“[W]hen individuals are unable to gain a sense of control objectively, they will try to gain it perceptually. … Feelings of control are essential for our well-being – we think clearer and make better decisions when we feel we are in control. Lacking control is highly aversive, so we instinctively seek out patterns to regain control – even if those patterns are illusory.”
Tag: 2010
‘Housework Is An Academic Issue’
“Since René Descartes, Western culture has stringently separated matters of mind from body. Housework is, however, related to the life of the mind. Scientists wear clean clothes to the lab (at least from time to time), eat food procured and prepared by someone, and live in reasonably clean houses. This labor used to be done by stay-at-home wives.”
The Horticultural Parable And The Existence Of God
Two people return to a long-abandoned garden and find that a few of their old plants are still thriving amidst the weeds. One person says that some gardener must have been tending to the plants; the other says it’s all happenstance. The pair hide, watch and wait, but no gardener ever appears. But still the believer insists that there’s a gardener; the skeptic asks what the difference is between an invisible gardener and an imaginary one.
Tapestries Crossed With Byzantine Mosaics, Made From Bottle Tops
They are “large hangings made of thousands of pieces of shimmering metal, stitched together with copper wire. They are astonishingly beautiful and not like anything done before. Some think of them as tapestries; [the artist, a Ghanaian-Nigerian named El] Anatsui calls them sheets. It is common to hear them compared to Byzantine mosaics, but the differences are greater than the similarities.”
The (Over-)Professionalization Of Everything
“At the end of the 19th century, an amateur meant someone who was motivated by the sheer love of doing something; professional was a rare, pejorative term for grubby money-making. Now, amateurism is a byword for sloppiness, disorganisation and ineptitude, while professionalism … is the default description of excellence. … Is it time we let some of the hot air out of professionalism?”
Advice For Writing In English As A Second (Or Even First) Language
William Zinsser to new international students at Columbia’s journalism school: “The words derived from Latin are the enemy – they will strangle and suffocate everything you write. … Short Anglo-Saxon nouns are your second-best tools as a journalist writing in English. What are your best tools? Your best tools are short, plain Anglo-Saxon verbs.“
Tatiana Stepanova, 85, Star Of Ballets Russes
“She was the last dancer to reach prima ballerina status in the various manifestations of the Ballets Russes directed by Colonel W. de Basil.”
Shakespeare’s Language Is Getting In Our Way
“[F]roufrou words and syntax, and the artificiality of meter, are not in themselves what makes Shakespeare such an approximate experience for most of us. The problem with Shakespeare for modern audiences is that English since Shakespeare’s time has changed not only in terms of a few exotic vocabulary items, but in the very meaning of thousands of basic words….”
Why Are We Teaching Children To Undervalue Singing?
“Parents sing, sing, sing in the early years of children’s lives–and then it stops. … Once children are at school age, after a toddlerhood of joy in singing, parents begin to consider their musical ability, they look into the future, ambition sets in, music lessons enter stage left, and suddenly, without anyone noticing it, singing has been dealt a critical blow.”
An Idle Mind: It’s Not (Only) The Devil’s Playground
“[For] the first time, functional measures of the resting brain are providing new insights into network properties of the brain that are associated with IQ scores. In essence, they suggest that in smart people, distant areas of the brain communicate with each other more robustly.”