North Shore Towers Courier n March 2014 3 Inside the mind of a Nobel Prize winner BY KATELYN DI SALVO It was a full house in the Country Club VIP room recently, as North Shore Towers residents got to sit in on a conversation between a Nobel Prize laureate and an Emmy Awardwinning actor. NST’s resident memory expert, Fred Chernow, hosted the screening on Thursday, February 13, featuring an in-depth conversation with Eric Kandel, founding professor of the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University. Dr. Kandel is the only American psychiatrist to have received the Nobel Prize, which he did in 2000 for his discoveries, “concerning the cell and molecular mechanisms of learning and memory.” The interviewer wasn’t a doctor, though he played one on TV. Alan Alda gained fame as surgeon “Hawkeye Pierce” on the long-running hit “M*A*S*H,” but has had a lifelong interest in science, hosting the PBS series “Scientific American Frontiers” from 1993 to 2005. He is the driving force behind the establishment of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stonybrook University on Long Island. The focus of the hour-long interview was Kandel’s book, The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain. In it, the scientist focused on the mingling of impressionist artists and great scientific minds in the salons of Vienna, Austria in 1900. Both the city and topic have particular meaning to Kandel, who was born Vienna between the World Wars. He watched his hometown go from a cosmopolitan center of the arts and science – and a safe haven for Jews for nearly 1,000 years – to a hotbed of Nazi insanity in the late 1930s. Kandel discussed, among other things, how the brain perceives art, noting that exaggerated or distorted facial expressions in impressionist paintings spurred nerve cells, saying, “The brain is a creativity machine.” He related the mental stimuli produced by viewing impressionist works to his own work on the muchsimpler brains of lower animals and how they process information. After the program, Chernow led a discussion of Kandel’s ideas with the residents in attendance. Many agreed with the view that the interplay of such diverse social gatherings over a century ago couldn’t happen today because, according to popular views in the room, “kids today are too busy tapping away on their phones… we are no longer social… we don’t have enough face time.” In spite of the majority view, a few residents observed that Kandel was speaking of a time without technological advancements – and judging social communication today by the modes of the past would be very pessimistic. After all, they had just enjoyed a lively discussion about a conversation from years before, as if it were in their living rooms. With additional reporting by Victor G. Mimoni Eyes wide open for the NEW AMERICAN DREAM BY KATELYN DI SALVO North Shore Towers residents, who, some would say, are living the American Dream, were confronted with a new vision recently. Harvard and Columbia University graduate Howard Shurdut challenged a packed VIP room on Monday, February 17 with his lecture, “A New American Dream.” A motivational and educational speaker, Shurdut contends that there is the old, outdated American Dream – and a new American Dream that is more applicable to our advancing society. He explained the old dream as a product of a time when people had to work hard to achieve financial stability and opportunities were limited to certain people. “The American Dream was not reachable for minorities or women,” he explained. Showing an advertisement for a pair of “SPANX,” figure-flattering apparel, he declared, “A woman in her 20s invented this and she’s a billionaire. She’s a woman and she’s young and she achieved this new American Dream.” Shurdut also spoke about the idea that the younger generation today wants to get rich fast, explaining how people will take any shortcut, referencing Jordan Belfort, the stock market swindler portrayed by Leonardo Di Caprio in the movie “Wolf of Wall Street.” A proponent of the view that, “Our country is at many crossroads. We must face some hard decisions that will set the stage for the future,” Shurdot views the economy, the size of government, educational and social reforms, gun control, climate change, privacy concerns and our role in the world as important factors. Thanks to political and social movements, he suggested, there are now more opportunities to achieve success. Yet, he complained, “Some people are still not so accepting of these changes, and that is the problem.” After explaining his views, Shurdut opened up the floor for discussion. Many in the audience voiced agreement with his theory about the changing American Dream; others were critical of his politics. Al Chumsky and Herbert Landau were two in the audience who challenged many of Shurdut’s political points. “He is giving a very left wing point of view and he hates Republicans which is obvious… there are two sides to everything and the Republicans aren’t all that bad,” they agreed Despite political disagreements, many enjoyed the lively discussion about the new American Dream.
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