Category: ideas

For years, doctors have been discouraged by Americans’ disregard for and mismanagement of their sleep. (“I might as well have been running a chain of beauty parlors for the last four decades” is how one described his advocacy.) But bragging about how little you sleep, a hallmark of the ’80s power broker, is starting in certain circles to come off as masochistic buffoonery.

“The part of our world that is most recalcitrant to our understanding at the moment is consciousness itself. How could the electrochemical processes in the lump of gray matter that is our brain give rise to the dazzling technicolor play of consciousness, with its transports of joy, its stabs of anguish and its stretches of mild contentment alternating with boredom?”

“In that quarter-century, much has changed in the CAD world. The industry has become more diversified and competitive, yet the same things that made computer-aided design commercially popular 25 years ago remain just as true today.”

Psychologists puzzle over this basic bias for the bright side. This sense of hope boosts consumer confidence, creates market bubbles and spurs irrational exuberance. ‘We don’t know whether optimistic people are dumber or better than pessimistic people’.”

“When next summer’s Olympics roll around, the Beijing Weather Modification Office will be poised to intercept incoming clouds, draining them before they get to the festivities. No fewer than 32,000 people nationwide are employed by the Weather Modification Office.”

“Brainbow allows researchers to tag several hundred neurons at once with roughly 90 distinct colors. The resulting images , which resemble abstract color paintings, are both beautiful and informative. They look like they could hang in a modern art museum and are among the most detailed images of neuronal connections ever made.”

“An international team of researchers analyzed measures of social and intellectual development from over 16,000 children and found that disruptive or antisocial behaviors in kindergarten did not correlate with academic results at the end of elementary school.”

“Mass media, the communications technology that became supreme in the 20th century, has ruined debates. Today’s mass media, reflecting a cultural short attention span, elevates shallowness. But technology can also help restore the debate.”

“When inactive people get more exercise, even starting in their 70s, their executive function improves, as shown in a recent meta-analysis of 18 studies. One effective training program involves just 30 to 60 minutes of fast walking several times a week.”

“Why do we find Proust’s failure meaningful or relevant? Because all around us, we see a city, a Seattle, that we can’t stop, that offers us no existential anchor, that makes a fool out of our memories by daily destroying the old and building the new–yet we continue the doomed project of living here.”