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January 6, 2009
How the City Hurts Your Brain
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/06/042202
"The city has always been an engine of intellectual life and the 'concentration of social interactions' is largely responsible for urban creativity and innovation. But now scientists are finding that being in an urban environment impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory and suffers from reduced self-control. 'The mind is a limited machine,' says psychologist Marc Berman. 'And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations.' Consider everything your brain has to keep track of as you walk down a busy city street. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to redirect our attention constantly so that we aren't distracted by irrelevant things.
This is something that I've believed for some time. Humans forced into close proximity are more productive, and possibly more creative as well, but if you never remove yourself from that environment, it fries your brain and rattles your nerves. Being around the office water cooler during the day is crucial to staying in the loop, but if you go to sleep listening to car alarms and police sirens, and get up at 4:00 a.m. to do it all over again, then you're probably not getting enough down time.
Posted by Rob Kiser on January 6, 2009 at 6:02 PM
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtcaigalHgU
"Song About Traveling"
The Innocence Mission
A man said Why, why does traveling
in cars and in trains make him feel sad,
a beautiful sadness.
I've felt this before.
It's the people in the cities you'll never know,
it is everything you pass by,
wondering, will you ever return?
The colors of rowboats, the greens and the blues.
Orange grove side streets you only see halfway.
And beaches in winter
and when kites are flown.
It's the people in the cities you'll never know,
it is everything you pass by,
wondering, will you ever return?
Posted by: The People In The Cities on January 6, 2009 at 10:33 PM