Friday, October 28, 2011

Coco Lee-Bruce Rockowitz tie the knot

HONG KONG — The beautiful and talented 30-something Coco Lee (李玟) tied the knot the other day in Hong Kong with Canadian billionaire boyfriend Bruce Rockowitz [ אֶלִיעַנָה ] in a posh wedding under a
Hebrew wedding canopy in fragrant China.

Well, not really China, but the ex-British colony once called The Fragrant Harbor (“Hong Kong” in Chinese) that is now a sub-autonomous region of Communist China, which means that freedom and democracy there are now at risk.

Still, it was a very capitalist wedding, and what seemed like half the celebrities of Hollywood were there, even though nobody has ever heard of Coco Lee outside of Taiwan or Hong Kong. She can sing though, and dance, too, and it’s a shame she has never been able to break through the Yellow Ceiling that prevents Asian singers from breaking into the American pop music mainstream.

Truth be told, Coco can sing as well as Mariah Carey and she’s even more beautiful. But for some reason, the North American music industry does not admit singers from Taiwan or Japan or Hong Kong (or Communist China) into its ranks. It’s not racism per se, but it’s racism nonetheless.

Asia has some of the best singers in the world performing live to huge audiences there, but crossover to North America? No way, Jose. For some odd reason, Asian faces and Asian accents are not accepted in the North American music business and that’s a shame. You’re missing some great stuff!

Meanwhile, back to the wedding of the century. Oprah Winfrey and Jennifer Lopez were there, and so was a Very Wang wedding gown and some jewels “sponsored” by Piaget.

According to May Daily in Beijing, “the two-day celebrations started on Thursday evening when the couple held a Jewish ceremony at the Sky 100 Observation Deck” and ended the next day with Bruno Mars, Alicia Keys and Ne-Yo performing at the sweet 36/52 wedding party.

Rockowitz, yes, a young-looking baby-faced 52 mensch, has been president of the Hong Kong-based Li & Fung Group for the past eight years, and he and Coco look set to enjoy their sunset years jetsetting
around the world in high fashion.

Will she continue singing? You betcha! She’s good a voice that does not quit, and some day a Grammy might come her way. She deserves one!

As for Bruce, he’s in 7th heaven and set for life.

Tintin gets pummeled by British lit crit

How could they do this to Tintin?

Hergé's comic-book hero is one of the great creations of the 20th century. Which makes Spielberg's film version little more than murder, says Guardian boy reporter Nicholas Lezard, a lifelong Tintin fan


Mr Lezard opines on Tuesday 18 October 2011 :

Coming out of the new Tintin film directed by Steven Spielberg, I found myself, for a few seconds, too stunned and sickened to speak; for I had been obliged to watch two hours of literally senseless violence being perpetrated on something I loved dearly. In fact, the sense of violation was so strong that it felt as though I had witnessed a rape. I use this comparison not as a provocation or to cause unnecessary offence: I am using it in honour of a very good joke made by an episode of South Park, in which the cartoon's children watch the final Indiana Jones film and are so traumatised by what they have seen that they go round to the police station and try to get Spielberg and his colleagues charged with the crime. "What they did to poor Indy. They made him squeal like a pig." The tragic irony of this is that it was Hergé himself, Tintin's creator, who, a few weeks before his death in 1983, anointed Spielberg as his preferred director to make a Tintin film; and this after he had seen, and loved, as we all do and did, the first Indiana Jones film.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Production year: 2011Country: Rest of the worldCert (UK): PGRuntime: 106 minsDirectors: Steven SpielbergCast: Andy Serkis, Cary Elwes, Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Toby JonesMore on this filmThe sense of outrage is palpable, and even after two days I find myself moved to pity; to pick up my shuddering, weeping copy of Hergé's The Secret of the Unicorn, cradle it in my arms, and whisper soothingly to it that everything will be all right; but all the time knowing that, after this, it won't be; nothing will be the same again. The forces of marketing, and of global idiocy, will see to that. But I will try to make things better as well as I can and remind you of some of the things that made Hergé's original one of the consistently great works of art of the 20th century.

The elements are simple: a boy, or boy/man; his dog Snowy; and, in later books, his gruff sidekick, a quick-tempered alcoholic old seadog called Haddock; and a deaf, absent-minded professor called Calculus. Tintin, with or without the others, rights wrongs, rescues the innocent, uncovers dastardly plots, goes on mind-boggling adventures; even, in one book, to the moon (a scientifically accurate adventure conceived some 15 years before people actually walked there). All executed in cartoon form, but in a style grounded in meticulous attention to detail and respect for veracity.

The books grew in sophistication: Tintin's first appearance in 1929-30 was a black-and-white rudimentary anti-Soviet potboiler, little more than propaganda; there then followed a trip to the Belgian Congo, which is childishly but still blush-makingly racist (yet still hugely popular in the post-colonial country); yet by the final completed work, Tintin and the Picaros (1976), Tintin is sporting a CND symbol, and helping, albeit with reservations and only on condition of non-violence, a group of not-quite-explicitly leftish guerillas gain power in a despotic Latin American country. It's a long learning curve.

My love of Tintin began, as almost everyone's does, in childhood. The books were translated into English not in the order written, so for a while the chronology of the series was somewhat jumbled: in one book the cars and other urban furniture are all 1940s; in the next, technology has advanced enough to build a nuclear-powered rocket capable of reaching the moon; in the next we were back to what looks like the 1930s, except that – in The Cigars of the Pharaoh – a desert sheikh is able to proclaim himself a fan of Tintin, even getting a servant to hold up a copy of Destination Moon as testament to his devotion. No matter: any child with the Alice books (or, say, The Wind in the Willows, with its car-driving Toad) under his or her belt is not going to be too fazed by the dream-logic of what we may loosely call postmodernism – that is, a work of art that draws attention to its own artifice.

For the adventures of Tintin, although they might have messed around with the conventions a little, such as with the fourth-wall-breaking direct address to readers at the end of The Secret of the Unicorn, in which Tintin tells everyone to pursue the book's follow-up adventures in Red Rackham's Treasure, never left the realm of possibility. The adventures might have been implausible – Tintin's escapes from capture or near-certain death might have often been on the unlikely side – but there was nothing in them that was flat-out impossible. (Except, perhaps, for the brief sequence in which he learns the language of elephants in The Cigars of the Pharaoh, but that kind of mistake was never repeated, and besides, the book itself is, appropriately enough given its MacGuffin, an opium dream of a story.) There is certainly none of the CGI garbage of the film – its flying galleons, its impossibly-well trained falcon etc etc etc.

There is a truism which states that the very appearance of a comic strip is virtually the same thing as the storyboard of a film – the sequence of images which is the intermediate stage between the script and the final product. This is certainly why comic books do, according to the film-makers who use them as basis for their next franchise, scream "Take me! Take me!". But this is very misleading; a faux-ami, as we call a word that is not the same in French as it is in English (eg sensible in French means sensitive, not sensible). The experience of reading a cartoon is not the same as that of watching a film. It is slow, quiet and intimate, and in childhood would be most typically undertaken while lying front down on the floor, the book in front of one, one's legs raised perpendicularly at the knee, ankles crossed; the classic childhood pose of absorption in a text. The images may contain stories of chase and speed; but the frames can move as slowly as one wishes. And Hergé, who was as happy to have a frame crammed with words as he was to have one with no words at all, allowed the reader to be complicit with him in the speed at which the story was taken.

I would often linger over the pictures as I admired Hergé's famous ligne claire, the style in which caricature and realism superimpose themselves on each other. No one's face may look like Tintin's, with its rudimentary ellipsis for a head and its dots for eyes, like a teach-yourself-cartooning book's first instructions on how to draw a face ("Tintin", incidentally, means "nothing" in French); but when Tintin is chloroformed on page 35 of The Secret of the Unicorn, his right foot lifts off the ground in just the way yours would, were you too to be chloroformed by a pair of vicious thugs. Incidentally, look at the strips again: see how many of them have a character whose feet are standing directly on the bottom line of the frame. A huge number. They are, so to speak, grounded – another subliminal stratum of plausibility, which helps us give our assent to the adventures depicted.

A scene from Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Photograph: Sportsphoto/Allstar Being as familiar as I am with the books in English, I thought I'd better have another look at The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure in French: to slow me down, for my French is not perfect, back to childhood reading speed. This allowed me to appreciate better the art, which, after 40-odd years of reading the books, I had been beginning to take for granted. Hence I finally noticed the impeccable triumph of comic timing in which the Thomsons, putting their bowler hats back on with the dignity which slapstick always subverts, are about to be brained by the enormous files of bogus genealogy that Haddock has just thrown down the stairs (Red Rackham's Treasure, page 4); and finally noticed the little joke at the beginning of the first book, in which, in panels four, six and nine of the first page, we see Snowy scratching himself. Why? Because he's at a flea market! A joke whose corniness is obliterated by the fact that we have to work out the punchline, and even the fact that it is a joke, for ourselves.

But there are other, deeper, darker signals embedded within the books themselves, and for noticing these I have to thank the novelist Tom McCarthy, whose book Tintin and the Secret of Literature, using the astonishing findings of Hergé's biographers (and subsequent interpretations by the French writer Serge Tisseron), touches on an almost incredible story: that the whole Tintin series is a consistent, creative, psychological working-out of Hergé's family secret: that he may well be related to the King of Belgium. A visiting VIP – maybe the king, he did visit – would often pass by the chateau where Hergé's grandmother worked as a maid; one such visit resulted in her pregnancy, the results being his uncles (twins who, dressed identically in bowler hats, suits, and carrying canes, are so obviously the Thomson Twins that no doubt as to the link with them is possible). His grandmother was quickly paired off with the gardener; his subsequent grandfather. McCarthy can give a better account of this, and the subsequent coded resurfacings of this story himself than I can in precis; suffice it to say that his book is one of the few critical works that can truly be called "mind-blowing", and that no adult interpretation and indeed appreciation of the books can now be considered complete without having read it.

For example: I pointed out to McCarthy before we saw the film together that there were an awful lot of beds in the Tintin books. A great deal many more than you would expect in a series carrying the words "The Adventures of …" Tintin has a hospital-like bed in his flat at 26 Labrador Road; we see him in it while Snowy brings him the phone. The Bird brothers, the real villains of the story (not the originally innocent Sakharine, who is the film's baddie), may be nasty pieces of work, but they are considerate enough to provide Tintin with a nicely made-up set of sheets and blankets in which he can recover consciousness; Calculus has made himself a bed in a lifeboat in Red Rackham's Treasure (character and story completely jettisoned from film); and in The Seven Crystal Balls, the next book to be ravished and broken by Spielberg and his cronies, there are beds galore, in which the cursed professors writhe with tormented nightmares. And so on and so on: make your own list of the beds in Tintin. It's fun. (On a personal note, I would often, when feigning or even occasionally genuinely suffering from illness, read all my Tintin books in bed, matching drink for drink, in Lucozade, what Haddock in the books was doing with whisky.) So. What's that all about, I asked McCarthy. Easy, he said: it's because of what happened in bed between his grandmother and the unidentified nobleman.

Interestingly, it becomes clear, from a couple of quite clear references, that at least one of the screenwriters, Stephen Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, have read McCarthy's book. (McCarthy knows Cornish slightly, I gather.) Alas, they have not understood it. There is a great deal about Captain Haddock's genealogy in the film – he is the character who secretly "carries" the Hergé family story in the books – and there is even a bit when he says to Tintin that "you transmit your own signals", an unambiguous lift of one of McCarthy's own riffs. But there then follows a speech, which Hergé's Haddock would never have made in a million years, full of sub-Alcoholics Anonymous self-empowerment rubbish about breaking through walls and finding your true self, which would have made any self-respecting screenwriter insist on having his or her name taken off the credits.

As it is, the film has turned a subtle, intricate and beautiful work of art into the typical bombast of the modern blockbuster, Tintin for morons, and the nicest things one can say about it are that there's a pleasing cameo of Hergé himself in the opening scene, the cars look lovely, indeed it is as a whole visually sumptuous, and (after 20 minutes or so of more or less acceptable fidelity; and the 3D motion-capturing transference of the original drawings is by far the least of the film's problems) it usefully places in plain view all the cretinous arrogance of modern mass-market, script-conference-driven film-making, confirming in passing that, as a director, Spielberg is a burned-out sun. A duel between dockyard cranes? Give me a break. Oh, and the opening credits are nice and witty. But this only confirms a maxim that I have recently formulated: that the closer in spirit the title sequence is to the original from which the subsequent film has been stolen, the more of a travesty of that original it will be.

There may be those who think that to quibble about the traducement of what might be considered a work of one of the lesser arts is to waste everyone's time. But it is not. Something of great subtlety, beauty and artfully deceptive complexity, resonance and depth has been betrayed, and it is time to make a stand.

And Mr Lezard just made his stand! Comments from the Tintin gallery?

Dish!

Monday, October 24, 2011

The ''Complex Chinese Character'' edition of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs' bio is a hit in Taiwan, surpassing Harry Potter sales



The ''Complex Chinese Character'' edition of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs' biography is already a hit in free and democratic Taiwan, and will likely be a hit in communist
Red China too when the Simplified Chinese Character edition goes on sale in Beijing as well. Jobs has penetrated the Bamboo Curtain separating Taiwan from China. Few people can do that!

In Taiwan, Huang Wan-ru, a 31-year-old female office worker loves the book and says that what interests her most about Jobs is his childhood and early work experience.

"I admired his unique personal style, always being true to himself, which was never affected by others," Huang, who owns an iPod, iPhone and iPad, told a reporter recently.

Eslite, a major book chain in Taiwan, said it was offering offer free apples and apple-shaped notepapers at 12 of its outlets to the first 100 people who showed up Monday dressed in black turtlenecks, Jobs' signature wear., according to TV news reports in Taiwan.

All of Eslite's outlets are packaging the Taiwan edition in paper bags bearing a picture of Jobs.

A 22-year-old college student surnamed Kuo told a Taiwanese TV reporter that for his part he would like to know how Jobs managed to come back from his frustrations.

"I'm curious about the time when he was kicked out of Apple and founded NeXT Computer. I think it was a transition point in his life," Kuo said.

Eslite's sales of the book are expected to reach 200,000 copies in the first three months, approaching the record set when the first book in the Harry Potter series by British author J. K. Rowling was released, according to sources,

Commonwealth Publishing Group, the exclusive Taiwanese publisher of the biography, said it had planned to do a first print of 100,000 copies, but decided to run 220,000 copies instead based on the warm reception.

On a message board outside the Eslite bookstore, fans have posted memorial messages such as "Thank you for teaching us how to think creatively," "Thank you for changing the world" and "We're all proud of you and all miss you."

One fan wrote "Thanks for making us realize the meaning of 'never give up.'"

ALSO

The authorized biography of Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson was released after its early arrival on Kindle yesterday. CBS News’ 60 Minutes broadcast an interview with Isaacson about the book and his conversations with Jobs. The interview is online, via Catharine Smith at The Huffington Post.

Stephen Shankland at CNet looks at the “wealth of detail” in the book, while Bill Weir at ABC News runs through the book’s “11 most startling revelations.” Meanwhile, Zach Epstein at BGR.com writes about one of Jobs’ final projects, Apple’s smart TV, and how it could be a “game-changer for gaming.”

An Interview with Newspaper Pagination Designer Ian Lawson in Maysville, Kentucky

Julie Moos over at Poynter.org writes: Design Editor Ian Lawson had never turned the Ledger Independent’s front page on its side before, but while designing the Friday cover that featured news of Moammar Gadhafi’s death, he tried it at the last minute.

“I just didn’t love what I had been working on for most of the two hours I get to design our A1,” he told Moos by e-mail. “To be honest, I’m still waiting for the email telling me my publisher’s head exploded when he saw it.”


Lawson, who has been with the Maysville, Kentucky, USA, newspaper for [almost 5] years, had no newspaper experience when he started out. But after working on inside pages — and a stint at Disney — he became head of pagination one year ago.

The recently-redesigned newspaper, published 6 days a week, with a day off on Sundays, has a circulation of about 8,501 and is distributed in 7 counties in the region.

In a recent email interview with this blog in Taiwan, where we had been attracted to Lawson's work from Ms Moos' heads up, ahove, Ian took some time to answer our questions.

INTERVIEW HERE  ***************

DAN BLOOM: How did you get into page making for newspapers? What was your
career and college student trajectory? Are your parents artists?
Were you exposed to art as a teenager? How your KEEN EYE
that is catching eyeballs nationwide, worldwide even, with your front pages?

IAN LAWSON: I kind of snuck my way in. I was familiar with adobe
photoshop and my newsppaper, the Ledger Independent here, needed
someone who was able to work with it. So I sort of wandered through
the rest and learned the page design part in about a week. Although I
was horrible at it at first.

My parents aren't artists at all. I became interested in art in the
fourth grade of elementary school as a kid because I loved watcing
"The Simpsons." I started to draw them when I was in fourth grade and
I began to get a bit of attention from my classmates -- and that was
that!

I went to college for one year to study computer programming, but I
quickly realized it was not for me and dropped out -- which leads me
back to the first part of my answer above!


DAN BLOOM: After your MLK and Jobs and Gadaffi front pages, you have
been getting
lots of national media attention, at least, from newspaper blogs
and websites. How does this make you feel? Did you ever think this
would happen?

IAN LAWSON: It's defiantly fun. It's always nice to hear compliments
on your work. But honestly, no, to answer your question, I never
thought our little newspaper here would be featured on several design
blogs.


[NOTE: Mr Lawson just turned 31 back in May. He grew up moving back
and forth between Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.]


DAN BLOOM: Which newspapers and magazines influenced you as you
growing up, in high school and later on as am adult?

IAN LAWSON: I've always read comic books and magazines for as long as
I can remember.
''Rolling Stone'' has always been a favorite magazine for me. And
Wired, spin and Time are others I enjoy.

My favorite newspaper is The Virginian-Pilot out of Norfolk, Virginia.
Its design is second-to-none.

DAN BLOOM: Your newspaper there has circulation of around 8000, and
yet your work is
getting national attention
from designers and newspaper editors -- worldwide! Have any offers for future
jobs come in?

IAN LAWSON: No, so far, no offers for any jobs. Unfortunately, as you
know, newspapers are having a hard time as of late. So being in a
smaller market probably is big help for our publication.


DAN BLOOM: What are your newsroom colleagues and bosses saying about
the increased
attention the Ledger Independent is now getting nationwide?

IAN LAWSON: I think they are happy for me and for the attention given
to our little newspaper.
I think it shows our ''home office'' out in Iowa that even the little
guys can make a big splash in the world!


DAN BLOOM: In 20 years, where do you want to be and what do you hope
to be doing?


IAN LAWSON: I wish to be healthy and happy with my wife wife and son.
Hopefully, someplace warm and still working in a graphic design role
for either a newspaper or a magazine.

DAN BLOOM: Do you ever do you dream at night about front pages while you
are sleeping?

IAN LAWSON: Funny you should ask! I actually had a dream just last
night about whether or not my most recent frontpage covering the
earthquake in Turkey would make the new newseum.org's top ten. And it
did!

DAN BLOOM: In your opinion, what is the purpose of a newspaper's
front page, from your perspective as a page maker?
And also from your own understanding of readers needs?

IAN LAWSON: I look at the front page as a way of grabbing people's
attention. To make them want to stop and look while it's sitting there
on the rack. To make them want to pick it up and take it home with
them. To get them to stop and take some time to slow down and read.
Everything is going digital these days. It just make me sad to think
of a world with no physical books or newspapers or magazines.


DAN BLOOM: What are your future plans?

IAN LAWSON: I guess my future plans are to keep trying to do what I
love, anyway I can.

DAN BLOOM: Thank you, Ian, for taking the time to answer these
long-distance questions.

IAN LAWSON: Thank you so much for the interview and all you kind words.

-------------------------------------

****Note: Newspaper design pundit Charles Apple wrote about Lawson's genius  here as well.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Taiwanese TV award substitute 楊一峯 reads acceptance speech from Director Hung phoned in via text onstage. CUTE!.......電視金鐘獎 - Best Directing for a Mini-series/TV movie (迷你劇集/電視電影導演獎)

UPDATE: .......our Taipei-based Taiwanese informant tells us:......."The man accepting the award for Director Hung who could not be there that night was Yang Yi-feng [楊一峯](also known as Katsuhiko Miki in Japan [三木克彥]  who is a friend of Director Hung who won the award of Best Director of TV Drama and Mr Yamg, also a TV direcor and CM director and film director in Taipei accepted the award on stage
on behalf of Hung Chih-yu (洪智育) and effortlessly snapped a photo of the audience with his own camera as he stepped up to the stage.
Mr YAng was reading the ''thank you'' speech that Director Hung sent in to him to the mobile phone on stage. Cute. Technology transforms the Oscars soon, too?''



speech comes in at 3 minutes into video, around 3:01


-- Reads acceptance speech phoned in by text from Director Hung himself to the iPhone screen

 
The times they are a'changin' -- but perhaps not in the way that Bob Dylan sang
about years ago in his famous folk song.

Case in point: During the recent ''Golden Bell'' Television Awards last week in
Taipei -- Taiwan's equivalent to the Ameican ''Emmy'' Awards -- a man accepted a TV award for
Director Hung who won it but could not be there in person because of outside work -- Mr Hung won the gong for best TV director of a drama series called "Scent of Love" for 2011--  and the other man, named Mr Yang, also Taiwanese, walked up to the stage and snapped a
camera photo of the audience from the stage) while approaching the podium stage, and then took
out an
iphone from his shirt jacket pocket and started reading email messages from Director Hung while
smiling to himself, before finally addressing the
5,000 people in the audience and on national TV by reading not from a
prepared piece of folded dead-tree paper but from the clean screen of his iPhone -- and the speech he read was phoned in, er, texted in, by Director Hung himself from a remote location. His
substitute speech performance for the real award winner might just have made award-show history worldwide,
by replacing a prepared written speech with
a prepared written screen text that was phoned in in real time by text message.

Can the Oscars and the Man Booker Prize next year be next?

REFERENCE 電視金鐘獎

Best Directing for a Mini-series/TV movie (迷你劇集/電視電影導演獎)
*******洪智育╱就是要香戀(CTV - 中國電視事業股份有限公司)

Celebrities and fans crowded the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, exuberant over the 46th Golden Bell Awards (電視金鐘獎), Taiwan's equivalent to the Emmy Awards, which awarded Wilber Pan (潘瑋柏) and Tien Hsin (天心) as best actor and actress, respectively, while some director bloke snapped his own DIY pics while accepting his award and reading from iPhone screen for speech.
htp://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/arts-&-leisure/2011/10/22/320628/Wilber-Pan.htm

GOOGLE or FACEBOOK:
三木克彥 tells this blog:

"My Chinese Mandarin name is Yang Yi-feng (which is the spelling on my Taiwannese passport), and in Chinese characters my name is 楊一峯。.....I am half-Japanese half-Taiwanese so the name on my facebook page is 三木克彥 or Miki Katsuhiko. That is the name I use in Japan. I am a TV comercial director, and I recently started to direct TV dramas in Taiwan, too. ''

Friday, October 21, 2011

OLD TYPEWRITER AND WRITER NORMAN CORWIN, circa 1872

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ncorwin-1973.jpg#file

Photographed by unknown person, User:Arrowcatcher, with Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic film camera and electronic flash at Norman Corwin's Wellworth Ave., Los Angeles apartment in February 1872.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

阿裕牛肉湯


阿裕牛肉湯 in Tainan County, Rende City, No. 525 ChungCheng Road and oishii! and LO LAT!
地址:台南縣仁德鄉中正路一段525號電話......:06-266-8816/ 266-8857
http://www.google.com/search?client=gmail&rls=gm&q=%E9%98%BF%E8%A3%95%E7%89%9B%E8%82%89%E6%B9%AF

Facebook Friend Numbers Linked to Brain Size

MRI studies show reading on paper surfaces lights up superior regions
of the brain compared to screen-reading

By Ben Hirschlerr

RONDON | Wed Oct 19, 2012

RONDON (Reutters) - Scientists have found a direct link between
reading on paper surfaces and information processing compared
to when people read off screens, raising the possibility that using
screens for our daily reading is an inferior method of "reading."

The reading brain in terms of memory, emotional responses and critical
analysis prefers reading off paper surfaces, such as books,
magazines and hardcopy print outs, the research indicates. So far,
however, it is not possible to say whether one
reading mode is superior to the other, reseachers say.

"The exciting question now is whether reading off paper really is
superior in terms of brain chemistry to reading off screens, -- this
will help us answer the question of whether the Internet is changing
our brains," said Astin Kawabata Sensei of University College London
UCL.L, one of the researchers involved in the study.

Sensei and colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (f)MRI to study
the brains of 125 university students, reading on both
paper and off screens. They discovered that reading off paper surfaces
is superior in terms of the "grey matter" in the amygdala, the right
superior temporal sulcus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the right
entorhinal cortex. Grey matter is the layer of brain tissue where
mental processing occurs.


"If our research pans out, it will mean big trouble for the computer
and reading device industry," said Grant Lee of UCL.

"This shows we can use some of the powerful tools in modern
neuroscience to address important questions -- namely, what are the
effects of reading on screens to my brain. It appears that reading on
paper lights up different and superior regions of the brain compared
to when I read
off a screen on an iPad or a computer."

The study results were published on Wednesday in the journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society of The Reading Brain.

Heidi-Sally Bloom of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in
the research, said the findings were intriguing but did not mean that
they are true or even useful.


"We still need more studies on this using PET brain scan machines,
too," she said. "The current study cannot tell us whether reading off
screens is good or bad for our brains."

Is Facebook altering our brains?

MRI studies show reading on paper surfaces lights up superior regions
of the brain compared to screen-reading

By Ben Hirschlerr

RONDON | Wed Oct 19, 2012

RONDON (Reutters) - Scientists have found a direct link between
reading on paper surfaces and information processing compared
to when people read off screens, raising the possibility that using
screens for our daily reading is an inferior method of "reading."

The reading brain in terms of memory, emotional responses and critical
analysis prefers reading off paper surfaces, such as books,
magazines and hardcopy print outs, the research indicates. So far,
however, it is not possible to say whether one
reading mode is superior to the other, reseachers say.

"The exciting question now is whether reading off paper really is
superior in terms of brain chemistry to reading off screens, -- this
will help us answer the question of whether the Internet is changing
our brains," said Astin Kawabata Sensei of University College London
UCL.L, one of the researchers involved in the study.

Sensei and colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (f)MRI to study
the brains of 125 university students, reading on both
paper and off screens. They discovered that reading off paper surfaces
is superior in terms of the "grey matter" in the amygdala, the right
superior temporal sulcus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the right
entorhinal cortex. Grey matter is the layer of brain tissue where
mental processing occurs.


"If our research pans out, it will mean big trouble for the computer
and reading device industry," said Grant Lee of UCL.

"This shows we can use some of the powerful tools in modern
neuroscience to address important questions -- namely, what are the
effects of reading on screens to my brain. It appears that reading on
paper lights up different and superior regions of the brain compared
to when I read
off a screen on an iPad or a computer."

The study results were published on Wednesday in the journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society of The Reading Brain.

Heidi-Sally Bloom of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in
the research, said the findings were intriguing but did not mean that
they are true or even useful.


"We still need more studies on this using PET brain scan machines,
too," she said. "The current study cannot tell us whether reading off
screens is good or bad for our brains."

The more Facebook friends you have, the bigger your brain is

MRI studies show reading on paper surfaces lights up superior regions
of the brain compared to screen-reading

By Ben Hirschlerr

RONDON | Wed Oct 19, 2012

RONDON (Reutters) - Scientists have found a direct link between
reading on paper surfaces and information processing compared
to when people read off screens, raising the possibility that using
screens for our daily reading is an inferior method of "reading."

The reading brain in terms of memory, emotional responses and critical
analysis prefers reading off paper surfaces, such as books,
magazines and hardcopy print outs, the research indicates. So far,
however, it is not possible to say whether one
reading mode is superior to the other, reseachers say.

"The exciting question now is whether reading off paper really is
superior in terms of brain chemistry to reading off screens, -- this
will help us answer the question of whether the Internet is changing
our brains," said Astin Kawabata Sensei of University College London
UCL.L, one of the researchers involved in the study.

Sensei and colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (f)MRI to study
the brains of 125 university students, reading on both
paper and off screens. They discovered that reading off paper surfaces
is superior in terms of the "grey matter" in the amygdala, the right
superior temporal sulcus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the right
entorhinal cortex. Grey matter is the layer of brain tissue where
mental processing occurs.


"If our research pans out, it will mean big trouble for the computer
and reading device industry," said Grant Lee of UCL.

"This shows we can use some of the powerful tools in modern
neuroscience to address important questions -- namely, what are the
effects of reading on screens to my brain. It appears that reading on
paper lights up different and superior regions of the brain compared
to when I read
off a screen on an iPad or a computer."

The study results were published on Wednesday in the journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society of The Reading Brain.

Heidi-Sally Bloom of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in
the research, said the findings were intriguing but did not mean that
they are true or even useful.


"We still need more studies on this using PET brain scan machines,
too," she said. "The current study cannot tell us whether reading off
screens is good or bad for our brains."

People With Bigger Brains Have More Facebook Friends

MRI studies show reading on paper surfaces lights up superior regions
of the brain compared to screen-reading

By Ben Hirschlerr

RONDON | Wed Oct 19, 2012

RONDON (Reutters) - Scientists have found a direct link between
reading on paper surfaces and information processing compared
to when people read off screens, raising the possibility that using
screens for our daily reading is an inferior method of "reading."

The reading brain in terms of memory, emotional responses and critical
analysis prefers reading off paper surfaces, such as books,
magazines and hardcopy print outs, the research indicates. So far,
however, it is not possible to say whether one
reading mode is superior to the other, reseachers say.

"The exciting question now is whether reading off paper really is
superior in terms of brain chemistry to reading off screens, -- this
will help us answer the question of whether the Internet is changing
our brains," said Astin Kawabata Sensei of University College London
UCL.L, one of the researchers involved in the study.

Sensei and colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (f)MRI to study
the brains of 125 university students, reading on both
paper and off screens. They discovered that reading off paper surfaces
is superior in terms of the "grey matter" in the amygdala, the right
superior temporal sulcus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the right
entorhinal cortex. Grey matter is the layer of brain tissue where
mental processing occurs.


"If our research pans out, it will mean big trouble for the computer
and reading device industry," said Grant Lee of UCL.

"This shows we can use some of the powerful tools in modern
neuroscience to address important questions -- namely, what are the
effects of reading on screens to my brain. It appears that reading on
paper lights up different and superior regions of the brain compared
to when I read
off a screen on an iPad or a computer."

The study results were published on Wednesday in the journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society of The Reading Brain.

Heidi-Sally Bloom of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in
the research, said the findings were intriguing but did not mean that
they are true or even useful.


"We still need more studies on this using PET brain scan machines,
too," she said. "The current study cannot tell us whether reading off
screens is good or bad for our brains."

MRI studies show reading on paper surfaces lights up superior regions of the brain compared to screen-reading

By Benn Herschlerr

RONDON | Wed Oct 19, 2012

RONDON (Rotters) - Scientists have found a direct link between
reading on paper surfaces and information processing compared
to when people read off screens, raising the possibility that using
screens for our daily reading is an inferior method of "reading."

The reading brain in terms of memory, emotional responses and critical
analysis prefers reading off paper surfaces, such as books,
magazines and hardcopy print outs, the research indicates. So far,
however, it is not possible to say whether one
reading mode is superior to the other, reseachers say.

"The exciting question now is whether reading off paper really is
superior in terms of brain chemistry to reading off screens, -- this
will help us answer the question of whether the Internet is changing
our brains," said Astin Kawabata Sensei of University College London
UCL.L, one of the researchers involved in the study.

Sensei and colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (f)MRI to study
the brains of 125 university students, reading on both
paper and off screens. They discovered that reading off paper surfaces
is superior in terms of the "grey matter" in the amygdala, the right
superior temporal sulcus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the right
entorhinal cortex. Grey matter is the layer of brain tissue where
mental processing occurs.


"If our research pans out, it will mean big trouble for the computer
and reading device industry," said Grant Lee of UCL.

"This shows we can use some of the powerful tools in modern
neuroscience to address important questions -- namely, what are the
effects of reading on screens to my brain. It appears that reading on
paper lights up different and superior regions of the brain compared
to when I read
off a screen on an iPad or a computer."

The study results were published on Wednesday in the journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society of The Reading Brain.

Heidi-Sally Bloom of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in
the research, said the findings were intriguing but did not mean that
they are true or even useful.


"We still need more studies on this using PET brain scan machines,
too," she said. "The current study cannot tell us whether reading off
screens is good or bad for our brains."