I request a bequest

Heading to London? Me neither. But, if I were, I’d be sure to stop by the National Gallery and Tate Modern just to check out some new lovelies, collectively worth ?100m. No big deal.

after the bath ????

My favorite is “After the Bath,” an 1896 painting by Degas (I couldn’t find a photo so instead I included a picture entitled “After the Bath” from Google images). Although the Rousseau portrait of Joseph Brummer is pretty wonderful, too. The Guardian’s Maev Kennedy called it “endearing,” which is actually one of my favorite adjectives of all time. Little known fact.

Maka-Maka, wocka wocka, I’m confused?

Google’s apparently vying for a spot in your soul, too. Or maybe it just wants what’s left of your soul after Facebook ? the post-Facebook sloppy seconds. Nice.

Maka-maka (or makamaka, which is a name from manga, another life-stealer) will be launched in early November, and will pretty much be the poorman’s Facebook, with similar applications until someone comes up with something new.

As if Google doesn’t have enough control. It’s the original brand-name verb! “I’ll Google it!” came before “I’ll Facebook him!” lest we forget. Oh well. If you’ll excuse me, I’m just gonna go upload some new pictures of myself from my Macbook’s webcam onto Facebook. Any comments can be forwarded to my g-chat. PEACE!

Heady tunes

A very intellectual European friend of mine just emailed me about a book she’s excited to read, and I’m quite excited about it, too. Musicophilia is Oliver Sacks’s latest look into how our brain works, focused on where and how music affects our brain. London Times reviewer Bryan Appleyard caught my attention right about here:

We all know people who ?live in? music. These are not necessarily music lovers or professional musicians. Most people can be deeply moved by music. But there are some people for whom anything that is not music is a distraction from the real business of their lives. They may not say it, they may not even know it, but you can recognise them by their expressions when music starts to play or the subject of music comes up. That?s what matters, they?re thinking, that?s all that matters.

I know loads of people like this. Heaps of ‘em. Not just casual listeners, but people who literally hear music differently than I do. To understand them would be reason enough to pick up the book, but just wait! Sacks was on NPR last week, and you can read an excerpt of the book there and here. So read on, Brinksters, read on.

Manga mia!

In the past couple of weeks, manga’s been all over my life: My Youth Culture in a Global Context senior seminar, USA Today, all over Wired. Even this Postsecret secret thinks manga’s taking over.

The USA Today article mainly focuses on how, apparently, Manga’s on the bad side of the lame mark in Japan, but here it’s just really starting to pick up steam. Wired, likewise, created a tutorial in manga drawn in the manga fashion.

Personally, I don’t think manga’s losing its popularity in Japan ? it’s probably just losing money cause people found a way to get it for free. Kind of like with music, here. I don’t know ?I don’t have the answers, I just ask the questions. And sometimes I don’t even do that.

Sleep to think

While staying up until sunrise is romantic and actually quite fun, it’s not the best way to nourish your intellect, says the New York Times. According to recent studies, apparently we do some great thinking, reflecting, logical categorizing and relearning while we’re in deep sleep.

Now, a small group of neuroscientists is arguing that at least one vital function of sleep is bound up with learning and memory. A cascade of new findings, in animals and humans, suggest that sleep plays a critical role in flagging and storing important memories, both intellectual and physical, and perhaps in seeing subtle connections that were invisible during waking ? a new way to solve a math or Easter egg problem, even an unseen pattern causing stress in a marriage.

The theory is controversial, and some scientists insist that it?s still far from clear whether the sleeping brain can do anything with memories that the waking brain doesn?t also do, in moments of quiet contemplation.

So, technically, we really should sleep on our arguments and problems, instead of staying up until the early hours of the morning trying to resolve them. Similarly, college students should not stay up for 11 nights straight, studying or otherwise.

Previous studies of nocturnal sleep have found the same thing. Memory of learned facts, whether they are names, places, numbers or Farsi verbs, seems to benefit in part from deep sleep. Healthy sleepers usually fall into deep sleep about 20 minutes or so after head meets pillow. They might spend an hour or more in those lolling depths early in the night, and typically less time later on. When cramming on facts, in short, it may be wiser to crash early at night and arise early, than to burn the candle until 2 a.m., the research suggests.

This confirms what I’ve known all along ? a good night’s sleep is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.

Oink.me (.cd) no more

Way back in the day, a friend of Brink invited her into the Oink phenomenon, a torrent site where users could find pretty much any CD ever created, and even some yet to be created, released, and sold. Well, I was kicked off the site long ago for inactivity while I studied abroad, but it seems now everyone’s been kicked off. FOR GOOD. Because the site got busted and it’s all over. We we we we all the way? to British jail ? where I hear you get tea in place of the standard gruel of the American prison system.

Watch your back

Well guess what? The U.S. government isn’t the only entity after your information. Apparently, the MPAA hired a hacker named Robert Anderson to grab the goods on TorrentSpy, the BitTorrent search site. Among other interesting information Anderson offered to Wired? That the MPAA wanted to set up a fake Torrent site to gather “names, address books, contact information and banking information” of other Torrent sites. Sneaky sneaky, though the MPAA denies the thing, and says it’s not their fault Anderson was a creep.

The MPAA does not dispute it paid Anderson for the sensitive information, but insists that it had no idea that Anderson stole the data. “The MPAA obtains information from third parties only if it believes the evidence has been collected legally,” says MPAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Kaltman.

To the MPAA I say two things:
1. Thanks for nothing, you’ve really been letting me down lately. You okay-ed a remake of The Birds? Really? And why isn’t The Darjeeling Limited playing in Ithaca, N.Y. yet?
2. You hang with creeps, you hire creeps, you’re gonna get creeped.
PEACE AND LOVE
Brink.

Vroom vroom goes the … cardboard box?

Perusing the internets today I came across these beautiful sculptures by Chris Gilmore, an English artist who’s been exhibiting work since 1998. So I’m 10 years behind! Anyway, his work is really wonderful, and I’d love to get to a show sometime in the (near) future.

And speaking of cars, I’d like to shout out to my father, a lover of all things DATSUN. He’s a big fan of Yutaka Katayama, who he affectionately calls Dr. K. And apparently this rare 510 was stolen. Anyone in the LA program seen it? Shoot me an email. We’ll split the gloating 50/50.

Dog days/daze?

I’d like to extend my deepest apologies (and thanks!) to those who have checked in to Brink to find no new posts. It’s midterm week here at Ithaca, and we students are worked to the bone. Kind of. Anyway, it would have been nice to have one of these this week, to lick my face and get excited when I came home. In fact, here’s a picture of a puppy that looks somewhat like a dinosaur.

Instead, all I got were dirty coffee mugs and empty red bull towers, which isn’t some stereotype I’m simply evoking to look cool. Two Brink roommates have literally created a tower of RedBull cans in our kitchen nook. And brava to them for jolting their hearts into pumping much-needed blood to their brains.? That’s the spirit!

Avatar superstar

Brink loves Brink. But if it didn’t … then it could make an avatar to fulfill its wildest identity-shifting fantasies. And to make virtual life easier, the BBC reports that now your avatar can span across virtual cliques. That is, your Second Life character could also be your … Wii character. Or other virtual world character/ facsimile. (Love that word, by the by. Use it sparingly, but wisely, and your life will be richer.)

Anyway, this could be useful, considering that your workplace orientation will probably be taking place online. So you can judge a person by his avatar after all. Hmm. Well, Brink Google-imaged (and created a verb) “liz avatar” to test that statement. Let’s take a look: