Saturday, May 17, 2014

Don't ask me why

Argh... I really don't intend to let the blog sit for weeks at a spell.  Last month I groused about not having enough time, and I suppose that's still true.  But I think I'm also in the middle of a blogger's block of sorts... nothing much seems to solidify as the subject of an interesting enough post.  Still, it does me good to "core dump" my thoughts here every so often, even if there's no über-significant theme to it...
  • I'm planning on posting something fun to the Then and Now blog-fest on June 13, hosted by a quartet of awesome people.  The idea is to spotlight a movie that was a part of your life when you were young, but now which adulthood lets us view through a different lens.  There are so many movies to choose from, and I still don't know which one will rise to the top.
  • This fall, the TV networks seem to be planning not one, but two new shows about 1960s astronauts and the space race.  I don't think either one looks particularly great, but this news made me recall my plans to design a space-race themed game.  I'll probably be digging into those outlines and drafts to see what can be done with them.
  • The comments in Squid's post about the Star Trek episode Journey to Babel took a left turn into discussion of colors and synaesthesia -- the unconscious mixing up of sensory stimuli.  Although I've never experienced it directly (i.e., tasted the color blue, or heard the smell of roses), I have always associated specific colors with the 26 letters of the alphabet and the 10 digits.  These were set in stone in my brain at a very young age, and they haven't changed at all over the decades.  They've been helpful in memorizing names and dates, I think.  I also once attempted to render these mental colors in bits and bytes.  I'll post them here, and if anyone can use them to divine any truisms or secrets about my inner mental workings, I'd love to know... :-)

  • The title of this post was inspired by the song that's been going through my head for the past few days.  (Hmm, much more about Cygnus' gray matter in this post than I anticipated.)  Actually, the more I thought about the lyrics, the less sense they made.  Oh well, you can't go wrong with the Piano Man...
All your life you had to stand in line
Still you're standing on your feet
All your choices made you change your mind
Now your calendar's complete
Don't wait for answers
Just take your chances
Don't ask me why

17 comments:

  1. I've always though the Space program could be fertile material for a tv series. Hopefully someone will eventually do it justice.

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    1. Hopefully! The two new shows are more about the surrounding characters (the wives and the engineers). For the main events, it's hard to outdo The Right Stuff and the various Tom Hanks projects...

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  2. It's amazing that you have a color for each letter and digit. Wow. Oliver Sacks wrote a book (Musicophilia) that explores, among other things, the relationship that some people have with music and color. Do musical notes have colors in your head?

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    1. Thanks, Kerry... I'll have to check out Sacks' book. I've heard a lot about some of his other books, but not this one. It might be useful for my "Glass Bead Game" studies, too.

      No colors associated with musical notes for me.. Even though I'm greatly interested in how musical notes and intervals evoke certain feelings, I don't play an instrument or read music. :-)

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  3. First, thanks for both plugs.

    Second, Kerry's question's an interesting one, regarding notes having colors. In discussing this with you, I've wondered if perfect pitch might be a form of synesthesia - a darn useful one, too. Or if not for all who have the gift (curse?) I wonder if for some, the notes might present a visual manifestation which facilitates recall.

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    1. I'm sure there have been studies of people with perfect pitch. Brain scans may be useful, but I hope that they were also asked if they use any of their other senses when listening intently...

      In a related thread, I've been contemplating writing up an "Alpha-Bytes" post on Solresol.

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    2. Solresol is a new one on me - fascinating!

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  4. Did I ever tell you Billy Joel is one of my top five favorite vocalists? I'll give you ten dollars if you can guess three of the remaining four. :) :)

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    1. Hmm...

      Well, Freddie's got to be number one. I'd guess that Geddy Lee and Paul McCartney are in there somewhere. Fourth? I'll cheat and say I wouldn't be surprised if it were Aretha... or Elton... or Robert... or George... or Janis... or Dennis... or even an upstart like Phillip. :-) :-)

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    2. :) You got one right. (I'm sure you know who.) Though now I'm wondering why the heck Paul ain't on the list.

      Please email me the code for hyperlinks ... again? eep.

      In the meantime, no. 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM_iTNtdvYM

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    3. Just one? :-( May Mrs. Dosamentes whack me in the head for forgetting Stevie.

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    4. Okay, awesome. The code woiks. Here are the other four in the top five besides Billy, Freddie and Stevie. (I was an English major. You do the math.)

      In no particular order:

      this woman's work.

      the other Paul.

      not Shane McGowan.

      a very honorable mention.

      Heck. One more for sheer happiness:

      it's the whole package.

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    5. Again in the "duh, how could I forget" category is the other Paul. (I probably think of him as half of a matched set, but he'd still be legendary based on his solo stuff.) Sinead soars, too. I don't know enough about Kate or Jeff. I thought briefly about Steve (Perry) for my first response. :-)

      FYI, I've settled on my "Then & Now." It's not a movie, though. It's one season of TV that I'm a bit embarrassed to claim as influential in my life. But it was. Big question: should I binge-watch the whole thing?

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  5. My daughter has synaethesia (and my son, too, to a lesser degree). If you see letters/numbers as colors, you have synaethesia too. That's called "grapheme synaethesia." My daughter also has musical note synaethesia, and she does have perfect pitch, or nearly. Synaethesia is basically a cross-wiring of the brain, but it's also a cool party trick.

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    1. You know, I don't think I quite "have it." I don't automatically see the letters/numbers as colors... I just have these ingrained associations. I "know" that A is bright candy-apple red (and "A is for Apple" may have been the cause of it... see also G and L) -- but I don't perceive it every time I see the letter. Weird.

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