Martin Luther King's Acceptance Speech, on the Occasion of the Award of the Nobel
Peace Prize Oslo, December 10, 1964

The Nobel Foundation has granted the publication Folly permission to publish the Nobel
lecture by Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King is the sole author of the text. ©  The
Nobel Foundation 1964. Right photograph: KING Jr., Martin Luther. Nobel Laureate
PEACE 1964. © Nobelstiftelsen. Martin Luther King, © Nobel Foundation
(see January
2007 issue)
The Poet by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The essay, The Poet was written by Ralph
Waldo Emerson in 1844. (see January 2007
issue)
Your Brain on Jazz: Researchers Use fMRI to Study Improvisation, Creativity

Research, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and musician volunteers from the Johns Hopkins University’s
Peabody Institute, sheds light on the creative improvisation that artists and non-artists use in everyday life. A pair of Johns
Hopkins and government scientists have discovered that when jazz musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to
self-censoring and inhibition, and turn on those that let self-expression flow. It appears, they conclude, that jazz musicians
create their unique improvised riffs by turning off inhibition and turning up creativity.

In a report published February 27, 2008 in Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE, the scientists from the University’s School
of Medicine and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders describe their interest in the
possible neurological underpinnings of the almost trance-like state jazz artists enter during spontaneous improvisation.  (see
July 2008 issue)
Photograph courtesy of and with
permission from Johns Hopkins
Medical © 2008
The X PRIZE Foundation is a non-profit organization that
awards monetary prizes to individuals and teams that
discover solutions to global challenges in the areas of
energy and the environment, life sciences, education, global
entrepreneurship and exploration (space and ocean). It is
widely recognized as a model for fostering innovation
through competition.

The foundation hosts competitions to achieve a goal, set by
the foundation, which has the potential to benefit humanity.
Rather than awarding money to honor past achievements or
directly funding research, an X PRIZE fosters
cross-disciplinary innovation through competition, public
interest and entrepreneurship.  (see September 08 issue)
What's the difference between a challenge and a banning and who challenges books?

According to the American Library Association (ALA), a challenge is an attempt to remove or
restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of
those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they
are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of
others.

Throughout history, more and different kinds of people and groups of all persuasions than you
might first suppose, who, for all sorts of reasons, have attempted—and continue to attempt—to
suppress anything that conflicts with or anyone who disagrees with their beliefs.

According to the “The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books, Challenges by Initiator, Institution,
Type, and Year,” parents challenge materials more often than any other group.  (see October 08
issue)
Ideas
Audubon Insectarium: By the Numbers

♦ Audubon Insectarium comprises 23,000 square feet and features 70+ dynamic and interactive exhibits with thousands of live
and mounted specimens.
♦ Insects make up nearly 90 percent of the world’s species. At any one time, it’s estimated there are 10 quintillion individual
live insects (10,000,000,000,000,000,000).
♦ Worldwide, some 900 thousand different insects are known – with thousands more discovered each year. The US has
approximately 91,000 species of insects; another 73,000 species may still be undiscovered by science.
♦ There are 31 different classes of insects. The largest and most common are: Diptera (flies and mosquitoes); Hymenoptera
(bees, ants and wasps); Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths); and Coleoptera (beetles).
♦ Beetles are the largest single group of animals on the planet, with more than 300,000 different known species and
thousands more discovered each year. If you lined up all the animals on earth, every 4th one would be a beetle.
♦ Beetles are so popular in Japan, there are more pet beetles than dogs or cats.
(see August 2008 issue)
"Kosovo's Sorrow: Fleeing Kosovo"  by Carol
Guzy,
The Washington Post.  Feature
Photography winner, 2000
NEWSEUM

Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery

This gallery contains the largest and most comprehensive
collection of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalism ever
assembled. Visitors can view a documentary in which
photographers explain their craft and can access an
electronic database that will feature 1,000 images and 15
hours of video and audio compiled from interviews with 68
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers.
Image (right) courtesy
Newseum.
 (see August 2009 issue)
A National Summit on Arts Journalism/ October 2, 2009, 9AM PDT

The Summit will present a range of ideas and projects representing current thinking in covering
the arts. Five projects were selected in an open call this summer that attracted 109 submissions.
Five additional projects will be presented representing broad trends in the field of journalism.
Presentations will be made in front of a live audience, streamed over the internet.

The Summit will also include two roundtable discussions about the art and business of arts
journalism. A National Summit on Arts Journalism is a project of USC Annenberg School for
Communication and the National Arts Journalism Program. (Live Video of Summit October 2,
2009 9AM-1PM PDT
www.najp.org/summit)
From Music to Painting: The Strange Yet Not-So-
Strange Tales of Pardhaans
by Udayan Vajpeyi

All transformations give materiality to the otherwise
immaterial thing called time. This time lives in tales.
Perhaps we may claim that the point of all tales is to
underline one or other kind of transformation.

The one I am going to talk about is no different. It is about
an extremely strange transformation that took place not
long ago. It is about Pardhaans, a sub-community of the
Gonds, one of the largest ‘tribes’ of central India, and one
that has ruled portions of that region for centuries, both
before and after Mughal rule. I must express my
reservations about the use of the word ‘tribal’ in the Indian
context, because I feel those who are called ‘tribal’ in the
modern discourses about India are in fact various castes;
their complementarity to each other, like that of castes in
various localities, is one of the reasons why this is so. I
believe that they were conceptually and practically
segregated from other communities living in India, to
serve the purposes of colonial rule -- even though their
lifestyles were in continuity with those of other
communities. But that is a different story, which will have
to wait for some more time if it wants to be told in greater
detail and with authenticity.  (see November 2009 issue)
Delfeayo Marsalis
SWEET THUNDER
HONORING DUKE ELLINGTON AND SHAKESPEARE

Delfeayo studied literature at the University of New Orleans,
nurturing his love for William Shakespeare and exploring his long-
term affinity for both Duke Ellington and Shakespeare. In 2004, he
received an MA in jazz performance at the University of Louisville. It
was there he made the first connection between the Bard and Duke
in the form of a thesis paper. He was invited by Stratford (Ontario)
Shakespeare Festival to create a fresh new interpretation of the
1957 Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s
Such Sweet Thunder. By
combining Shakespeare and Ellington, Delfeayo’s
Sweet Thunder
reaches beyond the niche jazz audience; it's a significant musical
and theatrical event - a major departure from the original
Such
Sweet Thunder
. It is hard to imagine an interpretation by a musician
less versatile than Delfeayo. Sympathetic to the musical
requirements, he explores the original material in the distinctive
language of his native New Orleans, while his melodic alterations
and formal additions are seamlessly composed and orchestrated.   
(see January 2011 issue)    
YouTube Link
Delfeayo Marsalis
(image courtesy of the
artist)
The Neuroscience of Aesthetics: Artists and perceptual researchers start a
conversation on what they can learn from one another  
by Nicky Penttila

The neuroscience of music has a relatively rich history, at least in hearing and the mental
processing of sound. Only recently, though, have the mental processes involved in producing
music been studied. Dana grantee Charles Limb, a neurosurgeon at Hopkins and a professor
at Hopkins's Peabody Institute of Music, is trying to trace the changes in the brain as trained
musicians improvise.

Limb described a series of experiments he ran in 2008 of jazz musicians improvising on a
specially designed keyboard while undergoing fMRI brain scanning. Activity in a broad patch of
the frontal cortex, thought to be controlling self-monitoring and self-inhibition, went down, while
that of a tighter patch, thought of as an autobiographical area, went up. "That's a very tidy way
to frame something [musical expression] that isn't tidy at all," he said.

"Artistic creativity is a neurologic product that can be examined using scientific methods," Limb
said. “The question is: Is it truly possible to study creativity scientifically, and if it is, why should
scientists study it?" His answer is yes to both.  (see December 2010 issue)
Music and the Spark of Spontaneity
By Carl Sherman

Why improvisation? It may represent “the essence of
creativity,” one panel member suggested: a sustained
flight of the mysterious process that generates art,
literature—and great ideas in science. “Jazz is a good
model… it’s amenable to experimentation,” panelist
Charles Limb said in a telephone interview after the
symposium.  

Limb, a Dana Foundation grantee who teaches at both
Johns Hopkins Medical School and the Peabody
Conservatory of Music, has used fMRI to look into the
brain of the improviser.  

“Music affects the brain globally,” he said at the
symposium. “We were trying to figure out what part of the
brain is involved specifically when you improvise.” In his
study, he had several highly proficient jazz musicians play
a keyboard adapted for use in the scanner, and compared
brain activity while they improvised and played a
memorized passage.  

One distinctive feature of the improvising brain was a
pattern of dissociation in the prefrontal cortex: increased
activity in the medial part of this brain region, and reduced
activity in lateral areas. (see July 2011 issue)
Photo by Kellyann Estrem
A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan
A Documentary
Seamus Murphy

The project spans over 15 years of my traveling and reporting in Afghanistan. I first went there in 1994 and it became a baptism of fire for me. It was the first
time I had exposure to real war and it left a deep impression on me that I carry to this day. I saw things and heard stories that changed my life. The suffering,
cruelty and waste was unimaginable. But it was the humanity of the people which  compelled me to return, again and again.

The result is a large archive of images documenting those years, 1994 up to the present, which documents the stories and experiences of the Afghan people.
We will hear from the people who lived through those years and who live in Afghanistan now, distilling their hopes and fears for the future. We seldom hear
what it is the Afghan people want and need. Stories of what happened and why things happened can give us a greater understanding of the country, and
possible solutions for stability in the future.  
YouTubeLink     
UNESCO, U.S. Library of Congress and Partners Launch World Digital Library

Paris, Washington DC, 21 April - UNESCO and 32 partner institutions launched the World Digital Library, a Web site that features unique cultural materials from
libraries and archives from around the world. The site – located at www.wdl.org  – includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints and
photographs.  It provides unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.

The WDL functions in seven languages – Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish – and includes content in more than forty
languages. Browse and search features facilitate cross-cultural and cross-temporal exploration on the site.  Descriptions of each item and videos, with expert
curators speaking about selected items, provide context for users and are intended to spark curiosity and encourage both students and the general public to
learn more about the cultural heritage of all countries. (see April 2009 issue)
FOLLY
Brain wiring a no-brainer?
Scans reveal 3D grid structure
The brain appears to be wired more like the checkerboard streets of New York City than the curvy lanes of Columbia, Md., suggests a new brain imaging
study. The most detailed images, to date, reveal a pervasive 3D grid structure with no diagonals, say scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health.

“Far from being just a tangle of wires, the brain's connections turn out to be more like ribbon cables — folding 2D sheets of parallel neuronal fibers that cross
paths at right angles, like the warp and weft of a fabric,” explained Van Wedeen, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), A.A. Martinos Center for
Biomedical Imaging and the Harvard Medical School. “This grid structure is continuous and consistent at all scales and across humans and other primate
species.”  (
see July 2012 issue)