When I wake up on a spring morning, the first thing I notice—after the cool breeze and chirping of birds—is the rush of cars from the highway about a mile from my house. The hustle and bustle of life in the United States is evident in the ambient noise around us—and it does not go unnoticed. Based on data that was collected over [...]
I am never one to fully plan ahead for the boredom of my commute. By the time I am out the door, I realize that the best entertainment I have is my iPod and my smartphone. Sure, my music is always somewhat entertaining, but due to my lack of interest in social media, my smartphone does not provide a wealth of excitement. I [...]
The first National Math Festival took place in Washington, DC, on April 18, 2015. The event was organized by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) and the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution.With more than 20,000 math enthusiasts in attendance, the festival began a few days early, starting with a Twitter challenge: #ispymath. The goal—to spot math in your everyday life—earned the [...]
Remember the analog days before social media and the digital world took over? When the internet had yet to be born, photos were kept in an album in the closet and movies were made with unstable film that could either catch fire at any moment or slowly deteriorate into a useless vinegary mess? Unsurprisingly, when you take these two possibilities, and then add that many studios [...]
Podcasting is an established, but still emerging means of listening to your favorite stories or talk show personalities. It is not an issue of what types of content people want to listen to; it’s finding the time to enjoy listening to them. Perhaps this is what has sparked the newest trend—is speed-listening the new speed-reading? Overcast, a free podcast-listening app for iOS, was [...]
Last semester I completed an introductory course to Shakespeare’s plays, and I remember struggling with the language, hating that the relationships between the characters were even more complicated than the plot of the film Inception and laughing at the famous stage direction from The Winter’s Tale that read “Exit, pursued by a bear.” But it is the variety of reactions and emotions in the audience that make [...]
As a child, I pictured college as something that came right after high school, lasted about four years and then ended. I never imagined older students attending college, so I was surprised to encounter a middle-aged student in one of my classes freshman year. With each passing semester, I met greater numbers of older students, and when I worked in the writing center [...]
I remember two things about the Harry Potter novels—besides the fantastic writing—from my youth. First, they were a great way for me to remain entertained during my older brother’s hockey practices, much to the delight of my father. Second, I recall the colorful cover art that drew me into reading each of the books I owned. What I did not realize was that [...]
Have you ever seen someone throw out a dish after eating only half of the food on it? It could be at a restaurant, in the park, or back when you were in school, but I’m sure we’ve all seen it or been a part of it—I know I haven’t always eaten 100 percent of the food in front of me. According to [...]
Take a look at this video. Did you get the first question right? How many times did the players in white pass the ball? Now, how about that second question? The video, done by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, is a replication of Ulric Neisser’s study from the 1970s representing selective attention, the tendency not to “see” major changes in the environment. A person’s attention [...]