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Turns out there might be a biological imperative to explain our addiction to information that leads us to obsessively check our Facebook profiles for updates and inexplicably lose hours at a time searching for obscure bits of information on Google. Scientists refer to this desire as seeking or wanting, a practice that affects the dopamine centers of our brains and causes us to chase the potential reward just around the corner rather than settle for the tangible one right in front of us. This quest for what might be, creates a seemingly infinite feedback loop where [...]

Sam Anderson has a wonderful article in New York Magazine that examines our modern culture of multi-tasking. He explores both sides of the attention spectrum from continuous partial attention to executive focus, and concludes that maybe all this distraction we’re experiencing is not all that bad. It’s a long (by internet standards) but worthwhile read.
Anderson on the benefits of distraction:
The prophets of total attentional meltdown sometimes invoke, as an example of the great culture we’re going to lose as we succumb to e-thinking, the canonical French juggernaut Marcel Proust. And indeed, at seven volumes, several thousand pages, and 1.5 million [...]

Scientific American has a fantastic interview with Daniel Tammet. He is an author and linguist, who’s also an autistic savant. He shares the amazing way his mind works, and gives advice on how to think better.
Tammet says:
I have always thought of abstract information—numbers, for example—in visual, dynamic form. Numbers assume complex, multidimensional shapes in my head that I manipulate to form the solution to sums or compare when determining whether they are prime or not. For languages, I do something similar in terms of thinking of words as belonging to clusters of meaning so that each piece of vocabulary makes [...]

To publicize their new fragrance Only the Brave, Diesel has set up a microsite called Is Brave to house their various online presences, including their latest tweets and blog mentions. It also displays videos around the central theme of bravery, titled Heart, Mind and Nerve, and features a shout box for users to convey what they think bravery means to them. Last but not least, they have tied up with artists and icons they think represent bravery, and will be hosting art-related events in New York on April 30th, Miami on May 7th and Los Angeles on May 9th.
While there [...]