Civilization Music

Two things in this world I have soft spots for are the Civilization franchise, and study music. Incidentally the two cross over really well. The Civ series incorporates classical music, and as a result makes great background noise for studying. A few months ago I created a very incomplete Spotify playlist of music from Civilization V and it has picked up a number of subscribers, so maybe it is worth sharing? The fourth game's music is just as worthwhile, and includes Jonh Adam's Shaker Loops.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of in-house music that is missing from this playlist. Field of Poppies is a stand out piece all on its own, as the title suggests, it invokes the imagery of a serene field of poppies waving in the wind. You can't find this music on Spotify, but if you buy the games you can extract them uncompressed no problem. A few years ago I got the game complete with expansions on Steam for $19.99, and it is possible that you can get it for even cheaper now, especially during a sale season. Then all you have to do is go to the music directory, which is located (if you bought the game on Steam, and installed it into the default path) in: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Assets\Sounds :

Civilization IV Music Directory

Enjoy!

Childhood Synesthesia

This is actually me getting my first bike!

When I was a child I could taste music. I never thought this was a big deal, and for the most part I always thought that I just had a really good imagination. Had I ever brought it up with my parents, my mother probably would have told me to shut the fuck up. In the meantime it made videogame music awesome.

The phenomenon of synesthesia is when the stimulation of one sense leads to other unrelated senses being stimulated. These people can see numbers and letters in different colors, taste phonemes, associate touch with colors and everything in between. I do not experience this anymore. I can remember tasting things that I have never actually eaten before as well as getting a metallic like taste in my mouth when I heard certain slow love songs on the car radio.

Yesterday's post was on language acquisition, where I wrote about how children have a critical period in which they are able to learn language. During this time the developing brain is more "malleable" due to neuroplasticity; which means that neurons in the brain are moving around (your neurons literally miagrate to get where they are in your brain HOLY SHIT!), connecting and removing themselves from each other and adding new cells and dendrites. Every time you learn, you are physically altering your brain! This process is simply accelerated in small children, and why it is so easy for them to learn languages they are immersed in, and why it becomes so tough for adults later in life.

At the end of the critical period there is a stage of synaptic pruning, where neurons that have not been firing together are removed. I have a feeling that it was during this period in which I lost my synesthesia. Perhaps it was not used enough, and therefore not pruned. After all while it was pretty neat, it was in no way helpful. I need my sense of taste to tell if my milk is spoiled, and therefore prevent me from becoming sick; but sappy love music wont kill me. I wonder if many other children experience this phenomenon, and then simply forget that they ever had these abilities. Many people who have synesthesia simply never tell anyone because they assume everyone perceives their environment the same way.


Now because I am writing about a personal experience that happened to me as a child, it is only based off of anecdotal evidence. I could very well be appealing to the availability heuristic, or confirmation bias. Nevertheless I would love to run a population of small children in a survey / experiment where we could see if on average they experience synesthesia more than an adult control population. However given the many different types of synesthesia that exist, as well as the amount of participants we would need to run in order to reach a significant result would take too much time and money for me to do on my own. One day perhaps...

Flash Cards Redux

I recently made a post about using flash cards. A few people who commented on the post said they are comfortable with using Anki, a flash card program.

Anki is cool because it's a little program that lets you download "flashcard" sets that other users have already created to study with. It is also available for smart phones, so if you have one, you can take your flashcards on the go with you. However I personally believe that you lose an element of the learning process, which is writing the words down. 

You can find flash cards German speakers have made to practice their English. You can also find chemistry, biology, or anything else that flashcards could be made for. It is a really neat idea that all the content is user created stuff that is being shared, therefore every day there should be more and more content. Plus it beats having a stack of flash cards like this:

Although I do worry about the quality of the content. You could hypothetically study a few cards that are incorrect, and learn the wrong information. Researching the validity of every flash card might help with the memorization process.

Last night I went over to a friend's house and they were all studying for a Psychology final. This video came up with a simple search for "study music" so it's not some super obscure thing, but it's a wonderful thing nonetheless. The music and visuals are great.

 

Try it out while you use Anki, practice your flash cards, or study in general and tell me what you think!