Tag: tidbit

An example of the Ebbinghaus illusion is where the perception of the orange circles below appears to be smaller in the left diagram than in the right diagram, when in fact the two orange circles are exactly the same size.

Even after you measured the size of the circles and have confirm and know cognitively that they are indeed the same size, your mind’s automatic perception system still cannot help but see the left circle as being smaller. The best that you can do is to be aware that in certain situations your perceptions can be fooled. This way, the next time you and encounter such a similar situation, your conscious mind can alert you to not trust your perception due to the fact that what you are seeing may be flawed.

There are many other visual and cognitive illusions in which our minds can be fooled. By being aware of the types of illusions will help us be aware of situations in which our minds can be fooled. The book

The Ebbinghaus illusion was named after the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus who discovered it. The illusion is also called the Titchener circles.

Did you know that your pupils will dilate when you are doing complex mental computation? Yes, this is according to Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Examples of mental computation would be if you had to increment each of the digits of a 4-digit number by 1. Or if one is trying to hold number in one’s head.

Some psychology experiments would measure a subjects pupil dilation as an indication of the amount of thinking the subject is undergoing.

You are supposed to breathe in while descending and breathe out while raising. This is according to 7 Weeks to 100 Push-Ups: Strengthen and Sculpt Your Arms, Abs, Chest, Back and Glutes by Training to do 100 Consecutive Push-Ups. Do not hold your breath.

If doing pushups is stressing your wrist, you can hold your hands into fists with knuckles to the floor. But make sure you are on a soft mat or have the hands over soft towels.

On page 39 of the book, the book gives you a table of how many push ups a male or female is supposed to be able to do on average for a given age group. As an example, an average middle-aged male between 40-49 years should be able to do 13 to 21 pushups on average. For females, it would be 7 to 14.

A male over the age of 60 who is able to do more than 28 pushups is considered excellent. 16 or more pushup for females over the age of 60 would be most excellent as well.

A study noted in telegraph.co.uk in 2009 says that …

“men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.”

In case you are wondering, the reverse is not true.  In other words, women’s cognitive function does not decrease in the presence of an attractive man.

One hypothesis is that men’s mental resource may have been “used up” trying to impress women.

 

National Public Radio program on July 2, 2010 was about the self-employed. You can hear an archive of the program linked here. What is it like to be self employed or to be a freelancer? Have you ever thought about going into business on your own and working for yourself. Listen as callers call in to describe their story.

The guests also give some interesting finding from various studies about self-employment.

In the audio episode linked here from the Infinite Mind Broadcast, we hear some experts talk about the positive and negative aspects of midlife and what midlife is. We will hear about some statistics of mid-life crisis. On a lighter note, we also hear and watch some comedy excerpts from The Midlife Crisis Comedy Tour as well as a song about midlife.

Facebook itself says it has “More than 500 million active users” on their Press Room page.

According to the United States Census data of 2010, there are 309 million people in the United States.

That means there are more people on Facebook than in the United States.

Although a surprising fact, it is not inconceivable, since 70% of Facebook’s users are outside of the United States.

Fact Check:

To corroborate those numbers, lets check some other sources…

According to stat found on onlineschools.org, there are 500,000,000 active Facebook users as of 2011.

U.S. World Population Clocks says population of United States is 310,920,549.  And population of the world is 6,903,350,805 (as of 5:37 UTC March 03, 2011).

Doing some math, it means about 7% of the world population is an active user of Facebook.

Conclusion:

Hence, it is fairly certain that Facebook has more active users than the number of people in the United States.

I found this quote from the introduction of the book Fully Present.

It is by the Taoist master Lao-Tzu which says…

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”

On the same traveling theme, he also was the one who said …

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”

More quotes by Lao-Tzu.

Yes, it is possible for an object to be in two places at the same time.  Those familiar with quantum mechanics can not deny this fact.  An electron is one such object.  And it routinely is in two places at once.  This counter-intuitive event can occur in the realm of quantum mechanics — in the world of the very small (such as sub-atomic particles).  This does not occur our everyday macro-scopic world of the large.  So that is why in our everyday lives, we can not have a person be in two places at the same time.

Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics, write in chapter 6 of his book “Parallel Worlds”:

“Modern civilization would collapse, in fact, if electrons were not allowed to be in two places at the same time.  (The molecule of our body would also collapse without this bizarre principle.  … What keeps two atoms locked in a stable molecule is the fact that electrons can simultaneously be in so many places at the same time that they form an electron “cloud” which binds the atoms together.  Thus the reason why molecules are stable and the universe does not disintegrate is that electrons can be many places at the same time.)”