Summer 2009: Research and jobs
I decided not to go home to Charlottesville for the summer after the spring semester ended. Instead, I am staying up in Boston until school starts again in the fall.
Change in focus: A more day-to-day blog
(No excerpt available.)
Listening like a blind person
I've sometimes watched the fully blind navigate city sidewalks and wondered how they manage to avoid obstacles and find destinations. The canes they sweep back and forth certainly provides textural and landscape information, but it can't tell them where they are. Furthermore, I've watched them avoid obstacles and follow sidewalks without the use of a cane. Besides mental maps and directional sense, they must be using their auditory environment to stay on course.
Could I learn to do that?
Every universal computer is “just” an interpreter
Today I was struck by the realization that every von Neumann universal computer (e.g. your laptop) is an interpreter.
Does “food boredom” help protect against nutrient deficiency?
If I fed you the same diet of (let's say) rice, lentils, carrots, broccoli, and cheese for every meal, every day, you'd soon get sick of it. You might start dreading mealtimes, knowing that the food will be the same. It's not that you specifically crave something else; you just want something different.
I get the impression that this "food boredom" phenomenon occurs in every culture, which would indicate a genetic rather than cultural basis. But what evolutionary advantage could there be to rejecting a perfectly healthy meal, just because it's the same one you had yesterday?