Vegan Friend

Incognito's author would go so far as to say that consciousness is useless, but then qualifies that statement. What's certain is that the unconscious mind does far more than most of us are consciousof. A group of people unable to retain short term memory were in a study in which they were taught to play tetris. The following day, they had no recollection of this, but their ability to play the game was on the same level as right after they were taught. Some had reported seeing colored shapes falling from the sky in their dreams. There's more. Plenty more examples of where the unconscious mind controls our actions and decisions against our wills. People end up in relationships with someone with the same first letter in their name more frequently than randomness would allow. You're more likely to believe something that's familiar. A group was presented sentences that contained a false fact, and then a week later were asked to rate the veracity of a series of statements...

 This section of Incognito addresses innovations in brain technology. I'm against animal testing, mostly. In all applications, it causes suffering, and in so many cases, it produces no valuable outcomes, But I also recognize that some animal testing has led to incredible medical advances. Whenever possible, animal testing should be avoided, but there are some applications where I'm torn. Here's an example. Mice are apparently color blind, but some have been genetically modified in an experiement that resulted in the mice being able to discern between red and blue. Incredible. I already know that there are many colors on the spectrum that humans are incapable of perceiving. What I just learned from this book is that about 10% of women have a genetic mutation where instead of three color receptors, they have four, and are thus able to perceive colors the rest of us cannot. I really wish the author had gone further into this. Maybe later. There's speculation that humans, t...

 Today I learned, reading Incognito, that I have a blind spot. The book explains that our eyes have blindspots, located differently in each eye. I tried the experiment described in the book to prove this by making an L with each hand's thumb and forefinger, touching the thumbs together, holding them away from my face, closing one eye, focusing on the opposite index finger, and bringing my hands slowly toward my face. Nothing. Maybe it needs to be further out, so I made more of a W. Still nothing. Then I thought I may as well do the opposite even though I know it won't work. I angled both index fingers toward each other slightly and tried once again. If it had worked, I expected it to be very close to my face, but in fact the other finger vanished with my arms still mostly outstretched.   We never notice these blindspots because our brain fills in the details. In fact, our brain does most of the work in seeing. The author described the brain as being encased in a vault of ...

 When mountains are painted, there's typically a blue hue, but this was not always the case. Before Rennaissance artists observed the blueness of mountains in the distance, this was not a standard tool. That perception was always available but went unnoticed because our eyes are unreliable. Our eyes make things up. Another example is the corner of a room, where two walls painted with the same paint look like different shades. Or here's a crazy one. If you look at four or five strips of paper ranging from black to white, and they are separated some, you'll see exactly that, but if you butt them up against each other in order from dark to white, your eyes will tell you that you are looking at a gradient.   I think I've always known this about my eyes, and not without some resentment. People looking at a painting will see different things if they are asked varying questions about the artwork. Why can't I just see everything? Something I don't like about myself is t...

Yesterday, I started reading the book Icognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman.  I'm still on the introductory chapter, but I am feeling like this is the book I've been looking for. My own brain isn't right, and I'm trying to figure out why. My brain has never been exactly normal, but it would dysfunction in beautiful ways. I would make strangely creative connections between words, people, concepts, whatever. I knew it was odd in a way that often did not make sense to others no matter how obvious it was to me. Ugh, I'm struggling for an example. I'll come up with some. For a while, though, I haven't been as confident and certainly not as creative. And I don't know why. It may have started when I lost my job in 2023. That was a dark time, and there's a lot of resentment I still can't let go, which is also uncharacteristic of me.  I've been making sure to write for 20 minutes every day for the past week, and that's helped ...

I did not discover a new Boston veg-friendly bistro last night. The timing was weird, with only an hour between the last education session and the celebration event. So, I'll take this chance to blog about the real reason I'm in Boston. Roughly every other year, I attend a conference called Greenbuild, which is run by the US Green Building Council. Since you blog enthusiasts aren't flocking to me in droves enough that it pays the bills (or pays at all) I have to have a day job. So, I work at BOMI International, where I help design and develop education programming for commercial real estate people--property managers, facilities engineers, and others. To do this, BOMI needs to work with industry leading experts. I'm here in Boston trying to meet and engage some of those experts. Greenbuild and the USGBC are committed to pushing the industry in the direction of sustainability. And it's going well. Most large-scale properties in the US and much of the world are...