This afternoon I selected a Stanford University Philosophy show by Professor Robert Harrison titled “Entitled Opinions About Life and Literature” from my iPhone to keep myself engaged during the commute home. I love the introduction, by way of unapologetic warning.

René Girard on Ritual Sacrifice and the Scapegoat (October 4, 2005)

Warning: The following is an unadulterated and unusually concentrated intellectual discussion. It should be avoided by anyone who does not have a very high tolerance for thinking. If you have an aversion to the exchange of ideas, if you’re deficient in curiosity, if you suffer from common American anti-intellectualism, then please tune out now.

This show promotes the narcotic of intelligent conversation. It takes us into the garden and seats us at the banquet table of ideas, where we feast on the bread of angels: clear and distinct thinking, intuitive analysis, and an enriched use of English. We bring them all to bear on the pursuit of self knowledge.

So be warned: we don’t dumb things down around here. We ratchet up and let it rip.

intelligence · itunesu · philosophy · stanford

Inside the baby mind
Jonah Lehrer, Boston Globe, April 26, 2009

This fascinating article discusses recent discoveries scientists have made about the brains of babies. Babies–surprise, surprise–are easily distracted. What I did not know is that toddlers learn 10 new words every day and that, “it typically takes significantly higher concentrations of anesthesia to render babies unconscious, since there’s more cellular activity to silence.”

Adults, I learned, are not better than babies at paying attention. The opposite is true; adults are better able to ignore the periphery while children digest a broader spectrum of sensory inputs.

This new understanding of baby cognition, and the peculiar ways in which babies pay attention, is also giving scientists insights into improving the mental functioning of adults. The ability to direct attention, it turns out, doesn’t merely inhibit irrelevant facts and perceptions – it can also stifle the imagination. Sometimes, the mind performs best when we don’t try to control it.

If we could learn to temporarily shelve our focus and allow our minds to wander like a child, keenly attuned to the world around us, we might be able to reach a level of consciousness that would permit us to discover creative solutions to perplexing problems.

At such moments, she suggests, we need to think with the innocence of an infant – to release the reins of attention and look anew at a world we’re still trying to understand.

baby · boston globe · brain · child · development · intelligence · learning · neurology · psychology · toddler

This is fun.  Let me know how long it took and the method you used.  DO NOT give away the solution.

There are five houses in a row in different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The five owners drink a different drink, smoke a different brand of cigar and keep a different pet, one of which is a Walleye Pike.

The question is– who owns the fish?

Hints:
1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the left of the white house.
5. The green house owner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Malls keeps birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhills.
8. The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.
9. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
10. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the one who smokes Dunhills.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Princes.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

It took me about thirty minutes and I used a spreadsheet.

deduction · intelligence · logic · puzzle