Mass produced hits

Mass produced hits

Facebook Threatens Legal Action Against Employers Asking for Your Password

Facebook Threatens Legal Action Against Employers Asking for Your Password

Designer Degrees

Scott Adams thinks there should be a new kind of degree, a “certification that a student has completed a series of classes specified by a particular designer.”

The designer would not be limited to one college for specifying classes. For example, if Warrant Buffett designed the Warren Buffett Business Degree, he would specify the general type of classes that need to be completed, and the student would be free to find those classes across any number of institutions and sources, including online classes or work experience. A graduate who earns the Warren Buffett Business Degree might take a few classes at the local community college, spend a year in China learning Chinese, work for an Internet startup for a year, join Toastmasters International to practice public speaking, read a number of specific business books, and so on.

This is a brilliant idea. The internet has made the technical aspects of it possible, and the questionable value of a college degree as well as the massive debt required to get one makes it desirable.

Get another brain by learning another language

Here’s another reason for me to start learning Spanish again. 

Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

The article gives neurological reasons why knowing two languages makes you smarted and keeps your brain healthy. However, the sustained mental effort necessary to learn a second language probably provides the biggest brain boost. 

Turn on your brain with metaphors

We need writers to seek out fresh metaphors and turn on our brains. Annie Murphy Paul explains why

[A] team of researchers from Emory University reported in Brain & Language that when subjects in their laboratory read a metaphor involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for perceiving texture through touch, became active. Metaphors like “The singer had a velvet voice” and “He had leathery hands” roused the sensory cortex, while phrases matched for meaning, like “The singer had a pleasing voice” and “He had strong hands,” did not.

Colorful metaphoric language activates the mind while reading in a way that flat words cannot.