dancers. Dancers who are injured may even be able to 'rehearse' mentally by watching the routines they will perform when they are healed. They can dance along within their mind.

Which may be why watching sports is so visceral. Why watching a dancer can make us feel like we're moving. It certainly helps understand why being in the audience of a physical spectacle is so satisfying. It turns out it really is a cerebral experience to watch a sport.

The Senses: The Full Body Sense

We smell with our noses, look with our eyes, taste with our tongues, and hear with our ears. Those four senses are limited to small areas of our bodies.

Touch is different. We touch with our entire bodies. We can be comforted by a hug, tickled on the soles of our feet, and get cozy as we surround ourselves with blankets. Touch is a full body sense.

Touch is more important than you might think. Here's a student paper by Crystal Leonard that shows how important it is.

Are there gender differences when it comes to touch? Do you think women have more sensitive fingers then men? Turns out sensitivity isn't based on gender but on the size of the fingers. The smaller the fingers the denser the nerve cells. So those of us with big hands are less sensitive than people with dainty fingers.

Currently the word touch is less associated with the sense and more associated with our gadgets. We probably finger our phones more often than anything else (and if that sounds dirty to you... it sounds dirty to me as well). I don't know what's to come in the world of computer touch. The vision that isn't available to buy yet was shown off to the world in 2006. In the 2006 TED conference Jeff Han demonstrated what could be done with a large touchscreen that responds to multiple finger presses at a time. The video was a must watch for geeks everywhere. Fast Company did a lengthy write up on Jeff Han and his work called Can't Touch This.

There are problems with reaching out and touching our computer screen. Accessibility issues. Issues with having our arms block the screen. It may not be the best way to interact with computers but it certainly is an interesting one.

And no... I am not going to buy an iPad anytime soon despite all the hype.

The Senses: Fooling Our Ears

This isn't a post full of examples of how our brain can fool us when we listen to sound. This isn't even a post with an example video of how people will hear messages in songs played backwards when they are told there is a message to be heard. (If you haven't seen Simon Singh's demonstration I'd suggest you watch it. Isn't the brain a wonderful thing?)

No. This post isn't about fooling our brain with sounds or fooling our hearing with our brains.

This is about the idiocy of fooling our brains and our hearing with our wallets. This is about the money wasted on useless technology in the world of the audiophile.


Audiophile Extravagances

There are a lot of myths held by audiophiles. But would you spend:

• $485 for wooden knobs for your audio components to improve sound quality?
• $2,750 for a 3 foot pair of Anjou speaker cables from Pear Cable? 
• $25 for a pen you use to (I'm not making this up) colour the edges of your CDs to reduce the scattered reflection of laser light?

I thought not. But some people do. It's bad enough that there are pages on nothing but audio snake oil and the debunkers. It's so bad that there's even a collection of audiophile BS.

Now don't feel all smug. Just because you wouldn't spend as much on your stereo, speakers, and various attachments as you on a small car doesn't mean you're in the clear. This isn't just about the absurdity of those with money to burn. Right now the biggest gouge isn't getting a few people to spend thousands on useless technology. The big ripoff is that the rest of us are convinced we need to buy expensive high quality cables to hear our music clearly. We spend too much on audio, video, and computer cables.

Why Use Special Wires at All?

For those of us who like nice neat well run double-blind experiments that prove the point... may I present a forum post by Dr. Bob Dean (savelife) on audioholics. You can skip the entire first section unless you want to hear how audiophiles explain their individual setups to each other. They take this very seriously. For example when describing his home theater setup he says:

Acoustical treatment consists of hung decorator rugs on the back walls, large back wall book case stuffed with books and nic-nacks, an acoustical fluffed (popcorn) ceiling, a 9 X 12-ft. area rug, and very soft, absorbant, dual pleat blinds which may be dropped down on the side walls exactly where the first sound wave launch hits the wall.

I couldn't make this up if I tried. The best part starts further down with "One last thing regarding your comment...". This is where the fun really begins.

His brother, an audio engineer, decided to help prove that you don't need expensive cables to enjoy good quality sound. His brother setup a true double blind experiment for himself and a few audiophile friends. They listened to music they'd never heard before on two different types of cables. Repeatedly. They couldn't find a difference between the cheap cables and the expensive "oxygen free ... stranded copper wire" cables.

Then his brother pulled a fast one while they where blindfolded:

Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat hanger wire! Unknown to me and our 12 audiophile buddies, prior to the ABX blind test, he took apart four coat hangers, reconnectd them and twisted them into a pair of speaker cables. Connections were soldered. He stashed them in a closet within the testing room so we were not privy to what he was up to.

Neither he nor his friends could find any difference. Even when just asked if things sounded good while the coat hangars where acting as wires they could only agree that the sound was excellent.

Debunking Speaker Wire in Depth

Very smart technically minded people have had spent a lot of time and effort debunking speaker cable myths. Here's some illuminating examples of the lengths people have gone to clear things up for the rest of us.

Roger Russell worked at McIntosh Labs and writes at length about testing cables. He starts immediately into the technical details. Those without a technical background beware. The interesting part is further down about The Truth about Speaker Wire.

 Looking at this from a different perspective, there will always be those who will want expensive wire, not because there is an audible difference, but because they may value pride of ownership and prestige in a similar way to that of owning a Tiffany lamp or a Rolex watch.

He even gets sarcastic near the end of the page:

We have been told by advertising that the exotic speaker wires offer fabulous advantages over ordinary lamp cord. It would seem reasonable that using this same wire for lamps would also enhance their performance. In the same vein as wire literature, you can have your lamp reproduce light with the full spectrum color fidelity of natural daylight, finally allowing you see light the way it should be seen and bring out the natural performance of your lamp.

Another long technical treatise is by Rod Elliot of Elliot Sound Products in Australia. Cables, Interconnects & Other Stuff - The Truth also methodically explains away the need for expensive cables.

In this digital age the gouge continues. High quality digital cables are sold at incredible prices. Which makes even less sense. Digital signals consists of bits. Just ones and zeros. On or off. There are no subtle nuances as in speaker cables carrying an analog signal. Either the digital bits make it from one end of the cable to the other or they don't. Those ones and zeros don't get partially garbled so your TV (via HDMI) or your monitor (via DVI) ends up wondering what to make of a a bit that is one half instead of a one or a zero.

So why do we think things sound better because we bought expensive cables? Why are we convinced that spending $100 is better than spending $25? I'm not completely sure of the answer.

Value judgments are highly selective. We expect more expensive things to be worth more. We expect more value when we spend more money. This is one of those areas where we are getting mislead. To the betterment of the cable companies and the detriment of our wallets.

Now I'm off to rewire my speakers with coat hangers.

The Senses: Something Smells Fishy

Andreas Keller is a PhD student who studies and researches odour and runs a website that covers odour and smell. His Olfaction page is a jumping off point to short articles on various aspects of smell. Each is meticulously researched and links to relevant research and other sites. If you want a glimpse into research about smell this is a great place to start. You'll come across tidbits such as:

• Some bees blend smells to create perfume
• People who smell odours that aren't there have phantosmia
• Why there hasn't been more research into how an why asparagus changes the smell of urine and how people notice the odour (hint - researchers haven't recently "had the courage" to ask people to smell other people's urine)

Andreas' site is one of the carefully put together pieces of the web that are embarkation points to much more. Start here and you'll end up jumping off to visit other sites. For example Andreas' site pointed me to the resources at The Sense of Smell Institute (www.senseofsmell.org). The Institute is a perfect example of what I call Wayne's Law. Years ago my friend Wayne pointed out that:

For any topic think of the first word or phrase that comes to mind and add "www." to the beginning and ".com" or ".net" or ".org" to the end and you'll find what you're looking for.

When I started looking into The Senses I should have just typed www.senseofsmell.org into my browser. I could have saved a lot of time.

The Senses: Revising Nonsensical Colour Theory

Put yourself in the shoes of a scientist trained in the rigors of research. Someone who is not only knowledgeable in your field (research psychology for example) but also someone who keeps abreast of other scientific disciplines such as astronomy and biology.

If it helps... imagine yourself wearing a lab coat. Though I'm not sure research psychologists wear lab coats.

Now picture yourself taking up a hobby. Let's pick watercolour painting. You wouldn't do it half way would you? You'd embrace it completely. Getting good enough to be able to sell your own work. You'd end up exploring the field of watercolours in depth. You're a researcher so you'd end up learning all you can about everything from brushes to techniques to the books that teach watercolours. If you had the bent you'd end up creating a website that takes a slightly "rational" approach to all things watercolourish wouldn't you?

This isn't a hypothetical situation. Let me introduce you to Bruce MacEvoy's watercolors site. Where discussions of paint isn't just recommendations and suggestions but details on how paints are made. Where the artistic and the technical meet.

Now put yourself in his place again. Imagine that as you start trying to understand the colour theory behind painting you come to realize that it's not based on rigorous science or psychology but on "18th century nonsense". What would you do? First you'd start learning more. Then, since you've already created a web site on watercolours, you'd create a definitive online work on color vision. And that's what Bruce did.

He starts with the nature of light and the nature of the eye. Goes into details on the makeup of the eye and its light receptors. Goes on to look at how we see and understand colour. He writes about colour theory that isn't 18th century nonsense but is instead rooted in reality. He goes into detail on how color is represented and explained technically. Talks about other parts of vision that alter our perception suck as how much detail we can actually see and how we see edges. There are discussions on building colour wheels and groups of colours for the artist.

color vision is not a short work. It is not even book length. It's larger than that. It's an invaluable resource to anyone who wants to understand colour and colour vision and it's still being written and expanded. A short browse will reveal the depth and complexity of how we perceive the world through our eyes. Thankfully for us a research psychologist decided to take up watercolours.

The Senses: Spices of Life

Do you eat to live or live to eat?

Brillat-Savarin supposedly wrote "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." When I checked The Physiology of Taste it is one of the "Aphorisms of the Professor" and translates to "Tell me what kind of food you eat, and I will tell you what kind of man you are." Which is slightly less prosaic. But only slightly.

I've always preferred being with people who live to eat. It says a lot about a person when they look forward to meals. I tend to like people who enjoy the simple things in life. Nothing is simpler, or more important, than enjoying food.

Part of enjoying food is making it taste good. Throughout history herbs and spices have been used to enhance flavours and make food more appetizing. There are quite a few plants that can be used to enhance flavours. I'm an expert at eating but not at all the esoteric details of spices.

Do you know type of plant a caraway seed grows on? Did you know it's not a seed? I didn't know it was the dried fruit of the plant. Could you identify a sassafras tree? Or a clove tree? Or did you know that nutmeg is a kernel of a fruit and mace is a thin leathery tissue in the same fruit between the nutmeg kernel and the pulp?

Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages will help clear things up for you. Each spice's entry covers the name of the spice in different languages with detailed entymologies (61 different languages for caraway), chemical details (the main component of sassafras oil is safrol which is also found in star anise, nutmeg, and black pepper), and links to sites with recipes and additional information. There are even details of what goes in various traditional spice mixtures. I can now make my own garam masala if I choose.

If Gernot's site can be said to lack anything it is recipes and basic or traditional uses for each spice. But by linking to others who have collected those recipes he can concentrate on names and botanical details.

While meandering across the web tracking down sites with recipes I came across an amazing food blog from southern India. Sailu's Kitchen is the food blog of Sailaja. She has a passion for all things food and it shows in the recipes and photographs of a wide variety of Indian cuisine. Chutneys, dals (including various vada recipes), Indian breads, and dishes both with meat and vegan. She's even started to cook some foreign cuisine. I keep being reminded on how global the internet really is. White bread and macaroni and cheese are foreign dishes to many people.

I live in the area of Toronto with the largest percentage of recent immigrants in the community. The grocery stores around me are filled with ingredients begging to be tried if I only knew what to do with them. Walk down the hallways of my building and you'll experience wondrous smells from different continents. With Sauli's Kitchen's help I have a chance at recreating many of those wonders using some of the ingredients I can buy down the street.

Makes me look forward to cooking and to eating.

The Senses: Two Genera of Living Earworms

As we've already seen we can close our eyes but we can't shut off our ears. We can't escape the sonic landscape around us. It used to be the sound of the natural world that surrounded humans. From birds and insects to the wind in the trees and flowing water. Many of us still find a brook or the pounding waves incredibly calming.

Then it became the sounds of the town and city. We live and work surrounded by noise. Many people don't find the city as calming as the country. We can't stop the noise, instead we hide it when we can. Thus was created Muzak.

Between Muzak and radio we ended up surrounded by music. Songs blare at us endlessly. Which leads to the phenomena of the ohrwurm.

Ohrwurm is a German word that translates to earworm. If you've ever had a tune stuck in your head you've had an earworm. It turns out a lot of research has been done on earworms though the tendency now is to call them involuntary musical imagery or INMI. Science removes some of the absurd creativity of language in its quest for clarity and understanding. Now it's time to use the structure of science to put it back again.

I'm shamelessly borrowing from biology. The individual songs that get stuck in your head are species of earworm. Family groupings of earworms are the genera. (plural of genus of course).

I wish to continue this dissertation by describing two genera of earworms. Not examples of individual songs but of the family groups of the type of sounds that keep ending up stuck in our heads.

First... the horrible overuse of auto-tune. Like all infestations of foreign species released into an environment it started with the best of intentions. Being able to change a singer's voice was revolutionary. Creative even. The story of how Cher scored a major hit thanks to auto-tune has been told several times. Believe was a huge hit.

What started as the introduction of a foreign species soon became a runaway infestation. And that link is two years old. It's only gotten worse. What ever happened to good singing? Now you don't even have to be able to hold a note as the computer will do it for you. I don't think we'll get away from it soon since country music singers, a genre not known for the necessity to hit each note exactly, are using the tool while performing.

Second... the drum beat that will never die. Once a group of species adapts to an environment there's almost no getting rid of them. Once something catches on we may be stuck with it for a long time.

In 1969 The Winstons put out a single for Color Him Father which won a grammy in 1970. The b-side of the single was an instrumental called Amen Brother. In the middle of the song is a six second long drum break.

We'll never know who first took that six second strand of musical DNA and incorporated it into their own composition. Tthat six seconds has ended up in more songs and more genres than you can imagine. That bit of musical DNA is now with us forever.

The result? Sit back and listen to Nate Harrison describe the history of the Amen Break in Can I Get An Amen? Not only is there some interesting history into a familiar sound but interesting concerns about copyright and ownership and creativity.

Both auto-tune'd music and the Amen Break are like the famous Wilhelm scream. Once you know what they sound like you'll hear it everywhere.

Whether you want to or not.

The Senses: I Love the Smell of History in the Morning

The middle ages. A thousand years of European history after antiquity. A period of superstition and ignorance. Just thinking of the period brings vivid images to mind.

If I try and picture that time in European history I think of bad weather and dirt and grime. Of people struggling to survive. Of western culture having fallen from the heights of the ancients to the grim reality of those dark centuries. Dark homes filled with smoke. People living short, nasty, and brutish lives while working towards their eternal reward.

So what was it really like back then? Was it dirty? Did people just smell bad or were there alternatives?

Luckily for us Jenne Heise's collection of information and writings is still online. Simply entitled Jenne Heise / Jadwiga Zajaczkowa the site is a collection of herbal lore, medieval recipes, and historic research that seems to be untouched since 2005.

The internet has a tendency to make it easy for parts of the web to vanish. Sites vanish without a trace. Web pages are replaced or updated leaving no sign of what came before. But once in a while an old web page sticks around. Forgotten? Left behind? Who knows. For now this resource is still available and what a resource it is. You'll find:

• A listing of scents and perfumes. Fresh dill seeds were tucked into cradles to sooth babies.
• A discussion of people's attitudes towards bathing. Did you even suspect that church fathers condemned excessive attendance of public baths?
• Details of mouthwash and dental hygene products. With details of how each worked when tried.
• Even a collection of period mustard recipes as they where originally written down.

This isn't dry history. The past brought alive by showing us the seemingly mundane details of daily life. This is how people lived. History comes to life. Being brought to life is apt because the site is written primarily for members of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Solid scholarship joined with enthusiasm and energy makes Jenne Heise's site a treasure.

The Senses: The New Colours of Summer?

Something is wrong with the look of new Hollywood movies. I don't think I can blame my eyes. I may need stronger glasses but I can still see pretty clearly. Action films started to look different. Now it seems the problem is spreading.


Do you have a collection of older movies on VHS? Maybe some old DVDs of movies before they were re-mastered and re-released? If you get the chance go and watch some of them. From blockbuster action movies through to romantic comedies have a blast watching some old movies. In particular look at the colours. At the skin tones and the differences between indoor and outdoor scenes.


Notice that skin can look greyish indoors and pale in the light? How the wash of colour from the sky reflects on to all the objects in a scene? There were methods to change the look of a film after it was shot but much of the work was done in situ. Film faithfully captured the light.


The year 2000 was the beginning of a revolution in film making. The Coen Brothers were the the first with O Brother, Where Art Thou?. It was filmed in Mississippi at a time of year when the leaves and grass were green. Which was a problem. In certain parts of the movie The Coen Brothers wanted to give the film a dusty sepia-tinted feel. Instead of waiting for a drought or another season they turned instead to the power of computers.


The entire movie was scanned into a computer and digitally colour corrected. Green grass was made to look like it had suffered a prolonged dry spell. Whole scenes weren't just tinted but adjusted. Instead the colour of the movie was tweaked. The look of the entire film was altered and changed to fit the Coen Brothers' vision.


Digital colour correction had been done in Hollywood before but never to an entire film. Computer hardware and software had reached a point where it was practical to change the look of a complete movie. Since then the technology has become less expensive and the tools more pervasive.


The result? The modern blockbuster movie's distinct look. The problem? Well let me turn you over to Todd Miro's rant Teal and Orange - Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness.


Now don't get distracted by the fact that Hollywood made a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine. I'm sure it's bound to be a classic along the lines of Back to the Future or Peggy Sue Got Married.


The issue isn't so much that colours can be changed. It's that the tool isn't being used to add artistic value but to push the pallet in one direction all the time. As soon as you see the new colour problem in film you'll end up seeing it everywhere. It's not a problem only on Michael Bay's blockbusters.


Todd points to filmmaker Stu Maschwitz to see how this is done. Stu has a wonderful post about Memory Colors that shows how colour correcting can enhance a shot and points out the power of certain colours in certain situations. These memory colours help the audience establish a sense of place. The example still taken of a scene set in New York shows how this can work effectively. He's collected a few examples of colour correction where you can compare before and after.


The real fun happens when Stu demonstrates the techniques involved in colour correcting. The video at the top of Got Me a Side Job is a product demo Stu created as a new Creative Director for Red Giant Software's Magic Bullet line.


Yes... I'm pointing you towards an extended product demo. No... I don't want you to go out and by software to alter your videos. No... I'm not affiliated with Red Giant or anyone else in this post.


Look, the long web isn't just essays and fiction. It's writing and video and presentations and brochures and demos and much more. The long web isn't just what amateurs create on their own time even if that's a big part of it. It can be corporate, governmental, or homegrown. It can be created for love and it can be created for money. The Longer Web is about exploring larger pieces of the web regardless of origin.


As product demos go this one has the advantage of being pointed, funny, and over the top. This isn't about how to subtly change a video. This is about how you can recreate the look of blockbusters. Get past the intro and in no time you'll see what's happening on the desks of movie colourists as we speak. Even if you don't watch the whole thing you'll quickly get a flavour of what's possible.


Brace yourselves. Movie screens will only become more orange and teal. If something is good enough for the blockbusters and easy to do as well... then... orange and teal may be around for a while. The two programs used in the demo cost $600 and other similar products are in the same price range. It won't just be Hollywood. Now everyone is able to make any video clip's colours look like a moving commercial for Florida Oranges or a sports franchise.

The Senses: Listening and Language

It wouldn't be wrong to call this site a celebration of language. Most of what will be linked to will be lots of words. Some will be spoken but most will be written down. (Is "written down" anachronistic in the era of word processors, online editors, and bytes?).

Language however is hard to define and understand. We talk about language using language. For most of us the languages we use are inherently limited by our ability to say and listen to words. Sign language is the notable exception. The rule tends to be that languages are based on the sounds we can make and listen to.

Olivier Burckhardt has posted his two part essay originally written for Quadrant magazine. Spirals to Unravel a Mystery starts with the issue of how to understand language but quickly shifts to the connection between language and sound.

He takes us through science and literature. Covering technical details of the ear and also sharing our cultural understanding of sound and language. Whether reminding us that hearing is not a choice - "after all we can close the lids of our eyes but cannot do so with our ears" or pointing out that "as one Hindu mystic pointed out to a French cardinal, even for the God of the Western Bible to have said 'Let there be Light', implies there must have been sound before light" there are many moments that will make you stop and think.

Once you're in the thick of Spirals it is a wonderful read. How often do Dante, Werner Heisenberg and Joseph Heller get quoted in the same essay? There are interesting facts sprinkled throughout. Did you know that "with an average of 0.000024 watts generated by human speech, it would take two and a half million people to keep a 60watt light bulb burning"?

Spirals shares the unique property of the best essays. You end up knowing more about language, speech, and hearing and understanding. You end up with new insights. You will have a new appreciation for the subject. And you are left with more questions and topics for discussion. Questions you didn't know could be asked before you read Spirals. Topics you didn't realize where worth contemplating before Spirals revealed them.

What more could you ask for?