'The Fittest Brains' QQC

Quote: “A still-unpublished study from his lad compared the cognitive impact in young people of twenty minutes of running on a treadmill with twenty minutes of playing sports-style video games at a similar intensity. Running improved test scores immediately afterward. Playing the video games did not.”

Questions: What made them even think to compare running with video games? Why was there a marked difference between the two? Aren’t you basically performing the same actions and movements in both? 

Comments: I thought the comparison between these two forms of ‘exercising’ was pretty interesting. That someone would even think to look at the similarities and differences between the two struck me as kind of weird. The results make sense, though – you can imagine that the negative effects necessarily associated with playing video games could outweigh the positive ones of aerobic exercise. In addition, the exercise that you are probably getting through video games wouldn’t be as intensive as simply running on a treadmill, because you’d have to be stopping in between screens, and focusing on the gameplay rather than the workout.

QQC - Much Ado About Nothing

Q: "A.D. stands for Anno Domini which means "In the year of Our Lord," but by starting at 1, the calendar is incorrectly celebrating the first birthday of Christ on the day he was born. On 2 A.D., Christ was 1 year old. On 3 A.D. he was two. (In fact the calendar is probably much more inaccurate than this, for according to Matthew 2, King Herod was alive when Jesus was born, and historical records show that Herod died in 4 B.B. according to our calendar.) So our calendar is in a bit of a mess. Because we had no zero, the beginning of the second century was actually 101 A.D. The recent millennium celebrations were all a year out - the year 2001 A.D. was really 2,000 years since Christ's (perceived) birth." 

Q: When was this realized, and who first discovered it? Is it possible that the calendar truly is accurate as it is currently? How can we  really know whether or not our calendar is correct? It the calendar is off by a year, or whatever, should the calendar be altered? Does it really matter if the calendar is inaccurate? 

C: I thought that this was an interesting section of the text, because you don't really even ever consider that our method of time keeping could be flawed. Or even that zero, in itself, has had such an impact. You don't think, initially, that numbers or mathematics would even matter that much in relation to the calendar, but, apparently, it does.

'Mindset' QQC

Quote: "You would think the sports world would have to see the relation between practice and improvement - and between the mind and performance - and stop harping so much on innate physical talent. Yet it's almost as if they refuse to see. Perhaps it's because, as Malcolm Gladwell suggests, people prize natural endowment over earned ability. As much as our culture talks about individual effort and self-improvement, deep down, he argues, we revere the naturals. We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don't like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary."

Question: Why are we set against viewing those successful as successful due to growth and practice as opposed to innate ability? Do we really want to see our idols as superheroes? Don't most people want to believe that those they look up to have risen from nothing, rather than have been born great, so that they have something to aspire to? The article talks about character and mindset being most important, but aren't there some counter-examples showing that some are truly just naturally more talented, and will be successful regardless of their attitude or feelings?

Comment: I thought this quote, as well as the article as a whole, was fairly interesting. The article kind of just stated the obvious - what we've been taught our entire lives, that attitude is everything - but it is written in a way that it holds your attention and makes you think about it. Despite not caring in the least about sports, I felt that the author did a good job of expressing his point and holding your interest by telling stories within various sports that supported his argument that your mindset is what ultimately determines your performance, not just your natural talent and ability. This quote, in particular, stood out to me as kind of summarizing the explanation behind what the author was saying, because it gave you the reason as to why our culture wants to idolize those who do something that is effortless to them, not someone who had to work just as hard as anyone else to get where they are. All in all, I found this article to be interesting and informative, and it made me wonder what the entire book was about that this chapter was taken out of.

Bryson Chapters 2-3 QQC

Chapter 2:

Q: “We have been spoiled by artists’ renderings into imagining a clarity of resolution that doesn’t exist in actual astronomy. Pluto in Christy’s photograph is faint and fuzzy – a piece of cosmic lint – and its moon is not the romantically backlit, crisply delineated companion orb you would get in a National Geographic painting, but rather just a tiny and extremely indistinct hint of additional fuzziness. Such was the fuzziness, in fact, that it took seven years for anyone to spot the moon again and thus independently confirm its existence.”

Q: Was this written before Pluto stopped being classified as a planet? If it’s so difficult to see and make out Pluto and its moon, how do we know what we do about it, let alone other bodies, such as stars, even further away? If existing photographs are so blurry and indistinct, how are artist renderings even possible? What are they basing their images on? How is it possible for it to have taken seven years to see the same planet twice?

C: I chose this quote, because it’s something I hadn’t really thought about. These planets are so far away,  guess it makes sense that pictures we have are hardly good representations, and that the representations of the solar system that we rely on are inaccurate as well.

Chapter 3:

Q: “Looking into the past is of course the easy part. Glance at the night sky and what you see is history and lots of it – the stars not as they are now but as they were when their light left them. For all we know, the North Star, our faithful companion, might actually have burned out last January of in 1854 or at any time since the early fourteenth century and news of it just hasn’t reached us yet. They best we can say – can ever say – is that it was still burning on this date 680 years ago. Stars die all the time.”

Q: So when does a star really die? When it first explodes, or when we notice it? How do we know exactly how far away these stars, such as the North Star, are, and therefore how long it takes there light to reach us? So the lights that we view stars at are actually just old light just now reaching us?

C: I found this quote interesting, because it’s not really something I had ever thought about or really even fathomed. I hadn’t really put together that, since the stars are so far away, what we are seeing in the night sky may not even exist anymore. 

Bryson Intro QQC

Q: "Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don't actually care about you - indeed, they don't even know that you are there. They don't even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.) Yet somehow for the period of your existence they will answer to a single overarching impulse: to keep you you."
 

Q: What does this have to do with math? How is it possible for things that what makes you up isn't, in itself, even alive? How do the atoms "keep you you"? Why is it not a gratifying experience? If the atoms are not alive, is there even an experience to be had?

 

C: I thought that this section of the introduction was interesting because of the way it introduced atoms. Without really explaining what they truly are, the author let you know that they're what make you you, and, while they make you alive, they aren't actually alive. He also presented ideas that aren't usually brought up, like how "if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust", and I found that thought-provoking.