The Job You Probably Never Inspired, the Health Benefits of Yoga and the Mosquito Killing Billboard Zika
Inspirational ideas Monday morning, career options your counselor probably never came up with, real health benefits of yoga (no fancy pants required), and more – all at Lifehacker Brain Buffet this week!
Working as your consultant was probably never mentioned
From milking snakes to carving cheese, John Green of Mental Floss has tons of fun but important jobs that probably weren’t on your radar when you were thinking about what to become when you grow up, or what to do when you grow up. you graduated from high school. And don’t worry if none of them sound great, there are plenty to choose from, like an ice cream taster (yum!), A dog food taster (ugh), and even NASA’s top sniffer who sniffs things. before they go into space. This whole story is eye-opening and hilarious and well worth seeing. [ via Mental Floss ]
The whole computer science class did not realize that their teacher assistant was a chatbot
We are probably already at a stage where the Turing test is not a very meaningful way to distinguish a person on the Internet from a computer – mainly due to the slowly deteriorating quality of human interaction on the Internet and the rapidly improving capabilities of chatbots and immature AI that technology companies programmed as our “virtual assistants” such as Siri and Google Now, and other access control service tools ( I see you Microsoft ).
So it doesn’t surprise me at all that a college computer science teacher programmed a chatbot to essentially “be” the teacher’s assistant for his class and then run a semester test on his students to see if they ever figure out. it is not so. do not talk to people on the forum of their class. To their credit, a lot of the students did get a little suspicious, and the fact that the TA was named Jill Watson (because the bot was running IBM Watson) may have raised a red flag here or there. [ via TheNextWeb ]
Actual Health Benefits of Yoga Beyond Stretching and Flexibility
This video from DNews is probably the best I’ve ever seen for a breakdown of the health benefits of yoga (along with the blunt, simplistic, blatantly illegal aspects of its practice in the US) that I’ve seen since last time. we talked about it here.
More than a few studies have pointed to the fact that the act of relaxation and meditation and focusing on your body, combined with exercise, can benefit both at the same time. In the end, you’ll reduce stress, reduce chronic (or acute, for that matter) pain due to long-term conditions, improve blood flow, and more. While this is not a magic ticket to a long and healthy life, it is certainly something that more people could benefit from and do not need to buy expensive rugs and branded tights to participate. [ via DNews ]
Find your scent in the kitchen
The New York Times recently launched a new series of documentaries called Taste Makers , each of which features a profile of an interesting or distinguished young man from America who is doing something unique in his fast-paced career in the food industry – be it a chef, farmer or businessman. This video, one of the first in the series, follows Adrienne Cheatham, head chef at Marcus Samuelson’s Red Rooster Restaurant in Harlem.
To say that the episode is inspiring is to say nothing. I have always known that working in the food industry is hard, long and thankless work, but it sheds light on it and always serves as a good reminder. Marcus’s kind (but decidedly honest) words about his chef in front of the camera were also particularly interesting from a leadership perspective, where he could more than easily talk about Adrienne’s strengths and growth areas as she stood right here. Adrienne’s work and passion – and then returning home in the evening to pour herself a glass of something strong after a 12-16 hour workday and work on her board for inspiration, even though she says she doesn’t feel inspired, is also amazing.
Seriously, take a closer look at all of this. I’ll probably include a few others from the playlist in future Brain Buffets, so don’t bother with the whole episode, okay? [ via The New York Times ]
Theories about how we perceive consciousness and a new contender: timelines
There are two prevailing theories about how we perceive the world and reality around us. Someone says that this is something like a movie, a constant flow of information and perception without a real beginning and end. Another postulates that it looks more like stills from a movie, elusive pieces of time stitched together into perceptions to create consciousness, and a brain that silences the missing pieces in the name of the conscious mind.
Now there is a new theory outlined in a recent article published in PLOS Biology (the full text is there, so feel free to read it) by a team of researchers who speculate that this is some sort of hybrid where consciousness happens in time slices “of about 400 milliseconds each and our brains sew them together in a consistent and consistent way. From ScienceAlert:
In their model, “time slices” of unconscious stimulus processing last up to 400 milliseconds (ms), immediately followed by conscious perception of events.
“The reason is that the brain wants to give you the most accurate and clear information possible, and that takes a significant amount of time,” said researcher Michael Herzog of the Ecole Polytechnique Federal Lausanne (EPFL). “There is no advantage in letting you know about its unconscious processing, because that would be extremely confusing.”
According to Herzog and fellow researcher Frank Scharnovski of the University of Zurich, neither “continuous” nor “discrete” hypotheses on their own can accurately describe how we process the world around us, since numerous studies that test people’s visual perceptions seem to be refute both of these concepts.
… After this analysis is complete, the researchers say that the features we find integrate into our conscious perception, compressing all unconscious records into something that we are actually aware of.
In other words, while we perceive the world, we do not actually perceive it consciously. Instead, we simply silently use our senses to record data up to 400ms at a time. Then, in what might be called a moment of clarity, we consciously perceive the stimuli that our senses pick up.
Of course, like any preliminary research, this is preliminary research and you shouldn’t take it as hard fact or anything like that. It’s just very interesting and allows us to understand exactly how we perceive the world around us and how we understand it. [ via ScienceAlert ]
Zika Mosquito Killing Billboard
The mosquito, which carries the Zika virus, also carries a number of other diseases that can be fatal to humans. If left in the side of the unresolved global problem with a virus Zika and the Olympic Games, not to mention the ongoing emergency situation in the field of public health in Brazil, because of this, this simple billboard capable of killing hundreds of mosquitoes every day – and the people who created it, published plans and blueprints are publicly licensed under a Creative Commons license so anyone can make one by themselves.
However, this is more than a big mistake. The billboard emits a combination of CO2 and lactic acid into the air, mimicking human respiration and sweat to attract mosquitoes. It also burns, making it more attractive to insects at night. At the bottom is a simple catcher that sucks in mosquitoes flying around and keeps them inside until they die of dehydration.
This is a simple solution that effectively kills mosquitoes already in the air. Combined with removing standing water and disturbing water in which mosquitoes breed, this is a simple one-two blow that cities and municipalities can take to control their mosquito populations, whether they worry about the Zika virus or not. [ via Hackaday ]
Everyone this week! If you have thought-provoking stories, interesting podcasts, eye-opening videos, or anything else that you think is perfect for Brain Buffet, share it with us! Send it to me by email , leave it as a comment below, or send it in any way convenient for you.