Road in Dover, MAIf you had asked me a month ago what I imagined life would be like after graduating from college, I would have told you, “more annoying, but pretty much the same. Oh, and more pretty bike rides in the suburbs.”
And now, one month and a commencement ceremony–spent in the throes of a suspiciously virulent flu-like affliction–later, life has indeed become more annoying. And pretty much the same. I’ve started biking more, which is great, but have made up for it by sitting down more, indulging my addiction to reading articles on the Internet.
Let me try to tell a story of my recent life using only links to articles. (more…)
The New Yorker carries two features this week with some great anecdotes illustrating how current psychology views the role of effort and free will. I’ve thrown in a link to my new favorite science publication, Seed Magazine, which combines top notch science feature-writing with an impressive breadth of cultural awareness. They also have an impeccable design department headed by Ben Fry, who wrote the textbooks to a visualization class I took.
Malcolm Gladwell describes a computer-engineer-turned-little-league-basketball-coach who takes his daughter’s team to victory in the junior nationals simply by using a continuous full-court press. It’s a deadly effective strategy, but also “socially horrifying.” The article explores other examples where simply “putting in a lot of effort” is met with resistance by our culture at large.
Jonah Lehrer writes about a psychology study that found that children who are able to suppress their craving for candy for a future reward end up being more successful later on in life. While this isn’t terribly surprising, the underlying psychological explanation–metacognition, or the awareness of your own thought processes–is intriguing. Is highly developed metacognition a genetic trait, or can it be cultivated? You can probably guess which answer is most appealing to the readers of the New Yorker.
Seed Magazine features the “eusocial” insects–ants, bees, and wasps–to illuminate an age-old puzzle in evolutionary theory: how does altruism evolve? Why is it that most hive members become sterile workers, slaving away while unable to pass their genes on to the next generation? One idea is that workers are still helping out their own genes since they are related to the queen (who does have offspring). However, some species have “selfless” social roles even when hive members aren’t closely related.
Ah, third time’s a charm. I am officially consecrating this as a recurring feature on the blog now. Please feel free to send me suggestions in the future. I will credit finders of quotes as well as the original source.
happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none
Herman Melville
Like thesis advisors and prom dates. Don’t wait too long to ask.
Jess Caplin
Short sellers: “They delve into the deepest state and business secrets and do not hesitate to attack even the government and excite the masses in order to profit more… Widows and orphans are seriously hurt by speculators a la baisse.”
Muys van Holys
But this is a PG-13 movie, and therefore not inclined to dwell on icky matters of reproduction when there is wholesome bloodshed to pursue.
A. O. Scott on X-men Origins: Wolverine
Only one of these was actually from another person’s status. In other words, these are quotes I would put on my own Gchat status message. Basically, I found these quotes interesting.
When we like people, for some sad reason, we can convince ourselves that it is reciprocal, no matter how obvious the truth is to everyone else.
“Social Q’s,” by Philip Galanes
Surely puns silence conversation before they animate it. Some stricken with pun-lust sink so far into their infirmity that their minds become trained to lie in wait for words on which to work their wickedness.
“Puns for the Ages,” by Joseph Tartakovsky
strangely enough, or perhaps not strangely at all, people were thoroughly satisfied, which would lead one to believe that what readers really craved was not so much the contents of books, magazines, and papers as the assurance that they were not missing anything.
“IRTNOG,” by E. B. White
it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that if you want to live like a Whole-Foods-shopping San Franciscan Democrat, you need somebody, somewhere, to procreate like a megachurch-attending Republican.
“Who’s afraid of low birthrates?” by Ross Douthat
I’ll start with the ending: three Mondays ago, after 2 years of work in a lab and several recent months of panic and suffering quiet perseverance, I turned in my thesis. It arrived at the biochem office 51 minutes after the deadline.
This was after I wrote an abstract in 10 minutes (4:30pm), an entire chapter of results in 5 hours (11:00am), made two figures overnight (12:00am-9am) off of data collected from experiments 2 days before. If had gotten to the office 9 minutes later, the doors would have closed and locked away any hope I would have had of graduating with honors. Fortunately I made it in time.
