Science

After many years of having thoroughly enjoyed the annual parade of opinions of books over at The Millions, I decided to have a go myself this year. Far from being a celebration of a year in which I read deeply and widely, it is a light reflection on all the things I managed to read this year. Enjoy! --- Of the myriad of things I most deeply wanted to achieve this year, two loomed large in the personal development domain; to read more and write more, which was why I entered the year clutching my copy of Patty Dann’s The Butterfly Hours close to my chest. In my head, writing more - and by extension, better - required tools for tuning my craft, which was why this book, with its promise of personal memoir married to prompts, seemed the perfect fit. It helped that all nineteen reviews on Amazon were 5*. I did enjoy the book, albeit more an an example of easy reading memoir than a collection of prompts. I suspect that had a lot more to do with me than the book. If it is any consolation, I returned to it several times over the course of the year, it along with Dinty Moore’s Crafting The Personal Essay being fine examples of the sort of creative non-fiction I would like to churn out. ...

After many years of having thoroughly enjoyed the annual parade of opinions of books over at The Millions, I decided to have a go myself this year. Far from being a celebration of a year in which I read deeply and widely, it is a light reflection on all the things I managed to read this year. Enjoy! --- Of the myriad of things I most deeply wanted to achieve this year, two loomed large in the personal development domain; to read more and write more, which was why I entered the year clutching my copy of Patty Dann’s The Butterfly Hours close to my chest. In my head, writing more - and by extension, better - required tools for tuning my craft, which was why this book, with its promise of personal memoir married to prompts, seemed the perfect fit. It helped that all nineteen reviews on Amazon were 5*. I did enjoy the book, albeit more an an example of easy reading memoir than a collection of prompts. I suspect that had a lot more to do with me than the book. If it is any consolation, I returned to it several times over the course of the year, it along with Dinty Moore’s Crafting The Personal Essay being fine examples of the sort of creative non-fiction I would like to churn out. ...

The perfect excuse for letting rip with a big yawn in the middle of a boring work meeting; your above average intelligence. Or over familiarity. Image Source: YawnTalking

http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_cheat?language=en On the biology of love (amongst a ton of other fascinating stuff), and the three brain systems that evolve from our human experience of mating and reproduction - lust, romantic love and (long term) attachment.

Are emotions prophetic? The short answer is No, but Jonah Lehrer at The Frontal Cortex offers a good summary of the long answer [pdf]: Every feeling is like a summary of data, a quick encapsulation of all the information processing that we don’t have access to. (As Pham puts it, emotions are like a “privileged window” into the subterranean mind.) When it comes to making predictions about complex events, this extra information is often essential. It represents the difference between an informed guess and random chance. ...

The Queen advertises for a dish washer to come on staff… My local MSP wonders if they’ve not heard of a dish washing machine. The WHO drills down into the alcohol stats.. Apparently alcohol killed more people than AIDS or TB in 2010.. Sobering.. Understanding the story.. Thirteen perspectives…. Brain chemicals and dating.. A primer. Teju Cole’s ‘Open City’ hits the shelves… The New Yorker, The Daily Beast and The Apostrophe weigh in with reviews. The kid named Facebook..Ostensibly its a testament to the impact FB had on the Egypt Revolution.. Hopefully, the kid doesn’t get a lot of stick for the name though.. There’s an app for that… Tracking relationship changes on Facebook gets the Web2.0 makeover….. SMH.. Web mourning? Help for the blokes - wristbands that warn of potentially PMSing partners. Bringing faiths together by cuisine.. The Faith and The Hot Dog show..

‘Spiritual’ love goes social… The story of Vicars connected by a witty comment on Facebook A soup ladle turns out to be a life saver in more ways than one.. Meet the bloke saved from a tiger by his wife’s soup ladle ‘Life is short, have an affair?’… Al Mohler muses on the Ashley Madison business model.. GABA receptors may be the reason for anxiety around that ’time of the month’ for the lasses.. The ’thief’ who sued the bloke he tried to steal from - and got 13k pounds.. A not so short history of Aji-no-moto.. And the scare scaremongering around MSG. Man vs Machine.. 1-0 to the machines on Jeopardy..

Personality tests go a notch up - this site offers personality tests based on your blog. Automating war? Danger room reports that one in fifty ‘combatants’ in Afghanistan is a robot. The key to snagging the dream girl appears to be acting uninterested. @JangleLegJones thinks differently, sadly I couldn’t convince her to write a 4000 word essay deconstructing the research. Tim Challies offers the chance to pre-order his new book, and get a signed copy. Apparently, even sex is a matter for IQ these day s.. Sigh.. There’s an app for that. Confessionals go electronic. Sleepwalking may be in the DNA after all. A kiss too far? Much ado about farting Potentially crappy valentine weekend coming up? Try these books to get you laid..

Steve shares his learnings so far - 30 days after quitting Facebook The Christian Illuminati? Or Just a well connected crew? More questions than answers in this teaser... Large-proofing emergency services - counting the costs. The Jerusalem UFO, or a drone? Becoming invisible? Wack or what? The bloke who added his wife to a terrorist watch list to prevent her flying back home. ‘Spray-on skin’ for burn victims. This brings a whole new meaning to the storm in a tea-cup idiom. Storm in a bed sheet? Mubarak’s cronies launch a cyber counter-insurgency… Mosquitoes evolved?

Genetically engineering plants to spot bombs may be the future of counter terrorism.. LED teeth may be the new cool.. If only in Japan.. Want to make the transition from talk to bed? Social media might be it after all. So much for Gladwell’s ‘diss’ of social media. Apparently brain scans can identify a predisposition to transexuality.. His Grace - Archbishop Crammer - weighs in on the lack of political voices speaking up on the abortion debate. Tyler Blanski encourages us to re-think sex One bloke got busted for importing cockroaches… HT @relevantmag