From Science Daily: Drinking alcohol primes certain areas of our brain to learn and remember better, says a new study from the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research at The University of Texas at Austin. The common view that drinking is bad for learning and memory isn’t wrong, says neurobiologist Hitoshi Morikawa, but it highlights only one side of what ethanol consumption does to the brain. “Usually, when we talk about learning and memory, we’re talking about conscious memory,” says Morikawa, whose results were published last month in The Journal of Neuroscience. “Alcohol diminishes our ability to hold on to pieces of information like your colleague’s name, or the definition of a word, or where you parked your car
Author: Sam Kornstein
Good News for Coffee Drinkers
Given that I drink about five cups of coffee per day, I welcome this news: Numerous studies in recent years have reported that drinking coffee may be good for the cardiovascular system and might even help prevent strokes. Just last month, Swedish researchers announced results of a large study showing that coffee seemed to reduce the risk of stroke in women by up to 25%. But what about men?
More on the NYT Paywall
I previously mentioned that I probably wouldn’t be subscribing to the NYT, as the prices are fairly inflated compared with other digital subscriptions. A couple additional thoughts: I’m surprisingly satisfied with the BBC iPhone app. It’s completely replaced the NYT as my mobile news source, and with a few exceptions (mostly the op-eds), it’s been just a good. I’m a little annoyed that individual blog posts count as articles on the NYT site. Some of the blogs I follow have as many as ten posts a day. If I read them all, I hit the maximum number of 20 articles/month within two days. This is causing me to (grudgingly) rethink my decision about whether or not to subscribe. I’m well aware that
Kim Jong-Il Likes to Look at Things
From Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things: Looking at linen. Looking at fish. Looking at a lab worker. Looking at a truck. Looking at soy sauce. Much more here.
Ben Franklin’s Schedule
Via The Big Picture:
Self-Description
Via xkcd:
Mean Picking
My guitar teacher can really pick:
A Little Perspective
Via The Big Picture:
The Global Stock Market
For a while now I’ve been curious to see a time-series chart of global stock market capitalization by region. I’ve looked, and have been unable to find one. So I downloaded some data from the World Federation of Exchanges, and made my own. Whenever someone says “the world stock market,” this is what they’re talking about: And in real 2010 dollars:
Fluffy White Rabbits
Pretty Things has just released their first Spring seasonal. They call it a hoppy tripel. It’s strong, smooth, and is loaded with aroma hops. It’s absolutely delicious. From their website: Our first Spring, we brought you a magical tree full of waving babies… and the Baby Tree has stuck around, we’re happy to say. So the past two years we’ve made a pale gold, hoppy triple called Fluffy White Rabbits. We say White Rabbits in Yorkshire for luck, so here’s a good way to drink some lucky beer and here’s to a fabulous warm season for all of us! The beer is 8.5% abv, with Saaz, Styrian Goldings and Amarillo hops added aplenty. Look for a fluffy mouthfeel, faint sweetness with