Suffering From Back Ache?

This may not come as relief to those who suffer from chronic back pain, slip disc, herniated disc, etc., but at least you know who to blame. (When you are in pain, it is good to curse someone).
So here goes ...
The human spine, for example, is a lousy solution to the problem of supporting the load in an upright, two-legged creature. It would have made a lot more sense to distribute our weight across four equal cross-braced columns. Instead, all our weight is borne by a single column, putting enormous stress on the spine. We managed to survive upright (freeing out hands), but the cost for many people is agonizing back pain. We are struck with this barely adequate solution not because it is the best possible way to support the weight of a biped, but because the spine's structure evolved from that of four-legged creatures, and standing up poorly is (for creatures like us, who use tools) better than not standing up at all.

So you know who to blame.
Evolution!

And no. I have no idea if Gary Marcus, the author of this delightful little book called Kluge, suffers from back pain.

Do You Have a Teenager?

This extract from Gary Marcus's Kluge will not give you any solution, but will certainly help you understand your teenager.

Teenagers as a species seem almost pathologically driven by short-term rewards. They make unrealistic estimates of the attendant risks and pay little attention to long-term costs. Why? According to one recent study, the nucleus accumbens, which assesses reward, matures before the orbital frontal cortex, which guides long term planning and deliberate reasoning. Thus teenagers may have an adult capacity to appreciate short-term gain, but only a child's capacity to recognize long-term risk.

Hmmm.... Does the human orbital frontal cortex ever mature? Think rain forest, environment, financial meltdown, wars, nuclear arsenal ... I rest my case.

Philosophy at an Early Age

There are so many innovations happening all around the world. I wish there were some way to check it all out. And this one that I picked up at the fag end of Kluge by Gary Marcus is supposed to be more than 30 - that is not a typo, it is thirty - years old. And it goes by the name Philosophy For Children.

Studies in teaching so-called critical thinking skills are showing increasingly promising results, with lasting effects that can make a difference. Among the most impressive is a recent study founded on a curriculum known as "Philosophy for Children," which, as its name suggests, revolves around getting children to think about - and discuss - philosophy. Not Plato and Aristotle, mind you, but stories written for children that are explicitly aimed at engaging children in philosophical issues. ... Kids of ages 10-12 who were exposed to a version of this curriculum for 16 months, for just an hour a week, showed significant gains in verbal intelligence, nonverbal intelligence, self-confidence, and independence.

Two questions:
1) Why didn't I know about it till date?
2) Why are my children still studying moral education at school? Instead of P4C?

Are you being over paid?

Are you over-paid?
No?
Are you bored of your job?
Yes?
Then you are perhaps being over-paid.

Consider this ...

[I]n the late 1950s, Leon Festinger did a famous series of experiments in which he asked subjects (undergraduate students) to do tedious menial tasks (such as sticking a set of plain pegs into an (sic!) plain board). Here's the rub: some subjects were paid well ($20, a lot of money in 1959), but others, poorly ($1). Afterward, all were asked how much they liked the task. People who were paid well typically confessed to being bored, but people who were paid only a dollar tended to delude themselves into thinking that putting all those pegs into little holes was fun.

I love my job!
I think it is time to ask for a pay revision :D

The above is extracted from Kluge by Gary Marcus.