Daily Archives: June 22, 2014

June 22, 2014 · 4:42 pm

Are All Movie Heroes the Same Person? – Pacific Standard: The Science of Society

Are All Movie Heroes the Same Person? – Pacific Standard: The Science of Society.

Perhaps you’ve heard they’re making another Star Wars film. Perhaps you’ve read up on the backgrounds of the new cast members and heard that the Oscar-winning Lupita Nyong’o will also be joining the crew on their adventures in a galaxy far, far away. Maybe you delivered a furtive fist pump upon seeing the leaked production photos, which show actual physical buildings and creatures on set in Abu Dhabi, as opposed to studio rooms adorned with green screens. Whether you’re a fan of the nearly 40-year-old franchise or not, the hype surrounding its next installment—scheduled for release in December 2015—is pretty hard to ignore.

While several factors deserve credit for Star Wars’ ongoing popularity—the ballet-like lightsaber duels, the roguish charm of Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, the massive amounts of toy merchandising—it’s quite possible that the space opera’s greatest strength lies in its reliance upon the work of American mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Read the rest at: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/movie-heroes-person-joseph-campbell-monomyth-83796/#.U6SbO7MNr_o.facebook

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June 22, 2014 · 11:59 am

This Is Your Brain on Metaphors – NYTimes.com

This Is Your Brain on Metaphors – NYTimes.com.

Despite rumors to the contrary, there are many ways in which the human brain isn’t all that fancy. Let’s compare it to the nervous system of a fruit fly. Both are made up of cells, of course, with neurons playing particularly important roles. Now one might expect that a neuron from a human will differ dramatically from one from a fly. Maybe the human’s will have especially ornate ways of communicating with other neurons, making use of unique “neurotransmitter” messengers. Maybe compared to the lowly fly neuron, human neurons are bigger, more complex, in some way can run faster and jump higher.

But no. Look at neurons from the two species under a microscope and they look the same. They have the same electrical properties, many of the same neurotransmitters, the same protein channels that allow ions to flow in and out, as well as a remarkably high number of genes in common. Neurons are the same basic building blocks in both species.

So where’s the difference? It’s numbers — humans have roughly one million neurons for each one in a fly. And out of a human’s 100 billion neurons emerge some pretty remarkable things. With enough quantity, you generate quality.

Read more at: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/this-is-your-brain-on-metaphors/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=2

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