Category: CogZest

Mind Wandering about Paul R. Fleischman’s Lecture on Features of Meditation: Homeostasis, Meta-management and More

Last summer I blogged about using the method of loci to memorize a Buddhist lecture on art.

This past Tuesday, Lam Wong and I attend Dr. Paul R. Fleischman’s lecture at UBC on the “The Universal Features of Meditation”. We were asked to turn off our devices and refrain from using recording devices of any kind. I had brought pen and paper, but wasn’t sure whether they were taking mindfulness so far that I shouldn’t even take notes…
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Mata Hari’s Emotions

According to Michel Aubé, if motivation involves managing resources, then emotion, a subset of motivation, involves managing commitments (human resources). Combine this idea with the fact that emotional episodes involve perturbance, where a cluster of affectively charged mental content, or motivators, tend to disrupt and maintain attention. Continue reading Mata Hari’s Emotions

Where Should You Place Your Bet? On Developing Working Memory or Many Mental Mechanisms?

Working memory has long been considered by cognitive psychologists to be the most important cognitive predictor of fluid intelligence. For the longest time, working memory was thought to be a fixed capacity. However, about a decade ago, following the publication of a paper by Continue reading Where Should You Place Your Bet? On Developing Working Memory or Many Mental Mechanisms?

AI Readings for Clinical Psychologists and Psychiatrists

While writing about the history of the Cognition and Affect project, I received a request for some readings on AI and psychotherapy. So, I thought I’d share a few readings here. Continue reading AI Readings for Clinical Psychologists and Psychiatrists

Shedding Some Light on Night Shift in iOS 9.3

Given that cognitive productivity is influenced by the brain’s circadian mechanisms, and that information technology and other technology can interfere with these mechanisms, you might be interested in a recent blog post of mine on mySleepButton.com. The post is a response to the introduction of a Blue Light Reduction setting in the Display & Brightness panel of iOS 9.3.

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Report on Book Report on Kurt Palka (The Piano Maker, et al.): What if a Great Novel is Worth Re-reading?

I’ve been responding deeply enough to art since I launched CogZest to own up to the fact “it” has become a project of mine, beyond the one I committed to from the outset of CogZest, i.e., The Zest of Brel. My long term plan includes editing, publishing and contributing to a book provisionally called Cognitive Responses to Art. However, I’ve also made “it” a major focus of Discontinuities.
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Is It a Good Idea to Enable the iPhone’s Predictive Keyboard and Auto-correction?

A couple of months before I started university, I spent some of my evenings learning to type on a typewriter. (A year or so before I purchased a Mac Plus.) My girlfriend of the day pleaded with me to engage in more pleasurable summer evening activities with her. However, I knew that I’d be writing documents for the next four years and beyond, and that I had better learn to type. I wanted to be able to focus on my ideas so they might flow as fluidly from my brain as they needed to. My playmate decompensated; but I Continue reading Is It a Good Idea to Enable the iPhone’s Predictive Keyboard and Auto-correction?

Why Is A Christmas Story — The Musical — So Hilarious? Inside Jokes, The Mating Mind and Mental Spaces We’d Rather Not Explore

“You don’t mean to say that this charming, clever young lady has been so foolish as to accept you?”
Lord Caversham to Lord Goring in Oscar Wilde’s, An Ideal Husband

“Evolution is an examination with two papers. To succeed demands a pass in both.”
Steve Jones, Darwin’s Ghost (p. 76)

The Arts Club of Vancouver’s performance of A Christmas Story—The Musical had me in stiches. But why?

A Christmas Story—The Musical
Continue reading Why Is A Christmas Story — The Musical — So Hilarious? Inside Jokes, The Mating Mind and Mental Spaces We’d Rather Not Explore