February 2012
Lessons from Asia’s Tiger teachers
What is the Big Idea?
Chinese parents have always placed a high premium on education and now they have the numbers to show for it. Shanghai’s students scored the highest in the most recent round of math, reading and science tests conducted in 2009 by OECD’s Program for International School Assessment (PISA).
Effective strategies,...
A psychonaut’s adventures in videoland
On camera Hamilton Morris has smoked Amanita muscaria fungi in Iceland, interviewed a woman who endured torture by psychedelics, rubbed the secretions of an Amazonian frog into his burns and, in Haiti, dusted himself with the voodoo zombie poison Tetrodotoxin, which was thankfully an inactive batch, since even at low doses, this neurotoxin is...
So, yesterday, I really should have started on my technical paper. Didn’t. I was too busy buying vintage Chanel for full-time employment.
Immortal worms defy aging
The discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may shed light on the possibilities of alleviating ageing and age-related characteristics in human cells.
Planarian worms have amazed scientists with their apparently limitless ability to regenerate. Researchers have been studying their ability to replace aged or damaged tissues and cells...
Upper class people more likely to cheat: study
The seven-part study by psychologists at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Toronto analyzed people’s behavior through a series of experiments.
For instance, drivers of expensive vehicles such as Mercedes, BMW and Toyota’s Prius hybrid were seen breaking the rules more often at four-way intersections than...
Really? The claim: your body can determine when you get sick
The immune system and the body’s internal clock are intimately tied.
Blood cells that fight disease ebb and flow with the body’s daily circadian rhythms. Levels of circulating T-cells peak at nighttime, for example, and then gradually subside. Studies have also shown that the immune system reacts to certain infections by manipulating...
Chilled out
A poll contradicts what we thought about income and happiness
Despite global economic gloom, the world is a happier place than it was before the financial crisis began. That is the counterintuitive conclusion of a poll of 19,000 adults in 24 countries by Ipsos, a research company. Some 77% of respondents now describe themselves as happy, up three points on 2007, the last year...
Can everyone stop with the gas mask, already. So over fucking done.
#whenoncecoolthingsgomainstream #eightypercentyofpeopleruineverything #tryhard
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the Weather.
- Bill Hicks
#54 Fucked or fun fact about me
The guy who asked me out, after not revealing who he was….for 10 minutes or so, on the phone………was a girlfriend’s father. Yes. Father. Full-blood related FATHER. Who had her when he was young. But still. Yuck. Gross. Freaky. Of course, I ended the friendship. Was more than a tad weird and fucked up yo.
P.S. SHE EVEN SAID “DON’T MIND WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE...
Ok, just so you know, two drinks on an intermittent fasting program - hits you more like five.
The electronic brain? : your mind vs. a computer
In a 2011 interview, physicist Stephen Hawking declared, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail.” Of course, the brain is not a computer in the literal sense of the word, but the brain-as-computer metaphor is a powerful one. Long before the invention of the PC, people used the word...
Sat In Your Lap by Kate Bush
Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving
“Clever” is the word that perhaps describes ENTPs best. The professor who juggles half a dozen ideas for research papers and grant proposals in his mind while giving a highly entertaining lecture on an abstruse subject is a classic example of the type. So is the stand-up comedian whose lampoons are both funny and incisively accurate.
ENTPs...
Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving
INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them.
Precise about their descriptions, INTPs will often correct others (or be sorely tempted to) if the shade of meaning is a bit off. While annoying to the less concise, this fine discrimination...
The mind is a guess
My recent Beyond Boundaries column for the latest issue of The Psychologist explores how the idea of the ‘mind’ as a single distinct concept is an assumption that many cultures don’t share.
I’d like to talk about people who don’t have minds. This isn’t going to be one of those ingenious philosophy arguments where I claim that we’re all zombies, nor a smug assertion that...
“I can live with doubt and uncertainty. I think it’s much more interesting...”
– Richard Feynman
Early Indicators: High Functioning Autism and Aspergers Syndrome
Disabled World - Disability News for all the Family: http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_2255.shtml#ixzz1kBLycV4A
Children with high functioning autism or Asperger’s Syndrome are often misdiagnosed and underserved in our country. The difficulty in understanding and acknowledging autism, primarily...
Everything you know about dieting is wrong, say US scientists who have devised a new formula for calculating calories and weight loss that they hope will revolutionize the way people tackle obesity.
Obesity rates have doubled worldwide in the past 30 years, coinciding with a growing food surplus, and the ensuing epidemic has sparked a multibillion dollar weight loss industry that has largely...
Foundation Medicine: personalizing cancer drugs
Foundation Medicine is offering a test that helps oncologists choose drugs targeted to the genetic profile of a patient’s tumor cells. Has personalized cancer treatment finally arrived?
Michael Pellini fires up his computer and opens a report on a patient with a tumor of the salivary gland. The patient had surgery, but the cancer recurred....
Happy Birthday, My Viking Heart. I love you. Love always, Me.
When questioned why my insomnia seems so much of an urgent issue now, despite having suffered from it since my teens - I quipped that it doesn’t bother my sleep but that of my boyfriend’s. It was never an issue for me. Ever.
However, for now, I’m just gonna give in to it ( again ) and not worry over it anymore - like I haven’t ever.
I’m in quite good company. Sir...
The myth of the eight hour sleep
We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.
...
But I’m really tempted to work for this investment bank in one of the best parts of the financial district, for a shitload of money.
So, I may be applying for a job in biomedical product development.
“A woman loves nothing more than to be wrapped in chains.”
– Coco Chanel
How exercise fuels the brain
Moving the body demands a lot from the brain. Exercise activates countless neurons, which generate, receive and interpret repeated, rapid-fire messages from the nervous system, coordinating muscle contractions, vision, balance, organ function and all of the complex interactions of bodily systems that allow you to take one step, then another.
This increase in...
Idag skal jeg bake kjøttkaker og toscakake.
I wish I were close to you
As the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.
- Akahito
Why quantum theory is misunderstood
What’s the Latest Development?
When Brian Cox, a particle physicist at Manchester University, recently gave a lecture on quantum mechanics to a popular audience, he uttered the phrase, ‘everything is connected to everything else’. It means the subatomic constituents of your body are constantly changing in response to changes occurring at...
