WEEK2 Tutorial and Concept

Since Awakenings first stormed the bestseller lists (and the silver screen), Oliver Sacks has become an unlikely household name, single-handedly inventing the genre of neurological anthropology.

Why you should listen to him:

Oliver Sacks is a ground-breaking neurologist -- and a gifted storyteller, who has enriched our knowledge of the infinite variations of human psychology. After his pioneering work with “sleepy sickness” patients (who were in fact survivors of an early-20th-century pandemic), Sacks went on to study the connections between music and the brain, as well as disorders such as Tourette's syndrome, Parkinson's disease, and many other little-understood disorders that often count Sacks as one of their first chroniclers.

Sacks is well known as a writer of such best-selling case histories as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars, and his memoir of his early work, Awakenings, all of which have breathed new life into the dusty 19th-century tradition of the clinical anecdote. Sacks' writing, compassion, and wide-ranging knowledge catapults the genre into the 21st century and brings the far frontiers of neurological experience into the view of millions of readers worldwide. He maintains a small practice in New York City.

"Sacks's writerly form is now its own literary genre. It's easy to take his originality for granted, to forget how unlikely it is that a book about neurological disorders would become a bestseller, or that a bearded neurologist would become a cultural icon."
Jonah Lehrer, seedmagazine.com






I found this on TED.com. This article and video talks about how ones mind can make up pictures and images, i am really interested in this and from this i am going to look into the brain.

WEEK1 Initial Concept Generation

Got given out EMP briefs this week, as well as our first tutorials on concept generation for the project. To get things started I decided to look at the news websites to see if anything was happening in the world which was interesting and motivating. Here are some examples of what i have found.

Pirates seize second UK-flagged vessel in days

Map

A UK-flagged cargo ship with 25 crew has been seized by pirates off Somalia, media reports say.

The Asian Glory was taken 620 miles (1,000km) off the Horn of Africa nation's coast, the Bulgarian foreign ministry said.

The vessel, which has a multi-national crew, is the second UK-flagged ship hijacked in days, after chemical tanker the St James Park was seized on Monday.

The waters around Somalia are among the most dangerous in the world.


Pirates! Even though this is quite concerning news, I feel compelled to go 'arrr'. You see I'm from Penzance, as in "The Pirates Of Penzance". On a more serious note. this is interesting, but i do not think that I would like do it for my EMP. NEXT



Sweden culls its resurgent wolves

Grey wolf
Grey wolves have made a comeback since hunting was banned

Swedish hunters have begun culling wolves for the first time in 45 years after parliament ruled that numbers needed to be reduced again.

More than half the quota of 27 may have died on the first day alone with nine shot dead in Dalarna and up to nine killed in Varmland, Swedish radio says.

Hunters have until 15 February to complete the cull, which will leave Sweden with an estimated 210 wolves.




Schools closed and travellers hit as snow continues

A man clears snow from his car in St Boswells, the Scottish Borders
Thousands of motorists have been delayed or stranded by the snow

Thousands of schools are closed and travellers have been hit by major disruption after new heavy snowfalls hit large parts of the UK.

Parts of Scotland and northern England have had more snow, which has also spread to southern areas of the UK.

Up to 5,000 homes in Sussex are without electricity after heavy snow brought down power lines to several villages.

Some rail firms have reduced services, many roads are badly affected and flights have been delayed or cancelled.

The worst-hit areas have been central southern England and parts of the South West and south Wales.

Counties most affected include Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Berkshire and parts of Gloucestershire and Buckinghamshire.