Working Out the Mind

A Mac user comments on the virtues of gaming, web work, music, the visual arts, and more. From January 2008.

brain1.jpgThe part of my body I most likely work out most is my mind. This sort of cognitive workout comes from an array of things, such as playing video games, working on my Mac, making traditional art, and making music. While at least half of that list would

Posted at 2pm on 05/16/08 | no comments | Filed Under: call of duty, photography, gaming, social networks, music, Web 2.0 read on

Music and movies

Thoughts on intelligence and three “m”s: movies, music, and math. From January 2008

There are many things that have given me a cognitive workout in my life. Some of the most influential, however, are playing the piano, taking AP music theory (thus learning how to compose music on a general level), and watching films like Love Me if You Dare, Trois Couleurs Rouge, Trois Couleurs Blanc, Trois Couleurs Bleu, and Déjà Vu.

Posted at 12pm on 05/16/08 | no comments | Filed Under: movies, trois couleurs, math, piano, music, Multiple Threading read on

About

This blog is the window to the world for Professor Burow-Flak’s New Literacies, Cultures, and Technologies of Writing classes offered by the Department of English at Valparaiso University, and a supplement to our course materials on Blackboard. Right now, our blog is centers on discussion of Steven Johnson’s 2005 book Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. Posts began as the first assignment in an undergraduate and a graduate section’s discussion board in Blackboard, and have been redrafted before appearing here. Our task: to identify what, whether electronic or not, makes us smarter. We have also just begun to add video and audio files that further our discussion.

For more on our class consensus, see the Introduction to Johnson page, Everything Bad is Good for Who?. Categories, listed to the right of this posting, index postings with subject matter in common. Want to respond to a something? Use the handy comment forms at the bottom of each posting. Don’t forget our archives, also.

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