Pop Music as Torture

Read an interesting Freakonomics article recently. According to Wired magazine, the US government is using David Gray's Babylon to torture inmates at Guantanamo Bay and in fact may owe Mr. Gray royalties for the use. But the devastating power of soft vocals doesn't stop there. In Australia Barry Manilow is used to keep "late night hooligans" from hanging out in parks. However their is a flip side to this music and apparently (also from Wired) Kenny Rogers may help recovering stroke victims. An interesting use of music.

Since this is the last post and it seems like the popular thing to do is to reflect I shall write my second paragraph. I enjoyed this class and the relaxing atmosphere brought by the teacher and fellow classmates. I really enjoyed the earlier slower paced music genres where we were able to really absorb them especially Muddy Waters and the Big Band era. It gets a little hard after the 60's to fit everything in. I also, enjoyed the blog posts as they were unique in the fact that most students, even quieter ones had an equal say by using texts and left some interesting posts. I think for future classes that the blog should be tied in with Friday discussion more. If one had to write down in words their thoughts on a specific discussion question before the actual discussion there could be a deeper more diverse conversation. For me at least I'm terrible at speaking on the fly and feel like I'm blabbering on.

Thanks for a very enjoyable class!