wanderingstan

My favorite links from the past week, roughly themed around ‘happiness’. Have a create weekend!

• I Used To Believe
• Like me, did you used to believe that factories make clouds, or wonder why youth in asia were so controversial? Turns out we weren’t alone!
• Pretty Woman’s Face Is Just Like Cocaine To Male Brain
• “A beautiful woman’s face is like chocolate, cash or cocaine to a young man’s brain, according to Harvard University researchers.” Oldie but goodie, found again while compiling sources about happiness and human reward system.(Original Research Paper)
• In Praise of Melancholy – ChronicleReview.com
• Too rhetorical for my taste, but still manages to make good counterpoints to the idea that we should be happy. Recommended by Fabian, who’s writing his thesis about this.
• Why your brain has a ‘Jennifer Aniston cell’
• I saw monkey brain slices while visiting my friend Anita Schmid in at Cornell Medical School. She mentioned this study, which could be revolutionary. The idea of cells dedicated to something as specific as a single person has been out of fashion for decades.
• The sad tale of the aspiration treadmill
• More on happiness from an excellent series of articles from smart people who’ve changed their minds. What is the real connection between standard of living and life satisfaction?
• The Death of High Fidelity : Rolling Stone and High dynamic range imaging
• I’m really into the idea of a “Dynamic Range.” These links are about sound and images, but I wonder about the importance of dynamic range in emotions, saliency, and “interestingness”. (As I discussed previously about YouTube.)
• On Burning Out
• Great post from friend and Boulder entrepreneur Andrew Hyde about the dangers of pushing too hard, not taking time for yourself. Sees to have struck a chord.
• Feltron Eight – Personal Annual Report
• A New York designer creates a beautiful ”annual report” for his life in 2007. Maybe something everyone should try, though the results might not be so beautiful.