The brain’s cortex contains “at least 30 billion neurons with 1 million billion connections between them; counting one a second, it would take 32 million years to count them all. There are also multiple brain regions, 200 types of neurons, even large-scale neuronal deaths. How does such an object function, let alone give rise to consciousness?”
Tag: 03.27.04
New Tactic: File-Sharers Are REALLY REALLY Bad Guys
The recording and film inductries are pressuring the US Congress to make file-sharing peer-to-peer networks illegal, and lawmakers are complying, introducing bills that suggest file-sharing networks are the haunts of terrorists, pornographers and big bad evildoers. “In defending the Pirate Act, Senator Orrin Hatch said the operators of P2P networks are running a conspiracy in which they lure children and young people with free music, movies and pornography. With these “human shields,” the P2P companies are trying to ransom the entertainment industries into accepting their networks as a distribution channel and source of revenue.”
Checkpoint Airport Art
Wonder where those items confiscated from airline passengers at security checkpoints end up? An artist bought a few hundred pounds of the items and made art out of them. “In the massive Plexiglas case, wrapped in a heavy chain Maloney bought at Home Depot and hand-painted a rust color, are deer antlers, a tuning wrench for bongo drums still in its plastic case, his and her handcuffs, knitting needles, a decorative diaper pin, metal brushes, hair picks, a painted horseshoe, knives and forks, tweezers, meat thermometers and fishing hooks along with the lines and sinkers.”
Vancouver Museum’s Limited Space
The Vancouver Art Gallery wants to expand, but that is a complicated proposition. The museum’s current site has little additional room, and there is no obvious alternative location. “The gallery, the fifth largest in the country, has a permanent collection of more than 8,000 works worth $100-million. But right now there isn’t enough space to show the permanent collection, which includes extensive holdings of Emily Carr and of conceptual photography.”
A Better Mousetrap – 30 Years And Still Going Strong
Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap celebrates its 30th years in the sme London theatre. “It has to be the defining production in British theatre history.”
Stage Fright – Iraq Theatre Up And Running
Iraq’s National Theate is up and runnig again, and a week-long festival of plays, dance and music is being produced. There’s still not much of an audience yest, in a city once renowned for its cultural life. “The situation is still very complicated. It is difficult to start living culturally again.”