Quote of the day
His eye would not perceive colour, his ear sounds, his body would be unaware of contact with neighbouring bodies, he would not even know he had a body. All his sensations would be united in one place, they would exist only in the common “sensorium.”
~Jean-Jacques Rousseau, author of Emile
.
.PSYCHOLOGY
A circus of the senses, Aeon | Tweet
It makes letters colourised and numbers pulsate with cosmic time: a rare gift, or are we all on the synaesthetic spectrum? Vladimir Nabokov once called his famed fictional creation Lolita
‘a little ghost in natural colours’. The natural colours he used to paint his ‘little ghost’ were especially vivid in part because of a neurological quirk that generated internal flashes of colour whenever letters of the alphabet appeared within his mind. In his memoir Speak, Memory
(1951), he described a few of them: ‘b has the tone called burnt sienna by painters, m is a fold of pink flannel, and today I have at last perfectly matched v with “Rose Quartz” in Maerz and Paul’s Dictionary of Color’. The condition he had was synaesthesia, a neurological oddity that mixes up the senses, making those who possess it see as well as hear music, or taste the shapes they set their eyes upon.
HEALTH
Attention: A muscle to strengthen, The Atlantic | Tweet
A doctor’s recommendations for mental health evoke more philosophy than biology.
Maybe early humans weren’t the first to get a good grip, NPR | Tweet
The special tool-wielding power of human hands may go back further in evolutionary history than scientists have thought. That’s according to a new study of hand bones from an early relative of humans called Australopithecus africanus. Researchers used a powerful X-ray technique to scan the interior of the bones, and they detected a telltale structure that’s associated with a forceful precision grip.
HAPPINESS
The Paradox of Choice, 10 years later, Pacific Standard | Tweet
Whether you’re deliberating between breakfast cereals, TV shows, career paths, pension plans, or lifetime partners, the amount of options out there can be overwhelming. In modern America, however, the freedom to decide who you are and who you’re going to be is mandatory.
BOOKS
My attempt to read James Patterson’s new book in the 24 hours before it self-destructed [Private Vegas
], Quartz | Tweet
On Wednesday, the American thriller author James Patterson’s new book Private Vegaswas made available as an e-book to 1,000 lucky participants. The book’s website released a series of codes which could then be used to download an app on the iPad to read it. The catch, of course, was that you had 24 hours to finish it before the book would self-destruct.
SCIENCE
Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?, The Guardian | Tweet
Philosophers and scientists have been at war for decades over the question of what makes human beings more than complex robots.
TECHNOLOGY
Smartphones don’t make us dumb [TechnoStress
], NYT | Tweet
As much as we love out digital devices, many of us have an uneasy sense they sense that they are destroying our attention spans. We skitter from app to app, seldom alighting for long. Our ability to concentrate is shot, right?
Why I am not a maker? [The Real World of Technology
], The Atlantic | Tweet
Every once in a while, I am asked what I “make.” A hack day might require it, or a conference might ask me to describe “what I make” so it can go on my name tag. I’m always uncomfortable with it. I’m uncomfortable with any culture that encourages you take on an entire identity, rather than to express a facet of your own identity (“maker,” rather than “someone who makes things”). But I have much deeper concerns.
WRITING
Checklists for beginning a novel, Beyond the margins | Tweet
Last week I taught an all day seminar at Grub Street — “Writing Tools for Beginning a Novel”— where I learned how difficult it is to condense the process into six hours . . . and how exhilarating it is to step back and look at the entire process. At day’s end it seemed as though I’d climbed a mountain where (for a day) I could look down at the forest and also take note of the trees. For those who appreciate concise road maps, my aerial view of writing a novel is below. Note the word “my.” There are as many methods and belief systems are there are writers—this one’s mine.
What your favorite books tell you about your writing, The Write Practice | Tweet
Four novels sit on my desk at all times: To Kill a Mockingbird
, A Prayer for Owen Meany
, The Lovely Bones
, and The Book Thief
. There are many other books I adore, but these are my favorite books, the ones I keep nearby for writing inspiration. Each changed me in an unforgettable way.