Motto: Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest
(Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself)

Paracelsus (1493-1541), born Theophrast von Hohenheim in Einsiedeln, Switzerland, is sometimes called the father of toxicology. A pioneer in the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine, he was the one who named the element zinc (from "zinke" German for pointy). An alchemist (initiated by Henry Cornelius Agrippa), he worked off the hermetic view of health centered around the harmony between the microcosm, Man and the macrocosm, Nature. Despite the risk, he investigated the plague firsthand. He also came up with a chemical diagnosis of madness and was the one who invented the Alphabet of the Magi used for engraving angelic names on talismans. Though a pacifist, he always had a huge broadsword at his side, even when he slept. His search for occult knowledge took him through Germany, France, Hungary, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, China, to Constantinople, where an Arabian adept supposedly imparted Paracelsus with the supreme secret of a the alkahest, a hypothetical universal dissolvent. Another story has it that the devil gave him a white horse, but considering the historical Paracelsus died in a White Horse Inn makes the similarity questionable. A new book by Phillip Ball, Devil’s Doctor, explores the life of this mysterious figure. Today, Paracelsus still crops up in Harry Potter books.

Ragged-trousered alchemist, Guardian.uk.com
Devil’s Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, Phillip Ball

Having examined 50 years of solar radiation measurments, Giles Harrison and David Stephenson of the University of Reading, UK, found that cosmic rays can increase the chances of a cloudy day by nearly 20%. Normally, solar cosmic rays are about 90% protons (hydrogen) and 9% alpha particles (helium). However, during a solar flare - exlosion on the Sun that happens when energy stored in twisted magnetic fields, typically above sunspots, is suddenly released - there is a significant burst of radiation across the spectrum (radio, x-rays, gamma rays), flares are classified according to x-ray brightness (1-8 Angstroms). So, the bright side of a cloudy day is that you’re shielded from radiation. Further, this may be a clue to explaining some of the mysterious climate changes our planet has experienced in the past (Big Ice Age, Little Ice Age).

(Proceedings of the Royal Society A, DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2005.1628).
Cosmic rays linked to cloudy days, New Scientist.com
SpaceWeather.com

4 Classical Human Virtues: Health, beauty, strength and wealth

4 Classical Divine Virtues: Prudence, moderation, justice and courage

3 Medieval Theological Virtues: Faith, hope and charity

2 Scholastic Virtues: Patience and fortitude

7 Christian Virtues: The three theological virtues and the four divine or in this case “moral” virtues, i.e. faith, hope, charity, prudence, moderation, justice and courage (sometimes called strength)

7 Medieval Liberal Arts: artes sermocinale: Philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, artes reales or physicae: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music

Ministry to Mosaics: Teens and the Supernatural, a study conducted by the Barna Group, interviewed over 4000 teens ages 13-18 and found that 73% of America’s youth have taken part in some type of psychic or occult activity (beyond media exposure or horoscope usage). Most common occult activity was using a Ouija board or reading about witchcraft (1/3 teens), 1/10 participated in a seance, 1/12 tried to cast spells or mix potions. 30% had their palm read, while 27% had their fortune told in some other way. 14% claim to have witnessed someone else using psychic powers. No wonder Underworld 2 is the highest grossing movie in the country.

New research explores teenage views and behavior regarding the supernatural, Barna.org

Here are some notes I took on the meanings of playing cards. First, I list the older meanings linked with tarot and the occult, then, their Medieval counterparts.

Spades: Air, swords, a leaf, cosmic tree, fall/winter, intellect, action, destiny, death (esp. Ace)
King: Saturn, King David
Queen: Pallas Athena/Minerva
Knave: Mercury, Hogier the Dane (Charlamagne’s paladin)

Hearts: Water, cups, spring/summer, light, knowledge, watery creation, love, fertility, chalice, joy
King: Neptune, water, Charlamagne
Queen: Venus, love, Judith (of the Bible)
Knave: Mars, La Hire a.k.a. Etienne de Vignoles (French warrior)

Clubs: Fire, wands, trefoils, fall/winter, night and darkness, oppose diamonds, energy, will, wealth, work, luck
King: Zeus, Alexander the Great
Queen: Hera, Argine An (anagram of Regina)
Knave: Apollo, Lancelot

Diamonds: Earth, pentacles, feminine power (contrast w/clubs), earthly matter, money, courage, energy
Ace: the single entity
King: king of fire, spirit and father, Julius Caesar
Queen: fuel for king’s fire, soul and mother, Rachel (of the Bible)
Knave: warrior, the ego, Hector of Troy

Joker: the ethereal, void

Today marks the new lunar year, 4703 by the Chinese calendar. The year is balled bingxu, based on the ’stem-branch’ system used in China, which uses 60-year cycles composed of five 12-year ones. Each year in the 12 year cycle is named after an animal from the Chinese zodiac, while each cycle is named after an element. So, this year will be the year of the Fire Dog (hotdog), the 7th year in the current 60-year cycle. Now go set off some fireworks.

Posture

Legs should be crossed. All the classic sitting meditation positions involve a stable three point base. So, you should sit in either the Lotus Position (padmasana), Half-Lotus or in the "Indian" or "tailor" fashion. In the Lotus, you sit with each foot placed on the opposite thigh, the way Sakyamuni Buddha is usually depicted. Unless you’re really limber or practice yoga, you’ll probably find this position difficult if you don’t sit on a cushion. Tibetan Buddhists use square cushions, Zen use round zofu, but a pillow or a folded blanket work as well. For the three point base to work, both of your knees must rest on the floor. Plant yourself firmly.

There are many hand positions for meditation, called mudra. But most place their hands either on the knees or in the cosmic mudra (The dominant hand is held palm up holding the other hand, also palm up, so that the knuckles of both hands overlap. The thumbs are lightly touching, thus the hands form an oval, which can rest on the upturned soles of your feet if you’re sitting in Full Lotus).

The back is kept straight, like an arrow or a stack of coins. Extend your neck as though reaching toward the ceiling with the top of you head. Your ears should be in a line parallel to your s in Soto (Gradual Enlightenment) Zen; while others meditate facing the world like Sakyamuni Buddha, as in the Rinzai (Sudden Enlightenment) School. Choose the way that works better for you.

The hara, which literally means ‘belly’, refers to the center of gravity, located in the abdomen three fingers below and two fingers behind the navel. Called the dantian in Chinese (’red field’) and the Svadhisthana Chakra in Kundalini Yoga. It is considered the seat of one’s spiritual energy. You should anchor your mind in the hara, thinking with your guts, not with your head. When you breathe, you should imagine the breath going down to the hara and returning from there.

Breathing

There are different pranyama, or breathing techniques for meditation. But one should begin by counting the breath, either on each inhalation, exhalation, or counting both. When you get to ten, start over at one. If you wish, you can count up to ten and then down to one. The counting is a feedback to help you know when your mind has drifted off. If you get distracted and lose count, don’t worry and just start over. After a while, you’ll notice your thoughts settling as you gain mastery over your mind. As your thoughts quiet down, counting becomes easier. When you feel your mind is sufficiently calm, you can stop counting and just focus on the in-out breath. Over time, you’ll notice your breathing slow down. While on average a person at sea-level breathes fifteen times a minute, one in deep meditation breathes at a rate of only two or three breaths a minute. Heart rate, circulation and metabolism also slow down, which is why masters are able to live on little or no sleep and one or less meal per day.

Concentration

By focusing on the breath, you bring your attention to what you’re doing in the present moment. Sati, or mindfulness, is the awareness of your thoughts and actions here and now. It applies equally to bodily actions and the mind’s thoughts and feelings. Right mindfulness, samma sati, is the seventh of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path and is a prerequisite for right concentration. You must develop an awareness of yourself before you can reach the awareness of everything else.

Buddhist meditation consists primarily of two aspects. Shamatha is the gradual development of mental and physical calmness (in Tibetan it is zhi gnas or ‘peaceful abiding’, in Chinese chih or ’stopping’). Vipashyana is the heightening of awareness, sensitivity and observation (a.k.a. lhag thong or ‘penetrating vision’, kuan or ’seeing’). Some meditations are calming, others aim for clarity, yet others do both. It is important that a balance is maintained and that one aspect is not enhanced at the expense of the other. Calmness without awareness is dozing; awareness without calm is ‘tripping’.

Samadhi is the Sanskrit word for concentration or one-pointedness. It is the ability to fully focus all your attention on the object at hand, keep it there for as long as necessary and shift it effortlessly at the appropriate time. Concentration is detachment. It is only by being able to let go of everything else, that we can fully concentrate on any one thing. Each time you return to the breath, you are training your ability to direct the mind where you want it to go. Fully developed, this is right concentration (samma samadhi), the eighth of the Eight Fold Path that leads to the realization of the noble truth: the way out of suffering is to eliminate attachment and desire.

Above all, perseverance. Don’t get discouraged by physical pain or psychological discomfort. They will pass as your mind-body get used to sitting. It is said that when Bodhidharma came to China, in order to attract students he sat in meditation in front of a cave for nine years. The first three years, people would come by and make fun of him. During the second three years, people grew tired of bothering a boring statue and they ignored him. In the final three years, a few realized his great accomplishment of sitting in meditation for so long despite the hardship and began to join him. By the end of the nine years, Bodhidharma spoke in front of thousands of totally receptive students, every one of them became instantly enlightened. His sermon was called the Lotus Sutra, the lotus symbolizing the anabasis through a world of ignorance and suffering, just as the flower rises above the muddy water from which it grows.

Congratulations! You are now enlightened. Just kidding. Now go meditate.

Several Ancient Greek and Roman sources (Polybius, Plutarch and Pliny the Elder) tell that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (mathematician and subject of Hiero II) constructed a burning glass to set fire to the Roman warships, anchored within arrow range. Though it’s often pictured as a large lens, the death ray was probably an assembly of mirrors, as recorded by Anthemius of Tralles (474-534), architect of the Hagia Sophia. Purportedly, Proclus used a similar method in 514 against the ships of Vitellius. The death ray is still considered by many as fiction, TV’s MythBusters were not able to recreate the feat. But after doing some calculations to see if it was possible, the MIT’s 2.0009ers decided to give it a try. Running into some difficulties at first, once the clouds cleared they succeeded in setting fire to 1" thick red oak using only mirrors.

2.009 Product Engineering Processes: Archimedes, MIT.edu

Today is German composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 250th birthday. Probably the most famous classical composer, Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria, into a musical family. A child prodigy, he played all around Europe and even jammed with J. C. Bach (one of J. S. Bach’s sons) in London. Later, he became close friends with composer Joseph Haydn, they even joined the same Catholic Masonic lodge. The opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote) is filled with Freemason and Enlightenment symbolism. For a while there was a belief that listening to Mozart made you smarter, the so-called Mozart effect. However, as other composer-effects were reported, it turned out that lively classical music in a major key speeds up the heart bringing more blood to the brain, making listeners more awake and better at test-taking. Mozart’s extensive body of work was cataloged by Ludwig von Kochel in 1862, the Kochel number is usually used to refer to Mozart’s pieces instead of the usual Opus-number.

Over much nay-saying, the Dalai Lama spoke at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting. Protesters claimed that the Tibetan leader, 14th reincarnation of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, is not qualified to speak about the brain. Further, that his presence confuses the distinction between science and faith. The aim of meditation (central to Buddhism) is to tame and control the brain, a skill honed and perfected by Tibetan Buddhism so much so that it is called the Diamond Vehicle (Vajrayana), the quickest road to enlightenment. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama is open to the scientific method and has stated his willingness to abandon Buddhist doctrines shown by science to be false (some beliefs like reincarnation are untestable, therefore remain insulated). There was an online petition to protest the talk, it was quickly hacked by supporters of the Lama.

Buddha on the Brain, Wired.com

When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don’t turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.
- Albert Hofmann.

January 13-15, Basel, Switzerland hosted the conference LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug, an International Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25), a derivative of lysergic acid found in the alkaloids of the ergot grain fungus was discovered by Hoffman in 1938. During the 1950s and 1960s, LSD a.k.a. acid was found to be a promising tool for psychiatry and psychotherapy and was studied by the CIA as a potential interrogation weapon (Project MKULTRA). But it has been illegal worldwide since the mid-1960s, after the great acid wave that washed over popular youth culture. Dr. Andrew Sewell, a psychiatrist and neurologist from the Harvard Medical School says "There is no evidence that LSD causes permanent brain damage — and quite a lot of evidence that it doesn’t."
While acid flashbacks exist, they’re rare and not as dangerous as the media makes them seem. Further, no one has died of an LSD overdose. While doubtless there have been people who’ve done some really stupid things while tripping, still others have accomplished great feats, like Pittsburgh’s Doc Ellis who pitched a perfect game on acid in 1970. Among the first to popularize the drug was author Aldous Huxeley in Doors of Perception and Dr. Timothy Leary, ex-Harvard psychologist turned LSD crusader. Nobel-prize-winner Francis Crick, discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA, told friends he received inspiration for his ideas from LSD. Many computer pioneers also credit LSD as their inspiration, including Douglas Englebart, the inventor of the mouse, and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who considers it as "one of the two or three most important things he has done in his life." So it’s no surprise that some computer companies, e.g. Cisco Systems, have banned drug testing for their technologists. During the LSD symposium, mythologist Carl P. Ruck and chemist Peter Webster presented their research supporting the popular theory that an ergot preparation was the active ingredient for the Kykeon beverage used during the ritual of the Eleusinian Mysteries of the Ancient Greek cult of Diana. Others have linked ergot poisoning to explain the Salem witch trials, as well as the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

LSD: The Geek’s Wonder Drug? Wired.com
LSD Symposium

The Motion Picture Association of America, the vanguard in the war against movie piracy, is being accused of unlawfully making a bootleg copy of a documentary that takes a critical look at the MPAA’s film ratings system. The MPAA admitted Monday that it had duplicated "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" without the filmmaker’s permission after director Kirby Dick submitted his movie in November for an MPAA rating. The Hollywood trade organization said that it did not break copyright law, insisting that the dispute is part of a Dick-orchestrated "publicity stunt" to boost the film’s profile. Meanwhile, the MPAA website clearly states that "manufacturing, selling, distributing or making copies of motion pictures without the consent of the copyright owners is illegal… Movie pirates are thieves, plain and simple… ALL forms of piracy are illegal and carry serious legal consequences." Considering all the absurd lawsuits against kids over downloading in the recent years, it would be a shame if the MPAA gets off scot free. Who watches the watchmen?

MPAA finds itself accused of piracy, LATimes.com

Three glow-in-the-dark transgenic pigs, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into the ambrio.

Taiwan breeds green-glowing pigs, BBCNews
Green tinged farm points the way, BBCNews

The island nation of Iceland, which has brought us Björk and Sigur Rós, was formed by volcanoes and to this day has huge boiling underground lakes heated by molten rock. Cities pipe the hot water and store it in giant tanks to heat homes and business. Now, the environmentally friendly country is the first to take the step of abandoning gasoline power in favor of hydrogen. In electric engines, electrodes split water into hydrogen and oxygen, as hydrogen electrons pass through a conductor they create a current of power. Hydrogen fuel is 2-3 times more expensive than gas, but also gets up to 3 times the mileage, all without carbon emissions (only water vapor). Capital Reykjavik is already testing three electric buses. Marie Maack of the Hydrogen Research Project believes that "If we make hydrogen and use that as a fuel for transportation then we can run the whole society on our own local renewable energy sources." Iceland hopes to be free of gasoline-powered cars by the middle of the century.

Iceland the First Country to Try Abandoning Gasoline, ABCNews.com

German Protestant mystic Jacob Bohme (1575-1624) started out as a cobbler in Gorlitz, in his spare time he would study scripture and theology. Then one day he had a mystical experience that he summed up in the phrase "In Yes and No all things consist" (Philip K. Dick had a very similar experience/revelation from a beam of pink light). From it he developed a system of Christian Gnosticism, which has influenced Swedenborg, Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, George Fox (founder of the Quakers), Adam Weishaupt (founder of the Illuminati), the theosophists and high grade Freemasonry, to name a few. The "eye in the pyramid" on the back of the dollar bill was one of Bohme’s trademark images.

His cosmology consisted of the Trinity +1. The first person, God the Father, is the primal, unmanifested reality, the Abyss that contains all potentiality. The second person, the Son, is the desire of the Abyss to reveal Himself, which is accomplished through divine introspection/self-contemplation. So, the third person, the Holy Spirit, is the process of God’s self-reflection. However, this process involves a divine mirror, which Bohme calls Sophia or "Virgin Wisdom", sometimes viewed as the fourth person. It was seeing the images in the mirror of Wisdom that made God want to manifest potentialities in reality through Creation. This suggests that God is a kind of fractal, a self-replicating binary-based matrix of tension between potentiality and actuality, perpetually growing in complexity. Good and evil become the positive and negative aspects of Creation, one strives to differentiate itself, the other to sink back into oblivion. The Neoplatonist influence is especially noticeable here, as evil is defined as an absence of good. Furthermore, the Fall, departure from God, was a necessary step for humanity to evolve to a state of redemption superior to original innocence. Superior because it is achieved through free will and deliberate action, while original innocence can only be maintained through ignorance of good and evil (as in the Garden of Eden before the fruit incident).

Jacob Bohme, Invisible Basilica
Jacob Bohme, Rotten.com
Jacob Bohme Resources, UCF.edu

The perception of what exactly makes up wealth has been shifting away from materialism. What good is money if you can’t get what you want with it, what good are things if they don’t improve the quality of your life? Economists too noticed that much of our wealth comes from factors other than labor and capital. First reported by Nobel Laureate Robert Solow, the Solow Residual is the part of economic growth that cannot be explained through capital accumulation. According to a recent World Bank study, nowadays the residual is quite large. Looking at the total wealth of rich countries, its natural resources usually account for only 1-3%, their buildings and machines about 17%, with the other 80% in intangible capital. 93% percent of this intangible capital is accounted for by the rule of law (57%) and education (36%). The rule of law is simple, what good is having cool stuff, if people keep steeling it from you. The World Bank’s Rule of Law Index rates how much different countries believe in and submit to the laws of their society. US scored 92/100. Switzerland unsurprisingly came out on top with 99. The more renegade states include Nigeria at 4.8 and Burundi at 4.3, while Iraq comes in at 0.5. Other intangible factors in this area: voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and control of corruption. Education also plays a large part in a nation’s wealth, a one year increase in a poor country’s average level of school would increase its intangible capital by $838/person. Considerable, since right now their education spending averages $51/person.

The Materialism Fallacy, TCSDaily.com
The Intangible Wealth of Nations, Reason.com
Where is the Wealth of Nations? Measuring Capital for the 21st Century, [PDF] WorldBank.org

Pictures of the red planet taken in the last few years have shown ice-rich landforms near the equator that suggest glacial movements as recently as 350,000 - 4 million years ago. Scientists believe these deposits on Mars to be remnants of snow. The theory is that Mars used to have a different tilt, with the poles pointing more towards the sun. As a result, the polar ice caps melted releasing vapor, which was blown south over the Tharsis Montes and Olympus Mons volcanoes, and turned to snow as it cooled and condensed, thus forming the glaciers. The model is described in the Jan. 20 journal Science. "The findings are important because they tell us that Mars has experienced big climate changes in the past, the kinds of climate change that led to the Great Ice Age here on Earth," said Brown University’s planetary geologist James Head. "The findings are also interesting because this precipitation pattern may have left pockets of ice scattered across Mars. This is good information for NASA as officials plan future space missions, particularly with astronauts."

Snow on Mars Created Glaciers Near Equator, Space.com

Researchers at Hebrew University found that certain properties of the cannabis plant can strengthen human bones, ergo preventing osteoporosis. The article appeared this week in the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.) journal. The research team, headed by Prof. Itai Bab, and partially funded by the US NIH (National Institutes of Health), found that plants like marijuana contain substances that activate CB2-receptors, endocannabinoids ("inner weed"), fatty acids produced mainly in the brain but also found in bones and the immune system. Many CB2-receptors were found in mice bones and shown to be key in preserving normal bone density. However, pot also activates the CB1-receptors, mostly present in the nervous system, and it is this reaction that gives cannabis its psychoactive aspect. For this reason, the researchers have already developed a synthetic compound called HU-308, which battles osteoporosis without the high. Still, looks like another point for team Medical Marijuana.

HU Scientists Develop Prototype Drug to Prevent Osteoporosis Based on Cannabinoids Produced by Body, HUNews
Pot-like substances help fight osteoporosis, ScienceBlog.com

Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed to have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The crow has a cunning rep in the avian kingdom. It is the messenger for the Zoroastrian good god Ahura-Mazda, as well as for Hermes (Mercury) and Apollo. Norse god Odin, had two ravens, Huginn and Munnin (Mind and Memory), one on each shoulder. There is a Greek myth that recounts how the crow became black, the love story of Coronis and Ischys. Coronis was pregnant with Apollo’s baby, but before she had the kid, she went and shacked up with Ischys. Apollo found out about this from a crow and in his anger turned the crow black for bringing bad news and then proceeded to kill Ischys and the pregnant Coronis (for what it’s worth, he did feel bad as his lover was lying on the funeral pyre, so he saved the kid by performing the first c-section, the child was Aesclepius, future father of medicine). This identification as a harbinger is possibly why a gathering of crows is a "murder", of ravens an "unkindness."

Crows and other corvidae top the bird IQ scale, followed by falcons, hawks, herons and woodpeckers. They have unusually large brains for their size, about the size of a chimpanzee’s, while rivaling the great apes in intelligence. They use traffic stops to crush nuts, setting and retrieving them during red lights. Like other scavengers they know to follow armies for carrion. They can talk, make tools out of wire, and form complex hierarchical societies. They can even lie.

Dr Bungyar, University of Austria, conducted an experiment to see what ravens learned from each other while foraging. He had two birds, one dominant and one subordinate, named after Odin’s. Their task was to work out which color-coded film containers held cheese, open them and eat. The subordinate was far better at this than the dominant. But as soon as he’d start eating, the dominant one would bully him away to gain access to the food. So then the subordinate headed over to a set of empty containers, opened them enthusiastically, and pretended to eat. The dominant followed, whereupon the subordinate rushed to the loaded containers, having clearly misled the other. But that’s not all, the dominant one soon grew wise and stopped falling for the tactic, at which point the subordinate got angry and started throwing things about. Crows not only lie, but they can tell when others lie, and even get upset when they’re found out.

Quoth the raven, Economist
Crows as clever as great apes, study says, National Geographics
Crows and jays topbird IQ scale, BBC

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a psychological treatment which believes that thoughts are the causes of emotions (not vice versa) and that mental disorders stem from irrational thoughts which can be replaced by more realistic substitutes. Still, therapy takes time, effort and money, meanwhile cognitive therapist are few and far between. Fortunately, now you can be treated for depression over the internet from the comfort of your own home, and the British Journal of Psychiatry will vouch for it. One of the examples of online treatment is Australian National University’s open-access MoodGym, free to use, confidential and backed by several studies. Though it’s recommended that such treatments be used as supplements to normal therapy, people have showed improvement from the internet versions alone.

MoodGym, ANU.edu
Internet-based self-help for depression: randomized controlled trial, British Journal of Psychiatry

A curious group study led by William Thompson examined the link between musical training and the ability to percieve emotions in others. They recorded a person saying ordinary sentences like "the chairs are made of wood" with different emotions: happy, sad, angry, fearful. Then, by calculating the average pitch of each syllable, the recordings were transformed into musical sequences. What they were using was speech prosody, the musical aspects of speech such as pitch, pace, vocal stress, and duration of pauses. The processed clips were played for two groups - one of adults with no musical training, the other with 8-13 years of music lessons - who were asked to judge whether the corresponding sequence was angry, sad, happy, or fearful. In every case, the trained group came out on top, especially in detecting sadness.

So, it seems that an understanding of musical harmony can lead to insight into social harmony. But then that idea is nothing new. Music training has been emphasized by many, including the Ancient Greek philosopher/mystic Protagoras, Chinese sage Confucius, and Friedrich Nietzsche who said that "without music life would be a mistake".

Thompson, W.F., Schellenberg, E.G., & Husain, G. (2004). Decoding speech prosody: Do music lessons help? Emotion, 4(1), 46-64.

Music training helps people understand emotions in speech, CognitiveDaily.com

Tuesday, January 17, in a 6-3 vote, the US Supreme Court validated Oregon’s unique 1997 physician-assisted suicide statute, the Death with Dignity law, used to end the lives of 200+ terminally ill patients. The ruling backed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that former-Attorney General John Ashcroft’s "unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide." Consequently, the Bush administration improperly tried to use federal drug law to prosecute Oregon doctors who prescribe overdoses. "The authority desired by the government is inconsistent with the design of the statute in other fundamental respects. The attorney general does not have the sole delegated authority under the (law)," Kennedy wrote for himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.

The Court’s Ruling, SupremeCourtUS.gov
DeathWithDignity.org