Display by Label: Brain
Radiolab: Listen and Evolve
Friday, April 18, 2008 | comments (7)
Did you know that birds and aquatic mammals have the ability to sleep with one side of their brain wide awake? They do. It's called unihemispheric slow-wave sleep. It's why ducks can sleep with one eye open and why dolphins don't drown while taking naps. Land mammals seem to have lost this ability, maybe because we've learned to build safe enclosures for ourselves, or we sleep in packs, or because sleeping in water is just so annoying and makes our skin prune.
Okay, here's another: have you ever spent all day trying to learn something—a piece of music, for instance—and you just can't seem to get it and then you sleep on it and the next day you can play it perfectly? One theory as to why this happens is that there is a little janitor crew inside your head that comes in and washes your brain clean while you sleep, getting rid of the garbage and leaving behind the important stuff. And the theory makes sense. Figuratively, of course. Though I really wish it were literal, because I went ahead and named my janitors: Elvis and Bigsby.
Oh! Then there's this: have you spent all day doing something like surfing (the ocean variety, not online), and then find yourself dreaming vividly about it that night, so much so that you can actually feel the water against your body? It's your brain's way of making sense of those new problems it was tackling all day (the waves) and what's really interesting is when it takes those problems and mixes them with other problems you've encountered in your life and creates new situations out of them. Which is why you might have a dream about doing yoga on a ski slope. Or riding horses in the middle of the ocean.
If any of this interests you, you might like to listen to last year's May 25th Radiolab episode on sleep.
But be careful, because you might subscribe to their podcast and get sucked in and wind up listening to every episode, back-to-back until your head explodes. Which, luckily has not happened to me, yet. But I'm skirting a very fine line. Because Radiolab is definitely my new favorite show. And I've listened to a good many episodes over the last week. It's sort of like This American Life in that each episode consists of stories; however, all the stories have a scientific slant. Many seem to focus on some aspect of neuroscience, and how studying the brain can shed light on topics such as Stress, Laughter, or "Who Am I?"—all of which are actual episode titles. But there is also an anthropological and philosophical bent to the discussion. (Is laughter, by necessity a social phenomenon? More importantly, is laughter the thing that makes us human?) And sometimes a little physics works it's way in there too, such as the episode on "Time" where they discuss relativity, and how time can slow down or speed up depending on who you are and what you're doing. Not figuratively, but actually.
Or course, this might all sound kind of nerdy and a little too intense for leisure-time listening. But the way the show is done—as this sort of ongoing casual conversation between host/producer Jad Abumrad and co-host Robert Krulwich—it doesn't come across that way at all. Instead, it seems like the hosts are learning (and really struggling with) the topics along with you and you feel a part of the conversation. It's entertaining and—gasp!—informative at the same time. Indeed, Radiolab is helping me to evolve ... in all kinds of ways. Pretty soon, I'm hoping I'll be able to sleep with one eye open again.
link to this | comments (7) | File: Surfing Radio Brain
Okay, here's another: have you ever spent all day trying to learn something—a piece of music, for instance—and you just can't seem to get it and then you sleep on it and the next day you can play it perfectly? One theory as to why this happens is that there is a little janitor crew inside your head that comes in and washes your brain clean while you sleep, getting rid of the garbage and leaving behind the important stuff. And the theory makes sense. Figuratively, of course. Though I really wish it were literal, because I went ahead and named my janitors: Elvis and Bigsby.
Oh! Then there's this: have you spent all day doing something like surfing (the ocean variety, not online), and then find yourself dreaming vividly about it that night, so much so that you can actually feel the water against your body? It's your brain's way of making sense of those new problems it was tackling all day (the waves) and what's really interesting is when it takes those problems and mixes them with other problems you've encountered in your life and creates new situations out of them. Which is why you might have a dream about doing yoga on a ski slope. Or riding horses in the middle of the ocean.
If any of this interests you, you might like to listen to last year's May 25th Radiolab episode on sleep.
But be careful, because you might subscribe to their podcast and get sucked in and wind up listening to every episode, back-to-back until your head explodes. Which, luckily has not happened to me, yet. But I'm skirting a very fine line. Because Radiolab is definitely my new favorite show. And I've listened to a good many episodes over the last week. It's sort of like This American Life in that each episode consists of stories; however, all the stories have a scientific slant. Many seem to focus on some aspect of neuroscience, and how studying the brain can shed light on topics such as Stress, Laughter, or "Who Am I?"—all of which are actual episode titles. But there is also an anthropological and philosophical bent to the discussion. (Is laughter, by necessity a social phenomenon? More importantly, is laughter the thing that makes us human?) And sometimes a little physics works it's way in there too, such as the episode on "Time" where they discuss relativity, and how time can slow down or speed up depending on who you are and what you're doing. Not figuratively, but actually.
Or course, this might all sound kind of nerdy and a little too intense for leisure-time listening. But the way the show is done—as this sort of ongoing casual conversation between host/producer Jad Abumrad and co-host Robert Krulwich—it doesn't come across that way at all. Instead, it seems like the hosts are learning (and really struggling with) the topics along with you and you feel a part of the conversation. It's entertaining and—gasp!—informative at the same time. Indeed, Radiolab is helping me to evolve ... in all kinds of ways. Pretty soon, I'm hoping I'll be able to sleep with one eye open again.
link to this | comments (7) | File: Surfing Radio Brain
SXSWi Round-up #2 (and final)
Monday, March 20, 2006 | comments (0)
Here are a few more tidbits from SXSW that I wanted to get out there while they were still fresh in my mind. Each of these topics could probably be their own blog post. Strike that. Each of these topics could be, and in some cases are, their own books. So I'm obviously not doing any of them justice here, but I still wanted to jot down a few impressions and point to some other places where the conversations continue. Also, there is some video footage of the conference up, for anybody who is interested.
From the presentation given by Daniel Gilbert, How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times: "Expected happiness = odds of gain x value of gain." Gilbert went on to suggest that most of the time we do not meet our 'expected happiness' due to errors in calculating either the odds or value. For instance, the odds can seem multiplied by how memorable something is. We all remember standing in the 'wrong line' at the grocery store, which heightens our perceived odds of it happening again. It was a good presentation. I'm not sure we ever got to the 'do the right thing at all possible times' secret (which I think was intentional), but we definitely got closer to understanding the fallacies in reason that make us think that such a feat is possible. I think I may get his book when it comes out in soft cover. In case you're interested, LukeW gives a more detailed synopsis of the talk on his site.
In the Saturday keynote, Jason Fried from 37signals had some great comments about how 'less is more' when working on a new idea or project. In reaction to the age-old problem of 'not having enough time' one thing he suggested was that less time can actually work in your favor. Basically, he reasoned that people are going to waste time anyway, so why not 'procrastinate creatively.' I love this idea, and it touches upon something I had posted about once before. Some other jewels from Fried's talk: If you have too much money, you're going to build stuff you don't need into your product. Less money can be a good thing. It will help to simplify your product. Most importantly . . . CHARGE for your product! People will pay for things they find valuable.
Charles MacInerney gave an interesting talk on Increasing Creativity at Work. The discussion began with some rather abstract concepts of states of mind: beta, alpha, and theta. Beta is this crazy place where I unfortunately spend most of my time. It is a place where the world seems to be menacing and chaotic. Alpha, now this is the goal - it's where things are more calm and relaxed. Theta is good too, but it's kind of this dream-like state where it's hard to actually get anything accomplished. Still, this is the state of mind where big break-throughs occur, so it's good to be here at least part of the time. A pretty good run-down of the different states of mind can be found here. MacInerney also talked about mind mapping, which I'd actually like to read up on more. Anyway, the whole thing made me want to take yoga classes. I think it might do me some good. Might help me reach the alpha and theta brain states more often.
There was a really interesting discussion on 'Tagging 2.0.' Christian Crumlish has some great notes on the talk here. And Prentiss Riddle summarizes the anti-tagging stance he took for the panel here. The cool thing about this panel, in my opinion, was it seemed more like a philosophy class than a tech panel. A lot of open-ended questions concerning language and meaning in relation to the Web. There was a lingering question of whether or not tagging, as a system of organizing information, really worked. Before the discussion, I was a bit skeptical about the use of tags. And I also happened to agree with Prentiss on the points he raised against tagging, specifically in regard to their practical use and their interoperability with each other. However, despite all that, I do think tags show promise in helping to organize information online. They help give meaning to an object, based on aspects of identity, culture, community, and shared vocabulary. The meaning of the object is not just a 'definition' of the object itself. It is also the identity of the person who linked to the object, the vocabulary used to identify the object, and the culture and community in which the object is identified. As an example, my tagging a photo can mean something different than when that same photo is tagged using the same vocabulary by another person. These relationships in meaning were referred to as the "folksonomy triad" by one of the speakers, Thomas Vander Wal. Interesting stuff.
Finally, while I did not attend the panel, Chat, who I met at the conference said the microformats talk was really good. I intend to read up on microformats some more.
So that's about the extent of my brain-dump from SXSW. I could go on. For instance, there was a good panel on CSS trouble-shooting. But if I talk about this conference any more, I'm surely going to bore you. I'm already beginning to bore myself. Re-telling this stuff isn't the same as listening to it first-hand.
link to this | comments (0) | File: Yoga Tags sxsw Brain
From the presentation given by Daniel Gilbert, How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times: "Expected happiness = odds of gain x value of gain." Gilbert went on to suggest that most of the time we do not meet our 'expected happiness' due to errors in calculating either the odds or value. For instance, the odds can seem multiplied by how memorable something is. We all remember standing in the 'wrong line' at the grocery store, which heightens our perceived odds of it happening again. It was a good presentation. I'm not sure we ever got to the 'do the right thing at all possible times' secret (which I think was intentional), but we definitely got closer to understanding the fallacies in reason that make us think that such a feat is possible. I think I may get his book when it comes out in soft cover. In case you're interested, LukeW gives a more detailed synopsis of the talk on his site.
In the Saturday keynote, Jason Fried from 37signals had some great comments about how 'less is more' when working on a new idea or project. In reaction to the age-old problem of 'not having enough time' one thing he suggested was that less time can actually work in your favor. Basically, he reasoned that people are going to waste time anyway, so why not 'procrastinate creatively.' I love this idea, and it touches upon something I had posted about once before. Some other jewels from Fried's talk: If you have too much money, you're going to build stuff you don't need into your product. Less money can be a good thing. It will help to simplify your product. Most importantly . . . CHARGE for your product! People will pay for things they find valuable.
Charles MacInerney gave an interesting talk on Increasing Creativity at Work. The discussion began with some rather abstract concepts of states of mind: beta, alpha, and theta. Beta is this crazy place where I unfortunately spend most of my time. It is a place where the world seems to be menacing and chaotic. Alpha, now this is the goal - it's where things are more calm and relaxed. Theta is good too, but it's kind of this dream-like state where it's hard to actually get anything accomplished. Still, this is the state of mind where big break-throughs occur, so it's good to be here at least part of the time. A pretty good run-down of the different states of mind can be found here. MacInerney also talked about mind mapping, which I'd actually like to read up on more. Anyway, the whole thing made me want to take yoga classes. I think it might do me some good. Might help me reach the alpha and theta brain states more often.
There was a really interesting discussion on 'Tagging 2.0.' Christian Crumlish has some great notes on the talk here. And Prentiss Riddle summarizes the anti-tagging stance he took for the panel here. The cool thing about this panel, in my opinion, was it seemed more like a philosophy class than a tech panel. A lot of open-ended questions concerning language and meaning in relation to the Web. There was a lingering question of whether or not tagging, as a system of organizing information, really worked. Before the discussion, I was a bit skeptical about the use of tags. And I also happened to agree with Prentiss on the points he raised against tagging, specifically in regard to their practical use and their interoperability with each other. However, despite all that, I do think tags show promise in helping to organize information online. They help give meaning to an object, based on aspects of identity, culture, community, and shared vocabulary. The meaning of the object is not just a 'definition' of the object itself. It is also the identity of the person who linked to the object, the vocabulary used to identify the object, and the culture and community in which the object is identified. As an example, my tagging a photo can mean something different than when that same photo is tagged using the same vocabulary by another person. These relationships in meaning were referred to as the "folksonomy triad" by one of the speakers, Thomas Vander Wal. Interesting stuff.
Finally, while I did not attend the panel, Chat, who I met at the conference said the microformats talk was really good. I intend to read up on microformats some more.
So that's about the extent of my brain-dump from SXSW. I could go on. For instance, there was a good panel on CSS trouble-shooting. But if I talk about this conference any more, I'm surely going to bore you. I'm already beginning to bore myself. Re-telling this stuff isn't the same as listening to it first-hand.
link to this | comments (0) | File: Yoga Tags sxsw Brain
