The ultimate dangers of time travel aren’t in particle displacement,
or of where you might be put back together,
the reconfiguring of the atoms in your hand
or even the reunion of who you thought you were,
but the real danger is in the falsehoods of your destination

The true danger for the tourist is in the hands of the locals
and her unbitten tongue.
It’s in visiting a flat world with a globe on your desk,
and your snickers being heard in the lecture hall.

It’s in going to a place where the sky is either black or white,
where inquisitions happen before a question,
because there is only an answer.
It’s the encompassing fog,
the weather of where you are,
which hunts for pre-motived absolution.

The danger is in being unable to not preach to penguins
about what other birds are doing in another place,
and not escaping the wrath of their water wings,
the only wings in the world.

Writing in the Academy of Management Journal, Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and James Berry of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill report “intrinsic motivation is most likely to be associated with higher levels of creativity when employees are also prosocially motivated to take the perspective of others.” At least in a workplace situation, taking others’ needs into account, and seeing things from their point of view, seems to be a catalyst to creativity.

They cite three studies that found an association between prosociality (the willingness to do something for others without a benefit to yourself) and creativity. For example, one study found that security force officers “were more likely to earn higher supervisor creativity ratings when they also had high levels of prosocial motivation.”

Unfortunately, the article doesn’t explain why this association might exist–which is kind of a problem. Correlations or associations exist all over the place between things that are not related. The classic example is the relationship between the number of pirates and global temperature (see right). As pirate numbers decline we tend to see an increase in global temperature. Is one causing the other?

Come to think of it, maybe. We’ve been hearing more and more about Somali pirates and the 2000’s didn’t warm as much as the 1990’s. But seriously, in order for an association to mean something there also has to be a potential mechanism–an idea of how one might cause the other.

Another thing is that, though I haven’t read the studies themselves, it seems as though the research has only unearthed an association between the two. It’s not clear whether one is causing the other or even if there might be something else that’s causing both.

It’s easy to see how, if prosociality causes creativity, as the article seems to assume, businesses have been going about promoting people the wrong way. Most businesses promote the most productive and fire the least productive, which makes sense superficially, but this creates competition in the work place which does not lead to prosocial behaviour.

The results are still interesting in themselves though having been reproduced in three separate studies. I can’t for the life of me think of how one would cause a change in the other.

It’ll be interesting to see if more research comes out on this stuff. In the mean time, xkcd:

Shenton turns out to have resolutely mainstream views on most issues. The 33-year-old American, ­originally from Virginia but now living and working in London, is happy with the work of Charles Darwin. He thinks the evidence for man-made global warming is strong, and he dismisses suggestions that his own government was involved with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Cool. This guy seems to have his head screwed on right. Evolution? Check. Global warming? Check. I wish it ended there:

…when Shenton rides his motorbike, he says it is not gravity that pins him to the road, but the rapid upward motion of a disc-shaped planet. Countries, according to him, spread across this flat world as they appear to do on a map, with Antarctica as a ring of mountains strung around the edge. And, yes, you can fall off.

Meet David Shenton, President of the Flat Earth Society. I didn’t even think this society existed anymore but David Adam covers this guy’s story on The Guardian’s website. Check it out. It’s worth it.

Exhibit A:

The movie is Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and, thanks to Stephen Taubman,  it even has a science component to it. Made up science, maybe, but isn’t that better than no science? Yeah, you’re probably right. Below is an infographic made by  Taubman depicting Mega Shark’s heroic ascent to cloud level to take down a jumbo jet. The infographic is to scale which sadly also shows hows puny the CN Tower has become on the world stage. Nevertheless, between Godzilla, Snakes on a Plane and now Mega Shark, flying isn’t as safe as it used to be. (click on the image for the full-size pdf) (hat tip to Flowing Data)

There are blogs that are way wide of the mark, blogs that are streaky and there are blogs that consistently hit it out of the park. Mind Hacks is part of that elite last group. Originally started in 2004 to presumably promote their book of the same name, Mind Hacks: Tips & Tricks for using your Brain, this blog is the only promotional one I know of that has made it past 20 posts, never mind over half a decade.

I think it’s managed to be so popular because they cover a popular topic, the brain, but not in a ’scientists-have-discovered-the-(insert behaviour here)-part-of-the-brain’ kind of way but in a ‘people-have-actually-studied-that?!’ kind of way. For example, a post that has served me well at many a dinner party is about a study that looks into Russian Roulette. In a ten year period, the researchers managed to find a 24 cases of death by Russian Roulette–IN KENTUCKY ALONE. The victims, to use that term lightly, were mostly young, drunk or stoned men, with a bias towards body art. There was even a case report of a man who played the death-defying game with five bullets and one empty chamber. I’m glad I have no reason to ever go to Kentucky.

Russian Roulette is just the beginning. Other notable posts include a 24 year old man who break into seizures consisting of repetitive hugging and kissing people nearby whenever he saw a staircase but not if he saw the staircase from above. A guy who robbed two banks with lemon juice on his face thinking that that would prevent video cameras from recording his face. And a forensic investigation into a gladiator grave determining how they died and what weapons killed them. What?! You didn’t click on that last link? Crazy. Here it is again: gladiator forensics.

The real reason this blog is so popular, though, is that the posts are frequent, short and easy to read. They manage to steer well clear of the jargon that riddles the fields of psychology and neuroscience giving their blog a general audience rating. Well, general audience in terms of readability. I wouldn’t want my kids reading about Russian Roulette and GLADIATOR FORENSICS!

Check out Mind Hacks here.

Byrne, for those unaware, was the headman for the new-wave rock group Talking Heads (and don’t say “The Talking Heads”, they dedicated an album title to clear this up) and it’s with that group the he penned a song that, since the inception of the ipod, has consistently topped the number of listens on mine: This Must be the Place. The song’s subtitle, Naive Melody, betrays the song’s simplicity in relying on a couple simple guitar and keyboard riffs that persist throughout the song but the song’s other elements–including luscious backup singers (in the live version) and various kinds of synthesizers–easily round out the songs making you feel like all that exists is you and this song. Here’s the live version from what I think is the best live concert of all time Stop Making Sense:

This song and Byrne’s dance with the lamp are only the tip of the iceberg of his quirky creativity. For a bigger dose, here’s Byrne interviewing himself in support of Stop Making Sense:

And if you still haven’t had enough Byrne you should check out True Stories, a feature film he wrote with Beth Henley and Stephen Tobolowsky and starring Byrne and John Goodman. Here’s a sample of some of the music Talking Heads wrote for the film:

This polka based ballads are literally songs sung in Spanish about cocaine, marijuana, street toughs and the like.  This music dates back to the 1970’s when pioneers, Los Tigres Del Norte burst on the scene with such hits as Contrabando y Traicion” (“Contraband and Betrayal”) and “La Mafia Muere” (“The Mob Dies”).

Mexican Congress is trying to pass a law banning musicians to sing NarcoCorridos.  Essentially throwing singers in jail for singing any song in this genre. Ridiculous. Forget salsa music, this is now the most popular music in Mexico. Not only that, most of the music is recorded in the U.S. and is equally as huge in the southern states.

If the history of this music interests you and you want to read more about the rise of Los Tigres or about Chalino Sanchez-who got into a gun fight with an audience member during his own show (!) check out Elijah Wald’s book, “Narcocorrido A Journey Into The Music of Drugs, Guns and Geurillas“.

I’ve had lucid dreams before. I’ve even spent a week trying to have one after I heard a great two-part special on sleep on CBC radio’s Ideas called While You Were Out where I learned there are tricks to lucid dreaming. Some people get so good at it that they can do it at will even going so far as to use their dreams to practice things they want to do while awake (from the brain’s point of view, actions while you’re awake are the same as actions while your dreaming). To check if you’re dreaming, you can check digital watches, text, or test light switches because all of these things are known to be unstable in dreams. I find that I tend to have lucid dreams when I go to bed early before I’m really tired. Apparently, it even helps to go around while you’re awake asking yourself if you’re dreaming though that might be a step too far for me.

If you’re intrigued about lucid dreaming, you have to check out While You Were Out. It covers the science and history of sleep–the first part dedicated to what happens the first half of the night when you’re in slow-wave sleep and the second part covers that latter half of the night when we dream. The journalist, Jeff Warren, lives his journalism first-hand by subjecting himself to sleeping in a research lab where he’s woken up periodically and asked to talk about his dreams. He even sequesters himself in his family’s cottage during the shorts nights of November with no artificial night to see if he can experience sleep as we may be naturally supposed to experience it–in two four-hour chunks with two hours of conscious euphoria in between.

When this show came out as a podcast, it was so wildly popular that the CBC only left if up as a free download for a week before realizing they could make some money off it. That’s why now it’s only available on CD although you can stream it online from Jeff Warren’s website here. I highly recommend giving this a listen.

And now, Annie Lennox with some topical advice:

This song really is a prime example of how music can be the true emotional medicine. Recently I have been dealing with some moral dilemmas, most importantly, “how do I join the ever pressing adult world while keeping my street cred?” That’s when I pop on some cool rock classics like Rhiannon and realize that as long as my future kids know their Dad rocks to Fleetwood when he is driving them in the minivan to soccer practice, I have nothing to worry about.

This live version of the song is from a hip British show called “Midnight special” which is avaiIable on DVD. I highly recommend it to anyone up at 4 AM making grilled cheese and watching infomercials; three easy payments and it’s yours. The guitar solo half way through is worth it alone. Also, Stevie Nicks proves here why she is THE original rock babe. The voice, the looks, the drug habit…..amazing. Just watch the last minute of the video and you’ll get my drift. On a side note, I’m happy to see that Stevie still has it. At this year’s grammy awards, she gave current teen dream Taylor Swift a left uppercut/ right jab combo to the vocal chords. It was slightly shameful seeing my 70s goddess singing about some adolescent crush however.

Rhiannon can be played anywhere and anytime and you won’t get a complaint from me, this whole performance just oozes everything that was good about the 70s.