source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 11:32:07 -0800 Subject: Replies to Dan, Bruce From: John Chalmers Dan: I was being more than a little facetious, a sin of mine, when I made the remarks about Western art music being anomalous. Still, I don't know of any 12-tone serial Mbira players.... The details of the various "unsingable" traditions are fascinating. Thanks for bringing them to my attention. I believe the vocal scales of Indonesian soloists are quite different from the slendro and pelog tunings of the accompanying gamelan and have 9 or 10 tones rather than 5. I have read that Thai singers deviate markedly from 7-tet as well. While not quite on topic, it is another example of the differences between vocal and instrumental pitch structures. With respect to Ferneyhough and the "new complexity," I really don't knowvery much. Jon Fonville thinks Ferneyhough's music both playable and beautiful, but I think he's dropped off the list at the moment, or he could answer your question. I once asked Arditti in Houston (Da Camera series) about Ferneyhough's scores and he said that they were very definitely playable and not as difficult as some by other composers the quartet had played. I don't know exactly what his means, but I imagine Brian F. expects his music to be played as written. BTW, F used 1/4-tones in Intermedio and I believe in other compositions as well. By "unnatural pitches," I meant 12-tet, not literally, of course. Bruce: I followed the literature on electromagnetic effects back in the 60's and 70's, when most of your references were written, and I just don't think there is a reliable body of data supporting dramatic effects of small to moderate fields on humans or animals, in or ex vivo. Large inhomogeneous or fluctuating magnetic fields may have effects, but frankly, bioelectromagnetics has been pretty much of a disappointment to researchers hoping for big breakthoughs in biophysics, cancer research, etc. I was at the University of Washington, Seattle, in the early 70's and never heard of a Department of Paraphysics and Parapsychology. Are you sure of the domicile? UW is a large, prestigious state university with a world class genetics department, med school, etc. I can enquire of friends in the area. UW did have a student-run alternative college when I was there and I did sit in on some "courses," but while I recall a certain amount of woo-woo newagery, I don't remember there being a formal department. As for the monographs you list, I can only say that such effects are unknown to neuroscientists and biophysicists. There is no physical evidence for "auras" though bodies do have electromagnetic fields and can modify those of other objects they approach. The "body capacitance" effect is even exploited commercially. However, no spectrophotometer will detect color in these "fields." The fields associated with "brain waves," muscles, and other organs are extremely weak and require very sensitive equipment and adequate shielding to be studied. They are virtually undectable a few millimeters or centimeters from the body. Electric fish do much better, but water is conductive and their muscles are adapted to generating currents. Inflamed areas of the body or those with altered circulation will be detectable by their temperatures. Liquid crystal creams or IR sensitive instruments may detect them, but this effect has nothing to do with energy fields, rather with blood flow. To this extent, your reference is correct, but for the wrong reason. Since a human body is more than 90% water and most proteins, DNA, salt, sugars, amino acids, etc. are soluble, it is not surprising that the physical state is like a liquid. This insight is well-known to biochemists and biophysicists. The nervous system is electrochemical. It is also well insulated from the rest of the body and the outside. When the insulation breaks down, as in MS, the nervous system quits working and paralysis, uncordination dementia, and death result. I don't see how these data support the energy field concept. MS is the result of immune system attack on the myelin sheaths of nerves. Myelin is a mixture of fats and protein and acts as insulation, though nerve conduction is not strictly electrical, but driven by ion currents, chiefly sodium and potassium. There is absolutely no physical evidence that the electric fields in the body can exist independently of the precise physical structures of the body or can continue without metabolism. Death is definable as cessation of brain electrical activity, though individual cells may live for hours (sperm are motile, for example). Humans are not photosynthetic in any sense. It is true that our circadian rhythms may be entrained by the day-night cycle, that vitamin D is made from cholesterol in our skin by UV, that too much sunlight ages skin and causes skin cancer, etc. But this is not evidence for direct nourishment of our body by the sun or artificial light. There is also no correlation between the amount of skin melanin and neuromelanin, which is generated by a different biochemical pathway. Melanin in the skin does protect agains UV damage, but also inhibits the synthesis of vitamin D. This may be one of the reasons why most populations at high latitudes are paler than those in the tropics (but the Tasmanians were heavily melanized). Taoist concepts of immortality led to poisonous elixirs which killed even emperors. Alas, metals such as gold, silver and mercury are toxic, not life-giving. Joseph Needham wrote a good article on Elixir Poisoning in his monumental study of Science and Technology in China. Anyway, let's move this topic off-list before we drive away the musicians... --John Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 25 Mar 1997 22:44 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA16721; Tue, 25 Mar 1997 22:44:00 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA16856 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id NAA06103; Tue, 25 Mar 1997 13:42:00 -0800 Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 13:42:00 -0800 Message-Id: <009B1CF3FAA2D63E.8A33@vbv40.ezh.nl> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu