The world’s shiniest living thing is an African fruit that looks like a pointillist bauble. In the forests of central Africa, there’s a plant that looks like it’s growing its own Christmas decorations.
Shiny baubles sprout from between its leaves, shimmering in a vibrant metallic blue. Look closer, and other colours emerge – pinpricks of red, orange, green and violet. It looks as if Seurat, or some other pointillist painter, had turned their hand to sculpture. But these spheres, of course, are no man-made creations. They’re fruit. The Neuroscience of Your Brain On Fiction. The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever. Photo: Dwight Eschliman Jeffrey Mitchell, a volunteer firefighter in the suburbs of Baltimore, came across the accident by chance: A car had smashed into a pickup truck loaded with metal pipes.
Mitchell tried to help, but he saw at once that he was too late. The car had rear-ended the truck at high speed, sending a pipe through the windshield and into the chest of the passenger—a young bride returning home from her wedding. There was blood everywhere, staining her white dress crimson. Mitchell couldn’t get the dead woman out of his mind; the tableau was stuck before his eyes. Pushing to remember a traumatic event soon after it occurs doesn’t unburden us—it reinforces the fear and stress. The Star Wars Saga: Suggested Viewing Order » Absolutely No Machete Juggling. Brace yourselves, what follows is an amazingly long blog post about the best order in which to watch Star Wars.
First, let me say this: for people that couldn't care less about the prequel trilogy, I suggest Harmy's Despecialized Editions. They are 720p videos that are the result of "Harmy" from The Original Trilogy forums painstakingly reconstructing the theatrical releases of all three films utilizing a wide variety of video sources as well as custom mattes. Downloading, burning, labeling, and printing cases for these films is one of the neckbeardiest things I've done (aside from writing this blog post), and I'm extremely glad I did it. If the "proper order" for Star Wars for you is the original trilogy and nothing else, stop reading now and find the Despecialized Editions.
The wrong and right way to learn a foreign language - The Answer Sheet. This was written by linguist Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, is an educational researcher and activist.
He has written hundreds of articles and books in the fields of second language acquisition, bilingual education, and reading. By Stephen Krashen In a recent issue of the Washington Post Express, Andrew Eil, a staffer who works at the U.S. State Department on international climate change, recommends that foreign language students start with “boot camp:” Study grammar very hard, drill vocabulary every day, and force yourself to talk. The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction. 8 Visionaries on How They Spot the Future. Paul Saffo A longtime technology forecaster, Saffo is a managing director at the Silicon Valley investment research firm Discern.
Formerly the director of the Institute for the Future, he is also a consulting professor in Stanford University’s engineering department. Annie Murphy Paul: The Myth of 'Practice Makes Perfect' How Geniuses Think. 109Share Synopsis Thumbnail descriptions of the thinking strategies commonly used by creative geniuses.
What Is Your Dog Thinking? A Lot. The Secrets Inside Your Dog's Mind. Brian Hare, assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, holds out a dog biscuit.
"Henry! " The Science of Success - Magazine. Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere.
Are Kids “Learning To Be Distracted”? Annie Murphy Paul: Your Morning Routine Is Making You Dull. Brrriiinnng.
The alarm clock buzzes in another hectic weekday morning. You leap out of bed, rush into the shower, into your clothes and out the door with barely a moment to think. A stressful commute gets your blood pressure climbing. How Creativity Works in Cities - Arts & Lifestyle. The human imagination is a bewildering process.
How the brain comes up with great ideas is mysteriously complex. Are We Wringing the Creativity Out of Kids? Do you think you’re creative?” Ask this question of a group of second-graders, and about 95 percent of them will answer “Yes.” Leonardo's To-Do List : Krulwich Wonders... Here's something you can't do every day: How about you and I slip into Leonardo da Vinci's head for moment? Deep in. The Reinvention of the Self. Just as Duman was beginning to see the biochemical connections between trophins, stress, and depression, Gould was starting to document neurogenesis in the hippocampus of the primate brain. Reading Altman’s and Kaplan’s papers, Gould had realized that her neuron-counting wasn’t erroneous: She was just witnessing an ignored fact. Schumpeter: Angst for the educated. Teenage Brains. Although you know your teenager takes some chances, it can be a shock to hear about them. News Desk: Steve Jobs: “Technology Alone Is Not Enough”
Editors’ Note: Details from this post appeared in similar form in a July, 2011, piece by Jonah Lehrer for Wired magazine, U.K. Why Does Beauty Exist? The Cognitive Cost Of Expertise. Need to Create? Get a Constraint. Jonah Lehrer - La Ciudad de las Ideas 2010 - The Origins of the Future. Marcel Proust: neurocientífico (entrevista a Jonah Lehrer) Antes de que la neurociencia revelase algunas verdades nada evidentes sobre el funcionamiento de nuestro cerebro, muchos artistas y pensadores intuyeron, cada cual a su manera y en su parcela predilecta de reflexión y expresión, aspectos esenciales de nuestra naturaleza cuyo conocimiento preciso requeriría todavía mucha investigación y experimentación por parte de los científicos. Se anticiparon en la comprensión de funciones cognitivas como la memoria, el lenguaje y el aprendizaje, cuestiones tan trascendentes como la relación cuerpo-mente, la libertad y el sentido del yo, o el funcionamiento íntimo, asociado a sus ilusiones, de los sentidos de la vista, el oído y el gusto.
Ha sido un neurocientífico exquisitamente literario quien se ha decidido a señalar a estos precursores en un ensayo que tiende nuevos puentes entre las dos culturas. Jonah ha tenido la amabilidad de respondernos unas preguntas, preparadas por Antonio Gimeno y un servidor. En ingles: 15 Ways to Boost Your Confidence at College - Professors' Guide. It's easy to feel a lack of confidence at college.
10 Tips for Women Students in Science Fields - Professors' Guide. There is growing concern at American colleges about why so few women study science, technology, engineering, or math (the so-called "STEM" fields). Though women constitute more than half of undergraduates, according to a study of college students in 2009, 138,000 bachelor's degrees in STEM fields went to men, while only 88,000 went to women. A recent and quite interesting meta-study, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the American Association of University Women (AAUW), located eight factors that contribute to the disparity between the number of female and male college students electing the sciences: beliefs about intelligence, stereotypes, self-assessment, spatial skills, the college student experience, university and college faculty, implicit bias, and workplace bias.
The Brain: Use it or Lose it by Marian Diamond. Welcome to New Horizons for Learning - a leading web resource for identifying and communicating successful strategies for educational practice.