Vintage OAHN: Smart People and Mundane Things [06.26.15]

ON A HIGH NOTE

Hi! Welcome, those who are not confused by this email, to another installment of my brain typed up. Also, welcome, those who are utterly flabbergasted and almost a little bit angry to be receiving this email! It’s called On A High Note, it's a series of emails (now archived),  it’s made of things I thought were interesting, and you’re receiving it because it's growing slightly quickly and you not only have at least an amorphous concept of the type of person I am but also seem as though you would like the same things I like. If I’ve insulted you by being presumptuous, pretty please unsubscribe (way down at the bottom) and I promise I won’t cry (too much). If you want to spread the wealth, feel free to forward to folks and the subscription link at ahighnote.​weebly.com should work for anyone! Now that we got that awkward intro out of the way, onward and upward, my friends! Watch out for my inevitable typos! Dan Ariely!! Dan Ariely Dan Ariely! Do you know how to spell philosophical fun? A-R-I-E-L-Y. That is how. This dude, prophet, wearer of customized fleeces, and proponent of casual sitting stances, is the bee's knees. Sidebar. Why is it only one bee's knees? I feel like, if I was super emphatic about anything, I would equate it to many bees' knees. But maybe more is less here. I, for one, am pretty perplexed at this counterintuitive colloquialism, and before all of you disparaging folks critique me, saying it doesn't matter, just remember that accuracy is power. And all of us are traipsing around, using this phrase willy-nilly, without any true critical eye on the impact and cohesion of how we express ourselves. Which is not the bee’s knees nor a group of bees’ knees. End Sidebar. Back to people lying. People lie so often! I am always very impressed with how well, frequently, and nonchalantly people around here (here being the parts of Earth I've witnessed) lie. I have mad respect for honesty as it is my policy, but I concede that when someone asks you if they look good with facial hair after five years of sporting a beard, you might cover up the truth with glitter and some deflecting words. As a mediocre liar equipped with a better than mediocre memory that tends to capture truths to which I can compare lies, I am fascinated by this seemingly intrinsic human habit. Even kids do it. And I do not mean to imply that kids can’t do many things because I think they’re actually unfathomably able, but rather they are just super young. And lying. Lying is just everywhere. It's like the spandex fiber in our favorite jeans; it is there despite us never really considering its presence, it allows the fabric of our lives to stretch and twist to our rapidly, constantly changing states, it makes life fit better and neater, and when it's not there, we get uncomfortable. So goes the tiny, permeated lies woven through every day you exist. I am going to shut up now and let you watch Dan Ariely (!!) talk about humans and dishonestly. Everyone wants to beat Einstein.  Heck, I want to beat Einstein! And we're not even playing the same game. And by that I am referring to the fact that I sneakily avoided taking real physics and basically only learned it through astrophysics courses that distracted me from my immature boredom with equations via juicy theories about worm holes and space! Sidebar. I think space is the single most distracting thing to me. Honestly, throw space into the conversation and it's as if you just shouted the names of all members of One Direction at the top of your voice to a twelve year old American girl on the cusp of puberty. I'll be useless for the next two minutes; I warn you now, it is dangerous armory. End Sidebar. So beating Einstein. That sounds bomb. But sometimes, we need to recognize our own humanity. Okay, guys? Can we all do that? I fully recognize that there is a new Einstein out there, perhaps I am currently emailing the next Einstein! In which case, we all thank you and appreciate the gift of your mind to humanity and sorry for all the bad jokes in here. If not in our current 3rd dimension, the next Einstein is most definitely floating about, boppin' in the vast surface of the 4th. But I strongly recommend that all those Einstein challengers shift from a Western shoot-out style show down, which never ends well unless you're the second coming of John Wayne, to the intellectual equivalent of an evenly matched one-on-one basketball game with Michael Jordan. Which, in practice, is actually a whole team of average humans and well-recognized Looney Toons cartoon characters playing just one Michael Jordan. I am all for the team effort here, folks, just remember that not all of us can be an intellectual hero, rocker of crazy-hair, three piece suit aficionado, and adorable sucker for fuzzy slippers, so don't feel bad when Albert beats the lot of you. Because he was Einstein. This man. Was. Rad. Also, the anniversary of the theory of relativity is right about now. That is why this is relevant.  You know what else is rad? Brains. They are the second most distracting subject one could pose to completely derail me from any conversation. And there is this churning discourse around how the physicality of the brain translates to the mind. It is tricky. It gets into dualism. It is also brilliantly explained by Rebecca Saxe; fair warning this is a paper that is longer than this email and talks about brain lesions. There is no right answer, but instead of most quotidian questions we encounter that purportedly have no right answer, for example interview questions about your weaknesses, standardized test essay responses, what topping you'll add at Chipotle, this question actually matters. So, it's not that there is no right answer. It's that currently as I write this email there isn't a magic one-to-one mapping of ourselves to our physical selves, if you catch my drift. Unless the aforementioned new Einstein has been slaving away in cognitive architecture and neural substrates and very discourteously forgot to tell me that she or he discovered the blueprint to humanity. So rude. If you don’t catch my drift and you want to witness Dan Siegel talk about the neurological mapping of the mind, you could do that, too. The flimsy gossamer link between the preceding link and this one is that I found an article on the study of Einstein's Brain that serves as an elegant microcosm of this grand debate. Plus Einstein is involved. Yay. I know you're going to think that I am weird for this but I truly belive that not understanding the language of song lyrics can make songs better. I don't mean to knock the artistry of song writing. I just mean that the language barrier allows you to use your imagination and fill in whatever you're feeling at that second. In essence, I am robbing musicians of their artistic agency. Yup, I'm the worst. So, swiftly moving on, here is a video of a girl pretty intensely performing a song I have never heard of at a SOFAR series in Stockholm. It's kind of hard core. I also have no idea what she is saying. I also don't know what this guy is saying in his emotional, guitar-strummy ballad with really effectively-used white space. SOFAR stands for Strictly Officially Fanatically Awesome Reality. Jokes, it stands for SO(?)ngs From A Room.  I like really mundane things, a lot, just so often really. It makes me feel a touch ashamed that I don't have refined taste ubiquitously across all things I interact with. I would like to be cool. I would like to be subtly elegant at all times. I would very much like to scoff at things that are boring or semantically barren, or just plain unworthy of my time. But all of those in the (likely dwindling) reading audience who know me, I am only occasionally any of those things. Or at best, I am those things with a healthy serving of quirkiness on the side. I watch reality TV romance competitions. Frequently. Bread and butter was my jam in my past gluten-ful life. I have bought the same white tennis shoes since I was 11. Water is my favorite drink (barring Thai iced tea, which is on such a different level than all other liquids, it cannot possibly be categorized as a mere drink). My favorite type of blanket is that ubiquitous single-ply square of fleece, not even finished just cut from the bolt. I just sometimes like banal things. Which is why I felt my kindred spirits high-five my sensibilities when I saw this recipe for that standard carrot ginger dressing in Japanese restaurants. Now I can have boring things all of the time. Heck to the yes. Carrot to the Ginger. Let's do this thing. If you also fall victim to mundane preferences, please follow the link and join me in basking in the joy of having something super unexciting at your fingertips. Was that recipe not enough? Of course not, you're an insatiable monger of the mundane, aren't you? Join the club, we meet on Tuesdays at 11:00am which is arguably the most mundane appointment time of all. As part of your initiation, please turn your attention to Huff Post’s list of normal things that, with a little lens shift, are properly memorizing.  Announcing (drum roll on desk because I am a geek).....the OAHN Peanut Gallery!

I know, you've all been waiting for this moment. You thought it was going to happen that one time I sent you readers' submissions. But no, I disappointed you. Such a tease. Let me state again, so rude. But now, to repent for my irregular infusion of your own suggestions, contents, brainstorms, mind melts, and things you passively read to pass the time until it's socially acceptable to sleep. I've instituted the Peanut Gallery, a handy location to add in all of the links you shared (if any were shared) in response to the last crazy conglomerate of links I sent you. 

Sad times for everything that is living, I guess we women and men on earth have put our foot in it again. 

Watch this magical little nugget of science 3D print a bridge out of thin air, intense mechanical engineering, raw materials, years of R&D, and a pinch of gumption.

Happy times for humans that are living, this guy exists! And he is the same exact type of animal that we are! There is hope for all of us! We can do it, yes we can!

So from this I have gathered that start-ups are scary and might not be as sexy as they seem because we probably only hear about the ones that did well. But this guy is doing it right and taking that terror and turning it into self-amelioration. If only we were all so good at growing companies and ourselves. 

Do any of you like cute animals? I really need to be in a particular mood but I know these little guys melt all y'alls hearts on the regular so witness the holy grail of fluffy dog pics by way of BuzzFeed.  What?! You made it to the end!?? I just know you didn't actually want to read all of those words. There were so many! Seriously, you are a god amongst humans. Congrats. Let's have a nice, rousing golf clap. If you want to read to the end of another super long email, knock yourself you at the perpetual home for this particular kind of crazy, ahighnote.weebly.com