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Why Is It So Hard for Us to Do Nothing?
The Wall Street Journal: It is summer time, and the living is easy. You can, at last, indulge in what is surely the most enjoyable of human activities—doing absolutely nothing. But is doing nothing really enjoyable? A new study in the journal Science shows that many people would rather get an electric shock than just sit and think. Neuroscientists have inadvertently discovered a lot about doing nothing. In brain-imaging studies, people lie in a confined metal tube feeling bored as they wait for the actual experiment to start. Fortuitously, neuroscientists discovered that this tedium was associated with a distinctive pattern of brain activity.
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Being a Better Online Reader
The New Yorker: Soon after Maryanne Wolf published “Proust and the Squid,” a history of the science and the development of the reading brain from antiquity to the twenty-first century, she began to receive letters from readers. Hundreds of them. While the backgrounds of the writers varied, a theme began to emerge: the more reading moved online, the less students seemed to understand. There were the architects who wrote to her about students who relied so heavily on ready digital information that they were unprepared to address basic problems onsite.
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Probing Brain’s Depth, Trying to Aid Memory
The New York Times: The man in the hospital bed was playing video games on a laptop, absorbed and relaxed despite the bustle of scientists on all sides and the electrodes threaded through his skull and deep into his brain. “O.K., that’s enough,” he told doctors after more than an hour. “All those memory tests, it’s exhausting.” The man, Ralph, a health care worker who asked that his last name be omitted for privacy, has severe epilepsy; and the operation to find the source of his seizures had provided researchers an exquisite opportunity to study the biology of memory.
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Like All Animals, We Need Stress. Just Not Too Much
NPR: Ask somebody about stress, and you're likely to hear an outpouring about all the bad things that cause it — and the bad things that result. But if you ask a biologist, you'll hear that stress can be good. In fact, it's essential. For example, the adrenal glands of all animals have evolved to pump out stress hormones in unexpected situations — the hormones spur action and increase fuel to the brain, helping the animal react to danger appropriately. Those hormones also flow to memory centers in the brain, to help the critter remember those notable moments and places.
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Workplace Diversity Initiatives May Mask Discrimination
Diversity management has become a billion dollar industry, with mission statements and training programs aiming to help organizations foster multi-ethnic harmony and equal opportunity for their employees. But in many cases, diversity initiatives end up being nothing more than legal protections. Studies show they don’t objectively curb workplace bias and diversify the staff. But plaintiffs in employment discrimination lawsuits face more skepticism and criticism, and are less likely to win their cases, if the defendant company has a diversity program in place.
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Explaining the Funny, Then Not Funny, Then Funny Again Joke
New York Magazine: There’s a scene in the rom-com parody They Came Together that goes like this: Bartender: “You look like you’ve had a bad day.” Paul Rudd: “You can say that again.” Bartender: “Well, you came in here looking like crap and you haven’t said very much.” Rudd: “Tell me about it.” Bartender: “Well, you came in here looking like crap and you haven’t said very much.” Rudd: “You can say that again.” Bartender: “Well, you came in here looking like crap and you haven’t said very much.” Rudd: “Tell me about it.” … and this repeats, like, eight more times. ...
