I heart Aquatic Ape Theory!

Prepare to be astonished

Wow.

"The past isn't dead yet. It isn't even past." Go here now.

Dancing makes you smarter!

Researchers from The Albert Einstein College of Medicine studied the link between mental acuity and physical and cognitive recreational activities in senior citizens 75 years and older. Turns out, the best protection against dementia was frequent dancing!

"They studied cognitive activities such as reading books, writing for pleasure, doing crossword puzzles, playing cards and playing musical instruments. And they studied physical activities like playing tennis or golf, swimming, bicycling, dancing, walking for exercise and doing housework.

One of the surprises of the study was that almost none of the physical activities appeared to offer any protection against dementia. There can be cardiovascular benefits of course, but the focus of this study was the mind. There was one important exception: the only physical activity to offer protection against dementia was frequent dancing.

People who played the hardest gained the most: For example, seniors who did crossword puzzles four days a week had a 47% lower risk of dementia than those who did the puzzles once a week.

Reading - 35% reduced risk of dementia
Bicycling and swimming - 0%
Playing golf - 0%
Dancing frequently - 76%.

That was the greatest risk reduction of any activity studied, cognitive or physical."

Musings by Richard Powers can be found here.
The original article is over here.

Warning: Dancing to this song may cause your brain to re-wire itself

I mean...it's just so...I'm not sure what...it's like...CANNOT.STOP.LISTENING.

I am so transfixed by this. I really think it might be re-wiring my brain. After all, how often do the Eminem-related neurons get to talk with the Eurhytmics-related neurons? NEVER. Granted, the first time I heard it was at Flipside after four days of eating nothing but intoxicants and breakfast tacos, so my judgement might be a little skewed. But it's good, right? You want to listen to it again, right? Plus, I don't know what happens around 1:37, but I do know you should not fight it.

Things that make me cry in my cubicle. Part I

Maybe I need a new category of entries, like "Things that make me cry in my cubicle." It can be a mixture of the soul-crushing monotony of my workday life and the touching things I find on the internet to avoid the soul-crushing monotony of my workday life. Like this article about a dog that saves a baby kangaroo.

Morality: 2012

There is so much interesting research being done on morality right now. In this video, Jonathan Haidt discusses the difference in moral judgments made by liberals and conservatives. His research suggests that liberals make moral judgments based upon two moral foundations (harm and fairness), while conservatives make moral judgments based upon five moral foundations (harm, fairness, in-group, authority and purity). He suggests that liberals have a view of morality based upon protecting the individual, while conservatives have a view of morality based upon protecting the individual and larger social groups and institutions. Interesting...

Yummy brain food

My friend David lent me the book What is Your Dangerous Idea? Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable. Below are some of the yummier nuggets of brain candy.

* "In a very real sense, then, virtually all organisms, including humans, are sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy." ~Scott D. Sampson

* "Brains cannot become minds without bodies....Perhaps thought and feeling are only possible because the brain interacts with its body and listens to the things it tells it. And perhaps much of how the brain understands the world is only possible because of the brain's experience of controlling a body....We may build computers that understand language but cannot say anything meaningful, at least until we can give them 'extended tactile experiences.' To put it another way, computers may not be able to make sense until they can have sex." ~Alun Anderson

* "Our brains may never be well enough equipped to understand the universe, and we are fooling ourselves if we think they will. Why should we expect to be able eventually to understand how the universe originated, evolved, and operates? While human brains are complex and capable of many amazing things, there is not necessarily any match between the complexity of the universe and the complexity of our brains, any more than a dog's brain is capable of understanding every detail of the world of cats and bones, or the dynamics of stick trajectories when thrown. Dogs get by and so do we, but do we have a right to expect that the harder we puzzle over these things the nearer we will get to the truth?" ~Karl Sabbagh

* "Relativity makes it clear that asking, 'What is happening right now on Andromeda?' is complete nonsense. There is no 'right now' elsewhere in the universe; nevertheless, we keep thinking of the universe as if there were an immense clock ticking away the instants, and we have a lot of difficulty adapting to the idea that a phrase like 'the present state of the universe right now' is physical nonsense." ~Carlo Rovelli

* "The self that is the particular, networked set of connections of matter compromising our mortal bodies will one day die, of course. But the self that is the sum of each separate individual condensate in us of energy-turned-matter is already ancient and will live forever. Each fundamental particle may one day return to energy or from there revert back to matter. But in one form or another, it will not cease. In this sense, we and all around us are eternal, immortal, and profoundly connected." ~Carolyn C. Porco

* "Nothing can be more dangerous than nothing. Humanity has always been uncomfortable with zero and the void....But the emptiness is all around us. Most of the universe is void. Even as we huddle are our hearths and invent stories to convince ourselves that the cosmos is warm and full and inviting, nothingness stares back at us with empty eye sockets." ~Charles Seife

* And then there is this one, which I cannot adequately summarize, but is full of delicious yumminess.

More book art!

Alice in Wonderland yumminess by Abelardo Morell.


And the work of photographer Cara Barer.

237 reasons to have sex

"After asking nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, the researchers have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons — everything from 'I wanted to feel closer to God' to 'I was drunk.' They even found a few people who claimed to have been motivated by the desire to have a child."

An article on the research is here.

I have no idea how to even begin to make sense of this.

"For every older brother a man has, his chances of being gay increase by one third." But, this is only true if the man is right-handed.

The world? Still strange. In case you lost track.

I learn something new every day

Did you know there is something known as brain sand? Brain sand! It is not as silly as its name - it's just calcium and magnesium matter found in the pineal gland. But still...brain sand, brainsand, brains and.

Also, the pineal gland really is related to the third eye. "In some reptiles this pineal eye is an almost fully-developed eye with lens, vitreous humor, and retina."

The world? Still strange. In case you lost track.

Mmm...brain sand.