A connection between stress and cancer?

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If you know me, and I believe you do, you know I have an interest in mind/body medicine which argues that calming the mind can have beneficial effects on the body. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence making this case but not a great understanding on how this process could work. This article from the Harvard Medical School notes the following.

A new study from investigators at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center finds that eliciting the relaxation response—a physiologic state of deep rest induced by practices such as meditation, yoga, deep breathing and prayer—produces immediate changes in the expression of genes involved in immune function, energy metabolism and insulin secretion.
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A systems biology analysis of known interactions among the proteins produced by the affected genes revealed that pathways involved with energy metabolism, particularly the function of mitochondria, were upregulated during the relaxation response. Pathways controlled by activation of a protein called NF-κB—known to have a prominent role in inflammation, stress, trauma and cancer—were suppressed after relaxation response elicitation. The expression of genes involved in insulin pathways was also significantly altered.

I read that and said, “Hold on! Cancer?” Many people have theorized about a connection between stress and cancer but until now I’ve never seen any real science to back this up. I’ll be interested to hear what more research brings.

Youtube autogenerated videos a blast against Spotify?

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One point I’ve made before about music piracy: everyone drones on and on about pirate sites like Pirate Bay and what not, but there’s not as much discussion about the number one web site for free music: Youtube (owned by Google.) I haven’t downloaded music from a pirate site in years, but any time I want to hear some particular piece of music I check Youtube and, mostly, it’s there.

Is all this music on Youtube pirated (meaning, is it posted there without the consent of the rights holders)? Not entirely – most modern tunes have singles of which the videos are posted by the rights holders. (Though I was frustrated in my attempts to the see video for Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” which I found once and then never again.) However, a lot of the music is uploaded by individuals who burn their CDs and make kludgy videos with the song. That basically is piracy though my understanding is that rights holders can bring these violations to Youtube’s attention and share in the ad revenue. (It should be understood that all these videos have ads in front of them.)

Youtube now seems to have a new trick up their sleeve: autogenerated videos. This was brought to my attention by a friend of mine who is a musician and has an in demand catalog going back decades. He discovered that Youtube had taken most of the songs from his catalog and created bare bones videos (basically just the album cover set to music.) He of course, was in no way notified and received no compensation. I looked around online and found someone with similar complaints:

I was surprised recently when I saw that several of my recordings had appeared as music videos on YouTube. All of the videos look the same: Each one, in addition to the audio of a song, includes an image of the album art and some text that provides the artist name and album title. The bare-bones descriptions that accompany the videos provide composer and copyright information and the statement “auto-generated by YouTube.”
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I don’t really mind that these videos of my recordings exist, but not everyone will feel the way I do. Artists could have a number of legitimate objections to the videos. For example, if artists had created or intended to create videos of their own, these auto-generated videos would compete with the official videos. Artists might also object to the design aesthetic of the videos or the song selection.

But the biggest potential issues are copyright and compensation. Artists receive no royalties from these videos, and YouTube posts the videos without permission from the copyright owners. It’s strange that YouTube—which suspends users’ accounts and deletes videos if it detects copyright infringement or receives complaints from copyright holders—now trawls the internet for music and posts it without permission on an increasingly massive scale. Class-action suit, anyone?

I’m a little unclear how Youtube is getting access to the audio feed (e.g. the songs) to make the videos. It’s possible that if a musician places their music with a digital distributor (as I have) and that ditributor has some kind of deal in place with Youtube then Youtube has the legal cover they need.

Why would Youtube do this? I’m going to to take a guess that it’s for their recently announced Music Key service which is essentially a competitor for Spotify. The autogenerated videos are a tool to fill out the Youtube “jukebox”.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are all sorts of pirated movies on Youtube too.

Music nostalgia

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As may or may not be known, I make a certain portion of my income playing in an early jazz duo that performs at senior homes and the like. It’s quite enjoyable, but I’m constantly aware of one point: the senior audience is always fading away, e.g dying, so eventually the market for the kind of music we play will be gone. If someone is 90 today, then the “music of their generation” is music of the 1920s and 1930s. In ten years or so you should expect that the demand for that music to be in serious decline.

Except, it’s not quite that simple. There have been several revivals of early jazz through the years and I think later generations appreciate it. Additionally, a lot of the hits from the 40s and 50s were actually recycled tunes from previous eras—those songs earned a second life.

Additionally, a new study makes some interesting points.

Weirdly enough, though, subjects also displayed a similar attachment – including a feeling of nostalgia — to music that was popular in the early 1980s, long before they were born.

“According to previous research, this would be the time when [the subject’s] parents’ preferences were established,” the researchers write. Their theory is that because of this attachment, parents listened to this music during their “child rearing years” contributing to their children’s musical education.

So, you not only like the music of your youth, you like the music of your parent’s youth. I can relate to this. My parents didn’t listen to much of any contemporary music when I was a kid but my Dad was a big fan of Broadway musicals. As a result I’m well versed in the music from “My Fair Lady” and “The Pajama Game” and those songs have a certain emotional resonance that few others do.

Nonetheless, I think I’ll eventually need to get better versed in the music from the 40s and 50s, which is fine with me.

What is money?

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I was talking recently about the illusory reality of ideas, thoughts, beliefs… basically all non physical things. I was lying in bed this morning and it struck me that paper money is a good example of this idea.

For example, think of a bag filled with hundreds of 20 dollar bills. People would lust for such a bag, in some cases people might kill for it. But in terms of the materials of such a pile of cash, it’s just some paper and ink – not much different from a pile of Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets. Why does money have this perception of value?

Well, obviously that’s a complex question… too complex to really get into here. We humans have agreed on the concept of money and that it can be used to purchase things and people’s efforts. But there’s something a little disquieting about providing a good or service and only getting some pieces of paper in return. Of course, in civilized society we are fairly confident that the value of our paper will be respected by others; we have faith that its value will be enforced by law.

Money is real in a material sense (the paper exists), but the value is unreal – it’s dependent on people agreeing on it. You could call it a cultural construct. To use my example from before, if everyone on earth died, the value of money would disappear.

Art is also a good example. When Picasso painted his first painting at a professional skill level it probably wasn’t worth much—he was an unknown loser (I think; I don’t know much about his history.) But somehow, 60+ years later that same painting is worth millions. Why? The materials (paper and dried paint) certainly didn’t change, they didn’t become any rarer in the world (probably the opposite happened.) What happened is everyone decided that Picasso was a genius and cubist paintings became a desired style etc. That value of paintings is in the ideas, not the material.

Weird.

Maybe salespeople are on to something

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Freddie Deboer had a interesting post recently titled “Pedantic ridicule never convinced anybody of anything.” His point—a rather obvious one—is that trying to convince people that they are wrong by talking down to them and treating them like shit will probably have the opposite effect. (This has been been affirmed in various studies that claim to measure such things.) As Deboer states…

I can’t find it now (edit: here), but some Facebook friends of mine last year were sharing a comic about white privilege that was essentially the “argument through aggressive disdain and ridicule” thing to the absolute zenith. It literally ended with a cartoon character looking into the frame and saying “fucking educate yourselves!” to its implied audience. Let me assure you of something: no one, in the history of persuasion, has ever been persuaded by someone indignantly ordering them to educate themselves. Telling people to educate themselves in that manner is essentially ensuring that they won’t. At some point you have to decide if you’re more invested in the fun of feeling righteously superior or the actual need to convince others.

It’s worth checking out the white privilege comic to get a feel for what Deboer is talking about.

I always had an embattled relationship with liberalism because of this sort of thing. While I agree with at least some of liberalism’s ideas, I find the attitude of so many of its proponents to be completely off-putting. This is partly because I came into political awareness while living in Olympia, Washington and Seattle—two enclaves I think even moderate liberals would agree are stifling in their progressive orthodoxy.

But what is it precisely that bugs me about this kind of “fucking educate yourselves” argumentation? I think one hears it and suspects that the person making the point is being disingenuous. Take the cartoonist described in DeBoer’s post. Is their point really that they want to make the world a better place by eliminating inequality, or is it that they want to buffer their self image and serve the needs of their ego by saying, “Look at me! Look how wonderfully progressive and right-minded I am!”?

Well, that’s really an impossible question to answer since I’m not a mind reader, and, frankly, I’m arguing that this cartoonist is not even themselves aware of their real intent. We really have no way of knowing another person’s intent (though I think we can take some reasonable guesses). But I will note this: there is a class of people who really are focused on getting people to do something. These people are called salespeople, and usually they are trying to get you to buy something. And they are almost never pedantic or assholes, if fact, they usually bend over backwards to be nice. They try to appear as your friend. (Sometimes they try to dissuade your dubiousness to the idea that they are your friend by explaining their self interest in what they are presenting as a win-win. “I’m not going to lie to you, Bob, I’ll get a healthy commission if you buy this car. But I honestly think you will look great driving off in it too.”)

Is my point that liberals (or anyone seeking to cause political change) should be a lot more like salespeople? Well, sort of. At least I think folks find people who don’t seem indentured to their own egos as more convincing than those who are.

Interestingly, I stumbled on a web post just the other day that touched on this point. It was titled, “You’re Wrong And I Can Help You.”

The reason that I no longer want to act like I think I’m better/smarter than others is because I think it’s damaging my relationships. Previously, I’ve written about Power and Intimacy. I talk about how in relationships, power and intimacy are opposite: treating someone else (whether it’s a friendship, family, a partner, a colleague) as though you know better than them, distances you.

So even if you’re the smartest person you have met, or more insightful or more loving – whatever it is that makes you better than others – if you act on it while deep down thinking “you’re wrong and listening to me will help you,” think twice.

Rethinking The Fountainhead

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A while back there was an interesting blog post on Andrew Sullivan’s site (written by a guest writer) tying Ayn Rand’s book The Fountainhead in to the issues surrounding the hacking of the Sony Corporation. Rand’s writing is, of course, often lauded by libertarian free market types. This post had a different take… (Warning: Major Spoiler Alert about The Fountainhead.)

The problem of willingly selling out to the Chinese reminded me of Ayn Rand, whose bracing moral lessons I’m sure Freddie had in the back of his mind. Rand’s finest novel,The Fountainhead, is an anti-capitalist screed about the spiritual and cultural evil of catering to market demand. Forget the problem of giving the commie censors what they want. It’s wrong to give the free market what it wants, when what it wants is aesthetically debased, which it always is. The architect hero of The Fountainhead, Howard Roark, is the ultimate in spine, the patron saint of never selling out. When one of his perfect, austere modernist buildings is bowdlerized the better to suit the public taste, he blows it up. That’s right, Howard Roark is a terrorist, a jihadi for artistic integrity.

This is the first time in writing I’ve ever seen someone wrestle with what I always found confounding about the novel. When I read the book, I was struck by how anti-libertarian Roark’s actions seems; he shows no respect for property rights when he blows up the building. I assumed it was a kind of glitch in the philosophy of the book but it could be that it is the philosophy of the book. It does, at least, present the trait I’ve always liked about Rand: love her or hate her she clearly did not give a shit what anyone else thought, so much so that she present a character who is essentially a terrorist as a hero. (I believe I’m correct that no one is actually killed when the building is destroyed as he does it late at night.)

Is the Internet not God’s gift to discourse?

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Lately I’ve been musing on the the popular practice of promoting interesting online articles by offering a link and some select paragraph sized chunks. I have been as guilty of this as anyone.

The problem, I feel, is that it lets people just read the segmented chunks and not the whole piece and feel like they “got” the article. But that’s often not the case—many articles are a whole greater than the sum of their parts and you have to read the whole thing.

Anyway, I found this piece on the way the internet has fractured our culture to be quite worth reading. I’m going to offer nothing more than the link.

The return of the auteur?

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As you probably already know: Sony Pulls the Plug on Dec. 25 Release of ‘The Interview’ After Threats

As major movie chains moved to pull “The Interview” from their holiday lineups after threats from the Sony Corp. hackers, Sony has decided to shelve the film.

“In light of the decision by the majority of our exhibitors not to show the film ‘The Interview,’ we have decided not to move forward with the planned December 25 theatrical release,” the company said in a statement. “We respect and understand our partners’ decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theater-goers.”

Freddie De Boer also notes:

There have been widespread claims that recent blockbuster movies like the latest Transformers have been written so as to appease Chinese censors. There’s nothing wrong with writing movies to reach out to a particularly huge foreign box office– why wouldn’t you want your movie to play to Chinese moviegoers?– but appealing to the Chinese government is a whole other ball of wax.

I’ve complained about the fact that much of modern cinema seems toothless and feels as if it was neutered by committee style writing. I also think it’s very hard to be an auteur style filmmaker (or musician or comic artist) because audiences are used to high production values. A filmmaker in the 1970s who had a great or at least provocative idea for a story (think Abel Ferrera or Doris Wishman) could collect a meager budget, make the film and earn some some small success, usually as a step towards a greater career. Viewers were more forgiving of cheap special effects because even the big players didn’t have particularly awesome effects. (Think about how fundamentally cheesy the creatures in Steven Spielberg’s Gremlins looked.) But once we entered the era of massive CGI it was hard to make a decent action or sci-fi orientated film without being compared to the Transformers or Planet of the Apes reboots (the latter of which I think have some great stories.)

I think this idea that blockbuster movie companies are running scared from internet terrorists and the Chinese censors may be a great thing for cheap, auteur storytelling. If the big players are too afraid to create stories that take chances, then poor (in money, not talent) writers, filmmakers and comic creators have a void they can fill. And there’s a hunger for that kind of storytelling.

Can quantity make up for lack of quality?

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There’s an old Bill Hicks joke:

“It’s hard to have a relationship in this business…it’s gonna take a very special woman…or a bunch of average ones.”

I was reminded of this while I was reading through a book on ebook publishing. The book made the claim that even if the market was flooded with free ebooks, excellent ebooks would always sell because quality will always sell. Ten mediocre books do not equal a great book.

Is this true? It seems to make sense. Certainly I would like it to be true. But I also have a nagging sense that when I occasionally do hear about an exceptional product for, say 10 bucks, there’s a little voice that says, “eh, you’ve got plenty to read/listen to/eat etc. that’s free.” It’s not that uncommon, especially when you’re broke, to trade in the proverbial special woman for a bunch of average ones.

The Danny Kay/Kramer Connection

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I watched “White Christmas” for the first time last night and was struck by how much Danny Kaye’s character reminded me of Michael Richard’s portray of Kramer on TV’s “Seinfeld.” I was so struck by the similarities I looked online to see if there was any discussion of this. In fact, it’s right there in the wiki article for Kramer which states…

It is interesting to note that many of his mannerisms resemble those of Danny Kaye’s character in “White Christmas” though it has never been mentioned as an inspiration for Richards’s characterization of Kramer.

But that’s not all. Over at this yahoo page an observer notes:

Danny Kaye died shortly after appearing on The Cosby Show, in 1986.
Kramer (Michael Richards) died horribly (career) after making racial comments at The Laugh Factory, on the, “Cosby Stage”, in 2006. Exactly 20 years to the day.

Coincidence?

It’s clear that the Danny Kaye/Kramer connection exposes the machinations of a secret society that has been controlling world governments since time immemorial!

And I like this gal’s spin on things.

It’s amazing how much Danny Kaye looks like Seinfeld’s Michael Richards. Perhaps Richards should star in a remake of “White Christmas”? After the “N” word incident, it would give the title a whole new meaning.