“Goofing off is not a waste of time — well, not always. Exhibit A: Albert Einstein. He was a world-class loafer. In 1905, he was working as a clerk at a Swiss patent office, spending a lot of time spacing out. A ‘respectable federal ink pisser’ is how Einstein described himself. Yet it was at work, daydreaming one day, watching a builder on a nearby rooftop, that he experienced ‘the happiest thought of my life’ — a thought that soon blossomed into his ‘special theory of relativity.'”
Category: ideas
What Does Hirst’s Jeweled Skull Sale Say About Us?
“Damien Hirst, the British artist most famous for displaying sharks and sheep floating in formaldehyde, has just sold a platinum cast of a human skull, covered in 8,601 diamonds, for $100 million… It’s said that the only thing an auction record proves is the existence of two dumb rich guys, competing to pay more for something than anyone else on the planet has ever thought it was worth. [But] you could say that the price tag, with its nice round number trailing all those lovely zeros, is the most important and valuable art supply that went into the piece, and is what makes it work.”
Did You Notice That? (The Scientists Say How)
“Countless change blindness studies have showed that we’re extremely bad at noticing when a scene has changed. We fail to notice objects moving, disappearing, or changing color, seemingly right before our eyes. But sometimes we do notice the change. What sorts of changes are we more likely to notice?”
Coming: Games You Control By Thinking
“Several makers of brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs — devices that facilitate operating a computer by thought alone — claim the technology is poised to jump from the medical sector into the consumer gaming world in 2008.”
French Lose Tourism Crown, Told To Smile
“For the first time since tourism was invented, France has slipped from its perch as the world’s top destination. And the authorities are taking it so seriously that new guidelines are to be given to those working with foreigners to urge them to be better hosts.”
A Definition For Painting (If It’s Needed)
“The dilettantes are always right, because paintings are for looking at, and because every claim about what painting “should be” gets shriveled and old and academic even before the canvas does. The dilettante doesn’t care much about what painting “should be,” only about what it is and has been.”
Why You Should Trust Those Gut Instincts
“Research indicates that gut feelings are based on simple rules of thumb, what we psychologists term ‘heuristics.’ These take advantage of certain capacities of the brain that have come down to us through time, experience and evolution. Gut instincts often rely on simple cues in the environment. In most situations, when people use their instincts, they are heeding these cues and ignoring other unnecessary information.”
When America Was Copyright Outlaw
Americans work up outrage over copyright violations in countries such as China. But “a century and a half ago, another fast-growing nation had a reputation for sacrificing standards to its pursuit of profit, and it was the United States.”
Scientists Simulate Out-Of-Body Experience
“Scientists have long suspected that the clue to these extraordinary, and sometimes life-changing, experiences lies in disrupting our normal illusion of being a self behind our eyes, and replacing it with a new viewpoint from above or behind.”
Do We Need To Redefine Life?
“As scientists push the bounds of biology, astronomy and robotics, a big question looms: What exactly is life? That question is bubbling up from recent advances in lab work.”