Saturday, September 7, 2013

New York Bar Association

A couple SI swimsuit shout-outs in the current (9/9/13) issue of The New Yorker.
Adam Gopnik’s book review article “Mindless: The new neuro-skeptics” talks about the slipperiness of trying to explain what the mind is doing and why.

“…there are books on your brain and music, books on your brain and storytelling, books that tell you why your brain makes you want to join the Army, and books that explain why you wish that Bar Refaeli were in the barracks with you.”

And later:

“We’ll be informed, say, that when a teen-age boy leafs through the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue areas in his brain associated with sexual desire light up. Yet asserting that an emotion is really real because you can somehow see it happening in the brain adds nothing to our understanding.”

Well, let’s get some neurons firing on this lovely Saturday.

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