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Brain, Interrupted

In most situations, the person juggling e-mail, text messaging, Facebook and a meeting is [not multitasking, but] really doing something called “rapid toggling between tasks,” and is engaged in constant context switching.

As economics students know, switching involves costs. But how much? When a consumer switches banks, or a company switches suppliers, it’s relatively easy [...]

Amusing | Culture | Health | Journalism | Modding | Rhetoric

More U.S. Children Being Diagnosed With Youthful Tendency Disorder

Cameron’s psychological problems run even deeper. He can name every one of his beloved, imaginary Pokemon characters, but the plain realities of the actual world he inhabits are an enigma: Ask Cameron the name of the real-life city councilman sponsoring the referendum to renovate the park just across the street from his house–a park he [...]

Culture | Cyberculture | Design | Health | Media | Modding | Technology

New Voices For The Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets An Upgrade

Wonderful, inspiring article that uses text, photos, and audio samples to tell how a researcher remixed wordless sounds to create an artificial voice for a voiceless child.

Patel can take that sound, run it through a computer and find out all kinds of things about how that person would sound if that person could speak [...]

Amusing | Books | Health | Language | Literature | Modding | Writing

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Banned Performance Enhancing Substances in Literary Competitions.

PROUSTZAC

Enhances and enriches remembrance of things past. Can lead to increased carbohydrate consumption.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Banned Performance Enhancing Substances in Literary Competitions..

Academia | Culture | Education | Health | Humanities | Nature | Science

Know What It Really Feels Like To Be Learning Disabled?

Most teachers are those who, not surprisingly, have made it through the educational system smoothly enough to replicate it, even when they think of themselves as radical reformers of that system. Especially English teachers. English teachers are the gatekeepers to the normal brained. (I see this all the time when I am hanging out with [...]

Health | Nature | Science

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

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Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works.

Health | Nature | Science

Nature Has A Formula That Tells Us When It’s Time To Die

6octopus

[S]ize seems to predict lifespan. The formula seems to be nature’s way to preserve larger creatures who need time to grow and prosper, and it not only operates in all living things, but even in the cells of living things. It tells animals for example, that there’s a universal limit to life, that though they [...]

Culture | Education | Health | Rhetoric

Why You Never Truly Leave High School

It’s also abundantly, poignantly clear that during puberty, kids have absolutely no clue how to assess character or read the behavior of others. In 2005, the sociologist Koji Ueno looked at one of the largest samples of adolescents in the United States, and found that only 37 percent of their friendships were reciprocal—meaning that when [...]

Current_Events | Health | Science

The No-Nonsense, Non-Alarmist, Essential Guide to the Flu – Kicker

Let’s get this straight first… Flu is the respiratory sickness caused by the influenza virus that threatens the functions of your nose, throat and lungs.

Flu is a virus that spreads by injecting its genetic information into the nuclei of your cells. In other words, it hijacks the good cells and controls their function to [...]

Academia | Culture | Health | Media | PopCult | Science | Sociology

Does Movie Violence Increase Violent Crime?

The Twitter version: There’s a slight decrease in violent crime when violent movies are playing. People who like violence tend to go watch the movie instead of going out and doing violent things.

Laboratory experiments in psychology find that media violence increases aggression in the short run. We analyze whether media violence affects violent [...]