what a cool year 2007

Continuing with the similar topic to the top-10 lists by TIME, I have been amused and amazed by the last issue of New York Times Magazine: The 7th Annual Year of Ideas.

I don't have a chunk of time to read the whole issue during the past week, but piece by piece. And I have been piece-by-piece-ly impressed by people around the world who generated cool, creative, or not-so-ideal ideas this year.

For example, the route-generating software employed in the delivery company U.P.S. helped reduce CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons. How? The software tells the UPS driver to avoid making left turns! It is called Left-Hand-Turn Elimination.

Another example, a Japanese architect Shigeru Ban used cardboards to build an actual bridge over a river in France. The bridge could withstand at least 20 people. You think it must have looked weird? No, it was a beautifully artistic design. It was functioning for 6 weeks before dismantled for the rainy season. Click the cardboard bridge to have a look.

Other cool ideas include cool thoughts.
One truly touches my heart, all cognitive psychologists' hearts. It is called Neurorealism. This term, according to the journalist Hutson, was coined by Eric Racine.
Beautiful brain imaging data do not prove or tell us anything new about human mind. It does not verify anything what has been known either. New technology should help us with new knowledge instead of giving scientists credibility such as "Oh, I can see it in the brain picture, so what you say must be true!"
Let's say visual attention, the topic I have been studied. Definition: it is a mechanism selecting relevant or salient information into our visual system so that the selected or prioritized information can be processed further or quicker than other information. This definition has not changed since more than 100 years ago, and has not changed since PET or fMRI was invented and used in cognitive neuroscience.
You can say that imaging data help us to "localize" where visual attention is in the brain. Well.... yes and no. Take the people whom I am studying right now for example. Most of them have brain lesions in the right hemisphere, and they have impairments in visuospatial attention. However, as said 100 years ago or longer ago, etiology does not guarantee symptoms. Vice versa. Not all right-hemisphere lesioned persons have deficits in visuospatial attention. Not all persons with deficits in visuospatial attention have lesions in their right hemisphere.
Don't believe what you read about the brain in fashion magazines, please. A friend asked me whether it's true that using your non-dominant hand can give your brain a workout. She asked about it because she read it in Vogue, in which a beautiful brain imaging picture was shown beside the text. I told her, as long as you do not stop thinking, your brain is working out.
Don't get me started.

Let's move on.
There are also very geeky or boring ideas (boring at least to me). For example, a physicist wrote a model to explain why strings (such as a computer power cord) tend to form knots. His first "discovery" was not surprising: the longer the string, the more likely it forms a knot. I did not stop reading because I wanted to know whether he actually discovered something interesting. Luckily, the review section is short and followed by Lap-Dance Science that wiped out the boredom.

Other topics that caught my eyes are God Effect and Suing God. They makes me smile. Humans are so cute :)
God's existence has been emphasized too much in the States therefore I just cannot help but doubt it. I'm glad that some persons research on it or play with it. God does not made humans. Starch did.

Some makes me frown. For example,Vegansexuality. This is just too much.
I respect vegans in terms of their persistence and incredible will against delicious seafood, red meat, and real Chinese cuisine. I respect vegans in terms of their increasing influence in the free marketing world where vegan dancing shoes are now available.
But vegansexuality is just too much. "I couldn't think of kissing lips that allow dead animal pieces to pass between them." Quoted in the NYTimes Mag review.
Oh, I couldn't think of kissing lips that have actually say those words.
Can they be even more extreme? Do not use anything made by non-vegan workers. How about that? They probably have to move to the moon. Oh, they can't because spaceships so far are not veganized.
When did vegans become meat-eater-haters from peace-loving-makers?

Well... You go read by yourself. I have to rest. Too overwhelmed by ideas.