Monthly Archives: May 2022

Memories & History, Science & Health

Keep Forgetting Things? Neuroscience Says These 5 Habits Improve Memory and Leadership | Inc.com

Let’s go to the neuroscience: five specific tricks to improve memory and recall things better.

By Bill Murphy Jr., http://www.billmurphyjr.com @BillMurphyJr

Photo: Getty Images

When you forget things, you fall short: What time was that meeting tomorrow? Was it April who said she might want to become a customer in August, or was it August who said to call him next April?

Wait, what was the third thing?

I joke of course, but if there’s one thing many business leaders worry about — especially as they grow a bit older — it’s whether their memories have suffered. So, let’s go to the neuroscience: five specific tricks to improve memory and recall things better.

1. Walk backward. Let’s start with my favorite on the list, because the neuroscientists who came up with it can’t even explain why it works. Researchers from the University of Roehampton in London divided their subjects into three groups. In Group 1, participants were asked to watch a short movie, or memorize words, or study a set of pictures while walking forward. In Group 2, participants completed the same tasks while walking backward. In Group 3, participants acted as a control group, doing the same tasks but standing still.

Source: Keep Forgetting Things? Neuroscience Says These 5 Habits Improve Memory and Leadership | Inc.com

Books & Reading

What Is Space Opera in the 2020s? | Los Angeles Review of Books

By Grant Wythoff, May 28, 2022

from article…

A SPACE OPERA revival is in full flight.

But it’s not streaming on Amazon or any other platform owned by someone trying to escape to Mars. While studios hungry for prestige intellectual property are mining a much older space opera paradigm with adaptations like Foundation and Dune, books by a diverse group of writers from around the world are beginning to rework the tropes of speculative fiction’s oldest and pulpiest tradition.

This revitalization of space opera — stories traditionally set in distant futures when humanity has spread to worlds beyond the solar system — comes at an odd time. Many vanguard SF and literary authors alike, having finally acknowledged that it’s no longer possible to ignore the climate emergency, are writing influential, near-future works of climate fiction.

Why, then, has a new generation of authors like Nnedi Okorafor, Yoon Ha Lee, Ann Leckie, Hao Jingfang, Charlie Jane Anders, and Maurice Broaddus turned to stories of other worlds, when the fate of ours hangs in the balance?

Source: What Is Space Opera in the 2020s?

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Film & Movies

The Real Story of Pinocchio Tells No Lies | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine

Forget what you know from the cartoon. The 19th-century story, now in a new translation, was a rallying cry for universal education and Italian nationhood

By Perri Klass, Photographs by Simona Ghizzoni

“Once upon a time, there was a piece of wood.” An Italian tradition, epitomized by the fictional Geppetto, continues at Bartolucci’s shop in Florence.
Simona Ghizzoni

The town of Collodi, Italy, about 45 miles west of Florence, is set on a slope behind a fabulous 17th-century villa. The garden, built as a kind of fantasy pleasure park for the Garzoni family and their noble guests, offers terraces, flower beds, grand staircases, splashing fountains and antique marble statues surrounding the Baroque villa.

Walk through the tunnel under the villa and follow the path up the hill, and the stone houses of Collodi speak to a very different reality.

Ascending its precipitously steep cobblestone main street, you come to a small piazza with communal sinks for laundry. The town is older than the villa and was probably originally built on the hilltop for purposes of strategic defense. It is where the working-class people lived, the ones who tended the nobility’s villa and gardens. It’s hard to know what these laborers were thinking as they trudged back up the hill after a long day of working at the villa. It is probably fair to say they were tired.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: The Real Story of Pinocchio Tells No Lies | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine

Current Affairs, Memories & History, Pleasures, Travel

Top 10 US beaches for 2022 from ‘Dr. Beach’ | CNN Travel

By Marnie Hunter, CNN, Updated 25th May 2022

Liz Albro/Adobe Stock

(CNN) — A wild expanse on North Carolina’s Outer Banks has earned the top spot on an annual list of America’s best beaches.

Ocracoke Island’s Lifeguarded Beach is the No. 1 stretch of sand for 2022, according to coastal scientist Stephen Leatherman, also known as “Dr. Beach.”

Leatherman, a professor and director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University, has been ranking America’s best beaches since 1991.

He uses 50 criteria to evaluate 650 public beaches in the US. The criteria include beach width, sand softness, water temperature and color, wildlife and more.

The Lifeguarded Beach on Ocracoke Island rose to No. 1 this year from its No. 3 ranking in 2021. The beach is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and is operated by the National Park Service.

“I like this area because it has the three things that you must have to make a great beach: clean sand, clean water and beach safety,” Leatherman told CNN Travel Wednesday morning from the shores of Ocracoke, where it was windy with a small surf.

Source: Top 10 US beaches for 2022 from ‘Dr. Beach’ | CNN Travel

Food & Drink, Games, Pleasures, Television, Travel

‘The Love Boat’: How a TV show transformed the cruise industry | CNN Travel

By Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN, Published 23rd May 2022

from article..

(CNN) — From steam-powered ships, to mega-liners, the cruise industry has been through quite a transformation over the years. And the market has skyrocketed.

Back in 1970, an estimated 500,000 people went on a cruise holiday. That figure had jumped to five million by 1997.

So what brought about this sudden surge in interest? According to industry experts, it was mainly down to a certain TV show with a catchy theme tune.

“Come aboard, we’re expecting you!” Produced by TV legend Aaron Spelling,”The Love Boat” first aired in 1977 and went on to become one of the most successful shows in TV history during its decade long run.

The program, which is still available on streaming services such as Paramount Plus, partnered with Princess Cruises, and episodes were filmed aboard various Princess Cruise ships, the Pacific Princess and Island Princess being the most noted.

Source: ‘The Love Boat’: How a TV show transformed the cruise industry | CNN Travel

Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Politics, Science & Health, Web & Technology

Science Must Not Be Used to Foster White Supremacy – Scientific American

It’s scientists’ responsibility to reveal the inherent biases of studies used to disparage Black people and other groups

By Janet D. Stemwedel, May 24, 2022

A Buffalo resident covers his face with his hands near a memorial for the victims of a mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market at Jefferson Avenue and Riley Street on Thursday, May 19, 2022 in Buffalo, N.Y. The fatal shooting of 10 people at a grocery store in a historically Black neighborhood of Buffalo by a young white gunman is being investigated as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism, according to federal officials. Credit: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The white supremacist who drove 200 miles to a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket and opened fire, killing 10 people, had posted a screed.

Most of the people he killed were Black. The document’s 180 pages cited not only racist conspiracy theories, but also scientific research on behavioral genetics. The research focused on finding heritable differences in IQ and propensity to violence between racial groups.

There’s no reason to believe, on the basis of his screed, that the Buffalo shooter understood, or even read, the scientific papers. It’s more likely that he collected them, like the racist tropes he reproduced in the document, from message boards and social media channels whose users latch on to titles that seem to promise scientific support for white supremacy.

Scientists who research genetic bases for complex behavioral traits using genome-wide association studies have urged care in the conclusions drawn from population means, and especially in how their scientific results are communicated to general audiences.

But there is compelling evidence that research on the evolution of sociobehavioral traits finds an eager audience among white nationalists.

Source: Science Must Not Be Used to Foster White Supremacy – Scientific American