I'm your density

rogerwilkerson: New York Harbor - art by Charley Harper

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:02:18 -0400

rogerwilkerson:

New York Harbor - art by Charley Harper

ub14: npr: Check out the video of The National’s Tiny Desk...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:02:11 -0400

ub14:

npr:

Check out the video of The National’s Tiny Desk Concert on Friday.

(Photo: Hayley Bartels/NPR)

Checked.

"With the psychologists Simon Laham and Peter Koval, I found that people prefer politicians with..."

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:02:00 -0400

“With the psychologists Simon Laham and Peter Koval, I found that people prefer politicians with simpler names—and lawyers in American firms with fluent names rise up the legal hierarchy to partnership more quickly than their non-fluently named colleagues. (The result persisted even when we focussed on Anglo-American names, so it doesn’t simply boil down to xenophobic prejudice.)”

- The Surprising Psychology of How Names Shape Our Thoughts : The New Yorker

Oops, sorry, baby. Forgive us.
(via ub14)

"Assume for a moment that some of these measures really have helped make our persons and property..."

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:01:50 -0400

“Assume for a moment that some of these measures really have helped make our persons and property safer—are they worth it? Where and when was the public debate on whether they’re worth it? Was there no such debate because we’re not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we actually become so selfish and scared that we don’t even want to consider whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?”

- David Foster Wallace, published in the Atlantic November 2007 (via sarahspy)

marmite: Don’t let it get you down. Going through a really...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:01:07 -0400

marmite:

Don’t let it get you down.

Going through a really trying time right now. On the verge of a lot, working hard, things getting in the way. But it’ll get there. Don’t let it get you down.

beatonna: tonycliff: Adventures in the Pacific Northwest -...

Fri, 31 May 2013 18:35:51 -0400

beatonna:

tonycliff:

Adventures in the Pacific Northwest - depicting one of literature’s finest young adventurers, now having traveled to the beautiful, exotic north-west coast of North America.

Made for the exclusive VIP VanCAF artbook! Thank you to all the good people who came by the festival last weekend to say Hi! Excellent times were had by all.

gorgeous!

sexmusic: sea of love // the national download: amazon mp3 |...

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:42:06 -0400

sexmusic:

sea of love // the national

download: amazon mp3 | itunes

"This is a generation of kids that grew up with data science around them — Netflix telling them what..."

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:01:20 -0400

““This is a generation of kids that grew up with data science around them — Netflix telling them what movies they should watch, Amazon telling them what books they should read — so this is an academic interest with real-world applications,” said Chris Wiggins, a professor of applied mathematics at Columbia who is involved in its new Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering. “And,” he added, “they know it will make them employable.””

- Universities Offer Courses in a Hot New Field - Data Science - NYTimes.com (via infoneer-pulse)

wasa: 1937, Poster for the French Alpine Club, Samivel

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 18:14:11 -0400

wasa:

1937, Poster for the French Alpine Club, Samivel

poboh: Maurice de Vlaminck (French, 1876-1958), Orage dans la...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 17:18:46 -0400

poboh:

Maurice de Vlaminck (French, 1876-1958), Orage dans la forêt [Storm in the forest]. Oil on canvas, 60.3 x 73 cm.

stvincent-et-al: Harvest Moon ~ Annie Clark and Justin Vernon...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:23:20 -0400

stvincent-et-al:

Harvest Moon ~ Annie Clark and Justin Vernon recorded live

It’s a raw, gloomy, and rainy Sunday in Northern California. Listening to this old cover by Annie and Justin has helped to brighten my day, immensely.

Download the MP3

stottart: A series of illustrations I made a few months back…...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 15:28:11 -0400

stottart:

A series of illustrations I made a few months back… “Midcentury Dogs”.

allcreatures: Two dogs are seen guarding a bicycle in Nanjing,...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 14:32:44 -0400

allcreatures:

Two dogs are seen guarding a bicycle in Nanjing, capital of southern China’s Guangxi Province. According to owner Luo Ganren, the pair are protective of him and his possessions. My bike has no lock, and I never worry it would be stolen, thanks to my two puppies. They will guard the bike by holding the bars until they see me back.

Picture: HAP/Quirky China News / Rex Features (via Pictures of the day: 26 February 2013 - Telegraph)

neurosciencestuff: Chewing gum helps you concentrate for...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:37:20 -0400

neurosciencestuff:

Chewing gum helps you concentrate for longer

Chewing gum can help you stay focused for longer on tasks that require continuous monitoring.

This is the finding of new research by Kate Morgan and colleagues from Cardiff University published in the British Journal of Psychology.

Previous research has shown that chewing gum can improve concentration in visual memory tasks. This study focussed on the potential benefits of chewing gum during an audio memory task.

Kate Morgan, author of the study explained: “It’s been well established by previous research that chewing gum can benefit some areas of cognition. In our study we focussed on an audio task that involved short-term memory recall to see if chewing gum would improve concentration; especially in the latter stages of the task.”

The study involved 38 participants being split in to two groups. Both groups completed a 30 minute audio task that involved listening to a list of numbers from 1-9 being read out in a random manner. Participants were scored on how accurately and quickly they were able to detect a sequence of odd-even-odd numbers, such as 7-2-1. Participants also completed questionnaires on their mood both before and after the task.

The results showed that participants who chewed gum had quicker reaction times and more accurate results than the participants who didn’t chew gum. This was especially the case towards the latter parts of the task.

Kate explained: “Interestingly participants who didn’t chew gum performed slightly better at the beginning of the task but were overtaken by the end. This suggests that chewing gum helps us focus on tasks that require continuous monitoring over a longer amount of time.”

The study was discussed in Radio Four Today programme.

(Image: iStock)

theories-of: Martin Johnson Heade, Approaching Thunder Storm,...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:41:51 -0400

theories-of:

Martin Johnson Heade, Approaching Thunder Storm, 1859, oil on canvas

tierradentro: “Ground Swell”, 1939, Edward Hopper. (via)

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 11:46:43 -0400

tierradentro:

“Ground Swell”, 1939, Edward Hopper. (via)

seelenklempner: Mazzaro - Paul Klee

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 10:51:14 -0400

seelenklempner:

Mazzaro - Paul Klee

Great Teachers Can't Save America's Schools

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 09:55:59 -0400

Great Teachers Can't Save America's Schools:

infoneer-pulse:

Everybody loves a great teacher. When a student crosses paths with one, the influence can reverberate well beyond the last day of school. In last year’s State of the Union address, President Obama informed us that a “good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000,” a claim supported by a widely reported study by economists at Harvard and Columbia universities.

But by focusing too heavily on the teachers themselves, Obama may have missed an opportunity to bring out a far deeper problem. In this year’s address, he should focus on the disconnected and muddled curriculum that does more damage to our schools and colleges than bad teachers do.

» via The Atlantic

"The feeling of uncertainty feels like pain, when you can’t predict when the lights will come back on..."

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 23:45:54 -0400

“The feeling of uncertainty feels like pain, when you can’t predict when the lights will come back on and you’re holding multiple possible futures in your head. That turns out to be cognitively exhausting. And the more we can predict the future, the more rewarded we feel. The less we can predict the future, the more threatened we feel. As soon as any ambiguity arises in even a very simple activity, we get a threat response. So we are driven to create certainty.”

- Explaining People’s Behavior at Work (via slantback)

slantback: We asked Garodnick if any of these angry drivers...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 23:45:18 -0400

slantback:

We asked Garodnick if any of these angry drivers felt the city was intentionally trying to trick them, to which he replied: “Yes yes yes yes yes! That was part of the sadness of all of it – that people actually think that the city is deliberately trying to confuse them in order to give tickets. And that perception alone is a problem.” (via Anatomy of a Parking Sign That Actually Makes Sense - Emily Badger - The Atlantic Cities)