Not too long ago I was interviewed for episode of the radio show Radiolab. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich led me to a windowless cubicle where they then grilled me for a long, long time. From that interrogation, they produce a medley in which I say:
“Sloppy, sloppy, noisy, chaos, jumble, chance, sloppy, sloppy…”
Continue reading “Radiolab: The Noise and Sloppiness of Life”
Mind wandering is the subject of my new column for Discover. Far from just useless mental static, mind-wandering actually creates a distinctive pattern of activity in our brains–a pattern that suggests that it may actually be playing a crucial role in our mental life. Check it out.
Originally published June 15, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
Discover, June 15, 2009
I am going to do my best to hold your attention until the very last word of this column. Actually, I know it’s futile. Along the way, your mind will wander off, then return, then drift away again. But I can console myself with some recent research on the subject of mind wandering. Mind wandering is not necessarily the sign of a boring column. It’s just one of the things that make us human.
Everybody knows what it is like for our minds to wander, and yet, for a long time psychologists shied away from examining the experience. It seemed too elusive and subjective to study scientifically. Only in the past decade have they even measured just how common mind wandering is. The answer is very.
Continue reading “Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State”
Benjamin writes, “The tattoo on my ankle is of a one-bit binary full adder. It one of the most basic building blocks of all computer chips. The flow of binary state would be from left to right as oriented in the picture.”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published June 14, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
As I mentioned earlier, as part of the World Science Festival, I’ll be talking Sunday with Eric Sanderson, an ecologist who has just published the book Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, based on his remarkable project to map out the ecosystems of New York on the eve of the arrival of Europeans. We’ll be at the Author’s Corner, which is now in a different location: The Discovery Theater, on the 8th floor of the Kimmel Center at NYU on Washington Square. Here are the details and a map .
Eric and I will speak from 11:00 am to 11:30 and then we’ll both be signing books at noon.
See you there!
Originally published June 12, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.