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The magical music of the brain

Regular readers may recall an article here about brain machines—electronic devices that use flashing lights to promote relaxation. The idea behind these machines is that brainwaves have a tendency to fall in step with stimuli of certain frequencies—a phenomenon known as entrainment. So by flashing lights at the same frequency as one’s brainwaves would have during, say, deep meditation, a machine should be able to induce a meditative state artificially. It’s a fascinating concept, and there are numerous gadgets that use light alone, or sound and light together, to induce sleep, improve learning and creativity, and perform any number of other feats.

In the course of my research for that article, I noticed that there were also products that claimed to produce exactly the same effect using sound alone. Somewhat skeptical, I put on some headphones and listened to one of the sample recordings. The next thing I knew, I was waking up, wiping the drool from my keyboard. A half hour had gone by and I never knew what hit me. Whatever happened, the effect was as surprising as it was impressive.

Beat It

I decided to investigate further. There are, it turns out, quite a few different companies selling downloadable audio files, CDs, and electronic gadgets based on the basic notion of binaural beats. Although they come in many different forms and have different claims, they all exploit an interesting quality of the brain.

If you were to listen to two musical instruments playing the same note, but slightly out of tune with each other, you may perceive a sort of warbling or vibrato effect. These cyclic pulsations are called beats, and within a small range of tunings, they get faster the farther apart the two notes are. (If the instruments are perfectly in tune, the effect is absent, and if they’re really far out of tune, then you simply hear two different notes.) It turns out that you can get exactly the same effect if you play a tone in one ear and a very slightly lower- or higher-pitched tone in the other ear. Listen to either sound individually, and it sounds normal—but listen to both together and you perceive the beats. In other words, this effect is not an acoustic one, but is produced by the brain.

The human auditory apparatus can hear sounds with a pitch as low as about 20Hz (Hertz = cycles per second), give or take a few Hertz. However, the frequency of brainwaves—particularly those associated with states of relaxation and sleep—can go much lower, even below 1Hz. So a recording of a sound at, say, 4Hz would be inaudible and would have no effect. However, if you pitch two sounds exactly 4Hz apart (say, one at 100Hz and the other at 104Hz) and play one in each ear, the brain “manufactures” a 4Hz beat. And, all things being equal, the brain will then strongly tend to fall into sync with that frequency, producing the same sort of subjective sensation as sleep. Conveniently, the range of frequency differences that can produce an audible beat corresponds roughly to the range of frequencies dominant in the brain during the sorts of relaxed states most of us enjoy.

Mixed Notes

Of course, plain out-of-tune tones aren’t especially interesting to listen to, so most publishers of binaural beat recordings mix in other sounds such as rain, waterfalls, bells, gongs, and so on. In some cases, these extra sounds completely hide the beats so that the listener is unaware of them consciously, but they still register in the brain and have the same effect.

It’s not at all difficult to record these sounds in an MP3 file or on a CD—perhaps in a progression from faster to slower beats—and numerous companies do. There are also mobile and web apps that do the same thing. These recordings and apps are billed as aids for meditation, relaxation, or self-hypnosis—and even as a legal “digital drug.” The prices range from almost nothing to thousands of dollars for a multi-year program of customized recordings. Although each company puts a unique spin on its particular method or formula, it’s virtually impossible to make fair comparisons because what you have to judge is ultimately a subjective experience. That US$15 recording might produce an effect that, for you, is just as good as what you’d get by spending several hundred dollars—then again, it might not. It’s reasonable to expect better and more reliable results from larger companies that employ neuroscientists and psychologists and do actual testing of their products’ effects on human brainwave patterns.

I have invested only a little time—and no money—into a few limited experiments on myself with binaural beats. My results have been modest at best—perhaps I get what I pay for. Still, my experience suggests that this technology has a lot of potential. And it’s certainly a lot less goofy-looking than sunglasses with blinking LEDs mounted on the inside. So the next time you see someone on the train wearing headphones and apparently zoned out, remember: you might be looking at a great spiritual master in training.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on October 13, 2004.

Image credit: Skyhead E [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Wow, it seems like a mere 12 months ago that I was writing about our 15th birthday! Websites, like kids, grow up so fast!

Although this site has indeed been around since April 1, 2003 (and no, it wasn’t/isn’t an April Fools’ joke—that just happened to be a convenient date), it spent much of that time in a zombie-like state of ambiguous not-quite-deadness. Last year, I finally managed to resurrect it for real, and for each of the past 365 days we’ve had freshly updated content. Yay! So I thought I’d take a moment to bring our readers up to speed about a few things.

A Year (or So) of Progress

First, let me say thank you for reading! Some people stumble on one of our articles during a web search, while others subscribe via email or RSS, or follow us on Twitter, and a few just like coming back to the site every day. However you got here, we’re glad to have you! We hope we’re able to provide a few minutes of enjoyable infotainment every day.

This past year has turned out a bit differently than I was imagining. Careful readers will have noticed that most of the articles we’ve published have been updated versions of our “classic” articles from 2003–2007. I was expecting to dole those out more slowly, but for a variety of reasons it seemed wiser to get rid of stale content—outdated information, broken links (oh, so many broken links!), and text that offends our older-and-wiser sensibilities. We repurposed some old SenseList content, too. We also retired quite a few articles that just needed to die—either they simply weren’t interesting anymore, or they were about things that no longer exist, or they would have required a complete rewrite to be publishable.

Within a couple of months, all the remaining classic articles (and the SenseList stuff we want to keep) will have been either updated or sent to live on a farm in the country. Then we’ll turn our attention fully to brand new content, though as I mentioned last year, our new-from-scratch articles will mostly be much shorter, because there are only so many hours in the day.

Can You Hear Me Now? No. (Sorry.)

I’ve received a lot of email since last year asking what happened to the audio recordings we used to have. Previously, every article included a recording of yours truly reading it (and doing my best not to butcher all the words in French, German, Chinese, Norwegian, and so on). It turned out that these recordings were especially popular among English learners, because they could listen to the audio and follow along with the perfectly matched text, thus picking up clues about colloquial English writing and pronunciation at the same time. But the audio disappeared with the site redesign, and that made a lot of people unhappy.

I’m sorry about that. I wish I could have kept the recordings, but it was impossible. The whole idea (and, indeed, the thing that made them attractive to English learners) was that the audio matched the text. But now all the text either has changed or is about to change, so in order for the audio recordings to match once again, I’d have to re-record (and edit) all of them, something that is incompatible with my already much-too-full schedule. As a matter of fact, knowing that would have to happen was one of the main things that kept me from redoing the site for so long—I couldn’t figure out when I’d ever have the time to deal with all that audio, and I wasn’t willing to break the connection between the audio and the text, or leave embarrassingly outdated info in the recordings. So I got stuck. It was only by deciding to ditch the audio that I was able to bring the site back at all, and though I’m sad to have left the audio in the past, I’m glad the site is once again viable.

That said, I have been thinking about compiling chunks of articles from this site into an actual book (well, I mean, there’s enough content for several books), and if I did that, I would certainly consider offering an audiobook version as well. I’m not sure I’ll have time to do that, but having plenty of updated content certainly would make that job easier, and that’s another of the reasons I decided to focus on refreshing old content before adding new. So, we’ll see. In theory, I’d also like to do a podcast, but again, it’s a question of time.

In and Out

Last April we started listing (mostly informal) “holidays” on the site, like National Donut Day and World Sleep Day. I thought it would be fun, and it was, but very few people bothered to read about them, so I don’t feel as though that time was well spent. As of today, the faux holidays are gone, and in their place we have a new Book of the Week feature, which more often than not will be a Take Control title, in that running the company that publishes those books is my actual day job! Because I’m such a nice guy, I’m offering readers of Interesting Thing of the Day a 30% discount on all our Take Control ebooks. They’re all designed to help ordinary, nontechnical people overcome problems with technology, and I hope you find them helpful!

There are several other things on my to do list for Interesting Thing of the Day, too—including new types of content that I think will be both fun and useful, and at the risk of repeating myself, the only barrier to implementing them is the number of hours in the day. Since I don’t know for sure which of these things will happen or when, I shan’t promise anything, but the more interest people show in the site, the more likely I am to squeeze in some extra hours working on it.

One thing you have not seen here in the past year, and still don’t, is ads. Because, frankly, I just hate ads. I run ad blockers on all my devices, and if you don’t, you should! Ads are, in some respect, a necessary evil, but lately I’ve felt they’re more evil than necessary. So there aren’t any on this site, and it simply isn’t part of my plan to use ads to support our content. I mean, unless you consider articles and blurbs about other books we publish to be ads, in which case Oh Yes You Will See More of Those. But those are just us telling you about our own stuff. We don’t let third parties display any content on our site, and we don’t do any surreptitious tracking or other privacy-violating stuff, because ewwwww. So if you like reading good material with no ads and want to support us, you know, buy some books! We’d really appreciate that.

Image credit: Jim, the Photographer [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

This week we’re instituting a new feature: our Book of the Week. Because the people behind Interesting Thing of the Day also run Take Control Books, many of the featured titles will be from our collection of tech books for nontechnical people, and of those, a fair percentage were written by our own Joe Kissell. To make the books even more attractive, we’re offering a 30% discount on all Take Control books to Interesting Thing of the Day readers (after you click one of the links in this post, the discount will be applied automatically when you check out…or you can manually enter coupon code ITOTD). From time to time we’ll also feature books by authors we know, and other titles that we just think are especially noteworthy.

Our first weekly book is just for Mac users, so if you don’t have a Mac, there’s nothing to see here (but stay tuned…we’ll have some good options for you in future weeks). It’s called Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, and it’s a comprehensive, up-to-date, and user-friendly guide to keeping all the data on your Mac safe from any of a thousand things that could endanger it (including theft, fires, floods, and even good old-fashioned human error). This book will teach you about various types of backup, how to choose backup media, how to pick and configure backup software, and much more…including, crucially, how to restore data if disaster strikes. You’ll learn about the pros and cons of Apple’s Time Machine app, why and how to clone your disk or SSD onto an external volume, and what you should be aware of when considering a cloud backup system. And that’s just the beginning. If you have Mac backup questions, this book almost certainly has the answers. Don’t wait until it’s too late—protect your data right now with an excellent backup plan!

This book, like all Take Control titles, comes as an ebook, and you can download any combination of formats—PDF, EPUB, and/or Kindle’s Mobipocket format—so you can read it on pretty much any computer, smartphone, tablet, or ebook reader. The cover price is $14.99, but as an Interesting Thing of the Day reader, you can buy it this week for 30% off, or just $10.49. In fact, we can do even better than that, but just through Monday, April 1, 2019. Since we’re still running our World Backup Day sale, for today only, it’s just $5. Pick up your copy before this special sale ends!

Short story as body art

Here in urban California, if you want to appear inconspicuous in public, the best way to do so is to wear leather, dye your hair in fluorescent colors, and have all your visible skin tattooed, pierced, or both. I exaggerate, of course—but I think we can all agree that in much of the western world, body art is big these days. Personally, I find the notion of permanently altering my appearance unappealing. My tastes in clothing, hair styles (and colors), and so on change over time, so I don’t want to lock myself into a look I might feel less enthusiastic about in a few years. There’s also the whole issue of pain, which, all things being equal, I prefer to avoid. If I ever were to have a tattoo, though, it would have to be both discreet and very meaningful—something more than mere decoration.

One artist is using tattoos on human skin as a medium for literature rather than images, and in an extremely unconventional manner at that. In 2003, New York author Shelley Jackson wrote a 2,095-word story titled “Skin,” which she refers to as a “mortal piece of art.” By the time the project is finished, each word of the story will have been tattooed on a different person’s body; over 500 of the tattoos (and possibly many more) have been completed, using participants from around the world.

Jackson last updated the project’s status page in April 2011, and I don’t know what progress has occurred since then. However, in March 2011, just before that last public update, Jackson had an exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum featuring a video of a subset of the Skin Project’s participants—each person saying their word (in some cases, multiple times) and showing their tattoo, with the words cut together into a different story of about 900 words.

I Give You My Word

Someone who encounters one of the “words,” as she calls the participants, will be able to read at most one word, along with any adjacent punctuation. Volunteers must sign a contract stating that they will receive a tattoo of whichever word Jackson assigns them (in black ink and in a classic book font) and that they will send her a photograph of the finished tattoo as well as a portrait of themselves that does not show the tattoo. Jackson further stipulates that if a volunteer receives a word that could be considered a body part (“back,” say), that word must be tattooed on another part of the body. Only after the tattoo is finished does the participant get a copy of the entire story, which, according to the contract, must be kept secret.

Jackson’s intention is that the complete story never be published or revealed to the general public in any fashion; only those who receive the tattoos get to read the entire piece. However, when the work is finished, Jackson hopes to arrange portraits of the participants (not showing the tattoos) in the order in which their words appear in the story, complete with paragraph breaks. When a “word” dies, according to Jackson, the story will change—and she will attempt to attend the funeral, though she expects most of the words to outlive her. When all the words have died, the work as a whole will be dead.

Going With the Flow

The idea for Jackson’s human work of literature came partly from the art of Andy Goldsworthy, the subject of the 2001 documentary Rivers and Tides. Goldsworthy uses only natural materials for his pieces, including icicles, leaves, rocks, and dirt. Many of his works melt within hours, disappear with the next tide, or float away in the river (hence the film’s title). And yet the ephemeral nature of the art is precisely what he means to explore. In Jackson’s story, meanwhile, not only is the work as a whole temporary, but all of its components are also autonomous.

Although my tastes in art tend toward the conventional—and I still do not have the slightest interest in getting a tattoo myself—I find something about these organic works of art strangely compelling. If Jackson decides to do an even more ephemeral sequel called “Nails” or “Hair,” perhaps I’ll volunteer to become a word myself.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on January 14, 2005.

Image credit: Logan Baird [CC-SA 3.0], via Wikipedia

Every year, March 31—the day before April Fools’ Day (so it’s easy to remember)—is World Backup Day. Speaking as someone who has written quite a lot about backups (like Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac) and Wirecutter’s redundantly titled The Best Online Cloud Backup Service, this is an annual observance I can truly get behind. If you aren’t 100% positive that all your data (files, photos, contacts, email, etc.) could be completely restored even if, say, a space station fell on your house, now’s the time to get your digital life in order. There are lots of ways to back up your devices, and some are better than others, but something is better than nothing.

Save 67%! This weekend only (through April 1), my book Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac is on sale for just $5—that’s 67% off the $14.99 cover price! If you’re a Mac user, I hope you’ll take advantage of this occasion to learn the best ways to keep your data safe.

Image credit: Marco Verch [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

The postman’s palace

The topic of weird, elaborate structures built by wealthy eccentrics has come up repeatedly here at Interesting Thing of the Day—think of the Winchester Mystery House, Neuschwanstein Castle, and Hearst Castle, for instance. Today we add to that list a palace constructed in its entirety by an eccentric of modest means: a postman named Ferdinand Cheval.

The story begins in 1879. Cheval, then 43 years old, had been working as a rural mail carrier in the southeast of France for 12 years. Because his daily routine involved walking about 20 miles (32km), mostly in solitude, he did a lot of daydreaming. One day (perhaps while his mind was elsewhere), he tripped over a small limestone rock. He noticed that the rock was oddly and beautifully shaped, so he wrapped it up in his handkerchief, put it in his pocket, and took it home with him. The next day, he went back to the same spot and found lots of other interesting stones. He recalled a striking dream he’d had in 1864, in which he’d built a huge castle of stone. Right then and there, he decided to make his dream a reality: he made it his life’s mission to collect enough stones to construct that castle.

Going Postal

Cheval began collecting rocks on his rounds, eventually adding about 5 miles (8km) of walking per day. At first he kept the stones in his pockets, then moved on to baskets and, finally, a wheelbarrow as the size and quantity of the stones he collected increased. Back at home, he set to work arranging the stones into an ever-larger structure. He also made numerous figures of people, animals, and plants out of concrete and blended these into the creation, which was held together with the help of cement and wire. Despite ridicule from his neighbors, he continued working on the project for 33 years, and it became his full-time occupation after he retired from the post office in 1896. By the time he declared it finished, in 1912, it had grown to roughly 85 feet (26m) long, 40 feet (12m) wide, and 35 feet (11m) high. It was dubbed Le Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval (or Postman Cheval’s Ideal Palace).

And it looks like…well, no one can really say what it looks like. Cheval’s vision had been that of a fantastical structure incorporating elements from many different architectural styles. Part of it was intended to emulate a Hindu temple; part of it is supposed to look like a medieval castle. There are also influences from numerous other cultures from all over the world. And yet, the final product—a pastiche though it may be—has an odd sort of coherence that evokes (or possibly even inspired) Dr. Seuss.

Dying for Recognition

By the time the palace was complete, it had begun to draw international attention. Famous artists visited and drew inspiration from it; it was featured in media from postcards to magazines; and people came from far and wide to see this astonishing building. Public opinion about the work and its creator eventually shifted, and Cheval himself came to be regarded as an artist of some renown.

However, even though Cheval had essentially put the town of Hauterives on the map, the city government denied his request to be buried, along with his wife, in the palace. Not to be deterred, he went back to work in 1914 on a second, smaller structure in the local cemetery. He spent eight years building what he called the Tomb of Silence and Eternal Rest. Two years after its completion—and just days after he finished writing his autobiography—Cheval died and was interred in this new structure.

Set in Stone

The Palais Idéal was declared a cultural landmark in 1969, and underwent extensive renovations from 1983 to 1993. Today, the site draws more than 100,000 visitors per year to Hauterives. An exhibition at Paris’s Musée de la Poste (Post Office Museum) in 2007 showcased artwork inspired by Cheval’s palace, and included numerous artifacts relating to its history—including the original visitors’ log begun in 1905. The centerpiece of the exhibit was a detailed one-tenth-scale model of the palace.

I wouldn’t call this structure a work of architectural genius, and its artistic merits (or lack thereof) have been much debated. But no one can dispute that it’s audacious, wacky, and impressive. Whatever drove Cheval to spend half his life collecting stones and building bizarre monuments, it earned him a place in history as one of only a few truly famous postmen.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on August 15, 2007.

Image credit: Marine69 [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

National Doctors’ Day, first observed in 1933, was made an official U.S. celebration in 1990. It’s observed on March 30 in commemoration of first successful use of anesthesia in surgery on that date in 1842. We all know how badly screwed up the health care system is in the United States, but even so, we’d all be in pretty serious trouble without the hard work and dedication of doctors everywhere—and especially of primary care physicians. Think kind thoughts about your doctor today! Oh, and as a favor to yourself as well as your doctor, get yourselves and your kids vaccinated.

Image credit: National Cancer Institute [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons