United Academics Magazine - March 2011 by United Academics

March 2011

Guess What? You're Fat Why many people don't know they're overweight

F#ck Suicide Tuesday MDMA is worth the come-down

Digital Gluttony There is no such thing

Should we do xtc?

Guess what? You're Fat.

CONTENTS

Digital Glutonny

Why many people don't know they're overweight

Meaning in Minimal

Hundred Years of Debauchery

Remarkable Research

There's no such thing

Book Reviews

Minimal Techno isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t as boring as one might think

Credits Editor-in-Chief Anouk Vleugels Executive Editor Mark Fonseca Rendeiro Editorial Bendert Katier, Elke Weesjes Design Michelle Halcomb Acknowledgements: Fiona Gaffney Advertisement Send an e-mail to advertising @united-academics.org Questions and suggestions Send an e-mail to redactie @united-academics.org Address Warmoesstraat 149, 1012 JC Amsterdam Website www.united-academics.org

EDITORIAL

Gluttony Pants Although the capital sin of gluttony isn’t just about binge eating, to me the first image that comes to mind is a morbidly obese man, dead, face-down in a bowl of spaghetti. Brad Pitt says: “the guy’s heart has gotta be the size of a canned ham.” Morgan Freeman says nothing. It’s unlikely you’ll literally eat yourself to death someday, as did this unfortunate character in Seven. However, obesity is still the leading preventable cause of death worldwide, and viewed as one of the most serious public health problems of the 21st century. Nothing new, you might say. And you would be right: everyone knows that it’s unhealthy to be overweight. The problem is that many people don’t realize they themselves fall into the overweight category. According to an online survey done by Harris Interactive/HealthDay last year, 30 percent of those who are overweight think they’re normal size. And who could blame them? In an age where people are fooled by vanity sizing –making clothes bigger so the customers think they are buying a smaller size- and where women with a healthy BMI –for example Kate Moss- are deemed too skinny, it’s hard to keep track of what’s normal. Maybe you don’t care about heart disease and expanding waistlines. In that case, things are looking up for you, since society is increasingly catering to your needs. Last year the first Gluttony Pants were created, which have three buttons, allowing you to expand the pants’ waistband without putting on a show. So go on and wear them with pride. Just don’t order spaghetti. Anouk Vleugels, Editor-in-Chief

urnal of Social Sciences

CALL FOR ARTICLES BIOGRAPHIES AND BOOK REVIEWS May 2011: ‘War & Biography’

UAJSS is a refereed online journal which publishes new research by post-graduate and post-doctoral academics. Deadline: 5th of May See our journal for submission guidelines Mind Matters Understanding Aesthetic Preferences- Daphne V. Wiersema Phenomenology and Psychology - Martine Berenpas Sleeping & Learning - Sanna van Geldermalsen Work in Progress: Communication and Architecture- Philip Allin

Email: elke.weesjes@unitedacademics.org

Biography: Philosopher & Egoist Jean-Paul Sartre Book & Author: Jesse Bering on 'The Belief Instinct'

www.united-academics.org 5

DIGITAL GLUTTONY Flashing, bleeping and vibrating smart phones are constant reminders of the social obligations we have in our already busy lives. Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook are all designed to keep us up to date about our friends’ whereabouts 24/7. It seems that the constant stream of information we are confronted with these days has surpassed the amount of attention we can devote to it. We are constantly forced to decide what needs our attention first. E-mail? Tweets? Google chats? Some experts argue that we are biting off more than we can chew. Are we suffering from digital gluttony? According to Nicholas Carr, who wrote The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, we are. Because of the vicious Internet, he argues, we now have trouble focusing on the things that really matter. Carr points to research that suggests it’s attention that determines what we remember: “The sharper the attention, the sharper the memory.” Frank Schirrmacher, writer of the book Payback, also dreads the side effects of the digital age. He warn us that by being so dependable on our gadgets to remember certain things, we become more forgetful. Although this observation seems to be true -I can’t even reproduce one single phone number by heart, let alone remember my agenda for the coming week- I just don’t care. To me, not having to remember phone numbers and 6

appointments was the reason I started using the damn things in the first place. So what seems to be the problem? In Schirrmacher’s view, we can only pay a limited amount of attention to something. As a result, we just don’t have enough attention left to analyze which part of the information is important enough to remember. Although I share Schirrmacher’s point of view, solely portraying technology as a one-way street without recognizing the obvious ‘attentionsavers’, is not doing it justice. On the contrary, thanks to all kinds of new digital devices our minds are becoming pleasingly empty. Technology has enabled certain information streams to be turned around in such a way that we need less attention in order to grasp the same amount or even more useful information. Whereas a couple of years ago I spent much of my time and energy finding out what friends were up to, now technology enables them to post short messages through Twitter, which are sorted and organized for me to read. When I do meet up with them, conversations have shifted from ‘what did you do recently’ to ‘why or how did you do that’. The same is true for the location-based service Foursquare. Before Foursquare existed, I had to call each of my friends separately to track them down. Now they digitally check-in to physical locations, enabling me to know their whereabouts

within a few seconds. Less attention needed, will give these kinds of services the biggest same results obtained. boost. It isn’t true that digital technology just carelessly passes every piece of information on to you. In fact, most of its products are designed to only show you what is relevant, based on what the service aims to deliver. Gmail for examples filters spam so you don’t have to do it yourself. Since recently, it even prioritizes your e-mails in order of importance, which saves more time for you to actually read them. Google puts search results which are close to your location, and the ones which have been searched by your friends, higher in the ranking. Many other digital media are currently developing personalized filters to improve the individual user experience. If we are consuming too much information, it is because those filters aren’t working properly. By eliminating this so-called filter failure, we will be able to fully control our information intake and nip digital gluttony in the bud. Looking towards the future I think we are going to see a lot more services designed around relevance and context linking our physical surrounding to useful digital information. Mobile devices such as smart-phones and tablets are going to play a central role in this development, since its users will carry them at all times. Developing digital services on these devices that take into account our routines, the time of day, the people around us, and our location can be extremely helpful. Imagine walking up to the train station, when your phone realizes the train you normally take isn’t running. Instead, it suggests that you go around the corner where one of your favorite coffee shops is situated and wait for the next train which is leaving in 25 minutes. Wouldn’t that be easy? The technology known as augmented reality, a technique that places a digital layer over reality

Personally I don’t consider digital technological developments as being a threat to my attention span. By applying the right filters I am able to direct my attention more specifically, which can be very helpful and even liberating. New devices can function as our external memory, but also as knowledge filters which take into account both search relevance and our surroundings. Technology does not destroy our capability to think and memorize, instead, it can add a new dimension to our capabilities.

Bendert Katier After receiving his Bachelor in Business Engineering at the Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Bendert Katier moved to Amsterdam to do a Masters in Business Studies. At the Amsterdam Business School, he is currently writing his thesis which is centered on the business models concerning mobile augmented reality.

At the entrance of an H&M clothing store a significan reads ‘Big is Beautiful’. Maybe it is beautiful but h tisement campaigns for smaller sizes are considered pol eating disorders. In the Western world where obesity i and what isn’t. The latest research has shown that w not in the least because we accommodate obesity or

Whereas a distorted body image is usually discussed in regards to skinny people who think they are fat, ground breaking studies reveal that there are many obese people who categorize themselves as normal. In 2010 the University of Texas Medical Branch published the results of a study which examined weight misperceptions and their predictors among reproductive-age women. 2200 women between the ages of 18 and 25 answered questions about their lifestyle, self-perception and dieting habits. The outcome was remarkable; about 25 percent of the women, who are classified as obese based on their Body Mass Index (BMI), perceived themselves as normal. Based on this perception, these women, who all have a BMI > 30, skipped the ‘overweight’ category which is between 25 and 29.9. A healthy BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9, although medical research suggests that within this range a BMI between 20 and 22 indicates the ideal amount of body fat, which is associated with living longest, and the lowest incidence of serious illness. Besides BMI, one’s waistline is a very good indicator of health. For women, on average anything over an 80 cm waistline is unhealthy. For every three centimetres above this normal waistline measurement limit, the risk for heart attacks becomes three times higher. H&M sizes 46-54 , the Big is Beautiful range, is for women with a waistline measurement between 88 and 112 cm, which is classified as abdominal obesity. 8

Guess

’ You re

nt section is dedicated to sizes 44-54. A large sign having a size 54 surely isn’t healthy. Similar adverlitically incorrect because we don’t want to encourage is on the rise, we have lost track of what is healthy we have a distorted view of what is a normal weight, even, as the H&H campaign illustrates, glorify it.

what?

e fat.

Fooling the customers So why do people with a BMI over 25 think they have a ‘healthy’ weight? There are several factors that contribute to this trend. Dr. Mahbubur Rahman, author of the article Self-Perception of Weight and Its Association With Weight-Related Behaviors in Young, Reproductive-Aged Women, which is based on the aforementioned study, remarks on the outcome: “As obesity numbers climb, many women identify overweight as normal, not based on the scale but on how they view themselves.” According to dietician Lori Anderson from Binghamton University, this trend is directly related to peer effect. In her paper on the effects of social norms on perceived weight, she concludes: “Individuals surrounded by heavier peers will view themselves as thinner and will have less of a desire to lose weight. Increased social norms for weight associated with the trend in obesity increase acceptable weight, which then amplify increases in weight.” Julie Hansen, Nutrition professor at Weber State University, agrees with Anderson. She adds that, besides the peer effect and social norms, popular culture is not improving the situation either. Manufacturers, for example, are making clothes and other things bigger while giving them smaller size-labels to make us feel good. “There are a lot of accommodations. We are making a larger seat and a larger coffin, and larger medical beds,” she says, “I don’t think we really need to start changing clothing 9

sizes.” Hansen also researched people’s selfperception. Respondents, women and men, were asked to provide their height and weight in order to calculate their BMI before classifying themselves into several weight range categories. Her results show that 30 percent of people who are classified as overweight actually thought they were a ‘normal’ size. Hansen underlines that this distorted view puts lives at risk because when people don’t see themselves as having a problem they are unlikely to eat healthy and exercise. She has a good point, in recent years we have seen that besides glorifying big sizes, the apparel industry has accommodated expanding people by increasing sizes. What used to be “regular” jeans are now called “slim cut” in many clothing stores. What used to be a European size 38 is now a size 36. Times UK calls this phenomenon ‘vanity sizing’ which it defined as “a ploy in which stores flatter women by making clothes bigger so they think they are buying a smaller size.” From the manufacturers’ point

of view it is understandable, not in the least because people just don’t want to buy a bigger size. But because most of us know how big we are by our clothing size, vanity sizing is just adding to the obesity problem. Confused teenagers It has become clear that men and women have lost track of what is healthy and what isn’t. Within this context the attitude of one particular age group causes the most concern. A 2009 study of more than 65,000 highschool children shows that the next generation has an even more distorted view of body image. This study, done by Dr. Nicholas M. Edwards, assistant professor of Paediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre, reveals that 3 in 10 overweight teenagers believe that they are actually underweight or ‘normal’. Edwards points out that “Despite growing attention to the issue of obesity over the past several years, the number of overweight adolescents who misperceive their weight has held steady between

1999 and 2007.” Edward’s conclusions make it painfully clear that current strategies for fighting obesity need serious revision. Obesity is on the rise, yet is has become politically incorrect to emphasise that slender is healthy. Only people who are (morbidly) obese receive attention, ignoring those who are in the ‘overweight’ category. Brittle bones and shrivelled ovaries An abundance of parenting websites warn about the dangers of diets and how parents should be careful not to encourage bulimia or anorexia by putting their children on a diet. In a society where people’s waistbands seem to increase by the with each passing day, is it correct that the fear of inciting eating disorders has the upper hand? Thin models and lean actresses are constantly scrutinised and blamed for anorexia amongst young girls. Last year an editorial appeared in the English newspaper the Daily Mail about the negative influence of skinny celebrities. The writer, Rosalind Pomarenko-Jones, expressed the fear that millions of impressionable young people would seek to copy this ‘new breed of skinny celebrities.’ She proposed a radical solution: warning labels on images of celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Renee Zellweger and Kate Moss; “Perhaps they would consider also running a health warning alongside images of very thin women, an extended version of those you find on cigarette packs: “Being this thin could lead to death”, it might say. Then it could list the symptoms; “brittle bones, wasted muscles and shrivelled ovaries.”’ Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels Pomarenko-Jones’ comments illustrate the disproportioned attention to anorexia, but also the distorted view people have of body image. Many people, celebrities and ‘ordinary’ people, who have a healthy BMI (>18.5) are deemed too skinny, simply because they have become a rarity. It wasn’t too long ago that Kate Moss, the somewhat controversial

supermodel, said ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.’ Although she added ‘you try and remember, but it never works,’ her words outraged many people who felt she was endorsing anorexia. A media circus followed and Moss was vilified for her statement. Interestingly enough the phrase ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ was the slogan of Weight Watchers for years. No one ever took any notice of it then, but as soon as it is said by a woman who has a healthy BMI, it caused outrage. Teenagers and adults suffer from eating disorders and they need care and attention. We should never underestimate the horrific aspects of these potentially deadly afflictions. Nevertheless a recent study by Youfa Wang and Huifan Liang shows that more than 25 percent of American teenagers underestimate their body weight status while five percent overestimate their body weight status. The outcome of this research suggests that the fear of anorexia and bulimia is disproportionate. After all, ‘Thinking fat’, whilst being skinny (or normal) is a significant indicator of an eating disorder and statistics show that teenagers who have this distorted body image are outnumbered by those who underestimate their weight. Tough love Considering the statistics, it is interesting that no one would ever suggest that we should put a warning label on images of overweight celebrities, because that would be ‘politically incorrect.’ Even in obesity clinics, social workers rate the acceptation and understanding of obesity over a firm policy to fight this growing problem. Yet isn’t accepting obesity counterproductive? Tough love might be the answer. People who address weight issues and body image should not be labelled politically incorrect, on the contrary; honesty is key. Accommodating obesity and ‘vanity sizing’ are counterproductive practices. Only by taking an honest approach can we finally stop the obesity epidemic which has taken hold of the western world. Elke Weesjes 11

SHOULD WE

Ecstasy, Adam, Disco Biscuits- many names have been ing this party drug might get you arrested, but do

Psychiatry

Neurology

E DO XTC?

n given to this crazy little thing called MDMA. Usoes it also destroy your life â&#x20AC;&#x201C;and brain?

Biology

Psychiatry Once upon a time, MDMA was widely available. In fact, it wasn’t even considered a drug. It was during the early seventies in California, when MDMA found its way into the therapeutic clinics. After a few decades of absence, MDMA is now being rediscovered by many psychiatrists. From Medicine to Party Drug Although MDMA -or Ecstasy, its street name that would emerge later- had already been discovered in a German laboratory 1912, it was American scientist Alexander Shulgin who rescued it from obscurity in the late sixties. Years later, therapists in Shulgin’s circle began experimenting with the drug in couples counselling and psychotherapy. For these therapists MDMA offered the possibility to dig deep into their patients’ psyche, without them feeling any fear or pain. Unfortunately for them, word got out of this magical drug, and MDMA spread beyond psychiatric clinics. Alarmed by its growing use among teenagers, the US government classified it as a controlled substance in 1985. A little too late, as it turned out. While a whole new generation was discovering its benefits on the dance floor, thousands of practitioners kept risking their licenses to use MDMA in underground clinical settings. MDMA and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder So what does it do exactly? During a MDMA trip, both the level of serotonin and dopamine (neurochemicals associated with sensations of happiness and pleasure) and oxytocin (which causes feelings of trust and bonding) increase significantly. In addition, MDMA tames the brain’s fear center, the 14

amygdala, and suppresses the fight-or-flight reaction which occurs when the level of adrenaline rises. Because of this, any apprehension a trauma patient might ordinarily suffer in therapy— about revisiting trigger memories or confronting painful emotions—is muted. The use of MDMA has proven especially helpful for patients with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr. Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist, therapist and researcher, is one of the leading experts in that field. His study, published in 2010, involved 20 patients with treatment resistant PTSD, who were assigned to psychotherapy. The study

was double-blind and placebo controlled, meaning that neither the therapist nor the subject know whether the subject is receiving MDMA or a placebo. The outcome: 83% of the subjects in the MDMA-aided treatment group no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, versus 25 % in the placebo group.

started the clinical trial, she wasn’t able to grasp what had happened to her. “Imagine standing on a mountain top and looking down in a valley that’s covered with fog,” she explains. “You know that you have to go through that valley to get to the other side. You don’t know what’s in that fog, but you know you’re going to die if you go there. What MDMA did for me, was lift the fog.”

Lift the Fog Donna Kilgore, a rape victim, was one of the The results are promising, but what about patients who received MDMA. Before she the risk of addiction? According to Mithoe-

fer, none of the patients felt the need to use MDMA again in a recreational setting. The reason for this, he explains, is that the experience of using MDMA during therapy is very different from doing it at a rave. “At least two people said things like: ‘I don’t know why they call this ecstasy,’ Mithoefer recalls.

“The MDMA helped them not to become overwhelmed by anxiety or fear and made them connect with their emotions. As a result, many of them had some very frightful and difficult experiences during the sessions. So it wasn’t just a day of ecstasy. It was hard work.” 15

Neurology So MDMA can be helpful in trauma therapy, but what about its long term neurological effects? Does it really turn your brain into Swiss cheese, as is often claimed by worried parents? Or cause Parkinson’s disease? Recent evidence suggests the opposite. Evacuate the Dance Floor Since the use of MDMA became illegal in the U.S in 1985, several – often government financed- studies have been conducted to prove its negative effects on the brain. In 1998, neurologist George Ricaurte was the first to publish a study on MDMA. Ricaurte claimed that Ecstasy causes brain damage in humans, suggesting that its users could lose up to 85% of the brain’s serotonin function. Using these results, the U.S. began its ‘Brain on Ecstasy’ campaign. By spreading post cards showing a brain scan of the ‘MDMA brain,’ which appeared to be full of holes, Ecstasy panic arose. In a follow-up study, Ricaurte added that using the party drug – even once- could cause Parkinson’s disease. But all claims proved to be unfounded. The Parkinson’s study, published by Science, was retracted when researchers discovered that vials of MDMA had been accidentally switched out for methamphetamine, also known as Crystal Meth, MDMA’s less forgiving nephew. In 2002, the British magazine New Scientist also started questioning Ricaurte’s body of work. Leading independent researchers were asked to look at the evidence and answer one question: Does MDMA damage brain cells? New Scientist’s conclusion was: ‘the jury is still out.’

No Brain Damage As of February 2011, the jury seems to have reached a verdict. Harvard University’s John Halpern recently published a study in the medical journal Addiction that examined the effects of Ecstasy on cognitive ability. His conclusion: heavy recreational Ecstasy use does not cause cognitive damage. Halpern and his colleagues compared 52 long-term Ecstasy users, aged 18 to 45, with 59 non-users, all of whom were drugtested prior to their participation in the study to ensure accurate results. Unlike previous research, only ‘ravers’ were tested, to make sure that other side effects of having a party lifestyle –for example repeated sleep and fluid deprivation- would not influence the outcomes. The experiment also corrected for the possibility that any cognitive impairment shown by Ecstasy users might have been in place before they started using the drug. Not everyone was convinced. Recently the U.K. National Health Service (NHS ) published an article in response to Halpern’s study, claiming that “without further research, it is not possible to say that there is no evidence that ecstasy causes brain damage.”An incorrect assertion, according to Halpern, “What is critical to understand here is that we don’t have these sorts of debates

over the damage from alcohol. The fact is that there are 20-plus years of research in this field and it still isn’t conclusive for harm: This alone is quite telling. We don’t have this sort of debate over alcohol, so why with MDMA? I suspect that it’s quite likely that our findings have zoomed in on what has achieved the wide range of results in studies of the cognitive performance of Ecstasy users: variables were poorly controlled for in the past.”

the price? Not exactly. The fact that MDMA may not cause any brain damage, doesn’t mean it’s without risks. “Ecstasy consumption is dangerous: illegally-made pills can contain harmful contaminants,” Halpern notes. “There are no warning labels, there is no medical supervision, and in rare cases people are physically harmed and even die from overdosing. It is important for drugabuse information to be accurate, and we hope our report will help upgrade public health messages. But while we found no omGet Out of Jail Free card inous, concerning risks to cognitive perforSo does this mean we can use MDMA when- mance, that is quite different from concludever, wherever, without ever having to pay ing that ecstasy use is risk-free.”

Biology Being called ‘the hug drug,’ you would expect MDMA to boost your love- and sex life. However, new scientific evidence suggests that a hug might be all you’re getting. Using MDMA inhibits your sex drive and takes you longer to finish. Just Not That Into It This conclusion isn’t a new one. In 1991, the effect of MDMA on sexual desire was first tested on laboratory rats. The leading author, psychologist and researcher Dr. Wayne Dornan, found “a transient disruption of male copulatory behaviour” after treatment with MDMA. However, it wasn’t really fair to apply this results to party users, since the doses the rats received were much higher than the doses usually consumed on the dance floor. In 2008, a team of Italian scientists repeated the study, now using lower doses. The results remained the same: male rats on MDMA are just not that into it. Although a male rat normally penetrates the female right after they meet, the intoxicated rats needed much more time, or did not even try to approach females. Furthermore, the ones who did get it on, took much longer to ejaculate. Still, it’s important to note that only the acute effects were measured. After a couple of hours, the MDMA rats performed just as well as the sober ones again. No Global Love Potion Another study, conducted by psychologist Dr. Jim Pfaus, showed similar results. Pfaus did not just stick to MDMA, but also examined how alcohol, cocaine and even caffeine can affect a rat’s sex life. Basically, none of these

so-called aphrodisiacs proved to be helpful. “We reviewed data from more than 100 different studies,” explained Pfaus, “including original data from our own studies, to systematically examine the effects of drugs on sexual performance. In addition, we evaluated the aphrodisiac claims of some of these pharmaceuticals. In this broad-based and wide-reaching study, it appears that drugs and sex don’t mix well and there is no global love-potion.” Although the tests again were performed on lab rats, the effects of drugs on sexual performance resemble those in human beings, Pfaus explains. “Rats are a lot like us. They’re highly social animals. Also, there’s a high degree of behavioural and environmental plasticity, which is the same for humans. And most important, their sexual behaviour, which is often described as being polygamous, is highly opportunistic and malleable by their experience.” Using Ecstasy is not without risks. It will increase your heart rate and blood pressure, which –especially when combined with fluid deprivation and high body temperature- can lead to hyperthermia -a dangerous increase in body temperature. In addition, Ecstasy usually contains other components besides MDMA, like speed, LSD or PMMA. The only way to find out exactly what is in

a particular pill, and in what quantity, is to have it laboratory tested; a service which is offered in some countries. However, MDMA definitely isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t as destructive as was often claimed, and even proved to be very beneficiary in some cases. Its story serves as an important reminder that science isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always right, and therefore should never be taken for granted.

Hundre Years of Debau

Drugs come and go. Alc

ed uchery

cohol is forever. >>>

Scotland, 1914

New South Wales, Australia 1923

Scranton, USA, 1937 24

Chicago, USA 1945

>>>

Helsinki, Finland, 1955

New York, USA, 1969

Vietnam, 1970

Los Angeles, USA 1980

Romania, 1994

M端nchen, Germany, 2010

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Finding Meaning in Minimal Techno I have never been a huge fan of minimal techno - also known as just ‘minimal’. I love going clubbing, I love the release of having a massive night out, but I prefer the music to ‘take me on a journey’ with highs and lows, waves, peaks and troughs, with the possibility of having a sing-along once in a while. While dancing to music I love I have experienced indescribable moments which I will inadequately categorise as euphoric. I believe that my friends have also experienced these moments when listening to minimal techno, and the search for these moments is part of the appeal of the music. But why couldn’t I find these moments in this type of music? I felt that with minimal techno I was missing something that my friends seemed to ‘get’ and this bothered me. So I began my exploration: Can I find meaning in minimal techno? 33

Now-ness Describing music is always a difficult task possibly not well-suited to language, but it is safe to say that minimal techno is usually characterised by repetition of beats, beeps, clicks and noises that sounds like digital glitches. Minimal nights usually have hugely powerful soundsystems with thundering bass. Volume is very important to the night because sound vibrations are registered on some level throughout the body. No one knows this better than today’s clubber. When a 25kW bass-line pumps through the floor and up your legs, you know the music isn’t only registered in the brain. Minimal music is also referred to as repetitive music. Since the 1970s explosion of disco, pieces of music have been produced specifically for mixing. They do not end or begin in the traditional sense that a song does, because where the beginning and end would ordinarily be, comes whatever the DJ has decided to mix in. Ethnomusicologist John Blacking notes that “we often experience greater intensity of living when our normal time values are upset…music may help to generate such experiences. The massively loud volume of the music… [can] act to structure time for those present, while they are present, as eternally in the present, as a momentary time of continual ‘now-ness.’ This is a key concept when discussing to search for meaning in minimal techno. It seems that the point of minimal music may not be to mean

anything, but to facilitate physiological intensity or spiritual experience within us. Drugs, dancing, and empathy Somebody listening to music may say that it is meaningful to them, especially if they have an emotional reaction to it. Ben Malbon, author of Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstasy & Vitality, explains that “what we feel about music is essentially what the music means to us, and so the clubber’s emotional and physical reactions to music are integral to uncovering the meanings which they invest in music.” Minimal techno does not possess inherently emotive properties which arouse listeners, but listeners may become aroused when the music combines with a particular context or set of circumstances, and the way that the listener interacts with these and processes these elements may result in an emotional response to the music. The context is vital to the experience we have of the music. That is not to say that everybody in a club will have the same experience of or reaction it. Some people may not feel emotional, especially if they are not used to their surroundings and environment. But others will have an emotional experience, enhanced or more easily achieved or recognised by being immersed in this context. So what kind of context are we dealing with here? First if all, drug use is not unusual within the minimal techno scene. Ecstasy and

MDMA are the most common drugs taken at these nights. Ecstasy users may experience waves of pleasure which build up tension in their bodies and then ‘crash’ in some kind of frenzy, often in time with the music. Malbon suggests that “the use of drugs represents in some ways an additional layer of emotional and sensational “action.” Another effect of Ecstasy that users report to be enjoyable is a heightened sense of empathy, leading to a strong feeling of community and unity with other people at the night and the sense that everybody present is feeling the same. This does not, however, imply pointless hedonism. Many users have reported this to be a liberating, even spiritual feeling; something that they have not experienced before: “There came a point when I was just taken aback by…what we were and had become,” Malbon notes in Clubbing. “Some form of extraordinary empathy was at work in that crowd, particularly when at the kind of extended climax of the evening the music and lighting effects combined so powerfully with the moving crowd on the dance floor. Clubbers were losing it all over the place… The intensity of this fusion of motions and emotions was almost overwhelming.” A second element which is inextricably connected to minimal techno, is dancing. Many people report a sense of transcendence or connection with a “higher level” while dancing to minimal techno in a club setting. Blacking describes how dancing can actually be “a prominent form of creative listening.” This exemplifies the way that we do not just listen with our ears, but engage with the music throughout our whole selves as our embodied mind processes the music and surrounding environment. Malbon proposes “the foregrounding of a mode of listening that prioritises the simultaneously motional and emotional understandings of the listeners. Listening as an embodied and emotional activity takes on various forms in various spaces. Some spaces are more suitable for a more fully embodied understanding

through dancing than other spaces” and minimal techno nights are amongst those that encourage embodied listening. All about the journey Minimal’s function is to make people dance and come together, which people sometimes find meaningful. However, it’s not useful to search within the music for meaning because this misses the point of its existence. There is meaning in experiencing the music but not within the music itself. We can never tell when a set of circumstances will trigger something meaningful within us. Perhaps the repetition of the beat without many big changes, highs or lows, gives the listener the time, space and freedom to “get lost” in the music. At the beginning I wrote that I like dance music that takes me on a journey with peaks and troughs. These peaks and troughs may actually be destinations though. With minimal you are taken on a journey with no beginning, no end and no destination, travelling in all directions at once. This is a metaphor echoed by music journalist Cameron Eeles, who says of DJ Richie Hawtin’s album DE9: Transitions: “There’s very little to take note of along this minimal highway. Which is, of course, entirely the point. It’s not the destination that’s important, or even sightseeing along the way; it’s the act of movement itself that’s celebrated here.” Fiona Gaffney Fiona Gaffney studied Media Practice and Theory for her BA at the University of Sussex, where she specialised in photography. Her main research interest was cyberactivism. After moving to London, Fiona studied for an MA in Transnational Communication and Global Media at Goldsmiths. Here, she became interested in critical theory of cybernetics, embodiment and processes at work when people use technology to create electronic music. Read Fiona’s essay

Book & Review Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

Who still memorizes all their friends’ birthdays by heart? Or is still able to recite their phone numbers? In an age where daily memory has been offloaded to digital devices, memorization seems to be a lost art. In Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer shows that we’ve still got it. His memory used to be “nothing special,” Foer notes in his book. However, when he decided to participate in the U.S. Memory Championship in the name of journalism, Foer soon discovered that it could become extraordinary, just by training it. Using ancient Greek techniques, Foer shows that by visualisation and association, random facts –Foer memorized 99 new names in less than 2 minutes- become much easier to store in the memory. “Once upon a time people invested in their memories, they cultivated them, says Foer in an interview with Amazon, “Today, we’ve outsourced our memories to external devices. The result is that we no longer trust our memories. We see every small forgotten thing as evidence that they’re failing us altogether. We’ve forgotten how to remember.”

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement

The secret of a successful romance lies in the little details. There’s no need for excessive restaurants and three-course meals on the first date: in just glimpse of a second you’ll know whether he or she is right for you. Tall and handsome? Then he’s probably able to bring home the bacon. Wide waist-to-hip ratio? Then she will definitely carry your babies. In The Social Animal, author David Brooks brings up facts like these to show how our neurological functions control our social lives. Using the fictional love story of ‘Harold’ and ‘Erica,’ the book purports to explain what makes for the most successful choices in life. In the introduction, Brook explains why he chose this narrative form –which will not be appreciated by all readers: “I’m writing this story, first, because while researchers in a wide variety of fields have shone their flashlights into different parts of the cave of the unconscious, illuminating different corners and openings, much of their work is done in academic silos. I’m going to try and synthesize their findings into one narrative.”

Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

Break out the leg warmers, because the eighties are back. According to author David Sirota, present day American culture shows a striking resemblance with the one that characterized the 1980’s- including Wall Street scandals, military errors and The A-Team.

X-ray vision. Emotional robots. Space elevators. According to physicist Michio Kaku, these inventions will make our great-grandchildren’s lives a lot easier. In all likelihood, by 2100 we will control computers via tiny brain sensors and move objects around with the power of our minds.

Sirota argues that the United States has been unable to solve its current problems due to narcissism, nostalgia for the fifties, militarism, paranoia about the government, and racial divisions which were all rooted in the eighties. From the 80s-born ‘Greed is Good’ ethos (Gordon Gekko vs. Bernie Maddoff) to its foreign policies (Ronald Reagan vs. George W. Bush): Back to our Future shows that history is never really gone. “It’s important for there to be a deeper awareness that the Eighties pathologies that still define us today represent something ahistorical,” Sirota explains, “Appreciating that basic fact is key because it reminds us that there is another way into the future than simply our current Eighties way – a way that is more about common good, a way that we’ve actually tried and succeeded with before the Eighties.”

In Physics of the Future, Kaku interviews over 300 scientists to examine the rate at which certain technologies are likely to mature, how far they can advance, and what their ultimate limitations and hazards are. Although not all scientific predictions will come to pass, Kaku stresses that everything described in the book is consistent with the known laws of the universe. The book does not offer a vision of the next century’s inventions, but it does pose some interesting questions. Who will be the winners, when technology becomes even more important than it is today? Who will lose their jobs? “In the blue collar sector, the losers will be the ones who do repetitive work; the middle men,” Kaku says in an interview, “They will survive only by adding value to what they do, by offering common sense.”

R emarkable e s e a r c h 38

Medicine

Gene

Risk-free Down Syndrome test available soon

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Good news for future parents: within two years a new improved blood test will be available, which can tell you whether your unborn child has Down syndrome. The test is supposed to be easy to use, cheap and risk-free. Currently, Down syndrome can only be detected using two fairly invasive procedures: ‘amniocentesis’ and ‘chorionic villus sampling. ’ Both tests are up to 80 percent accurate, and carry a one to two percent risk of miscarriage. Because of this, only ten percent of all pregnant women opts for either of them. A recent study, published in Nature Medicine, brings out a risk free alternative. Researcher Dr. Phillipos Patsalis, chief executive medical director of the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics, took blood samples from pregnant women and mothers of Down syndrome and healthy babies. In each case, the test quickly pinpointed the chromosomal variation, identifying fourteen Down syndrome cases and 26 normal fetuses. With the new test Down syndrome can be identified in the 11th week of pregnancy; early enough to end the pregnancy if the parents choose to do so. According to Patsalis, the test could become standard practice if larger clinical trials confirm the results, “The cost is much lower than the invasive procedures. We estimate this can be introduced to clinical practice in a couple of years.”

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etics

Neurology

penis, bigger brain

Brain scan predicts who stays on the wagon

smooth penis should not be taken ed, new research suggests. If it hadn’t evolution, men would still have pedded with small, hard spines. And, as eren’t enough, a significantly smaller

Smokers who’d like to quit should not be buying expensive nicotine patches or gum, but get themselves a brain scan instead. According to a study recently published in Nature Neuroscience, brain scans showing neural reactions to pro-health messages can predict if you’ll keep that resolution to quit smoking. During the research, the participants’ brain activity was measured whilst having them listen to personal messages put together based on individual interviews, such as ‘your sister will help you quit smoking’ or ‘you are afraid you’ll start smoking again once you get angry or upset.’ After the experiment, the participants had to quit smoking. Four months later, they were checked up on. As in turned out, the ones who had shown the most brain activity while hearing the messages, were more likely to stay on the wagon. According to leading author Hannah Faye Chua, the results can bring us one step closer to the ability to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in order to select the messages that are most likely to affect behaviour change. “If you can imagine that people who create fast food or who sell cigarettes are doing this in an effort to convey a stronger message, we really need to better understand the ways our health messages can be more effective.”

s from Stanford University have found ular mechanism that explains the difetween the human genome and those es. By looking at what has been deletthe human genome rather than what t, researchers discovered 510 pieces hat are still present in the genomes of , but not (anymore) in humans. One pieces is responsible for the spines on y’s penis. Other parts which were only the primates’ genome, result in them maller brains and, in some cases, whis-

ntists have been widely praised for usual, but very effective approach. “It l but fascinating part of a bigger picut the evolution of human-specific aid Gill Bejerano, a developmental biStanford who led the work along with e David Kingsley. “We add a molecular ve to a discussion that has been going veral decades at least.”