You know those days where you wake up and before your feet hit the floor your head is already heavy with dread, the walk to the bathroom is like swimming through warm, flavorless jello and brushing your teeth is a massive undertaking during which your mind is a place full of painful memories and pointed reminders that you're not likely to do any better in the future? Those mornings where you avoid looking at other people on your way to work because you can't bear to see or be seen? When you're forced to expend what little mental acuity you have left keeping your thoughts away from the things that [...]
"It is known as the happiness chemical, but could serotonin also influence sexual preference? It certainly seems to in mice."
Over the last year or two I began to develop what I initially thought was a severe case of dandruff in the area around my temples. The duration of this crisis was blessedly brief, because it turned out what I was seeing was actually the first foray into my sideheads by a colonizing force of gray hairs. (Technically it would be more accurate to describe them as silver, but given historical precedent it seems unlikely that anything on my body would somehow retain any kind of elegance or class, so I expect them to lose what little luster they have imminently.) My vanity is of the variety that so [...]
I can't wait til I can just think "Okay, rats, bedtime!" and my team of rat slaves will follow my wordless commands to take off my clothes, put on my pajamas, pull down my blankets and tuck me in for a good night's sleep.
I tend to vacillate between a) pretending that nothing really matters because our existence, no matter how highly evolved we like to tell ourselves we are, is essentially a meaningless and arbitrary journey through a course fraught with obstacles both external and self-made in which we think we are choosing our own direction when in reality we are being pushed along by a collection of chemicals whose only goal is to spread their own ingredients regardless of the damage it does to their current host and b) cowering in the corner when confronted by the certainty that there's no actual need to pretend, because it's all true. In those bleak [...]
"If someone shouts 'look behind you,' tadpoles in Michael Levin’s laboratory may be ready. The tadpoles can see out of eyes growing from their tails, even though the organs aren’t directly wired to the animals’ brains." —If a scientist offers to put an eye in your butt, and you're a tadpole, then it's probably legit.
Photo by D. Blackiston and M. Levin/Tufts University.
"People who are depressed or have anxiety don't overrate themselves, [psychologist Mark Horswill] said. The more severe the depression, the more likely they are to underrate themselves. That suggests the illusion of superiority may actually be a protective mechanism that shields our self-esteem, he added."
