- Why do few journalists become politicians?
- Another crowd-funded human microbiome project (in addition to American Gut, which I’ve mentioned earlier)
- Psychiatrist keeps prescribing Adderall to boy in spite of warnings from the boy’s parents that he’s addicted
- Life-logging workshop in Rome. “This creation of lifelogs . . . will enable us to better understand ourselves.”
- Indian fermented food
- Sleep helps solve difficult problems but not easy ones
Thanks to Dave Lull , Bryan Castañeda, Patrick Vlaskovits and Tucker Max.
Not surprised about the sleep study–my experience has been that I can focus much better on mundane tasks while sleep-deprived because my mind is not as easily understimulated. Back in college, a sleep deprived day meant I listened better to lectures, but had a harder time completing problem sets.
I’ve also hypothesized, similar to the study, that “taking a break” in order to solve a problem will be much less effective if that break is spent on noisy stimuli such as internet surfing.
since when are 23 year olds “boys”?
Seth: Since women in their 20s started calling themselves “girls”. Whenever that was.
“In the past journalism was an act of courage, revealing truths in the face of powerful establishments and risking jail or even death.”
No, it wasn’t. While some journalist have indeed behaved in such a manner, most by far have never done so, even remotely. Journalism has always and mostly been a form of advertisement whether social, political, or simply commercial.
Seth: I think his point is that such cases (“act of courage”) were more common.
If that was his intention, he was not clear. Besides, even if he had been more circumspect in his assertions, there are too many self-promoting myths surrounding journalism (it is, after all, one of the main functions of journalism) to accept such claim at face value. A good example is the alleged versus real role of the press in the Watergate scandal.
Seth: Let me give some examples of journalistic courage. Ida Tarbell. Veronica Guerin, the reporter who was killed in Ireland. Here is a list of journalists killed in Russia. Here is more on journalists being killed. Yes, most journalists do not work in war zones or expose corruption, as you say. But since some do, for minimal rewards, journalists are not the first people I would accuse of cowardice.
The second link is to the NYtimes article mentioned in number 3.
Seth: Fixed, thanks.
This relates to personal science and sleep: a blog I read regularly CoolTools contains a review of safety glasses the reviewer uses with orange lenses to block UV/other blue light during evening activities to reduce sleep. Seems like a cheap, easy, self-initiated and controlled method for personal sleep research.
https://kk.org/cooltools/archives/10178?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CoolTools+%28Cool+Tools%29