Never Have So Few Been Enabled to Know So Much

     Never has any individual been enabled to know so much! If someone should give a smartphone to a Masai warrior in Africa, who's never seen technology, he would have access to more information than the president of the United States did in the year 2000. That's a stunning statistic, noting just how fast information on this, that and the other thing has proliferated and been mounting up in archives everywhere.
     The media has become so invasive that it is impossible for anyone to stop their education... well, to stop their learning at least. Education presumes a planned continuum in some field of endeavor by teachers trained to impart pertinent information. Learning usually is a collection of self-interest bits of knowledge imparted by people who merely want to be read or heard.
     I've enjoyed both. I loved school, attending and/or teaching at eight colleges or universities while earning three and a half degrees. Since giving school up and going to work, my innate curiosity has kept me on that other track, learning via media-borne information. I subscribe to eight magazines that I peruse cover-to-cover. I read two books a month. And I love the Internet and television, though I do pick and choose to avoid most of the clap-trap it often parades in front of us. I merely mention all this as an introduction of sorts into the theme of this particular blog. I want to share some of the "learning clips" I've discovered in all that reading, hoping what intrigued me will also interest you.
     First off is an item stating "Music can make you mighty strong". Basically it reported that deep bass sounds (in music) are associated with "dominance". Researchers from France and the universities of Northwestern and Columbia found that people who listened to bass-heavy music reported feeling more powerful than those who listened to  the same tunes with a reduced bass level. As a sidelight, those people also generated more power-related words in a word-completion task. (Think how strong a bass player must feel!)
     Item 2: There is a real place named Shangri-La. That's a surprise for those of us who thought it only a mythical place in the 1933 novel and 1937 Frank Capra film, Lost Horizon, about a magical Himalayan paradise. Actually, it turns out, it was a big public relation success story. A town called Dukezong, located on the border of Tibet and Yunnan, renamed itself and profited with economic prosperity via traveler visits by claiming to be the inspiration for that story.
     Item 3: Of the approximately 50 tech startups of the past decade to be valued at more than ! billion, at least nine have photos at the core of their businesses -  Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Pinterest, Airbnb, Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr.
     Iem 4: There is always the other side of the startups stories to consider, like Square Reader. This was a minimalist device for swiping credit cards that plugged into phones via an audio port, opening up a needed service to a massive, growing industry of micro-merchants, like baristas, food truckers,and florists. Merchants were charged a flat 2.75% rate per transaction, eliminating hidden costs and untangling antiquated charging models with credit cards. By late 2011 the company was processing $1 billion in payments annually A year later - not long after the company launched Register (software that transforms an iPad into a point-of-sale terminal) - its annual volume ballooned to $10 billion. But too much of their service cost intake was going to intermediaries they worked with and, when the execs tried to branch out, they lost their way and their customers. That's one of the biggest turn-arounds I've heard about.
     Item 5: We already have more than 16 billion active wireless-connected devices and, according to ABI Research, that number may exceed 40 billion by the year 2020.
     Item 6: According to Carrie Hessler-Radelet, director of the Peace Corps, 12 presidents in Africa credit a Peace Corps volunteer with starting them on their paths to presidencies.
     Item 7: Scanadu, a device designed by Yves Behar, pressed against your forehead will read your temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and other vitals, then send this info to your phone via a connected app. It's awaiting FDA approval.
     Item 8: Though 51 is the average age for menopause, 13 babies are born per week (2013 average) to women 50 years of age and over. The oldest recorded birth has been at age 70 - Rajo Devi in India. The top reasons given for delaying children: career, second marriages and filling an "empty nest".
     Item 9: Unhappy with the direction of your life? Try plastic surgery on the lines in the palms of your hands, an operation that is a rage in Japan among those who believe the lines dictate one's future. The doctors say most men want to change lines associated with business and money, while most women seek to alter their love lines.
     Item 10: In a couple New Orleans funeral parlors undertakers are posing the deceased - for viewing prior to burial - in death as they appeared in life (to family members). One woman was seated at a kitchen table with a can of beer in front of her and a cigarette between her fingers. The body of a boxer was arranged standing in a boxing ring. And a former paramedic was propped up behind the wheel of an ambulance. (I wonder what they will do with their first request for a sexual scene?)
     I have no idea what you will do with these ten blips of esoteric trivia. But they gave me a column. I can only hope it was interesting, even if not useful to you too.








   

IS GENIUS WITHIN YOU?

     Google terms like "gifted" and "head trauma" and you will find intriguing results, and just maybe something really unusual about yourself! You may find there is possible genius within you without you knowing!                   Science, according to Adam Piore in an article titled "The Genius Within" in Popular Science Magazine (March 2013), is looking for a way for everyone to tap into their individual "savant-ism". It has turned out that brain damage has unleashed extraordinary talents in a small group of otherwise ordinary individuals. That, of course, is a hard way to discover the genius within you, but  imagine if science could do that for everyone without the trauma side effect!
     Actor Dustin Hoffman introduced a savant named Kim Peek in the blockbuster film "Rain Man". Peek could read two pages of a book at the same time, one with each eye, committing both to memory. He had instant recall from some 12,000 books. (He died in 2009.)
     Look what some of these 30 or so known savants (people with a remarkable talent, even though ordinary, or less, in other aspects) have done, as reported by Piore.
     Back in the 19th century "Blind Tom" Bethune, a former slave, was able to reproduce any song on the piano. He played at the White House at age 11, did a world tour at 16 and earned a fortune at that time, $750,000.
     A high school dropout named Jason Padgett, brutally beaten by muggers, is the only known person in the world able to draw complex geometric patterns called fractuals. He also claims to have discovered a mistake in pi, which could upset a long-standing mathematical "fact".
     Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon in New York was struck by lightning while in a telephone booth. He then was able to learn to compose music and play the piano, something he had never been interested in before.
     A stroke transformed a mild-mannered chiropractor named Jon Sarkin into a celebrated artist whose work has appeared in "The New Yorker" with works in galleries selling for thousands of dollars.
     Stephen Wiltshire, who is autistic, drew buildings at age 8. As an adult in 2005 he flew over the Thames River for 15 minutes, then sketched seven square miles of London's streets, rivers and buildings, precise to the windows.
     Leslie Lemke, blind since birth, at age 14 played a Tchaikovsky piano concerto after hearing it in a movie theater. He has performed since around the world, being able to reproduce thousands of songs from memory.
     After recovering from a bad auto accident at age 14, Jim Carollo made a perfect score on a mastery of geometry test without having studied, and later passed calculus exams without ever taking trigonometry.
     Daniel Tammet can master a new language in one week and do lightning-quick mathematical calculations.
     Identical autistic savant twins Flo and Kay Lyman can name the day of the week for any date in the future or past. For any date in the past they can recall what they did, what they wore, what they ate and what the weather was like.
     Allan Snyder, a neuroscientist at the University of Sydney in Australia, has studied brain functions of people with savant syndrome since 1999. He thinks such untapped potential lies within all of us, just awaiting accessibility with the right tools. We cannot readily access these abilities "because they are not conscious to us," he thinks.