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Where worry breeds.

Choirs Synchronize Heartbeats

Jul 11, ’13 7:22 PM

I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t read it in the news. When a choir sings, their hearts beat to the same rythem.

Using pulse monitors attached to the singers’ ears, the researchers measured the changes in the choir members’ heart rates as they navigated the intricate harmonies of a Swedish hymn. When the choir began to sing, their heart rates slowed down.

“When you sing the phrases, it is a form of guided breathing,” says musicologist Bjorn Vickhoff of the Sahlgrenska Academy who led the project. “You exhale on the phrases and breathe in between the phrases. When you exhale, the heart slows down.”

But what really struck him was that it took almost no time at all for the singers’ heart rates to become synchronized. The readout from the pulse monitors starts as a jumble of jagged lines, but quickly becomes a series of uniform peaks. The heart rates fall into a shared rhythm guided by the song’s tempo.

How long does it take for them to go out of sync after the concert? Doesn’t say.
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Bannack’s in Time Out

Jun 18, ’13 6:31 PM

Chris and Bannack were featured in Time Out for Father’s Day. A photographer stopped them on their way home from the park. (Ismay too, you can see her stocking-cap head sticking out of Chris’ sling.) She asked Bannack some tough questions about why he thought Chris is the best dad in the world. He had a lot to say but they printed his best line:

Tell us why you have the best dad in the world.
“He made my baby sister!”—Bannack, 3, Brooklyn 

Photograph: Cinzia Reale-Castello

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Old Whales

Jan 24, ’13 5:16 PM

Bowhead whales were nearly hunted to extinction for their clean burning blubber. After the whale oil boom their population was estimated to be around one thousand individuals, but today they are doing much better. According to this article scientists “began recording whale numbers 34 years ago, [since then] their counts have increased from 1,200 animals in 1978 to 3,400 in 2011. From those numbers of whales seen, George estimates there are now 14,000 to 15,000 animals.”

This blog post from the Smithsonian points out that the best part of the article is that the whales can live up to 200 years. Which means there may be whales swimming in the arctic today that were born before Melvile wrote Moby Dick in 1851.

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Spiders Weaving Spiders

Jan 4, ’13 2:24 PM

Scientists in Peru have discovered what they think may be a new species of spider which uses twigs and dead insects to build decoy spiders to trick predators.

Afterward, Torres returned to the trails near the research center. Only within a roughly 1-square-mile area near the floodplain did Torres find more spider-building spiders — about 25 of them. “They could be quite locally restricted,” he said. “But for all I know, there’s millions of them in the forest beyond.” The spiders’ webs were crafted around face-height, near the trail, and about the width of a stretched-out hand. Some of the decoys placed in the webs looked rather realistic. Others resembled something more like a cartoon octopus.

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Short Film Helena

Jul 22, ’12 10:43 PM

A few weeks after I got home to Montana my friend Vincent Ma told me about his short film project. He’s an NYU film student I met years ago on another short film project here in Montana. Now he’s living in Helena and has been boxing at the club in Eagle’s Lounge and thought it would make the perfect setting for his thesis project.

He introduced me to local soon-to-be-pro boxer Ariel Beck, who he was considering for the lead. She had never acted for a camera before so the three of us worked on screen tests. She was serious and eager and after a few hours workshop we we’re both agreeing that she would be great.

I was able to meet with her one more time, along with another Helena boxer, Duran Caferro Jr., for another performance coaching workshop before filming began. It was entirely fun, energizing and exciting work.

The shoot is all done now, here is the article from Sunday’s paper about it all. There is even a brief mention of the acting coach. Hey, that’s me!

Check out Vincent’s Vimeo page for great footage from recent fights.

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