Category Archives: Science

FIREFLIES AND ROMANCE.

FIREFLIES AND ROMANCE. Fireflies evoke romance and past summer evenings. The Kevin Kline “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, with Rupert Everett as Oberon and Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania, ended with images of the fairies as fireflies as the lovers go off together. … Continue reading

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YOU CAN’T REALLY MULTITASK.

YOU CAN’T REALLY MULTITASK. Sam Anderson says that despite all the talk about multitasking, with minor exceptions, people can really pay attention to only one thing at a time. The best we can do is to switch rapidly from one … Continue reading

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ALLOCATING ATTENTION.

ALLOCATING ATTENTION. Economists think in terms of allocating a limited amount of a resource. Traditionally, they deal with the problem of efficiently allocating a limited income. I posted here about how economists are now thinking about allocating time and that … Continue reading

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AGREEING TO MY EXPERIENCE.

AGREEING TO MY EXPERIENCE. I posted here on Jonah Lehrer’s insights into Virginia Woolf. Lehrer concluded that: “Woolf realized that the self emerges via the act of attention.” Sam Anderson tells how Winifred Gallagher, the author of RAPT, a book … Continue reading

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WHY FOCUS ON A DOT?

WHY FOCUS ON A DOT? Alan Jacobs in The New Atlantis takes issue here with Sam Anderson’s article and with William James as well: “This is wrong-headed in a number of ways, but chief among them is this: there’s no … Continue reading

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PAYING ATTENTION TO A DOT.

PAYING ATTENTION TO A DOT. I posted here about the difficulty four year olds have in not paying attention to a marshmallow. In this article Sam Anderson points out that William James argued that it was difficult for a person … Continue reading

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POLAR BEARS AND MARSHMALLOWS (REVISITED).

POLAR BEARS AND MARSHMALLOWS (REVISITED). I posted here about polar bears and marshmallows.

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OTHER LESSONS FROM MARSHMALLOWS.

OTHER LESSONS FROM MARSHMALLOWS. I derived two other lessons from Jonah Lehrer’s article. First, as an identical twin, I am always interested in the twin studies done to attempt to isolate the role of nature (genetics) in human behavior. I … Continue reading

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NOT THINKING ABOUT THE MARSHMALLOW.

NOT THINKING ABOUT THE MARSHMALLOW. Even four year olds can be taught techniques–tricks–that can improve their self control. The four year olds that have more will power already have some of those techniques. They know how to direct their attention … Continue reading

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CHILDREN WITH WILL POWER.

CHILDREN WITH WILL POWER. I posted here about psychological research that supported the view that each of us has a fixed budget of will power. If we use our will power for some purposes there will be less will power … Continue reading

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