Category: ideas

“It turns out that the US west coast is happier than the east. Happiness peaks each Sunday morning, then dives to an all-week low on Thursday evenings.”

The research from India “provides evidence that bilingualism slows the onset of three different types of dementia. It’s also the first study to show this dynamic also applies to the illiterate – a finding that suggests the protective effect of bilingualism ‘cannot be reduced to differences in education’.”

“Ten years ago the idea that someone could become addicted to a habit like gambling the way a person gets hooked on a drug was controversial. … Now researchers agree that in some cases gambling is a true addiction” that rewires the brain the way some drugs do.

Michael Rosen, author of Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells A Story: “Debates about power and class surround every letter, and H is the most contentious of all. No other letter has had such power to divide people into opposing camps.” (Heck, we can’t even agree on how to pronounce the name of the letter itself.)

“In Civilisation and its Discontents, Freud saw humanity oscillating between freedom and security. Today, nauseated by desultory freedom, we are flipping back to security – the long book, the immersive TV series, experiences deeper and richer than posting your “likes” on Facebook.”

“When a student sits down at a test, he knows how to cheat, in principle. But how does he decide whether or not he’ll actually do it? Is it logic? An impulse? A subconscious reaction to the adrenaline in his blood and the dopamine in his brain? People cheat all the time. But why, exactly, do they decide to do it in the first place?” Maria Konnikova goes looking for some answers.

The questions arise out of a Bangkok advertising campaign earlier this year for, of all things, doughnuts.

“Twitter is faster and HuffPo more sophisticated, but the parasitic dynamics of networked media were fully functional in the 19th century. For proof, look no further than the Infectious Texts project, a collaboration of humanities scholars and computer scientists.”

Low doses of electrical stimulation “will not make you superhuman, but it may allow you to work at your maximum capacity.”

“Reaction to disappointment and reality testing occur more quickly face to face. … There is a narrowness with texting, and you don’t get to see the breadth of a person that you need to see.”