The future is here
I’m not normally one to endorse massive multinational corporations but seriously, this is unreal!
Evolution of the Mind: Fallacies of Psychology
Some evolutionary psychologists have made widely popularized claims about how the human mind evolved, but other scholars argue that the grand claims lack solid evidence.
Among Charles Darwin’s lasting legacies is our knowledge that the human mind evolved by some adaptive process.
A major, widely discussed branch of evolutionary psychology—Pop EP—holds that the human brain has many specialized mechanisms that evolved to solve the adaptive problems of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
The author and several other scholars suggest that some assumptions of Pop EP are flawed: that we can know the psychology of our Stone Age ancestors, that we can thereby figure out how distinctively human traits evolved, that our minds have not evolved much since the Stone Age, and that standard psychological questionnaires yield clear evidence of the adaptations.
Why some people are better with faces than names
The reason why some people are better with faces than names has been identified by scientists and it appears to be due to their higher levels of a special “socialising” hormone called Oxytocin.
Researchers have discovered that Oxytocin, a hormone well known for its role in helping mothers to bond with their babies during breastfeeding, is also involved in helping people recognise familiar faces.
The findings are the first time to shown the hormone in important in helping to remember social interaction.
“Recognising a familiar face is a crucial feature of successful social interaction in humans,” said Dr Peter Klaver at the University of Zurich, the senior author of the new study, which was led by Ulrike Rimmele, PhD, at New York University. “In this study, we investigated for the first time the systematic effect of oxytocin on social memory in humans.”
Telegraph (Thanks Katherine)
Atheist bus ads roll in London today: massive success
A UK campaign to raise money to buy London bus-ads to promote atheism was a massive success — 800 of the busses took the streets today, and the campaign is spreading around the world.
Today, thanks to many Cif readers, the overall total raised for the Atheist Bus Campaign stands at a truly overwhelming £135,000, breaking our original target of £5,500 by over 2400%. Given this unexpected amount, I’m very excited to tell you that 800 buses – instead of the 30 we were initially aiming for – are now rolling out across the UK with the slogan, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, in locations all over England, Scotland and Wales, including Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, Cardiff, Devon, Leeds, Bristol and Aberdeen.
TV-Brain Workout
Reach for the remote and hone your concentration skills: Lowering the TV volume a little more each day can teach you to filter out background noise and improve focus, says University of California, San Francisco neuroscientist Michael Merzenich, PhD. Your training at home could even pay off at work by helping you block out the loudmouth in the next cubicle or fully concentrate on a meeting while ignoring noisy distractions outside.
FILMING TODAY
Today we’re filming with Daniel Kish, an extraordinary teacher of ‘echolocation’ for blind people. Completely blind himself, here he is riding a bike. He’s able to ‘see’ his environment by making tongue-clicks and then interpreting the return of the sound. I’ve just been walking around an estate with him, and listened to him describe the environment in detail, even buildings a hundred yards away. He plays laser-tag, rides bikes and skateboards, ice skates and plays basketball with his blind students. It’s an extraordinary ability. I can’t even get off a bike without falling over.
He is able to organize his world spatially, which is what he teaches: something the rest of us take for granted. But a lot of blind people organize temporally: objects are so many seconds away rather than spatially placed. Watching him trace the shape of a car with his hand, I was intrigued by the fact he had what sounded like a visual ‘space’ for the vehicle, but no visual representation to put in that space. His reply to this conundrum of how he populates his spatial world without visual objects was extraordinarily vivid. He drew a parallel with listening to a live orchestra, and that sense of a sound environment. The world, he explained, is a symphony of sound, but the objects in it do not make sound: they reflect it.
The world as a symphony of reflected sound. A beautiful and fascinating image for those of us who instinctively, wrongly presume that a blind person must be at a disadvantage.
Amazing morning.
X
Earlist reference describes Christ as a “magician”
A team of scientists led by renowned French marine archaeologist
Franck Goddio recently announced that they have found a bowl, dating
to between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D.,
that is engraved with what they believe could be the world’s first
known reference to Christ.
If the word “Christ” refers to the Biblical Jesus Christ, as is
speculated, then the discovery may provide evidence that Christianity
and paganism at times intertwined in the ancient world.
MSNBC (Thanks Ekaf)
Where you sit on a bus defines who you are…
and other such bizarre claims made by wire haired scientists are just a small part of the problems I’m suffering this morning. Reading this report I find it strange you can define behavior by such a random event – I personally sit at the back on the bottom because it’s where the engine is and so it’s warmer – but also the Psychologists name is Dr Fawcett which I find utterly unforgivable!
Japanese Street magic
This is a neat little trick. Sadly you can kind of work it out if you watch it closely enough but the first few times through – it’s a nicely excecuted trick. For those of you really busting to know it’s done – go to the you tube source and see the solution as a response.
Invisible Rope
This little example of misdirection shows that if your miming only subtly confusing actions you can create a bit chaos around you (and even stop traffic).
