(Actually, you have to click here to go the TED site and watch this video).
Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who experienced, and recovered from, a stroke, gives an impressive talk. Her insights on right and left brain function, and their meaning to your life, are worth considering. I’m just sayin’.
The TED site is a terrific place to browse if your 1) want some fascinating talks on a variety of topics, and 2) want to learn/steal some tips and techniques on giving excellent presentations.
Just want to warn you that Spektor might be a witch who messes with your experiments.
I did a pilot study, got a very clear trend, and then did the full on study and got nothing, except very weird variance.
It could be because I listened to her album 3 x in a row while setting up the experiment.
2 days ago I repeated the experiment and just as I began to set it up, my finger was hovering over the play button on my fancy new Christmas ipod, to hear Regina again…and then I switched the artist to someone else. I was feeling superstitious.
Lo and behold, the experiment seems to now be confirming the pilot study.
She is a witch! Albeit loveable.
iPods (and the Walkmans, and boomboxes before them) have made some parts of field/lab biology more bearable. But it never occurred to me that some artists might insert random numbers into your results.
I’ve added five great books to the Reading List page on the importance of thinking like a designer. Too often when scientists communicate–in seminars, lectures or in journals–they assume content will carry the day.
But quality, as we all know, equals good content * good design.
One big plus: these books practice what they preach. They are a joy to read, browse, flip through, or pore through. They belong to that rare class of books that you will always keep at hand, a perfect companion to revisit when you have 30 minutes and a steaming cup of coffee.
“”Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works.
You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it.
Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.”
Leonardo da Vinci
Update 8 March 08–Gads, this may be a quote from Tom Peters. Either that or Mark Twain. Outside chance that it’s H. L. Mencken.
One way to improve your writing is to read good writers. Occasionally, if you are lucky, you come across a book on how a great writer writes. Such is Lincoln’s Sword by Douglas L. Wilson. No American president’s writings are so well known as those of Abraham Lincoln. His First and Second Inaugurals, and the Gettysburg address survive in part for the music of Lincoln’s words. But that music served a purpose; his style served the content masterfully. Here are a few things any beginning writer can learn from Abraham Lincoln, as revealed by Douglas Wilson. Read the rest of this entry »
Teaching is complex. It is a craft–a series of tricks and habits. It is a social skill–requiring empathy and listening. It is an art–rewarding intuition and the ability to conjur a metaphor.
Not surprisingly, most people suck at teaching at the outset. Good teaching has a steep learning curve.
When I sat down to put together a reading list on becoming a good teacher, it struck me that almost everything on the Reading List page thus far, and everything that will follow, qualifies. Teaching is that multivariate.
So I simplified the problem. What is the one book that every beginning graduate student should read, nay, inhale, to make the most progress toward good teaching in a short period of time? Read the rest of this entry »
A colleague of mine who knows a bit about the evolutionary biology of ethanol use, forwarded me a recent article in the European Heart Journal, entitled “The combined influence of leisure-time physical activity and weekly alcohol intake on fatal ischaemic heart disease and all-cause mortality.”
The upshot? Light to moderate physical activity (>4 h week) combined with moderate alcohol intake (4-10 drinks/week) minimized rates heart attacks and death in general in a sample of 19,329 Copenhagans. Abstention from alcohol, or 19-41 drinks/week, both tended to increase mortality in a similar fashion.
I don’t have a huge blogroll at this site, largely because a long blogroll buries the sites that are consistently, absolutely, worth checking out on a regular basis. One such site is Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders. I like this site because Mann is tech savvy, funny, and not afraid to experiment.
The other thing I like is that 43 Folders is a wee bit agnostic about Getting Things Done, the time management system that inspired the nifty title of this blog. Ultimately, your system is your system–a series of tips and habits that accrue in your toolkit because they allow you to work effectively and increase your happiness. Toward that end, one of my goals here is to point out some promising stuff to add to your toolkit. And 43 Folders is so consistently, over the top useful, that it resides in the GTDA blogroll.
If you haven’t visited 43 Folders lately, here is a good place to start. A recent mention by NPR spurred Merlin to highlight some of the better posts on the subject of GTD. Enjoy.
Dr. Mike Kaspari is Director of the Graduate Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Oklahoma. When he is not teaching, he studies the evolutionary ecology of ants and the brown food web. This blog is dedicated to exploring the strategies and tactics of the academic life.
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by Douglas L. Wilson. No American president’s writings are so well known as those of Abraham Lincoln. His 
