Thursday, December 13, 2007

Friday the 13th : Explained.

What better day to unravel the mystery of Friday the 13th then Thursday the 13th? So here it goes, 13 is considered unlucky because 12 is considered such a complete number ie- 12 months of the year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 13 was considered to "transgress this completeness" so that's why 13 is considered unlucky. Friday is considered unlucky because it's commonly believed by them Christians that, that was the day that Jesus was crucified.
There's another piece of information for you to tell your friends. Faces will look like this:

Albums of 2007 - By Mark Orford

2007 has been a great year for myself personally, as well as thousands of ears worldwide. My ears and my brain have combined to produce my top 5 albums of the year. In order? Yeah. Now what you should do is use your eyes and brain to understand the following.

5. Hey Venus! - Super Furry Animals



4. Favorite Worst Nightmare - Arctic Monkeys



3. In Rainbows - Radiohead



2. Because Of The Times - Kings Of Leon


1. Boxer - The National


Sunday, December 9, 2007

My 50th Post : A weekend

It's now Sunday. I'm in bed and I'm strangely unhungover given the amount of alchohol consumed last night. Everyone had fun, the lads (me, Deano and Brenden) went to a metal bar (shaaaawing) to honor Dimebag, while the lovely girls (Clare and Elaine) stayed in with wine. I was secretly thinking of this all the time, so I was laughing.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Things figured out 3. Yawning: contagious?

A couple of months ago, I was on the dart on the way into work. As sometimes happens a man brought a dog on the dart. That's fine I thought, the Dog then yawned, then I yawned. How odd I thought, I'm not tired and yet I've yawned because the dog yawned. So it begs the question, is yawning really contagious? I asked my friend wikipedia, here's what she said:

The yawn reflex is often described as contagious: if one person yawns, this will cause another person to "sympathetically" yawn. Observing another person's yawning face (especially his/her eyes), or even reading about or thinking about yawning, can cause a person to yawn. You could possibly be yawning from reading this section or looking at these pictures. However, only about 55% of people in a given audience will respond to such a stimulus; fewer if only the mouth is shown in a visual stimulus.The proximate cause for contagious yawning may lie with mirror neurons, i.e. neurons in the frontal cortex of certain vertebrates, which upon being exposed to a stimulus from conspecific (same species) and occasionally interspecific organisms, activates the same regions in the brain.[13] Mirror neurons have been proposed as a driving force for imitation which lies at the root of much human learning, e.g. language acquisition. Yawning may be an offshoot of the same imitative impulse. A 2007 study found that children with autism spectrum disorders, unlike typical children, did not yawn after seeing videos of other people yawning; this supports the claim that contagious yawning is based on the capacity for empathy.[14]

To look at the issue in terms of evolutionary advantage, if there is one at all, yawning might be a herd instinct.[15] Other theories suggest that the yawn serves to synchronize mood behavior among gregarious animals, similar to the howling of the wolf pack. It signals tiredness to other members of the group in order to synchronize sleeping patterns and periods of activity. This phenomenon has been observed among various primates. The threat gesture is a way of maintaining order in the primates' social structure. Specific studies were conducted on chimpanzees[16] and stumptail macaques[17]. A group of these animals was shown a video of other conspecifics yawning, and both chimpanzees and stumptail macaques yawned also. This helps to partly confirm a yawn's "contagiousness".

Gordon Gallup, who hypothesizes that yawning may be a means of keeping the brain cool, also hypothesizes that "contagious" yawning may be a survival instinct inherited from our evolutionary past. "During human evolutionary history when we were subject to predation and attacks by other groups, if everybody yawns in response to seeing someone yawn, the whole group becomes much more vigilant, and much better at being able to detect danger.

Wow!

Captain Planet! Saves Belfast!!

Photos of two canadian months













I especially like me and Gruff Rhys and Brendan locked on the road.

The best new blogs in town

It's been ages since i updated the world on the goings on of Mark Orford esq. So here we go. I now have a job, it's not much fun but then jobs aren't meant to be fun are they? Well, they are supposed to give you some sort of satisfaction, this one doesn't. But I'm hungover now, and everything seems a bit duller when hungover. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.
Toronto is going really well though, we've met new buddies called Brendan and Elaine, a lovely pair of sound people, we're planning a big long road trip to Vancouver in the Summer. If it works out it could end up being the best couple of weeks of all time ever. Overall it's been a good couple of months so far, it's strange to think we've been here for two months now, it seems like ages but it seems like no time at all really., does that make sense? "Yes Mark it definitely does" Thanks.
Also my good buddy Deano has created a blog which can be found at serial-hero.blogspot.com it's great, oh yes, myself and deano have created another blog called oasis and rap, and is about all the strange people that are on bebo it's very very good so check it out if you have the time. I think I'll post up some snaps of the past two months.

My feelings:

Tired.

Hungover.

Happy.

Sad.

Tired again.

They're good feelings.