Category: ideas

“Why do audiences need TEDx when they have TED.com? That is, at a time when we can get the best of everything remotely, what’s the point of having in-person events?”

William Deresiewicz: “[Food] is not narrative or representational, does not express ideas or organize emotions, cannot do what art does and must not be confused with it.”

Sara Davis: “One reason that art is such a jealously guarded term is that we use it to elevate sensory experience to something special – the implication being that sensory experiences are not all that special on their own. … The phrases ‘eye candy’ and ‘ear candy’ exist for a reason. So we rely on the word art to separate out sensory experiences that feel more present (or, perhaps, more proper) in the mind.”

“Scientists have found that the sting of rejection fires up the same neural pathways as the pain from a burn or bruise. Besides explaining why some people have thicker skins than others, this fact reveals an intimate link between your social life and your health – you really can die of loneliness.”

“For women, engaging in casual sex still carries a stigma, and the prospect of being judged dampens their interest in one-night stands.” A new study “concludes that, more than a half-century after the introduction of the birth control pill, the sexual double standard is alive and well and still influencing women’s everyday behavior.”

“The zany, cute, and interesting won’t stir us to tears or action or a belief in the creator. Rather, these are dashed-off assessments that feel like second nature, given the speed at which things circulate.”

“To be a really successful giver of gifts, a person usually needs to get inside the head of the intended recipient. Unfortunately, psychological studies reveal that givers and receivers have a hard time understanding each other’s mind-sets, which can make for a tricky holiday experience.” (The good news: re-gifting is okay.)

“Language lets us learn the answers to practical questions, but it also opens us up to novel insights and perspectives. Simply put, language straddles the chasm between science and art.”

“[The] growing chorus of neuro-critics are half right: our early-twenty-first-century world truly is filled with brain porn, with sloppy reductionist thinking and an unseemly lust for neuroscientific explanations. … [What] we need now is ‘the meticulous dissection of some elementary brain functions, not ambitious but vague notions like brain-based aesthetics, when we still don’t understand how the brain recognizes something as basic as a straight line’.”

“In a first-of-its-kind study, a research team led by Simone Ritter of the Radboud University Behavioral Science Institute in the Netherlands reports the beneficial effect of sleep on creativity can be enhanced by an evocative scent.”