Think you’ve read that book review before? It’s probably a bad case of reviewers lexicon.
In Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing, Bob Harris adds ‘poignant’, ‘compelling’, ‘intriguing’, ‘eschew’, ‘craft’, ‘muse’ and ‘lyrical’ to the ageing—but still achingly poignant—list of words that reviewers and publishers love too much (where ‘achingly beautiful’, ‘darkly comic’, ‘deceptively simple’, ‘penetrating insights’, and ‘that rare thing’ make an appearance, among others).
via Intelligent Life
Cabinet of Wonders provides us with everything you’ve ever wanted to know about fingerprints, but were afraid to ask. I particularly enjoyed this tidbit:
Spider monkeys, whose prehensile tail-tips are so sensitive and flexible that they can pick a dime up off a floor, also have prints on the bare spot at the end of their tails. Since the tails are used not only as a sort of third arm when swinging in the trees (as a safeguard from falling), but often supports the entire weight of their bodies while they feed, this would make sense: fingerprints, and other places with “friction ridges” – the volar regions – generally tend to occur where one needs to grip something. This can mean gripping an object to keep from dropping it, or (as in the case of trees) to keep it from dropping you, or simply to keep your feet steady on the rocks so you don’t fall off a cliff.
But how does it work?
via Seed
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a procedure in which a ‘brain pacemaker’ is implanted into a patient’s brain. This ‘pacemaker’ then sends electrical impulses to specific areas of the brain in order to alleviate the symptoms of typically treatment-resistant conditions.
Mind Hacks has made a list of the conditions treated using DBS:
Bluegrass musician Eddie Adcock recently underwent DBS surgery to treat tremors that were preventing him from playing. Via Mind Hacks, the BBC has a video of Adcock playing banjo whilst having surgery as a way to test the surgery’s success. (If you can’t see the embedded video, an ABC News report of the surgery has been uploaded to YouTube.)
Foreign Policy presents A Trail of Diamonds – a photo essay following the diamond trade from mine to bride.
It reminds me of a Janine Roberts interview (author of Glitter and Greed) where she discusses how the manipulation of supply and advertising created the myth of the diamond wedding ring and made Ernest Oppenheimer (who was in control of De Beers) a very rich man.
Dr. Rob of Shrink Talk talks with the PhilaLawyer on the intersection of work and life. The topic for this part of the discussion is boredom and job satisfaction. Here are a few choice cuts:
PL: I don’t think anyone is wired to sit in front of a computer in the same office, every day, doing the same task work for forty years. I think that’s demeaning, inherently inhuman, the sort of thing that makes people snap. I’d love to hear your input on that.
Dr. Rob: […] I hear a lot of complaints about the inherent emptiness of the work. Rarely do lawyers talk of justice, intellectual debate or creating a better world. Rather, I hear more about damage control, paper work, finding loopholes in the system and trying to make as much money as possible, for either themselves or their clients.Dr. Rob: Research suggests that the use of one’s skills and abilities is one of the biggest predictors of job satisfaction. Lawyers often tell me that spend most of the day pushing papers, filing motions, calming clients and freaking out about their “billable hours.” Would any lawyers consider that a use of their skills?
PL: Billable hours stand at the heart of everything wrong in the modern legal industry. Putting aside the lack of creativity and dehumanizing aspect of the structure, billable hours encourage fraud and compel needless busywork. […] If we eliminated billable hours and paid lawyers on a result or unit value basis, you’d see a lot of cases settle a lot more quickly. And a lot more happy, productive and engaged lawyers.PL:You want a cure for routine? Reinvent yourself every couple years. It’s hell on the innards, but you won’t run out of shit to talk about at parties.
After reading this, I think the Philadelphia Lawyer’s upcoming book, Happy Hour is for Amateurs: A Lost Decade in the World’s Worst Profession, should be an amusing and interesting read.
As an accompaniment to the rather dense Age of the Earth article on the USGS website, there is a great graphical representation of geologic time available: The Geologic Time Spiral.
If I were a teacher, I would definitely get the poster-sized version up on my wall.
This short video of Salvador Dali’s appearance on What’s My Line? is rather entertaining.
Naturally, he’s as surreal as his art. At one point a contestant mused: “You are a human being?”
Popular Mechanics has come up with a list of 100 Skills Every Man Should Know. Even though it has more diversity than The Independent‘s list, I don’t think it’s as good. Topics covered include:
via Kottke
Noting that knowledge is growing at an exponential rate, Kevin Kelly argues that thanks to science, our ignorance is growing exponentially faster.
If knowledge is growing exponentially we should be quickly running out of puzzles. Because of our accelerating rate of learning, a few writers declared we must be in the age of “the end of science.”
Yet the paradox of science is that every answer breeds at least two new questions. More answers, more questions. Telescopes and microscopes expanded not only what we knew, but what we didn’t know. They allowed us to spy into our ignorance. New and better tools permit us new and better questions.
Thus even though our knowledge is expanding exponentially, our questions are expanding exponentially faster. And as mathematicians will tell you, the widening gap between two exponential curves is itself an exponential curve. That gap between questions and answers is our ignorance […] in other words, science is a method that chiefly expands our ignorance rather than our knowledge.
via Seed
Squeezing the article into a tenuous comparison between Obama and McCain, The Boston Globe has a nonetheless interesting article on recent research into the benefits of, and the differences between, instinctual (gut) decisions and methodical (rational) ones.
The crucial skill, scientists are now saying, is the ability to think about your own thinking, or metacognition, as it is known. Unless people vigilantly reflect on how they are making an important decision, they won’t be able to properly use their instincts, or know when their gut should be ignored. Indeed, according to this emerging new vision of decision-making, the best predictor of good judgement isn’t intuition or experience or intelligence. Rather, it’s the willingness to engage in introspection, to cultivate what Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, calls “the art of self-overhearing.”
In the early 1990s, Damasio began publishing a series of landmark papers describing the symptoms of patients who, after a brain injury, were unable to perceive or experience emotion. At the time, most scientists assumed that such a deficit would lead to more rational decisions, since the patients were free of their irrational instincts.
Damasio found the opposite: these dispassionate patients made consistently bad decisions. Some made terrible investments and ended up bankrupt; others started drinking heavily and getting into fights; most just spent hours deliberating over irrelevant details, such as where to eat lunch. According to Damasio, when people are cut off from their emotions even the most banal decisions become all but impossible.
via Seed
