Various web links I found to be of interest recently.
Beyond Washington DC, Donald Trump, and impeachment, there lies a great big world - and that world, at the moment, is being convulsed by a remarkable number of revolts against political authority.
Everywhere, the mobilizing force has been the wish to strike
at the established order.
Politics in the digital age revolve around information. A safe
assumption when thinking about this environment is that everyone is
aware of everything, globally. This sets up powerful demonstration
effects: protesters in one nation can learn from those in another.
One reason for the spread of anti-establishment revolts may well
be their improved capacity to evade suppression.
The evolutionary history of humans explains why physical activity is important for brain health
Following up on this work in animals, researchers carried out a
series of investigations that determined that in humans, just like
in rodents, aerobic exercise leads to the production of BDNF and
augments the structure-that is, the size and connectivity-of
key areas of the brain, including the hippocampus. In a randomized
trial conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
by Kirk Erickson and Arthur Kramer, 12 months of aerobic exercise
led to an increase in BDNF levels, an increase in the size of the
hippocampus and improvements in memory in older adults.
...
In studies of healthy adults, Anderson-Hanley and her colleagues have
also shown that simultaneously exercising and playing a cognitive
challenging video game may elicit a greater increase in circulating
BDNF than exercise alone. These findings further bolster the idea
that BDNF is instrumental in bringing about exercise-induced brain
benefits.
The condition has been linked with diseases such as cancer and diabetes, and may help cause half of all deaths worldwide.
Just as effective as adding something to our lives, if not more so,
is subtracting the things that might be holding us back.
...
Not only can eliminating bad habits be a highly effective way to improve
your life, it's also often a lot easier than creating a new, positive habit.
Positive habits take a lot of motivation and willpower to cultivate.
But not doing something is much simpler.
Have Archetype - Will Travel, by skeptic Michael Shermer
Peterson waxed archetypal, calling religious claims, mythological
stories, and literary masterpieces "meta-true" and "more true than
scientific truth" inasmuch as they are mediated by socio-political
and cultural factors related to our Darwinian need to survive
and reproduce. There is no "truly independent" truth, he says,
only useful or not useful truths pertaining to our evolutionary
needs. The use-value of a claim at a particular time and place is
what makes it true.
...
Peterson's magnum opus Maps of Meaning, in fact, is subtitled
The Architecture of Belief, a 564-page mishmash of evolutionary theory,
biology, psychology, philosophy, literature, comparative mythology,
theology, the bible, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Jung, Freud, and others
that may have been more accurately subtitled The Architecture of Archetypes.
via Spotify
Most-streamed songs of 2019 (global)