Research & Rescue

Le Flash Mob, c'est magnifique

NYT: Wandering Mind Is a Sign of Unhappiness

A quick experiment. Before proceeding to the next paragraph, let your mind wander wherever it wants to go. Close your eyes for a few seconds, starting ... now.

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Viktor Koen

And now, welcome back for the hypothesis of our experiment: Wherever your mind went — the South Seas, your job, your lunch, your unpaid bills — that daydreaming is not likely to make you as happy as focusing intensely on the rest of this column will.

I’m not sure I believe this prediction, but I can assure you it is based on an enormous amount of daydreaming cataloged in the current issue of Science. Using an iPhone app called trackyourhappiness, psychologists at Harvard contacted people around the world at random intervals to ask how they were feeling, what they were doing and what they were thinking.

The least surprising finding, based on a quarter-million responses from more than 2,200 people, was that the happiest people in the world were the ones in the midst of enjoying sex. Or at least they were enjoying it until the iPhone interrupted.

Read the rest at www.nytimes.com

Random Acts of Kindness

This is quite beautiful:

Video: Aaron Huey: America's native prisoners of war

According to City-Data.com, the percentage of Pine Ridge residents living below the poverty line is more than 60%. For children, it's about 74%. The unemployment rate on Pine Ridge is somewhere around 85% (backpacksforpineridge.com)

From Aaron Huey's talk at TEDxDU:

"The suffering of the indigenous peoples is not an easy a simple issue to fix. It's not something everyone can get behind, the way they get behind helping Haiti or ending AIDS or fighting a famine. The fix, as it's called, may be much more difficult for the dominant society than, say a $50 check or a church trip to paint some graffiti-covered houses or a suburban family donating a box of clothes they don't even want anymore. So, where does that leave us? Shrugging our shoulders in the dark? The United States continues on a daily basis to violate the terms of the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties with the Lakota. The call to action I offer today - my TED Wish - is this: Honor the treaties. Give back the Black Hills. It's not your business what they do with them."

If you want to help the Lakota Nation in some way, here are two resources that you can go through. Feel free to leave other reputable ones in the comments:

Grassroots Non-Profit Assistance Programs for the Lakota Siouxan Nations

Betty Tuininga on Twitter

Help out Bread for the World, please

I just signed the pledge to end hunger and a generous Bread for the World member donated $1 in my name to help fight hunger. For every person who signs the pledge, an additional $1 will be donated to Bread for the World. Will you join me? Your voice can make a difference in the lives of hungry kids.

Stephan Wolff on Ending Ethnic Conflicts

Can leadership, diplomacy and institutional design be used to wage peace? Seems like a no-brainer. Historically, there's been a gap between power and leadership. Hopefully a global change in thought will result in a change in the trend.

Visit to Bandelier

Took a stroll on the main loop at Bandelier, since it was such nice weather. Click on the photo below to access the picture gallery:

Watch Your Pet

Hooray for Altair Engineering! Good advice for pet owners and, from the geek side of me, how cool that they made this ad with Solid Thinking! 

 

Everyone poops - and they always did

Apparently, even fossilized excrement can give us a great deal of information about the loving habits of ancient beings.

Ancient poop is known to geologists as coprolite material. It can be truly fossilized as solid rock, or just preserved in glacial ice, permafrost or dry caves. One geology department softball team I knew proudly named itself the “Coprolites.” Such is geologic humor.

Ancient mammoths and other prehistoric animals were well defined by the phrase, “you are what you eat.” And by studying what ancient animals ate — through their intestinal remains or their poop — we can learn about their diets and nutrition.

via www.gadsdentimes.com

Hat tip: @invasivenotes on Twitter

 

Congratulations to the Silly Party