Is Your Language Making You Broke and Fat? How Language Can Shape Thinking and Behavior (and How It Can’t) | The Crux Julie Sedivy is the lead author of Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You And What This Says About You. She contributes regularly to Psychology Today and Language Log. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary, and can be found at juliesedivy.com and on Twitter/soldonlanguage. Keith Chen, an economist from Yale, makes a startling claim in an unpublished working paper: people’s fiscal responsibility and healthy lifestyle choices depend in part on the grammar of their language. Here’s the idea: Languages differ in the devices they offer to speakers who want to talk about the future. Chen’s finding is that if you divide up a large number of the world’s languages into those that require a grammatical marker for future time and those that don’t, you see an interesting correlation: speakers of languages that force grammatical marking of the future have amassed a smaller retirement nest egg, smoke more, exercise less, and are more likely to be obese.
A Creative Buzz - Ideas Market By Christopher Shea People who like to write in cafes are onto something, it seems: A moderate level of noise—the equivalent of the background buzz of conversation — prompts more-creative thought, according to a study. Across several experiments involving more than 300 people, participants worked on a series of exercises demanding mental flexibility, including word-association games and practical problems. They brainstormed about how a mattress company might improve its product, for example, and devised as many uses as possible for a brick. They did their thinking while ambient noise recorded in a cafeteria, roadside, and at a construction site was played at three levels: softly, moderately, or loudly, with the moderate level being about what you’d hear in a bustling café: 70 decibels. People in the moderate-noise groups scored higher on the objective word-association test, and their answers to the other problems were rated, subjectively by peers, as more creative.
New Blood Type Discovered | Mind the Science Gap Do you know your blood type? You may know if you’re A or O or maybe even Rh positive or negative. But do you know if you’re M positive? Or Lan negative? Blood types are a way of identifying the presence or absence of structures called antigens on a blood cell’s surface. Photo credit: Wiki Commons Most people are Lan positive. When a person’s blood comes into contact with a different blood type, the immune system begins to attack the intruding blood cells. As part of the research, the first antibody (immune system component) against the Lan positive blood type was identified. Reference: Helias V, Saison C, Ballif BA, Peyrard T, Takahashi J, Takahashi H, Tanaka M, Deybach JC, Puy H, Le Gall M, Sureau C, Pham BN, Le Pennec PY, Tani Y, Cartron JP, Arnaud L. (2012). facebook twitter linkedin email sharethis digg Tagged as: antigen, blood donation, blood transfusion, Blood type, Lan +, Lan negative, Lan positive, Langereis, pregnancy
Mad Genius, Eccentric Behavior & Creative Process Kristi Tencarre : Mad Genius Eccentric Creative Beings By Kristi Tencarre What is madness, except for non-conformity to the norm? Majority makes up the norm, therefore their definition of madness becomes the marker signaling the labeled to watch out for and stay away from. One characteristic of success in any creative endeavor is to not conform to the norms, mores and expectations of society. Eccentric is a positive term used to describe creative madness, which can also be called creative genius. To be creative one must have a smidgen of rebellion in the soul. What would people say if you quit your job to stay at home and get creative? So what if people label us as "mad" because we are pursuing our heart's desire. © 2006 Kristi Tencarre Kristi Tencarre is a long-time and valued contributor to Creativity Portal, sharing her creative perspective and photo writing prompts with its readers.
Epigenetics, DNA: How You Can Change Your Genes, Destiny -- Printout - Back to Article Click to Print Wednesday, Jan. 06, 2010 By John Cloud The remote, snow-swept expanses of northern Sweden are an unlikely place to begin a story about cutting-edge genetic science. The kingdom's northernmost county, Norrbotten, is nearly free of human life; an average of just six people live in each square mile. Norrbotten is so isolated that in the 19th century, if the harvest was bad, people starved. Click to Print Five glorious presentations on visual thinking Do you think in words or pictures, or both? Visual thinking engages the part of the brain that handles visual processing, and is said to be both "emotional and creative" so you can "organise information in an intuitive and simultaneous way". A picture really might be worth a thousand words, while being easier to understand and recall. I have collated a few presentations to help you do exactly that. Visual Thinking By Chris Finlay. An Introduction to Visual Thinking By Ryan Coleman. The Value of Visual Thinking in Social Business By David Armano. The ten and a half commandments of visual thinking Via whatidiscover. Visual and Creative Thinking: What We Learned From Peter Pan and Willy Wonka By Kelsey Ruger. [Joyous visual thinking image by jonny goldstein via Flickr, various rights reserved]
The evolution of death Michael DeVita of the University of Pittsburgh recalls making the rounds at a student teaching hospital with his interns in tow when he remembered that he had a patient upstairs who was near death. He sent a few of the young doctors “to check on Mr. Smith” in Room 301 and to report back on whether he was dead yet. DeVita continued rounds with the remainder of the interns, but after some time had passed he wondered what happened to his emissaries of death. Trotting up to Mr. Smith’s room, he found them all paging through “The Washington Manual,” the traditional handbook given to interns. Most of us would agree that King Tut and the other mummified ancient Egyptians are dead, and that you and I are alive. The search for the moment of death continues, though hampered by the considerable legal apparatus that insists that it has already been found. Sorensen says that the idea of “irreversibility” makes the determination of death problematic. Cell death is far removed from brain death.
Making Good Lessons Great: Incorporating Multiple Iintelligences and Creative Thinking into Everyday Lesson Plans « clearings by Betty K. Wood and Andrew L. Hunt, University of Arkansas at Little Rock Sarah C. I didn’t find anything very revolutionary here except this quote which I shall bear in mind (lay-out is mine): ‘One model for teaching the skill of creative thinking involves: fluency flexibility originalityelaboration‘ “The following linear representation of a problem-solving thought process, developed by Puccio, Murdock, and Mance (2005), provides an excellent example of how characteristics and behaviors of Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking operate.” Source: Like this: Like Loading...
Why Are Men So Violent? Why Are Men So Violent? Jesse J. Prinz It will not have gone unnoticed that men are more violent than women. Men perpetrate about 90 percent of the world's homicides and start all of the wars. A historical explanation of male violence does not eschew biological factors, but it minimizes them and assumes that men and woman are psychologically similar. This historical story can help to explain why men are more violent than women. The authors claim that men are more xenophobic than women, because they are wired to wage war. The male warrior hypothesis makes many predictions that don't pan out. There are dubious presuppositions as well. Social history explains such facts by proposing that men have taken power by their greater strength, leading to violent competition and the abuse of women. To reduce male violence, it is not sufficient to reform men, as the defenders of the male warrior hypothesis recommend.
thinking skills There is no logic in connecting an office copier with 'nose'. That is to say, there is no 'logic' in our normal undertanding of logic. This understanding is based on passive surface information systems. There is, however, the logic of active surface information systems, and that is the logic of a patterning system. At the same time, the juxtaposition is a logic of action. JUXTAPOSITIONAs many readers will know, the random juxtaposition is one of the many tools of lateral thinking. • What has smell to do with a copier? Smell is a sensation. • What could smell be used for? When copiers run out of paper or toner, there is usually a light signal - perhaps a red light. SMELL SIGNALWhat about a 'smell signal'? There could be different smells for different things. MOVEMENTThe above example illustrates the process of 'movement', which can be practised until a skill is built up in this operation. Fluency, flexibility and fluidity with concepts form a key part of any creativity. 1. DEAD END2.