Category: ideas

“People used to think just three states of consciousness existed. You’re either awake or asleep – and if you’re asleep you’re either in dream or non-dream sleep. But brain imaging suggests there are more.”

“Why does age make us less mature? Why accounts for the infamous 4th grade slump in creativity? One possibility is that we trade away the ingenuity of our youth for executive function. As the brain develops, the prefrontal cortex expands in density and volume. As a result, we’re able to exhibit impulse control and focused attention.”

Lesbian koalas and gay male orangutans going at it, bisexual dolphins, the albatross eggs that have two mommies … Animal researchers are now documenting same-sex behavior which had been overlooked or explained away for 150 years. Activists, both gay and conservative, try to use this research for their own ends. But does the idea of gay animals even make sense? As one researcher puts it, “‘lesbian’ is a human term.”

“The genome of the male zebra finch devotes a lot of genetic code to hearing and singing songs, according to an analysis in the journal Nature. Much of that code controls brain circuits that are similar to the circuits people use for vocal learning.”

“This layered process of figuring out what someone else is thinking – of mind reading – is both a common literary device and an essential survival skill. Why human beings are equipped with this capacity and what particular brain functions enable them to do it are questions that have occupied primarily cognitive psychologists. Now English professors and graduate students are asking them too.”

“At some moments, Le Fooding seems earnest, in the manner of the Slow Food movement; at others, it is merely festive, a good-time gang; at still others, it appears determined to wrench the entire culture of good food in France from its historic place, on the nationalist right, to a new home, in the libertarian center.”

“Now comes still another study on how our surroundings interact with our unconscious minds … It concludes we’re more likely to come up with insights if we’ve been exposed to that universal symbol of brilliant ideas: a glowing light bulb.”

“The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has switched the default font on its e-mail system from Arial to Century Gothic. It says that while the change sounds minor, it will save money on ink when students print e-mails in the new font.”

“The bad news is population is continuing to increase, and the last doubling is going from a large number to a doubly large number. The good news is it’s leveling off. And then the bad news is maybe it’s leveling off too fast and headed down in a destructive way in certain parts of the world.”

An architecture show at MoMA “is a response to the effects that rising sea levels are expected to have on New York City and parts of New Jersey over the next 70 or so years, according to government studies. The solutions it proposes are impressively imaginative, ranging from spongelike sidewalks to housing projects suspended over water to transforming the Gowanus Canal into an oyster hatchery.”