A friend told me a few months ago that when he was going through heartbreak, he found his way through it by reading an entire graphic novel series in a slightly obsessive binge. He assured me that I would find something to help me through my heartbreak as well. This hopefully is my graphic novel series, not literally of course. For me, it is Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide.
As strange as it may seem, making sense of what is going on in my brain and in my heart seems to be the only way out of heartbreak for me. Somehow, figuring out some of the things that might be causing me to feel pain is therapeutic and somewhat exciting. I want to know why I feel the way that I feel and why things happened the way that they did. I might be able to parse out some things for that first half but probably not the second half.
Heartbreak has been so difficult to deal with because I feel broken by the loss of love. I’m thinking it is at least partly loss aversion, a concept that means people strongly prefer avoiding a loss, and that feeling might be stronger than the desire to acquire a gain.
Loss aversion is a theme that comes up in How We Decide, mostly when dealing with gambling and betting. People who are losing money are more likely to keep gambling or hold onto depreciating stocks because the thought of leaving at a loss is too much to bear. Loss aversion can be linked to some irrational decisions and/or behavior.
The neuroscience behind this suggests that certain areas of the brain increase in activity when the potential gains increase and decreasing activity may represent potential losses. Neural signals could be measured to try to predict loss aversion behavior by comparing the relative activity induced by the gains and losses.
For me, the thought of not being able to create more happy memories with that person is unbearable. I feel unsatisfied with the way things ended and have the urge to hold on until things look better. This is irrational of me and I know that, but my emotions won’t let me accept that loss very easily.
Continue reading →
With a slew of recent releases of gadgets that serve as ebook readers (Barnes and Noble Nook, iPad, and all the ones announced at the Consumer Electronics Show), I thought I would take some time to look back on the experience I’ve had with my Sony PRS-505 Reader and why I love it and e-ink technology. (Mine is dark blue, not like the one shown here!)
First of all, I got the Reader a little over 2 years ago in Fall of 2007. I bought it somewhat as an impulse buy, but I justified it as a long term investment. Since then, I read at least 4x more books than I would have otherwise. This is the biggest reason why I’m thankful that I decided to buy the Reader.
Here are the other main reasons why I bought it:
- I don’t have space at home for all the books that I want to read, and I don’t do well with library books (see #3)
- I don’t have the money to buy all the books I want to read (ebooks are usually cheaper, and many you might be able to find for free)
- I’m allergic to old books and dust (I get itchy all over), so I won’t be able to enjoy re-reading any of the physical books, bringing their value down over time
Here are the reasons why I love my reader now:
- It is way lighter and smaller to carry around than a book
- I like being able to immediately start reading another book once I’ve finished one
- The e-ink screen is nice on my eyes, as compared to a lit LCD screen (I get enough of that from staring at my laptop!)
I’m also happy that I chose the Sony Reader over the Amazon Kindle because any of the content that I buy from the Sony store is not locked to my device (i.e. anything bought for the Kindle only works on the Kindle, there are tons of stories if you Google “Kindle DRM”).
I don’t buy books very often, but when I do it is in a format that is more useful and open (usually ePub). The Kindle uses its own proprietary format. Also, I’m not so interested in the wireless download function of the Kindle so that does not bother me.
There was also that incident where Amazon deleted George Orwell books from all Kindles. That type of control is not something I am a fan of. Even though it was for valid reasons and they said they were changing their practices so it wouldn’t happen again, the fact that they have the ability to go into each device and perform that function irks me.
So, while I did have to shell out $280 for my Sony PRS-505, I’ve read enough books to make it worth it and I’m sure that I will be using my Reader for at least 4-5 more years.
Do you have a reader? Would you consider buying a reading device like this? I hope my comments have been helpful!
Image credit: Flickr user cloudsoup
When you train your dog to bring you the morning paper, that is a neat trick. When you train your computer to bring you news you want to read, that is an RSS feed.
I never fully appreciated RSS feeds for what they can do until I started reading the book We the Media by Dan Gillmor. The underlying idea is that you don’t need to search the Internet for the things that interest you but that they come to you through your RSS subscriptions and preferences.
This is useful for you when you want to be kept up to date on certain topics. Anytime there is an article, your RSS feed is updated to show it. I currently use Google Reader to keep track of blogs, job postings, and news.
Gillmor discusses another way to use RSS, which is to follow what is being said about yourself. This is a good way for popular bloggers and organizations to know what is going on in their realm and connects with their readers on a different level.
Honestly, I haven’t used RSS feeds enough in the past but I’m starting to really appreciate what they do. It could particularly be very helpful for my current job search!
Also an article in the book The Best American Science Writing 2007 is a piece called “Cooking for Eggheads” by Patricia Gadsby on molecular gastronomy, which is the study of the physical and chemical processes that go into cooking food.
It is interesting to think about this field of science and compare it to what nutritionists do. Nutritionists try to break food down into their essential parts and attempt to inject things where they do not naturally belong. Molecular gastronomists, on the other hand, are scientists who want to know what is happening to the molecular structures in food when they are cooked or otherwise manipulated.
Gadsby talks about how one person she interviewed, Hervé This (pronounced Tiss), demonstrated that the texture of cooked eggs is completely determined by the temperature, not the time, at which they are cooked. A few degrees make a difference because different proteins in the yolk and white coagulate at different temperatures in the range of 142-184˚F.
Hervé This makes the point that what molecular gastronomists are interested in is figuring out the mechanisms, but people who throw around the term molecular gastronomy to describe fancy cooking techniques essentially should not be considered representative of this field of science. Molecular gastronomists are more like the physicists who are looking to find the laws of the universe, just instead of the universe they are interested in the laws of food and cooking. But like nutritionism giving the false perception of understanding the composition of food, showy restaurant chefs are giving the public a misconstrued image of molecular gastronomy.
But there is a good side to everything, and exposing people to new techniques draws attention and recognition to the field. The tricky part is then to convince those people that there is a greater purpose to experimenting with food than to just have a cool trick to show. Molecular gastronomy brings us closer to understanding the complex nature of different types of food applied to heat and other external forces. By understanding these processes, we may get closer to finding out what makes food nutritious and how to maximize that nutritional value.
Image credit:
Flickr user Marco Veringa
I am currently reading the book The Best American Science Writing 2007, and in it was an article about lie detecting by Robin Marantz Henig entitled Looking for the lie that was published in the New York Times Magazine. (Just so you know, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that polygraphs can detect lies at very high accuracy.)
Towards the end of her piece, Henig discusses some of the evolutionary implications pertaining to deception and the development of the brain. Advanced social interactions are complex and often deception needs to be part of the equation and might be somewhat related to skills that make individuals socially adapted and intelligent.
This idea is interesting because it would explain a lot of the selfish behavior that we see in humans today. Social groups that are small enough may not suffer as much from serious deceptive offences, though they definitely have their share of gossiping, etc.
But as social groups get bigger, relationships are not as much defined by kinship but by association and profession. Being able to lie or deceive may have become adaptive in these settings where it would be the difference between gaining an advantage over a competitor or getting the short end of the stick.
Continue reading →
-
blogging at the intersection of science, technology, and society
Recent entries
- Defending wolves and worldviews
- Piezoelectricity in mini form and gecko tape
- TED Talk: Jamie Oliver’s wish to teach every kid about food
- Is heartbreak just another manifestation of loss aversion?
- Help save Idealist.org! Donate to keep them going!
Categories
- Books (14)
- Commentary (24)
- Cool thing of the Week (14)
- Features (19)
- Miscellaneous (23)
- Musings (21)
- Science (38)
- Society (72)
- Technology (32)
Archives
Blogroll
- Best Green Blogs
- Blog Catalog
- Deep-Sea News
- EnviroMentalog
- in a land faaaar far away…
- Last Stands
- Science Blogs
- Science is Boring
- Space Before Breakfast
- The EEB and flow
-
The wikiquest for innovation: Part 2
September 9, 2009
Books, Commentary, Society
(No comments)
Some more interesting quotes from the book Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams: