Dark Matter

Just so people who follow this aren't too bored waiting for a new post, here's a quick rundown on dark matter. It's a pretty cool and fun explanation.

Food!

Back to my usual theme of ways to enhance learning. One thing to consider is food. Eating healthily is definitely beneficial in many more ways than learning. There are things like: Vitamin B (specifically Niacin, I believe) is linked to increased mental performance. That's actually not what I want to get in to right now. The thing is, I've got a pretty busy schedule, and sometimes I don't eat very well during the day -- such as lunch.

The research evidence shows that being hungry helps learning. This is very counter-intuitive to me since I do horribly when I'm hungry. I can't think of anything else until I've eaten. Still, there is a reason why being hungry helps and the data supports it. The reason is that when you become hungry (as a primitive animal) your awareness heightens. You are in more need of food, and you need to do a better job getting it otherwise you die. So you take in more and remember it better for the future. This also seems to indicate that right after a big meal you will learn less and be more lethargic. I can easily agree with this one, not personally, but from watching people in class right after lunch time. Personally, I do much better on a full stomach. Perhaps being hungry helps when taken to a small extent, but hurts when overdone. I'm sure that's true of most things.

I encourage anyone who reads this to post a comment on what their personal experience with this has been.

Beer Helps Memory?

Here is an interesting article explaining how drinking a beer or two a day could help memory: Beer Article. I would say that the mechanism sounds all right, which is usually the hardest part in these learning and memory studies. They usually just have data and cool results and propose a strange mechanism. But, hey, results are results whether anyone can explain why or not. Obviously this is not a good reason to get drunk every night.

I'm Still Alive!

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted. Just an update for those who actually read this (i.e. no one). It is November, and that means it's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short?). Essentially it's a sprint to get to 50,000 words on a new work you start this month. Anyone can do it, and it isn't that hard (this is me speaking, having gotten nowhere so far AND having never done it before). What I mean is, this is a perfect example of my previous post on how a little bit every day adds up to a huge accomplishment. You don't realize how much you are doing as you are doing it because it is so easy to do just a little bit every day. Well, check it out! National Novel Writing Month