The 4 ways sound affects us: Report

Julian Treasure speaks about how sound affects us. He intends to transform the way we interact with sound, and explains that there are four ways in wich sound affects us. The first one is physiological; The sound of a circular saw working increases the levels of the hormone cortisol, and the sound of the sea is very soothing . The second one is psychological; Albinoni's adagio will surely make you sad, but a bird's tweet will relax you due to ancient instincts. The third one is cognitive; Productivity is reduced TWO THIRDS in a noisy workplace (This is also true in high scholls ¿eh?). The fourth and last one is behavioural; people with rythmic music doesn't drive in a stedy speeed, and "soundscape" is vital for sucessful retailing. Mr. Treasure has developed a system wich allows him to know the effects of a sound and vice-versa. He then speaks about music, wich is very powerful because it's very recognisable and it's very strongly associated to other memories and feelings. He finishes by saying that music has been inapropiately used especially in marketing and gives advice to people working in marketing.

It's english a mania ?

Some months ago, I was pretty shocked when I saw PM Zapatero saying "fair play" instead of "juego limpio". It was completely innecessary, but he repeated it two or three times more during the next week whilst the interest in the topic he was speaking about faded. My shock came mainly not from the fact that he was using an english expresion, but from the fact that he doesn't know english (another spanish tradition that hampers our progress) and he emphasized the expresion a lot. Was it an idea of one of it's advisors? or worse, was it his?
But back to my point, what I was seeing was another step in the race of english for becaming as ubiquitous as the monotheistic gods or corrupt politicians. As a result of two centuries of anglo-american hegemony in economy, trade, science, war, popular and not-so-popular culture now english is king, despite having "only" as many native speakers as spanish and less than half than mandarin. It's the cornerstone of any attempt at superior education, tourism and all kind of international enterprises. It has even became a Synonym for modern and cool, and is therefore used on every slogan, catchphrase or product. Nobody is unaware of it's importance, and so it has become a mandatory school subject in almost every country, every adult person with aspirations is trying to learn it, and virtualy everybody knows at least a hundred words in english.
Some people have claimed that it might be destroying the different cultures of the world, but I don't agrre with that, as it seems obvious to me that even if a person works, learns, and even watches TV in english, he might introduce some of it in his everiday life, but his everiday conversations, humour, debate and cultural production will still happen is his mother-tongue. I would also like to remember that every language metamorphoses each layer of new words be them foreign or indigenous, making it evolve without destroying it. People might still know easily that spageti or futbol are italian and english rooted words, but they have generaly no idea that gripe, auskalo, Irina, algebra or mendia came from German, Spanish, Latin , Arabic and Celtic.
And that's how you ramble on and on without answering a question.