Your brain on music

Went to Barnes & Noble, armed with various suggestions from previous comments here: The Disorder of Things, several brain books by Steven Pinker, Jared Diamond’s Collapse, et cetera. In the Science section I did find Pinker’s How the Mind Works, which is now a decade old.

And what did I buy? None of these! Instead my attention caught on This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. I’ve already betrayed my interest in the subject here and here. A cover quote from Talking Heads smart guy/weirdo David Byrne says that playing a musical instrument “coordinates more disparate parts of the brain than almost anything else.”

Probably won’t be able to read it until the week after Christmas, but, to borrow a line from The Princess Bride, I quiver with anticipation.

Carrots

Somewhere I saw carrots dismissed as a pedestrian side dish, not useful when company’s coming.

Are you kidding me?

Carrots are the best thing on the plate. One of nature’s true wonders. Extraordinary color and texture.

The problem most likely is that if you cut them into disks and boil them to limpid softness, what you get looks like it came out of a can.

So don’t do that.

Use heirloom carrots. Red carrots, yellows, whites. Thumbelinas. Or just small organic carrots (instead of the gigantic ones in the “bulk” basket).

Remove most of the greens but don’t actually cut the top off.

Steam them. Or grill them. Cut’em in half lengthwise and saute them in olive oil.

DON’T turn them into mush; cook them al dente, if you will.

Serve them with homemade sweet & sour sauce (vinegar, sugar, fresh mint, a little garlic) or carrot jus or House of Tsang’s Spicy Szechuan Stir-Fry sauce right outta the bottle.

Top five Rankin-Bass characters

Feel free to disagree (if you enjoy being wrong).

5. Heat Miser. The song, the hair.

4. Sir 1023. Odds bodkins. O.M. the caveman is an honorable mention. Yes? No? Yes!

3. Yukon Cornelius.

2. Kubla & Dummy.  “Dummy, who do you like best? Me, or Jack Frost?”  “You, Kubla. He has cold fingers.”

1. Bumble/Abominable Snowman. Alternately terrifying and cuddly. Great range for a sock puppet.

Strangely there is no mention in Wikipedia of Romeo Muller, the guy who wrote these screenplays, many of which are quite clever. Neither does the Jack Frost writeup mention the bad guy. I gotta fix that. Yeesh, these lazy social media types.

Neurobic of the day: Brush your teeth left-handed

I tried it. My right brain is very, very bad at tooth-brushing.

Interestingly, my right hand apparently really wanted to help. Mid-brushing I noticed that it was clenched into a fist and was raised about halfway to my head. Scary.

(The point, in case you haven’t memorized everything I’ve posted this year, is that doing new stuff – or old stuff in new ways – is alleged to forge new synaptic connections, making you smarter.)

Addendum to previous post

Ah, Spaghetti-Os and Corona Light. The late-night snack of champions.

Apparently, YES, I do have to buy a book about the …e6 Sicilian lines. Tonight I faced it for the third time in six weeks, and lost a piece on move 12. I did manage a draw due to mutual time-pressure sloppiness, but this is no way to play chess.

The problem with the white pieces

First of several thoughts on chess openings.

I played in seven tournaments this year. Let’s say I averaged four rounds per (though I typically miss at least one game in weeknight tourneys) for 28 rated games. 14 whites and 14 blacks. And let’s further imagine that with black, I faced 1.e4 seven times and 2.d4 seven times. (Not exactly true, but most Nf3 and c4 stuff transposes into 1.d4 lines in my games.) 

About three years ago I finally decided to learn an opening repertoire. For black, I bought two basic books. One of the two doesn’t really rely on theory so much as themes, so while I did study the book, I didn’t memorize a lot. The other black opening is the Alekhine, requiring that I be fairly familiar with about seven major variations, two or three of them requiring quite a lot of very specific memory of correct move sequences. The payoff has been tremendous. Lots of great results on that side of the board. I did get thrashed by Greg Kaden in a common Alekhine line (thanks Greg), but I took that line back to the book and subsequently beat an expert in the same line, with my book knowledge in that game running all the way out to an exchange sacrifice around move 19. Results this year suggest I can play these openings at 2200 level or so, and now I’ve branched out and I am studying a couple of more classical openings as black to broaden my understanding and vary my games. (And not be reliant on such an unstable opening as the Alekhine.)

Now here’s the problem: white.

There are two players in the top section at my club who play (or have played) the French defense. I very rarely see the French. And if I do run into a random French player, what line will he play – Winawer? Rubenstein? McCutcheon, Classical? Should I choose an early deviation to avoid that complexity (the hated Exchange, the dull Advance, the nutty Alapin)?

When I’ve studied up for the French, I’m more likely to run into a Sicilian. But which Sicilian? Najdorf, Dragon, Sveshnikov? Maybe I learn the 3.Bb5 lines to avoid all that – but then I suddenly everyone’s playing the Kan and Taimanov with 2…e6. So now I need a whole book on the …e6 Sicilians to prepare for the two …e6 Sicilians I’ll face next year? And a Caro book and a Vienna book and a Modern book?

For decades I chose completely offbeat lines and gambits to help avoid this problem. That approach took me as far as it could, and I really believe main lines – i.e. an attempt at learning “the best” move in every position – are the way forward from here.

But I must tell you, it’s a thundering nuisance.

I think I’ll just request black from now on.

What bookshelves are good for

Serendipitous re-discovery.

I come from a bookish family. My folks have an extensive collection of Russian novels, nonfiction about Native Americans, and miscellaneous fiction. Remind me to tell you about My Search for Warren G. Harding at some point. Brilliant. Anyway it’s normal to me to have a room or three full of bookshelves, loaded up with books. Even if you look at them only infrequently.

In fact, I have apparently not looked at parts of my library shelf in any detail for quite a long time. Because I just accidentally re-discovered two books I had completely forgotten, both of which fit fabulously into blog themes like chess and brain exercise.

First: Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, by Raymond Smullyan. Retrograde analysis problems in an entertaining Holmesian framework. (Retrograde analysis means you’re given a position and you have to figure out the preceding moves.)

Second: Keep Your Brain Alive by Katz and Rubin. I had no idea I owned such a book. “83 Neurobic Exercises”, some as simple as brushing your teeth with your off-hand. Point being that it’s the unexpected, not the routine, that keeps your synapses on their toes. (Did I not just promise you mixed metaphors?)

Recharging your batteries

Vacations are nice. Probably a luxury of the affluent modern world; I don’t suppose hunter/gatherers and subsistence farmers typically get to say “I’m taking next week off!” Nevertheless they do provide an excellent chance to re-energize yourself mentally and physically.

Legend has it that Salvador Dali took incredibly short recharger naps: He sat upright in a chair with a spoon in one hand and a tin cup on the floor below. At precisely the moment when he fell fully asleep, he’d drop the spoon, which would clang off the tin cup and awaken him. He claimed that some of his best inspiration came from the dreams of these drowsing moments.

A blogging break, however long or short, is likewise good. Blogging may be a conversation, yes, but there’s still a certain quality of monologue inherent in regular posts (unless they’re all of the “Hey, look at Liquid Egg Product’s great post about dumpsters” variety). Sometimes it’s good to reverse the current, shut the pie hole and focus on listening and thinking for a bit. 

Hope your holiday, for those of you in the US anyway, was refreshing. Reassembler will now resume its regular schedule of mixed metaphors, flawed comparisons and whatnot.