I’ve been a long-time fan of Raul Gutierrez’ blog, and he’s just posted another beautiful item: Lies I’ve Told My 3 Year Old Recently:
If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.
We are all held together by invisible threads.
Books get lonely too.
Sadness can be eaten.
The most profound?
I will always be there.
Lots of people have been saying how impressed they were by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk at this year’s conference. None, however, have summed it up better than Vaughan:
It’s a bit poetic in places. You can almost hear the sound of a thousand cognitive scientists gritting their teeth as she describes the supposed functions of each cerebral hemisphere and probably the sound of some of them fainting when she describes the “deep inner peace circuitry” of the right hemisphere.
Neuroanatomists may notice that this is almost exactly the same sound that occurs when psychologists describe something as a ‘frontal’ function.
The talk is gripping, however, and the highlight is her description of the day she had her stroke which is both insightful and very funny.
via MindHacks
Wired Science have got a great short film that follows two people who have deep brain stimulation devices implanted in their brains to treat tremors.While most people assume brain surgery is all pre-planned beforehand, for many treatments for cognitive or behavioural functions, the surgeons need to wake up the patient after they’ve open their skull to make sure they’re targeting the right place (and avoiding damaging essential functions).
In this case, they wake the patients up during neurosurgery so they can test out their movements while stimulating different areas of the brain, in a trial and error style.
Video of deep brain stimulation neurosurgery and ‘The Brain of an Alzheimer’s Patient’.
via MindHacks
There are a lot of very good US-based personal finance blogs around, but sometimes the information given is difficult for a UK reader to understand as the terms used are completely alien to us.
One of the newer additions to my RSS reader is Plonkee Money - a site I found when searching for a US-UK personal finance translator. Plonkee’s UK-US comparison post is now a year old and is still visited regularly when I forget what a term means.
Roth IRA = Stocks and Shares ISA
Roth IRAs and Stocks and Shares ISAs are similar investments but there are significant differences in the rules in each scheme.
Being notoriously difficult to understand, Plonkee is now - in the build up to the new financial year - producing a comprehensive introduction to Stocks and Shares ISAs - a crucial item in your investment armoury. Whether you’re new to ISAs or fancy brushing up on your knowledge for the coming year, this is looking like an important read.
- part 1: all about you – why you want to invest, and how much money you have to play with
- part 2: all about risk – successful investing means always being able to sleep at night
- part 3: all about investments – the types of investments that you can put into ISAs
- part 4: all about asset allocation – how to decide which mix of investments is right for your ISA
- part 5: all about funds – narrowing down your choices
- part 6: all about providers – getting the best deal for the money
- conclusions – what’s been covered, and what to do next
The Telegraph has compiled a nice list of The 50 Best Works of Art (and how to see them)
Zen garden, Ryoan-ji Temple
(late 15th century) Kyoto, Japan
Getting there: bearableThis is the most celebrated example of what in Japanese is called a karesansui, or “dry landscape”. Since it consists of nothing but raked white sandy gravel and mossy stones, it could, in Western terms, be thought of as a sculptural installation. Its point, achieved with incomparable simplicity and elegance, is one of the fundamental objectives of art: to focus meditation on the mystery of existence.
Obviously there are going to be works you want to be on this list and those you believe don’t merit a place on it - still, it’s interesting.
via Kottke