New Dimensions

OOOOHHHH....Higgs Particles are all very interesting, but an extra dimension? This could solve a lot of problems: roads will become less congested, air traffic control will become easier. Can we use jet packs? Is it a new frontier? Let's not conquer this one. Let's just let it tantalize us forever.

Brain Green's Op-Ed piece in Friday's New York Times was great. My concerns about the Large Hadron Collider have been quelled. I am reassured that Switzerland will not be swallowed, and I am spending my afternoon with a tape measure, staring at the kitchen table, waiting for the new dimension to reveal itself to me. Tomorrow I will casually mention that my table is 40" wide, 45" long, 30" tall, and 6 3/4" quimoogle. Yes. Quimoogle is the new dimension. I have just named it. For an English major, this is enough.

Aha!

I buy old copies of the The New Yorker at the library for 25 cents. This brings me great pleasure -- more satisfaction, in fact, than finding an old beer can (10 cents here in Michigan) on a walk in the woods. Some of the pleasure comes from the irregularity of it. I don't always know if I'll find a copy in the stack. Last week, I found the July 28 (2008!) issue, which included an article by Jonah Lehrer about what happens inside the brain when people have an insight, and why good ideas come to us when they do. What he learned from two cognitive neuroscientists, Mark Jung-Beeman at Northwestern University and John Kounios at Drexel University, is consistent with what many writers know: if you're waiting for an epiphany, you need to let your mind wander.

Here is a summary from the article: "The insight process, as sketched by Jung-Beeman and Kounios, is a delicate mental balancing act. At first, the brain lavishes the scarce resource of attention on a single problem. But, once the brain is sufficiently focussed, the cortex needs to relax in order to seek out the more remote assocation in the right hemisphere, which will provide the insight....As Jung-Beeman and Kounios see it, the insight process is an act of cognitive deliberation -- the brain must be focused on the task at hand -- transformed by accidental, serendipitous connections. We must concentrate on letting the mind wander."

Here is the article.

Trips

Wednesday's Dining Out section of The New York Times had an article ("A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue") which delighted me because it was strange and interesting and provocative, and because it was about a fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum. I like learning about new fruit. And this is a wacky one. According to the article, the berry "rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so, rendering lemons as sweet as candy." What a thrill to find an (apparently) harmless fruit that messes with our expectations. People are having flavor-tripping parties. I think I'd like to go to one. If a berry from West Africa can alter our palate, are there nuts from Brazil or coffee beans from Central America that could rewire the way our ears perceive music? If vinegar can taste like apple juice and goat cheese becomes cheesecake, could Philip Glass sound like Arnold Schoenberg? If I could only find funding, I would set sail on a tall-masted ship in search of this. I would bring scientists and musicians with me, and crates of oranges for the crew. And the Synsepalum dulcificum, which I would ration like rum.