Waking Up Drunk-Like

Waking Up Drunk-Like

Sleep inertia is a wonderful phrase, one I'm sure to add to my personal lexicon. "We found the cognitive skills of [some] test subjects were worse upon awakening than after extended sleep deprivation," researcher Kenneth Wright said. That's because in some of us, the cortical areas responsible for problem-solving take longer to wake up than other parts of the brain—as much as 12 hours, in my case.

Volvo's Jigsaw Puzzle Hardtop Convertible

Volvo's Jigsaw Puzzle Hardtop Convertible

One of my most pleasant memories from living in Santa Fe was cruising the back road to Albuquerque to visit Brian Damkroger for the first time in John Atkinson's classic Mercedes ragtop. Naturally, it started to rain and we had to pull off the road and wrestle his roof back onto the car. <I>All this Mercedes mechanical sophistication and we still have to do this by hand?</I> I thought.

Those Little Gray Cells

Those Little Gray Cells

Qwan Wen and Dmitri B. Chklovski, two theoretical physicists, have constructed a model that explains why vertebrate brains typically contain both gray matter and white matter. The gray contains local networks of neurons, wired by dendrites and mostly nonmyelinated local axons, while the white contains long-range axons that implement global communication via often myelinated axons.

Some Reflections on the Sociology of Anonymity

Some Reflections on the Sociology of Anonymity

An interesting treatise on anonymity in the Internet age. How much surveillance is too much? How much freedom from it is excessive? If we don't think these questions through for ourselves, somebody else might come up with answers that aren't palatable.

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