Category: ideas

“‘Our broad conclusion is that testosterone causes men essentially to be stingy,’ says Karen Redwine, a neuro-economist at Whittier College in California, who presented the work at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in Chicago last week.”

“The world has perhaps 5000 living languages – though estimates vary – so by the end of this century there will be only half this number. In North America alone, there were between 600 and 700 languages when Columbus landed in 1492. This number had fallen to 213 by 1962, of which only 89 languages had speakers ranging from children to the elderly.”

“Total recall may be beneficial for businesses and courts, clinics and insurance agencies, even possibly in settling occasional disputes with significant others, but rarely would it be deeply rewarding for the humble self.”

“What is it about music that is capable of swaying human emotions? To answer that question, you have to start by asking another one: What does music mean? We know what a pop song or an opera aria means because the words tell us–but how do we know what a symphony means?”

You know how sometimes you watch a wheel spin and parts of it appear to rotate backwards? And how frightening events can seem to happen in slow motion? It turns out that humans don’t perceive things continuously, but rather in a series (or several concurrent series) of snapshots, as happens with movies.

“You don’t need psychedelic drugs to start seeing colors and objects that aren’t really there. Just 15 minutes of near-total sensory deprivation can bring on hallucinations in many otherwise sane individuals.”

“Since actions cannot be undone, the only option when they conflict with beliefs – which produces the phenomenon called cognitive dissonance – is to alter the beliefs. When people experience cognitive dissonance, it turns out, brain activity causes us to back and fill, mentally.” Neuroscientists have found the centers of that brain activity.

“For actors at auditions, musicians at competitions or anyone else whose work is sequentially judged against that of others, a nagging question often arises: Would I rather be the first person to be evaluated, or the last? New research suggests both have their advantages, and either is far preferable than being stuck in the middle.”

“[A] German psychologist, along with colleagues from the Netherlands and the United States, has discovered a creative way of decreasing the temptation to indulge. Simply gaze at the delectable confection and think to yourself: Wouldn’t this make an excellent doorstop?”

“Durable, easily handled, yet retaining somehow the flavor of its coinage, the classic cliché has fought philology to a standstill: it sticks and it stays, and not by accident. … [It has been] an object, and a useful one: a concrete unit of communication that minimized labor and sped things up.”