Writing on Both Sides of the Brain

First annotation on Sep 9th, 2024. Last on Sep 11th, 2024.

7 quotes

“Nulla dies sine linea,” says Pliny—“Never a day without a line.”Sep 9 2024 2:29PM

Jaynes also quotes a British physicist as saying that the greatest scientific and mathematical discoveries are commonly made in the three B’s: the Bed, the Bath, and the Bus.Sep 10 2024 3:39PM
Generally speaking, it is the right hemisphere that remembers a person’s face, while the left remembers the name.Sep 10 2024 3:40PM
The right expresses itself randomly—in pictures, patterns, rhythms—and cannot articulate in words.Sep 10 2024 3:41PM
In The Inner Game of Tennis Tim Gallwey demonstrates this same principle, “if you don’t mind a little underhanded gamesmanship.” The quickest way, he asserts, to ruin a player’s game is to draw attention to his fine performance in the middle of the set. As you are changing nets, you point out how well he is doing.Sep 10 2024 3:43PM
Author/artist Edwards muses: This puzzle puts the logical left brain into a logical box: how to account for this sudden ability to draw well, when it (the know-it-all left hemisphere) has been eased out of the task. The left brain, which admires a job well done, must now consider the possibility that the disdained right brain is good at drawing. More seriously speaking, a plausible explanation of the illogical result is that the left brain refused the task of processing the upside-down image. Presumably, the left hemisphere, confused and blocked by the unfamiliar image and unable to name or symbolize as usual, turned off, and the job passed over to the right hemisphere.Sep 10 2024 8:05PM

When the Americans who were held captive in Iran were released, they told of overcoming the stress of 444 days in captivity through various strategies. One hostage mentally remodeled a whole house, nail by nail, board by board; another went, in his mind’s eye, on the Orient Express and recorded mentally every detail down to the menu. According to Time, the State Department doctors at Wiesbaden, Germany, called these survival tactics “Going to the Movies” and considered them good devices for “warding off the helplessness that comes with captivity.”Sep 11 2024 9:00PM

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