FREAK-est Links
This week, the debate continues on whether talent matters; does coffee lower the risk of cancer in women? Felix Salmon examines the rising costs of tuition; Groupon nearly bankrupts a London bakery; nice guys actually can finish first; why men of average height have more children, and the dawn of neuroeconomics. Read More »
National Treasure 2.7 Deciphered
In one of my previous posts, I asked for help interpreting a rather bizarre dream imagining a new plotline for a National Treasure movie. These movies often involve deciphering secret codes, and so did my post. My [day]dream was actually an aid to help me remember 40 digits of the irrational, transcendental constant of Leonhard Euler, e.
Here is the dream again with numeric annotations in brackets: Read More »
Flight Status
If you are in the least bit an airplane junkie, you should follow the advice of Jason Kottke (no relation to Daniel, or Leo, fwiw) and search for “planes overhead” on the Wolfram Alpha search engine. It returns a list of airplanes above your geographical location, including carrier, origin/destination, altitude, angle, type, slant distance, as well as a sky map so you can find the actual planes in the sky:
Does Walking Through Doorways Cause Forgetfulness?
We’ve all been there: you’ve got a million things you’re trying to get done, you’re running behind, you walk through a door into another room to get something and… wait a minute, what are you looking for again? Son of a…
According to new research (PDF here) from Notre Dame psychology professor Gabriel Radvansky, passing through doorways actually does cause us to forget things because of the way the brain compartmentalizes information. Doorways, according to Radvansky, serve as “event boundaries in the mind.” The simple act of having to adjust to a new setting takes just enough mental effort to cause a break in short-term memory. “Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized,” says Radvansky. Read More »
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. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie features Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and was made by a dream team of documentary directors. Paste Magazine named it one of the 