Fiction - A Blessing Or A Curse?

As you probably know by now, I really like reading. And I make sure to always take some time during the week to read a chapter or two of the book that I'm currently going through. Most of those books are non-fictional and end up being "discussed" by myself on this blog :)
But I also enjoy burying myself in a good fictional book that keeps my imagination going and has a storyline that somehow touches my heart. That way I can always have a good balance between stimulating the intellect (non-fiction) and the emotions (fiction).

So naturally, I was intrigued when I recently came across an article by Jonathan Gottschall entitled Why Fiction Is Good For You (published online at boston.com). I had always thought that fiction was good for me in the sense of entertaining me, kind of like curling up on the couch to watch a nice movie. Well, that's not what this man is talking about.

Links of the Week VI

Baby's day out? No, just a little Chinese kid on a toy motorcycle... in the middle of a busy intersection!

Also in today's links of the week: a stuntman decides to jump off the helicopter without a parachute, a man decides to rescue golf balls from a watery grave, and you should decide to be more optimistic ;-)

Do Smart Parents Beget Smart Children?

As a teacher you tend to figure out the level of intelligence each one of your new students has within the first few hours that you spend with them in a classroom. That can be an advantage, telling you how much you can expect from them and especially who will probably need more help and explaining than the rest. But it's also a very dangerous thing, because it may lead you to believe that some students will not be able to pass your class or exceed a certain grade at the end of the school year.

And now David Shenk has written a book entitled The Genius In All Of Us, that has recently got me thinking some things over. In a chapter called Intelligence Is a Process, Not a Thing, he argues that we've had the wrong idea of intelligence for way too long. We like to believe that some kids are just smarter than others, because their parents are smart and passed on these smart genes to their children. Not so, says Shenk.

Links of the Week V

A British girl has a scientifically perfect face, Asian kids don't spend enough time outdoors and an American acrobat is preparing for the walk of his life...

All that and more in today's links of the week.

It's All A Matter Of Interpretation

I love me some Cliff Goldstein every now and then. If the whole 28 minutes is too long for you, at least check out the last few minutes (starting at the 25 minute mark), where he makes his point. But if you're as fascinated by language as I am, you might want to watch the whole thing...



So, what do you think? How can we know if our interpretation is correct?

Why You Can Learn How To Juggle

I learned to juggle with three balls when I was about ten years old. My family was staying in Israel for a few months and I didn't have to go to school, leaving me with loads of free time and not sure what to do with it. So I decided to learn how to juggle. Pretty soon I was able to keep the three tennis balls aloft for quite some time...

Recently, I've started reading a new book called The Genius in All of Us written by David Shenk (you can get the book here). As the title already suggests, the author's main argument seems to be that we all have the capacity of becoming really, really good at something - so good that others might even think we're geniuses.

Links of the Week IV

Two short videos that fascinated me this past week. The English videos are not the same as the German ones, but the topic of each is the same. So if you know both languages, just watch all 4 clips ;-)

German:
Ach, das erinnert mich an meine Kindheit...
Ob sich dieses Auto durchsetzen wird?

English:
Paper plane world championship in Salzburg :-) 
Inside Google's self-driving car...

All You Need Is A Canoe

Emotions.

We all have them, we all have to live with them.
And we have to make sure that they don't influence us in a negative way. That may sound easier than it actually is, as a study by Dan Ariely seems to show (I say "seem" because of what I wrote in my post "Why Don't You Prove It?", which you can check out here).

In his book The Upside of Irrationality he writes about the problem of negative feelings and how they tend to influence our behavior (and especially decision-making) in a chapter entitled The Long-Term Effects of Short-Term Emotions. 

Links of the Week III

Hope you enjoy this week's links...

German:
Proben für einen Spaziergang auf dem Mars
Was die Holländer so alles werfen...
So was geht auch nur in Amerika...

How Much Is Too Much?

An easy answer is usually not readily available when someone asks: "How much is too much?"

When it comes to things that are known to be bad - smoking cigarettes, for example - we tend to say that one (cigarette) is already too much (which is probably true). When it comes to things that are good - e.g. eating good and healthy food - things get a little more complicated. How are we supposed to know when to stop eating because our bodies can no longer deal efficiently (there's probably a more scientific way of saying that, but you know what I mean :-)) with the amount of food we're putting into it?

Nevertheless, the question of "how much is too much" really becomes interesting the moment we start talking about something that is apparently neutral, i.e. neither good nor bad in and of itself: information.