This is your brain on Levitin

MP3 podcast CBC Interview with Daniel Levitin, ex-hitmaker producer turned neurologist and author of This is Your Brain On Music.

Why do we hear some sounds as music, and other sounds as noise? What's the critical relationship between anticipation and satisfaction that drives music? Just what happens when the human brain and music become dance partners? And what roles do the elements we call rhythm, harmony, melody and timbre play in that dance?

This is part of a 6-part series on the CBC The Nerve program, and full episode was posted at http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/features/theNerve/audio/nerveEp1.mp3 where you can get 5 more by just changing the digit.

Historia de un letrero

Short story winner of the Cannes Festival, 2008, History of a Sign
with music was composed by Luis Enr??quez Bacalov, from Argentina.

Beautifully shot, beautifully said.

Algebra!

Algebra - it's everywhere: "The very word can twist the stomachs of otherwise well-adjusted adults, dredging up memories of nonsensical X's and Y's and a lifelong loathing of math."

"I doubt if the politicians promoting this have any idea what they're promoting," said Keith Devlin, Stanford University researcher and mathematics professor, as well as the "Math Guy" on National Public Radio. "Few people know what algebra is.

Devlin would like to see "mathematicians in residence" at middle schools and high schools. They could visit schools and show students the cool side of math - like how an iPod uses algebra to play music.

Lockhart: "if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done. I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education."

TerraForm

In a short and fun little film, Johannes Brueckner shows us the progress, problems and solutions of globalization.