Researchers study a small group of patients who underwent surgery that split their brains:
Through studies of this group, neuroscientists now know that the healthy brain can look like two markedly different machines, cabled together and exchanging a torrent of data. But when the primary cable is severed, information — a word, an object, a picture — presented to one hemisphere goes unnoticed in the other. Michael Gazzaniga, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the godfather of modern split-brain science, says that even after working with these patients for five decades, he still finds it thrilling to observe the disconnection effects first-hand. ‘You see a split-brain patient just doing a standard thing — you show him an image and he can’t say what it is. But he can pull that same object out of a grab-bag,’ Gazzaniga says. ‘Your heart just races!’
“The Split Brain: A Tale of Two Halves.” — David Wolman, Nature
See also: “A Piece of Their Mind.” — Ken MacQueen, MacLean’s, Nov. 2, 2010
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Researchers study a small group of patients who underwent surgery that split their brains:
“Through studies of this group, neuroscientists now know that the healthy brain can look like two markedly different machines, cabled together and exchanging a torrent of data. But when the primary cable is severed, information — a word, an object, a picture — presented to one hemisphere goes unnoticed in the other. Michael Gazzaniga, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the godfather of modern split-brain science, says that even after working with these patients for five decades, he still finds it thrilling to observe the disconnection effects first-hand. ‘You see a split-brain patient just doing a standard thing — you show him an image and he can’t say what it is. But he can pull that same object out of a grab-bag,’ Gazzaniga says. ‘Your heart just races!'”
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Published: Mar 24, 2012
Length: 13 minutes (3,477 words)
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The stories of Daniel Murphy and Ben Zucker, two participants in Occupy Wall Street who are still looking to define what the movement is all about:
At 23, Zucker has the organizing gene. He’s a fresh graduate of Tulane University, where he studied public health to get a foot in the door of social justice work, and his family lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, just inside the Beltway. He once spent a semester running a health program in Senegal, and upon his return, he got involved with a protest by dining services workers. Zucker, who was hooked after first swinging by McPherson in early October, represents the liberal side of the movement. He wants universal health care and federal takeovers of big banks, and he thinks Occupy Wall Street is a good way to make it all happen.
That’s a sharp contrast with Murphy, a Long Beach native who earned his high school diploma in 2004 but never graduated. At 17, he was sentenced to more than two years in the California Youth Authority for stabbing three people at a coffee shop after his friend was punched.
“The Occupiers: A Liberal and a Radical Struggle for the Soul of a Movement.” — Andrew Katz, The Atlantic
See more #longreads on #OWS
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The stories of Daniel Murphy and Ben Zucker, two participants in Occupy Wall Street who are still looking to define what the movement is all about:
“At 23, Zucker has the organizing gene. He’s a fresh graduate of Tulane University, where he studied public health to get a foot in the door of social justice work, and his family lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, just inside the Beltway. He once spent a semester running a health program in Senegal, and upon his return, he got involved with a protest by dining services workers. Zucker, who was hooked after first swinging by McPherson in early October, represents the liberal side of the movement. He wants universal health care and federal takeovers of big banks, and he thinks Occupy Wall Street is a good way to make it all happen.
“That’s a sharp contrast with Murphy, a Long Beach native who earned his high school diploma in 2004 but never graduated. At 17, he was sentenced to more than two years in the California Youth Authority for stabbing three people at a coffee shop after his friend was punched.”
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Published: Mar 20, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,822 words)
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A writer visits a fifth grade classroom at a northern California elementary school, where she observes the class’s anti-bullying curriculum:
“Stop it, you are bullying me,” he says. Then he lets his body go slack. He bows, then sits down.
“You labeled it, you said ‘stop,’ you stood up straight,” Linda says, “Good job.”
“Very good,” Efrain asks. “Any questions?”
“Yeah,” someone shouts. “What do you do if someone calls you a hobo?”
“Is that a serious question?”
“Yes, I want to know what to do if someone calls me a hobo.” A pause as Efrain looks very mildly annoyed. “Okay. It’s not a serious question.”
“Hobo,” someone shouts.
“How to Bully Children.” — Sarah Miller, The Awl
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A writer visits a fifth grade classroom at a northern California elementary school, where she observes the class’s anti-bullying curriculum:
“‘Stop it, you are bullying me,’ he says. Then he lets his body go slack. He bows, then sits down.
“‘You labeled it, you said “stop,” you stood up straight,’ Linda says, ‘Good job.’
“‘Very good,’ Efrain asks. ‘Any questions?’
“‘Yeah,’ someone shouts. ‘What do you do if someone calls you a hobo?’
“‘Is that a serious question?’
“‘Yes, I want to know what to do if someone calls me a hobo.’ A pause as Efrain looks very mildly annoyed. ‘Okay. It’s not a serious question.’
“‘Hobo,’ someone shouts.”
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Published: Mar 13, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,247 words)
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Cain, writer of “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Double Indemnity” and “Mildred Pierce,” on the pros and cons of living in Southern California in the 1930s:
There is no reward for aesthetic virtue here, no punishment for aesthetic crime; nothing but a vast cosmic indifference, and that is the one thing the human imagination cannot stand. It withers, or else, frantic to make itself felt, goes off into feverish and idiotic excursions that have neither reason, rhyme, nor point, and that even fail in their one, purpose, which is to attract notice.
Now, in spite of the foregoing, when you come to consider the life that is encountered here, you have to admit that there is a great deal to be said for it.
“Paradise.” — James M. Cain, Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1933
See also: “Sweatpants in Paradise.” — Molly Young, The Believer, Sept. 1, 2010
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Cain, writer of “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Double Indemnity” and “Mildred Pierce,” on the pros and cons of living in L.A. and Southern California in the 1930s:
“There is no reward for aesthetic virtue here, no punishment for aesthetic crime; nothing but a vast cosmic indifference, and that is the one thing the human imagination cannot stand. It withers, or else, frantic to make itself felt, goes off into feverish and idiotic excursions that have neither reason, rhyme, nor point, and that even fail in their one, purpose, which is to attract notice.
“Now, in spite of the foregoing, when you come to consider the life that is encountered here, you have to admit that there is a great deal to be said for it.”
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Published: Mar 1, 1933
Length: 38 minutes (9,665 words)
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On the 1988 presidential campaign:
Among those who traveled regularly with the campaigns, in other words, it was taken for granted that these “events” they were covering, and on which they were in fact filing, were not merely meaningless but deliberately so: occasions on which film could be shot and no mistakes made (“They hope he won’t make any big mistakes,” the NBC correspondent covering George Bush kept saying the evening of the September 25 debate at Wake Forest University, and, an hour and a half later, “He didn’t make any big mistakes”), events designed only to provide settings for those unpaid television spots which in this case were appearing, even as we spoke, on the local news in California’s three major media markets. “On the fishing trip, there was no way for television crews to get videotapes out,” the Los Angeles Times noted a few weeks later in a piece about how “poorly designed and executed” events had interfered with coverage of a Bush campaign “environmental” swing through the Pacific Northwest. “At the lumber mill, Bush’s advance team arranged camera angles so poorly that in one set-up only his legs could get on camera.” A Bush adviser had been quoted: “There is no reason for camera angles not being provided for. We’re going to sit down and talk about these things at length.”
“Insider Baseball.” — Joan Didion, The New York Review of Books, October 1988
See more #longreads from Joan Didion
Photo: cliff1066/Flickr
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On the 1988 presidential campaign:
“Among those who traveled regularly with the campaigns, in other words, it was taken for granted that these ‘events’ they were covering, and on which they were in fact filing, were not merely meaningless but deliberately so: occasions on which film could be shot and no mistakes made (‘They hope he won’t make any big mistakes,’ the NBC correspondent covering George Bush kept saying the evening of the September 25 debate at Wake Forest University, and, an hour and a half later, ‘He didn’t make any big mistakes’), events designed only to provide settings for those unpaid television spots which in this case were appearing, even as we spoke, on the local news in California’s three major media markets. ‘On the fishing trip, there was no way for television crews to get videotapes out,’ the Los Angeles Times noted a few weeks later in a piece about how ‘poorly designed and executed’ events had interfered with coverage of a Bush campaign ‘environmental’ swing through the Pacific Northwest. ‘At the lumber mill, Bush’s advance team arranged camera angles so poorly that in one set-up only his legs could get on camera.’ A Bush adviser had been quoted: ‘There is no reason for camera angles not being provided for. We’re going to sit down and talk about these things at length.'”
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Published: Oct 27, 1988
Length: 39 minutes (9,980 words)
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