Images and Words

Brain-imaging

Technology that reads minds in real time is here. Richard Resak has written The Naked Brain explaining how mapping the workings of the brain can work for us.   It seems helpful for brain disease and sometimes identifying personality problems.  However, it is expensive and probably not worth scanning a brain for job preferences and abilities. The old-fashioned way of college majors and job performance seem to work most of the time.  The debate would be heated to decide what brain waves constitute good leadership or executive abilities when corporations argue over budgets and good marketing plans.  Machines can already tell us if someone is lying, what kind of person someone likes better, and what causes fear.  If a part of the brain predominates, can that change if we work at it? For instance, someone who is sedentary can decide to train hard and run a marathon and maybe not win, but at least finish.  There are no brain scans for will and determination.  No scans for morality.  If the choices have never occurred before, if experiences are new to everyone, how much does it matter if they use the impulsive or the slow and thoughtful parts of the brain?  Perhaps we need both to work together rather than a machine. 

Cartoons

      Thanks go to cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco on stage together, as well as Gary Trudeau at a later time, speaking at the Chicago Humanities Festival last weekend. Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco talked about the representative arts as reality versus cartoon metaphors as an example of thought.  Joe Sacco said cartoons can get at what life “feels like” versus what life “looks like”.  Gary Trudeau talked about his experience embedding with the troops in Iraq and his recent interviews with veterans home from Iraq. He said his work tries not to take a political position but to represent the feelings of war. 

      Satirical images with a thoughtful purpose – poignant, searing, funny, not so funny, and often controversial.

Two Groups Negotiating a Position

Elections Create New Walkways

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