From a post at Mindhacks we can learn a new acronym:

The problems with relying on Western college students as participants in psychology studies is also addressed by a new paper just released by Behavioural and Brain Sciences which you can read online as a pdf.

The article reviews data from psychology experiments and argues that not only are college students a very restricted subset of society, but they are actually wildly atypical in comparison to the rest of the world’s population.

In fact, the authors state that “The findings suggest that members of WEIRD [Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic] societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans”.

Christmas decorations and goods are in stores already!

They Were an Item #88

From one of my regular blog reads:

If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger,
There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats

Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy.

CronynandTandy.jpg

In Jonathan Sher’s November 9th story Movin’ Along – about a city discussion about advancing a light rail transit system – Deputy Mayor Tom Gosnell dismisses the idea the city should consider building a light-rail passenger service to stimulate development along rail corridors. Light rail, he said, is for cities with populations near one million, not smaller cities like London growing at a snail’s pace.

“Light rapid transit — our grandchildren can worry about that,” he said.

In Jonathan Sher’s November 9th Free Press story Movin’ Along – about a city discussion about advancing a light rail transit system – Coun. Paul Van Meerbergen said city hall needs to focus more on maintaining and expanding roads already too burdened by traffic. “The belief that most families will use transit is not realistic,” he said.

I think this is done. Again.

For a time during the last months on this blog there has been a lull. I’ve been doing other things, prepping some houses, tackling the To Do list, and working on a painting. This image is 48 inches by 60 inches, acrylic on canvas. There are some other paintings at my MobileMe site.

After painting a first – previous – version over months, stripping away distracting and facile bits of imagery, greenery, extra rocks and unclear bits of river in the background, painting over this and that, I was so fed up with the picture I stripped it off the stretcher and started again, hopefully with a clearer composition more focused on the bits I found interesting.

So a second start, and after months again, here I was actually audacious and confident enough to sign the thing, thinking I was done. Ha ha.

I can’t count how many times I painted the rocks over. I just couldn’t get the feel I wanted and they remain dead, dead in the water.

By this time I begin to include bits and pieces of the previous canvas for texture and motion in the water, and begin to consider how I can work that technique into the rocks. Carefully I lay down strips of the old rocks to show the striations and repaint again and again to try to bring them alive and wet. Just one more bit of fussing and I know it will be better, just one more bit of fussing, just one more… No, the damned rocks are still dead, like turds.

Repaint, reshape, fuss… And then, and then, I see the problem.

Dynamite. I need dynamite.

They aren’t useful. They aren’t helpful. They stop your eye from seeing the picture. Get that pot of gesso and paint them out. Blow them away. A painting in progress, not finished, started six times, and now in a brand new middle. And I can see where the thing should go now that the boulders are out of the way.

I’m clever enough to know I shouldn’t paint when I’m tired. I screw it up. I should be clever enough to know I can’t – don’t anymore – paint  realistically, and damned certain that I should never pretend to paint something real without a real reference, and I should be aware of the trap I fall into when I get fussy.

Always, I have an image in mind, a feeling, a motion – and it’s much clearer now, when the things I think I need, that I thought I needed for the ’story’, for the content, when I see that they are actually in the way.