24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
The Mind
To me the most astounding fact in the universe, even more astounding than the flight of the Monarch butterfly, is the power of mind which drives my fingers as I write these words. Somehow, by natural processes still totally mysterious, a million butterfly brains working together in a human skull have the power to dream, to calculate, to see and to hear, to speak and to listen, to translate thoughts and feelings into marks on paper which other brains can interpret. Mind, through the long cours... 1 
notes
notes17 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Fun With the German Response to a Sneeze
Do you guys in the US really say ‘Gesundheit’ ? It is so cute to see one of our words (particularly one unrelated to war or anything like that) put to good use in a foreign language.
As somebody pointed out, ‘gesundheit’ just means ‘health’, and I am sure that this is already an abbreviation of an older habit of saying ‘may you be in good health’ (which just takes too long to say).
There are some other interesting cultural differences: I had no idea that ‘achoo’ is the s... 1 notes
notesGesundheit, Schonheit, Klugheit: Health, Beauty, Wisdom.
26 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Vulcan Meditation
In any system of meditation, one can categorize the techniques endlessly.
One could divide them into active, passive, and waking, or make
distinctions between mental, emotional, and physical meditations. Active
meditation techniques require you to focus on some object to the
exclusion of all else - like a meditating on a symbol, a set of words or
an image. A passive meditation involves stilling the mind so that the
train of thoughts which occupy our consciousness so pervasively stop. The
su...Folksonomies: meditation
Folksonomies: meditation
2 There are three types of meditation: intellectual, emotional, and physical.
08 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
How Motherese Teaches Babies Language
The tests show that babies' preferences have nothing to do with the actual words mothers use. Babies choose motherese (or "parentese" or "caretakerese") even when the speaker is talking in a foreign language so infants can't understand the words, or when the words have been filtered out using computer techniques and only the pitch of the voice remains. Apparently they choose motherese not just because it's how their mother talks but because they like the way it sounds. Motherese is a sort of ...
1 With its characteristic slow, repetitive enunciation of the words in culture's language, Motherese seems like an instinctual way a mother habituates their child to the sound categorizations of their language. This begs the question: if the Motherese imitates the sounds of another language, would that stave off the child's failure to distinguish foreign sounds later on?
