Author Archives: Chris

Humor in the police logs

For a long time I have made a habit scanning the Palo Alto’s Daily Post for a few laughs. It’s not the comics page I’m looking at–it’s the Police Blotter. They have it broken down by city, and while most … Continue reading

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Drinking the fog

In Santa Cruz, where I grew up, the fog rolls in every summer evening and burns off about noon the next day, so this story about the technology to catch fog for drinking water was particularly interesting to me. Santa … Continue reading

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The smell of remembering

There was a time in the 60s when various people promised you could learn in your sleep. Just play a tape of a lesson as you slept, and voila! you would be ready to ace the test in the morning. … Continue reading

Posted in Brain Hacking, Neuroscience and Psychology, Science and Medicine, Sleep | Leave a comment

Birds and humans are the only animals that gotta’ dance

An interesting interview from Discover, about how nearly every species except humans can’t learn to bop to the beat of music. As the researcher explains, this probably has to do with our vocal learning pathways, which have to be highly … Continue reading

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To Lose Weight: Learn to Be Hungry

It sounds like a joke: if you want lose weight, go hungry. But I’m serious. A lot of the obesity we see exists because our bodies have forgotten how to be hungry. We are designed to fast occasionally. Our bodies … Continue reading

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How to get yourself to exercise more

I find that when I first start a run I can sometimes feel like a steaming pile of dog poo, especially if I have been away from running for a bit. But I also know that if I keep on … Continue reading

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Dopamine and Serotonin: Words and Music

Serotonin has sometimes been called the “police officer” of the brain, regulating the action of other neurotransmitters like dopamine. But this seems to me to be not quite the right analogy. I think of serotonin as the mood music of … Continue reading

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Digital technologies and social networks will usher in the biggest shakeup medicine has ever seen

Yesterday, Eric Topol, who is director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, CA,  spoke to members of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute about the transformative power of digital technology and social networks in medicine. He noted that the … Continue reading

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Alcohol helps the brain remember

I’m going to skip to what I found most remarkable about this news release from the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research at The University of Texas at Austin: “People commonly think of dopamine as a happy transmitter, or a pleasure … Continue reading

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Some stats on ebooks and ereaders

I knew that Amazon was now selling more Kindle books than paper books, but I was interested to see that ebook sales overtook hardcover sales this year. E-book sales, January 2011: $69.9 million E-book sales, January 2010: $32.4 million Hardcover sales, January … Continue reading

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