Scripturient: Blog & Commentary: Confused Science
In his book, The World in Six Songs, Daniel Levitin posutlates the ability to make or participate in music may have conferred an evolutionary advantage to early humans. It’s a reasonable hypothesis...
View ArticleScripturient: Blog & Commentary: When good people do bad things in groups
The headline is taken from a piece on Science Daily on a study about how groups change personal behaviour and morality. The study is reported on the MIT website. I’ve seen that change myself, many...
View ArticleScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The Utility Animal
In the July/August edition of Pets Magazine (the Cat Care issue) there are two articles that caused me concern. One is “The Loyalty and Bravery of a Cat” (p.28), the other is “Quick-Thinking Cat Saves...
View ArticleScripturient: Blog & Commentary: “A” Personalities: A Theory
When someone tells me he is an “A-type” personality, I cannot help but think of the title of Aaron James’ bestselling book: Assholes *A Theory (Anchor Books, New York, 2014). After all, what else would...
View ArticleScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Words, Your Brain and Sex
One of the reasons I’m a dedicated librocubularist* can be found in a story on IFL Science that is headlined, “Learning New Words Activates The Same Brain Regions As Sex And Drugs.” It opens: While it...
View ArticleScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Timothy Leary Was Right. Maybe.
This is your brain on drugs. Or rather, the right-hand image is your brain on psilocybin. The other side is your brain on a non-psychedelic drug. Researchers recently discovered some amazing facts...
View ArticleScripturient: Why Do We Make Music?
Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak. I’ve read, that things inanimate have mov’d, And, as with living Souls, have been inform’d, By Magick Numbers and...
View ArticleScripturient: Judas, a Biography
Long before Darth Vader, long before Lord Voldemort, long before Stephen Harper, Judas Iscariot reigned as the supreme icon of evil in Western mythology. Judas betrayed God. How much worse can you...
View ArticleScripturient: Hypergraphia
An article in the September, 2016, issue of Doctor’s Review looks at the curious, compelling affliction called hypergraphia: the obsessive need to write. I never knew before this that there was an...
View ArticleScripturient: The meaning of dreams
Jack Kerouac woke up most mornings in the 1950s and scribbled into a bedside notebook what he could remember of his dreams. Characters from his novels interacted with fantasies and real life events....
View ArticleScripturient: Ollie and pet rescue
We are suckers for the face of a cat at the window, a hungry cat, a cold cat, a lost cat, a cat someone has abandoned to fend for themselves and is doing a poor job of it. The pleading eyes, the rough...
View ArticleScripturient: The slow death of reading
To me, one of the most depressing stories to come out of 2018 was posted in The Guardian, last August. Its headline read, “Skim reading
View ArticleScripturient: Dandelions and civilization
Whenever I see a lawn with dandelions, I think, “This is the home of civilized people. This is the home of people who care about the environment and their community. This is where bees are welcome.”...
View ArticleScripturient: The new normal
“Oh, the humanity,” cried Herbert Morrison, as he watched in horror as the giant airship, the Hindenburg, burst into flames at its mooring. The year was 1937, and Morrison’s words still echo down the...
View ArticleScripturient: I’m Struggling With Julian Jaynes
I first came across Julian Jaynes and his controversial (or at least provocative) book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, back in the late 1970s. I bought a copy, and...
View ArticleScripturient: Blame Everything on Satan
Three people have so far died of COVID-19 after attending a “multi-day gathering of faith groups” in Nova Scotia. Public health officials said that, “in violation of public health orders,” none of the...
View Article
