Friday, November 25, 2005

How to Report Your Parents to the Government


What we have here is an image of the intercom from the house I grew up in, albeit somewhat abstracted in presentation. The house itself was a modest two-bedroom place (in a nice area), part of an overall tract with clone homes all over the block. The interiors had minimal frills or fixtures, but all drabness was compensated for by the inclusion of the intercom/radio. This was a state-of-the-art communication command post, centrally fixed on the kitchen wall. Purely Atomic Age in its conception.

The idea was that you could be in the kitchen making your deviled eggs, while monitoring the house for various reasons, including: the tell-tale intrusion of communists; magazine page-turning and heavy breathing; listening to termites, etc. This gizmo had great utility. You could patch radio broadcasts through to anywhere in the house, as there were individual speakers in every room, including the outside patio. Great for block parties and summer Luaus.


Having multiple speakers throughout the house also meant that one could be instantly informed of news regarding inbound nuclear warheads should they occur, which lent to an atmosphere of domestic tranquility. But the intercom option was the best feature. No longer would you have to yell 10 feet down the hall, when you could yell directly into the intercom. "Attention kids, come get your ambrosia salad! -over!"

The tube technology in the radio eventually faded; wires shorted or decomposed. Meanwhile, our astronauts went to the moon and then the future somehow lost its luster after Nixon played the piano in public for the first time. But I'll always remember that gosh-darn intercom, which I affectionately called "Ol' Yeller-adio". We had to put it down with a shotgun blast when, on its last legs, it began rabidly foaming at the speaker. It was a traumatic day but I learned a lot about life then too.


6 comments:

Joey Polanski said...

Pruvin that you can socialize yer kids witout evr havin t see th littl ... ummm ...


... darlins!

Anonymous said...

Although anecdotal and correlational results have suggested a reliable relationship between creativity and psychosis, few studies have examined this relationship using empirical methods. In addition, little is known about the neural substrates of creative thinking. We investigated the creative thinking process in relation to schizotypal personality, schizophrenia and prefrontal hemispheric laterality using behavioral and near-infrared optical spectroscopy (NIRS) methods. Schizophrenic, psychometrically ascertained schizotypal, and healthy control subjects (all right-handed) participated in a novel “alternate uses” task designed to assess divergent thinking (DT) ability. The DT task required subjects to generate “uses” for conventional and ambiguous objects. Prefrontal activity was measured using NIRS while subjects were engaged in DT vs. a cognitive control task in a subset of the subjects. Behavioral data indicated that schizotypes had enhanced DT ability compared with schizophrenic and control subjects, who showed similar performance overall. NIRS data showed that DT was associated with bilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation, but the right PFC particularly contributed to the enhanced creative thinking in psychometric schizotypes compared with the other two groups. Thus, creative thinking seems to robustly recruit bilateral PFC, but it is the right PFC that is preferentially activated in schizotypes in relation to their enhanced DT

Anonymous said...

In addition, Crystal Gibson has found that musicians show increased divergent thinking as well as increased schizotypal personality and higher IQ than control subjects. Frank Horton is working on a project of latent inhibition in relation to personality and creativity. Overall, we believe that it is important to study creativity processes rather than focusing on eminence and to show under what circumstances creative processes flourish and why.

Geritopia said...

why don't you just come out and say you love me?

Anonymous said...

Dear Editors,

I'm not sure about your policy with "Anonymous" people leaving information that they found on the Internet "without the website reference"....but that has happened here.

He's the website for those who are interested.......
Creativity and Madness
http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/sohee/creativity.htm

I was also wondering about leaving messages that don't have anything to do with the topic? Once again, that has happened here too.

By the way, we had one of those intercom systems too. They saved lots of foot traffic wear on the carpet.

Kisses,
Doris Day

P.S. Of course I love you! You silly Hunk!

Anonymous said...

Dear Bloggy-Blog,

I thought that you would appreciate this website in regard to your topic.......

Christian Children: Report Your Unsaved Parents to the Federal Government!
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0104/parents.html

Saving Grace,
Tammy Baker