Month: January 2021

Last Week’s Links

‘People in their 80s and 90s are bloody brilliant!’ Kate Mosse on writing – and being a carer

“The bestselling historical novelist has had a productive lockdown – reading 250 books and writing two, all while caring for her elderly mother-in-law.”

Historical novelist Kate Mosse was “one of a number of novelists commissioned by the Wellcome Trust to write about issues of social or medical care.” The result is An Extra Pair of Hands, to be published later this year. Mosse based the book on her experiences caring for, first, her mother during widowhood and, second, her mother-in-law during the current lockdown. 

Can You Treat Loneliness By Creating an Imaginary Friend?

I began reading this article thinking that it would discuss how many people, even adults, may have felt the need to create imaginary friends for company during this time of social isolation. But I was wrong. 

Here Jim Davies, professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Carleton University, discusses tulpamancy:

Over the last several years, a community of people, interacting mostly in online forums, like Reddit, have discovered a way to create something like imaginary companions as adults. This process is known as tulpamancy, and the people who engage in it call themselves “tulpamancers.”

The process involves the creation of a tulpa, an imaginary companion who is thought to have achieved full sentience. “In other words, this is a benign hallucination.”

Davies writes, “What is interesting to me about this phenomenon, which is only now beginning to be studied scientifically, is the reason that people decide to create a tulpa in the first place: Most often they do it to relieve loneliness.” He imagines several situations in which this practice might serve a useful function.

James R. Flynn, Who Found We Are Getting Smarter, Dies at 86

“A philosopher who moved into psychology and studied I.Q., he showed that as society grows more technical, human intellectual abilities expand to meet the challenge.”

I offer this piece not specifically for the obituary, but rather for the history and significance of Dr. Flynn’s work in isolating and understanding the field of intelligence testing. His work has continuing importance.

Remote learning isn’t new: Radio instruction in the 1937 polio epidemic

We all know about the use of remote learning during the current pandemic shutdown. Here Katherine A. Foss, professor of Media Studies at Middle Tennessee State University, tell us “This is not the first time education has been disrupted in the U.S. – nor the first time that educators have harnessed remote learning. In 1937, the Chicago school system used radio to teach children during a polio outbreak, demonstrating how technology can be used in a time of crisis.”

Hall of Fame voters pitch a shutout as character questions muddle Cooperstown debate

I’m a big baseball fan, and I’ve been interested over the past several years how the media and fans have reacted to the problem of performance-enhancing drugs in all sports. I was not surprised to hear of the recent vote that kept former MLB players Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling out of the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. In this article for the Washington Post Dave Sheinin examines how the voting works, including an explanation of how “the so-called character clause” in the voting instructions works.

© 2021 by Mary Daniels Brown

Last Week’s Links

Mary Catherine Bateson Dies at 81; Anthropologist on Lives of Women

When I wrote my dissertation on the life stories of five 19th century women physicians in the U.S., one of the reference books I used was Mary Catherine Bateson’s Composing a Life, “an examination of the stop-and-start nature of women’s lives and their adaptive responses — ‘life as an improvisatory art,’ as she wrote.”

Mary Catherine Bateson was the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. “They treated their daughter’s arrival almost as more field work, documenting her birth on film — not a typical practice in 1939 — and continuing to record her early childhood with the intention of using the footage not just as home movies but also as educational material.”

I frequently wish that I had studied more languages. Mary Catherine Bateson earned a Ph.D. in linguistics and Middle Eastern languages, for which she learned Hebrew, classical Arabic, Armenian, Turkish, Tagalog, Farsi and Georgian.

4 Ways to Do More With Your Smartphone Camera

I remember how stupid I felt the first time I realized that I didn’t have to write down the license plate number of a rental car because I could simply snap a photo of it. 

Here New York Times tech guru J.D. Biersdorfer explains a few more great things you can do with your phone and an additional app or two.

Electric Cars Are Better for the Planet – and Often Your Budget, Too

Some day, when we can travel again, my husband and I hope to go on some scenic road trips. We considered getting an electric car but decided that the recharging options currently out there aren’t adequate for where we intend to go. Nonetheless, electric cars are the future of family transportation, according to newly published data that suggest “electric cars may actually save drivers money in the long-run.”

Let us appreciate the grace and uncommon decency of Henry Aaron

In the last few months we’ve lost several baseball legends. Here ESPN senior writer and biographer Howard Bryant remembers Henry Aaron.

Larry King, legendary talk show host, dies at 87

And here’s CNN’s remembrance of another legend who died recently, interviewer Larry King.

At the Inauguration, Amanda Gorman Wove History and the Future Into a Stirring Melody

To end on a positive note, here’s a feature focusing on the other end of the age spectrum, Amanda Gorman, who enthralled everyone who watched her recitation of the poem she wrote for the U.S. Presidential Inauguration.

© 2021 by Mary Daniels Brown

Last Week’s Links

Parkinson’s Disease Needs an Operation Warp Speed

“It’s the world’s fastest growing neurological disorder. In the past decade, the number of Americans with Parkinson’s disease increased by 35 percent.”

Michael S. Okun is Executive Director of the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at University of Florida Health, and the Medical Director of the Parkinson’s Foundation. Here he argues that science must accelerate research into treatment for Parkinson’s disease. “In the past decade alone, the number of Americans with Parkinson’s disease increased by 35 percent and the growth was 20 percent faster than what was observed in Alzheimer’s disease.”

Is It Really Too Late to Learn New Skills?

“You missed your chance to be a prodigy, but there’s still growth left for grownups.”

“If learning like a child sounds a little airy-fairy, whatever the neuroscience research says, try recalling what it felt like to learn how to do something new when you didn’t really care what your performance of it said about your place in the world,” writes Margaret Talbot. 

How Murder, She Wrote Captured Our Hearts

My father-in-law grew up in coastal Rockland, Maine, and he faithfully watched Murder, She Wrote every week. Murder, She Wrote “was an hour-long mystery show that aired on CBS from 1984-1996. It starred Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, a widow living in Cabot Cove, Maine, who became a bestselling author after her husband died. She wrote popular mystery novels, and she was also handy at solving murders,” writes Liberty Hardy. Here she explains the program’s three features that enthralled audiences: it made us feel smart, we loved the guest stars, and it was silly.

The key to creativity? Be a better listener, says ‘The Artist’s Way’ author Julia Cameron

Last week’s links included the article You’re Not Listening. Here’s Why.

In the article linked here, Seattle Times reporter Nicole Brodeur interviews creativity guru Julia Cameron, best known for her book The Artist’s Way, about her latest book, The Listening Path. Brodeur writes that the book is about “personal transformation through better listening to not just others, but the silence around you.”

Our Favorite Golden Girl Turns 99! See 48 Rare Photos of Betty White Through the Years

Because you can never get too much Betty White.

© 2021 by Mary Daniels Brown

Last Week’s Links

I’m signing off as TV critic, but here are six shows I’d happily watch again

Hank Stuever wrote this piece when stepping down as TV critic for the Washington Post. I like it for its description of how television changed during his tenure as critic:

TV, which once seemed a manageable part of the cultural diet, became all-consuming. Netflix released its first big streaming hit, “House of Cards,” in 2013, and the steady supply of TV programs that I once jokingly thought of as an open fire hydrant instead began to resemble a tsunami. The customs of TV were upended: where to watch it, how to watch it, how much of it to binge-watch at a time. Also, new manners: how to talk about it, how not to spoil it for others.

Stuever ends with his list of “shows I reviewed that I would totally watch again.” I thoroughly disagree with the first on his list, “’Twin Peaks: The Return’ (Showtime, 2017).” My husband and I loved the original show but thought that this reboot was a thorough waste of time. However, three of the others he lists were total winners with us: The Americans, Lost, and Mad Men.

Turning the Page on the Year

“If ever there were a new year that called for a new notebook, this would be it.”

Dr. Perri Klass admits that she loves notebooks even if she’s not as diligent in writing in them as she’d like to be. I used to write in a journal just about every day, but for about two years, when we were traveling extensively in early retirement (and hopefully we’ll be able to do that again some time), I let myself fall out of the habit. (Yes, it’s much easier to let a habit lapse than to build a habit in the first place.)

But I’ve been building up the old habit over the last couple of months and intend to do much better this year.

You’re Not Listening. Here’s Why.

“There’s an unconscious tendency to tune out people you feel close to because you think you already know what they are going to say.”

Kate Murphy, author of You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters, says that while researching her book, she “earned something incredibly ironic about interpersonal communication: The closer we feel toward someone, the less likely we are to listen carefully to them. It’s called the closeness-communication bias and, over time, it can strain, and even end, relationships.”

There’s some good stuff here, including a possible explanation for “why people in close relationships sometimes withhold information or keep secrets from one another.”

No, it’s not weird to talk to yourself. Mental health experts point to pandemic, unrest as possible reasons

“Experts say [self-talk is] common and that, with the added stressors of a pandemic alongside protests over police brutality and race relations in America, self-talk can be a way to feel control in a world that offers individuals very little.”

Why Do Dwarves Sound Scottish and Elves Sound Like Royalty?

My husband and I had just finished three evenings of watching the extended versions of Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy of Lord of the Rings when the photo of Gimli the Dwarf popped up in my email. I had thought about the language of dwarves and elves during the films (the extended versions are LONG movies) and was therefore interested in reading how these fantasy dialects had originated. 

We have J.R.R. Tolkien to thank for the way these characters of fantasy speak. Tolkien, who has a philologist, “would create languages first, then write cultures and histories to speak them, often taking inspiration from the sound of an existing language.” 

Undecided On Getting A Covid-19 Vaccine? Beware Of These Two Cognitive Biases

Dr. Joshua Liao explains how availability bias and confirmation bias may influence our decisions about getting a coronavirus vaccine.

© 2021 by Mary Daniels Brown

Last Week’s Links

Feeling Socially Awkward? Even Extroverts Are a Little Rusty

“Months of limited mingling have made even extremely outgoing people uncomfortable socializing, ‘like awkward eighth graders attending a school dance for the first time.’”

Secular ‘values voters’ are becoming an electoral force in the US – just look closely at 2020’s results

This article takes a look at “one of the largest growing demographics among the U.S. electorate, one that has increased from around 5% of Americans to over 23% in the last 50 years: ‘Nones’ – that is, the nonreligious.”

Where Does Our Consciousness Overlap With an Octopus’s?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil reviews Peter Godfrey-Smith’s book METAZOA: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind. 

perhaps the most enthralling part of this book is the author’s experiences diving at famous sites now affectionately called Octopolis and Octlantis, just off the coast of eastern Australia where several octopuses live, hunt, fight and make more octopuses.

It’s an experience that demands we consider the very real possibility that an octopus, an animal already regarded as one of the most complex in the animal kingdom, is a being with multiple selves.

Talking out loud to yourself is a technology for thinking

If, like me, you occasionally realize that you’re talking out loud to yourself, this article will comfort you with its explanation. “Speech is not merely a conduit for the transmission of ideas, a replaceable medium for direct communication, but a generative activity that enhances thinking.”

Lesley Ann Warren Reflects On 35 Years Of ‘Clue’ And A Life-Long Journey In Hollywood

Although this article focuses on Lesley Ann Warren’s more recent career, I remember her best for her role in the old TV show Mission: Impossible.

© 2021 by Mary Daniels Brown