10.31.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:09 pm by Jon Silpayamanant
Artist: Jirapat Tasanasomboon
Title: Superman and Rama’s Struggle over Sita
Technique: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 140 x 190 cm
Year: 2002
I had blogged about Jirapat Tasanasomboon at the old Mae Mai blog earlier last year. He has since completed a few other paintings. Though this one above is an older painting I thought that this it was interesting and needed no commentary.
Jirapat Tasanasomboon was born in 1971 in Samut Prakarn and completed his Master Degree from Silapakorn University in 1999. He applies a pop-art style to his subjects who often feature well known (super)heroes from cartoons such as Batman, Superman and Spiderman as well as science fiction movies. His heroes are depicted in a distinctive Thai setting and are often seen interacting with traditional Thai heroes and mythical figures, most of whom are characters in the Ramakien (Ramayana). It might be seen as an indicator of the complex relationship between Thailand and one of its closest allies. Sometimes a loving relationship, but at other times struggling. Jirapat has participated in several art shows in Thailand and also in Korea (2003).
Jirapat Tasanasomboon
As some of you may already know, I am a legal permanent resident of the United States but not a citizen. Thailand is still a Kingdom, if only a constitutional monarchy. All the monarchs of the Chakri Dynasty of Thailand are named after Rama including His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej (King Rama IX). There’s more to Rama than Grant Morrison.
Related Links:
The Oral Tradition and the Many “Ramayanas”, by Philip Lutgendorf.
The Poetics of the Ramakian, by Dr. Theodora H. Bofman
Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, ed. by Paula Richman.
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filed under: Asia; Southeast Asia; Thailand; Jirapat Tasanasomboon; Rama; Sita; Superman; art
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10.24.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:58 am by Jon Silpayamanant
reviews:
Why is this important? Because it is practical information that shows one how to change one’s state of consciousness, rather than simply understanding or believing a metaphysical concept of such spiritual states. As both a Professor Emeritus of Neurology at the University of Colorado and a longtime Zen practitioner who has personally attained the state of kensho (or “enlightenment”), James Austin is uniquely qualified to discuss the topic, and this 844-page volume is both scientifically rigorous and deeply spiritual.
…
In all of these states, as well as the more exotic states of religious visions or spiritual enlightenment, our basic perceptions of reality and our relation to the world around us differ from the perceptions of so-called “rational” or “objective” consciousness, sometimes radically so.
In meticulous and fascinating detail, Austin describes what we know of the changes in brain activity associated with such altered states. In so doing, he arrives at the crucial insight that the brain is not “hard wired” for ANY particular state of consciousness. Rather, the “ordinary” state of waking consciousness is simply one pattern of brain activity out of many possible configurations … one that is largely “learned” by social conditioning and reinforcement during the process of growing up in a social structure that enforces a “consensus” reality. The important point he makes is that states other than our ordinary waking one are not altered forms of consciousness but rather reflect alternate, but equally valid, networking configurations of the brain.
from:
http://www.consciousevolution.com
another:
http://www.realization.org
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10.21.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:25 am by Jon Silpayamanant
I know I haven’t been blogging here much lately, but I thought I’d give a few shout outs, just because I support the local comics scene as well as those bloggers that support Mae Mai.
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Wayne Bertsch’s Barfly comics strip at the NUVO
I’ll let this little NUVO blurb and the strip above speak for Wayne’s work:
Lifelong fan of both comics and live music, Wayne is delighted to have an outlet to explore both arenas at once. Originally from northeast Ohio where he owned an operated a successful comic store, and was a convention promoter and self publisher during the 80’s and 90’s. Founder of the long running GOTHIK-APA (Amateur Press Association) and writer/Artist on the self published Comic book The Law his art credits since moving to Indy in 1998 has been limited mostly to murals in homes and businesses until joining the NUVO freelance stable.
Barfly Archives
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Justin Bleep’s Brick City Bunch
Mark Fossen of Focused Totality (another fine comics blog you should be reading) mentioned, “I would like to see more hip-hop in comics” which reminded me of an article at IndianapolisMusic.net that I had read a while back about Brick City Bunch. Created by local DJ, Justin Bleep, Brick City Bunch
follows the adventures of his five iconic characters through the streets and underground scenes of their city. It’s an appealing slice of urban culture in a city that doesn’t quite exist anywhere in the real world but plays itself out across the vast map of Bleep’s own imagination.
Bleep’s work will be hitting Wizard World Texas this November, so if you’re in the area and have the inclination to go to these things, check his work out.
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Shawn Hoke’s SIZE MATTERS: The Mini-Comic Blog
This is just such a wonderful review site. Given that Shawn gets minis from all over the world that just makes it nicer because of the breadth of the types of comics he takes a look at. Shawn is also from Indianapolis, which is just fine by me!
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Jim Roeg’s Double Articulation
Jim gave Mae Mai a shout out some time ago in the notes section of his Vol. 1, No. 8 weekly digest of reviews, notes, and rants. I’m going to self indulgently quote it in full, because though I haven’t quite lived up to the expectation here at my own blog I think that my numerous comments at other blogs and message boards have at least lived up to the hype a bit:
Make Mine Mae Mai!
Jon Silpayamanant is not only running an outstanding blog of comics and cultural criticism called Mae Mai, where he brings an exceptional range of erudition to the analysis of comics and visual art, he’s also a hell of a generous thinker. (You’ve probably seen his name in the comments section of more than one blog, including this one.) Jon describes Mae Mai as “Comics, Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism, Comparative Neurolinguistics, and Performance Theory.” All I can say is, anyone who can bring Edward Said and W. J. T. Mitchell to bear on comics in such illuminating ways is someone everyone interested in comics criticism should be reading. Religiously.
Now, once Jim comes back to the fray I expect that he will be calling me out on the lack of indepth analysis here–but I’ll likly be spending alot of time at his own blog which has some wonderful analysis and criticism of what is sometimes the maligned genre of the the comics of the big two. Jim’s ability to do comparative analyses with theatre and fine art as well as his poco (post colonialism) leanings lends his blog a breath of fresh air. So keep an eye on Double Articulation–you won’t be disappointed!
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Aklas Isip’s pinoy komix biz
Ever since discovering Darna I’ve have been coming across a number of pinoy comics blogs. Aklas’ blog is just dense with information–not only about the pinoy comics industry–but about the technology used to create comics, the comparative analyses of the the economics of comics production, and just about anything else you can think about that is comics related (his blog post about Digital Comics on 3G Cellphones was particularly interesting). He recently gave a shout out to Mae Mai as well:
Another site of worthy note is www.silpayamanant.blogspot.com by Jon Silpayamanant. Jon’s survey of Oriental comics in general is so pleasantly vast and overwhelming. The data is so varied and engrossing that one or two visits is not enough. You will eventually leave however, with the comfortable thought that not all comics are American or Japanese. Thanks, Jon.
I would hope that people leave this blog “with the comfortable thought that not all comics are American or Japanese!” I wouldn’t have it any other way!
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10.20.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:51 am by Jon Silpayamanant
http://www.congenitaladrenalhyperplasia.org/
CAH is a genetic defect of the adrenal glands. A person with CAH will not be able to produce several vital hormones known as corticosteriods. CAH is treated with hormone replacement, replacing one or both of the hormones missing, generally with Cortef and Florinef. Living with CAH requires extra attention to common illnesses and stress inducing situations (injury, exercise, etc.) and very good communication with your Endocrinologist. While this site is intended to provide information, support and education for people and families with CAH, your Endocrinologist must always be your primary source for medical information, and should always be consulted regarding any medical questions.
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10.16.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:05 pm by Jon Silpayamanant
Neil Cohn has a new essay up at Comixpedia.com.
“Comic” Theory 101: In place of another is a discussion on Metonymy in comics and is the first of a series of pieces Neil plans to write concerning the interesection of “comic theory” and linguistics.
Read it, now!
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10.13.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:30 am by Jon Silpayamanant
Brazilian Comics and Comix by Flávio Mário de Alcântara Calazans (abstract here)
abstract:
This paper relates a continuum exploratory researche of the comic books production made in Brazil, historically authorial, compared with the production commercial-editorial, comproved for study of the authors more recognized and productive, whose influences come from the super-heroes of the USA, from the USA underground comix, from the Japanese manga, from Europe and also of Middle East (Arabia and Lebanon). Demonstrate the emergence of the kind of author-researcher, which emerges from underground comix to the printed comic books and to the university as teacher with Ph.D. thesis on comics.
Keywords: comics, comix, Brazilian authors.
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filed under: South America; Brazil
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Posted in Uncategorized at 4:05 am by Jon Silpayamanant
Enhancing analogic reasoning with rTMS over the left prefrontal cortex — Boroojerdi et al. 56 (4): 526 — Neurology
abstract:
The authors utilized repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in 16 normal volunteers to investigate the role of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in analogic reasoning. rTMS over the left and right PFC, over the left motor cortex, and sham stimulation over the left PFC were administered during memory and analogic reasoning conditions. rTMS over the left PFC led to a significant reduction in response times only in the analogy condition without affecting accuracy. These results indicate that the left PFC is relevant for analogic reasoning and that rTMS applied to the PFC can speed up solution time.
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10.12.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:43 pm by Jon Silpayamanant
The Turtle Island Hypothesis of the Origin of Writing
Evidence continues to pile up of prehistoric trans-oceanic travel and trade — so why do I now hypothesize that Blackfoot originated it and weren’t just passive “dumb savage” recipients? Comparative internal evidence — qualities an original with historically four phonemic vowels can have which would then necessarily be lost when transplanted to any other language with more than four vowels (such as the fixed triliteral words of Arabic and Hebrew mentioned as implicit) — with 5, 6, 7 and more vowels, you’d have to either be a geometer to read and write or you’d tie ‘em down, fixed in one direction; which is what we find. I even highly suspect that the Cherokee Syllabary was not “invented” by Sequoyah: that he was a member of the Scribe Clan using a syllabary kludged and made to fit it from one brought long earlier from the north, where Algonkians lived, and thus that Cherokee writing is an offshoot of the original Blackfoot/Algonkian Syllabarium.
Interesting…
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Posted in Uncategorized at 6:10 am by Jon Silpayamanant
Speaking Tonal Languages Promotes Perfect Pitch by Don Monroe
A new study concludes that young musicians who speak Mandarin Chinese can learn to identify isolated musical notes much better than English speakers can. Fewer than one American in 10,000 has absolute pitch, which means they can identify or produce a note without reference to any other note. Also called perfect pitch, this skill requires distinguishing sounds that differ by just 6 percent in frequency.
I had posted this link already but thought it might be time to comment on it (see also Speaking In Tones by Alan Hall).
I had come across Diana Deutsch’s work nearly two years ago, mainly through research into “musical illusions.”
I hadn’t much thought about the connection between tonal languages and music despite the fact that my first language is a tonal language (Thai). But the idea of lexical tones continues to intrigue me especially given how language is generally lateralized to the left hemisphere. Since I’ve already blogged a little bit about how we can look at the left hemisphere as a “sequential processor” I can use this post to elaborate a tiny bit on what I mean by that.
See, I’m not really using this as a space to do detail intensive analysis (despite the subtitle of the blog) but more as a place to jot down some thoughts about various subjects. So I hope that I don’t venture too deeply into technical details of the neurology of this particular subject. I needed this space to practice my writing skills more than anything, and to see how well I can convey some of research in as simple a way as is possible. This is as much for my benefit as it is for any possible reader’s as I’ve always felt that if I can’t explain an idea simply (i.e. translate an idea into a clear and concise way) then maybe I just don’t quite understand it myself.
All that aside, it seems that most of the research on tonal languages indicates that lexical tones (as well as so-called “perfect pitch”) is lateralized to the left hemisphere of the brain. So this means, given my description of general neural functions of the hemispheres, that lexical tones are located in the sequential processor.
Now this seems to go against the idea that music is primarily a right hemispheric activity which is what has long been assumed to be the case, but a number of studies have demonstrated that the simple ability to, say, sing a tune is not the same activity as singing a tune from music notation. This is actually something that parallels literacy in language versus illiteracy. It seems like the ability to read language/music forces those activities into a sequential processing mode that is qualitatively different than just the ability to speak (but not read) and sing/play music (but not read music notation).
In other words, the actual process of training in reading tends to shift the lateralization of both language and music into the left hemisphere (for more in depth discussions of this, see especially the section “Music, Language, and Human Evolution,” in The Origins of Music).
I think it’s obvious that the activity of reading is a relatively sequential activity so the lateralization of it in the left hemisphere isn’t all that surprising. This is also bolstered by Melodic Intonation Therapy which has been used to help aphasics overcome serious speech handicaps as well as by second language aquisition after the so-called “critical period.” Both of these language activities utilize the resources of the right hemisphere only because either the left hemipshere has been damaged or has been exapted by the primary language. In other words, language learning in these contexts become a contextualizing activity due to the embededness of the primary language or loss of the ability to sequentialize the primary language.
Some of this embeddedness of the primary language has also been the focus of Deutsch’s research in the tritone paradox. The tritone paradox is a musical illusion using the interval of a tritone (three Western whole tones) that’s constructed with Shepard tones (constructed pitches that have no “height”). What is remarkable about subject’s perceptions of the tritone paradox is that dependant on the mother tongue of the subject (the language where phoneme aquisition takes place around 6 months), then that will determine whether the tones are ascending or descending even if the subject never actually learns the mother tongue (for more info, read this, or this or this).
The connection between music and tonal languages is not surprising given all the related research, but it’s not surprising that there’s still opposition to the idea of non-linguistic thought (see Jackendoff and Lerdahl and Jackendoff) since the privileged model of linguistics is still historically predicated on synthetic/inflected languages.
Deutsch suggests that for students who speak a tonal language, acquiring absolute pitch is like learning a second language, which becomes much more difficult after a “critical period” of development. For students who speak a nontonal language such as English, however, absolute pitch is more like a first language, for which the critical period occurs at a much younger age.
Now this last I find interesting. Second language aquisition has been shown to have an extended “critical period” the more closely it is related to the primary language. So in this context talking about a “critical period [that] occurs at a much younger age” makes sense for English speakers since absolute pitch (perfect pitch) is less related to it than to tonal languages.
One of these days I’ll actually get into more heavy duty analysis, but I’ve just been so busy with several other projects that finding the time to just jot down thoughts is getting difficult. I hope this will pass, but for now…
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10.11.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:51 pm by Jon Silpayamanant
AVEN
While most sexual people are shown a multitude of ways to live a life which involves sex, most asexual people find very little information on how to live life without it. The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), was created to address this discrepancy by encouraging dialogue among about about asexual people. We provide a safe space for asexual people to discuss our experiences in our online forum, and actively organize for the recognition and acceptance of asexuality.
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