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The science of why drivers slow down for Pittsburgh tunnels
The Incline: I brake before tunnels. This is an admission that, as a person new to Pittsburgh, I did not think would cause a scandal. But in a “city of tunnels,” confessing that you are guilty of this particular vehicular sin elicits sighs, groans and exclamations of outrage from people who just moments before were kindly offering you recommendations for good pierogies. That’s not to say that braking for tunnels isn’t a weird point of civic hate-pride: There are Reddit threads. There’s a T-shirt. There’s a song. ... In an effort to defend myself, I contacted Roberta Klatzky.
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Why We Should Stop Grading Students on a Curve
The New York Times: Ask people what’s wrong in American higher education, and you’ll hear about grade inflation. At Harvard a few years ago, a professor complained that the most common grade was an A-. He was quickly corrected: The most common grade at Harvard was an A. Across 200 colleges and universities, over 40 percent of grades were in the A realm. At both four-year and two-year schools, more students receive A’s than any other grade — a percentage that has grown over the past three decades. Among older graduates, figures like these usually elicit a comment involving the words “coddled,” “damn” and “millennials.” But the opposite problem worries me even more: grade deflation.
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Why Do We Forget?
Scientific American: The brain, with its 100 billion neurons, allows us to do amazing things like learn multiple languages, or build things that send people into outer space. Yet despite this astonishing capacity, we routinely can’t remember where we put our keys, we forget why we went to the grocery store, and we fail when trying to recall personal life events. This apparent contradiction in functionality opens up the question of why we forget some things but remember others. Or, more fundamentally, what causes forgetting?
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THE ENDLESS, AND EXPENSIVE, QUEST FOR RARE OBJECTS
The New Yorker: A few months ago, I was invited to speak at a small marketing conference in Chicago. To attract attendees, its organizer promised everyone a one-ounce pour—a sip, more or less—of a cult bourbon called Pappy Van Winkle. Pappy, as it is known to its fans, is so sought after that it’s nearly impossible to find, and, a few days before the conference, word came that the Pappy supplier had fallen through. Luckily, I happened to walk into a Greenwich Village liquor store where two bottles had just arrived. “They’ll be gone by tomorrow,” the clerk said, before naming his price: thirty-five hundred dollars for the pair.
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As More States Consider Legalizing, Questions About Pot And The Brain
NPR: Five states are voting this fall on whether marijuana should be legal, like alcohol, for recreational use. That has sparked questions about what we know — and don't know — about marijuana's effect on the brain. Research is scarce. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug. That classification puts up barriers to conducting research on it, including a cumbersome DEA approval application and a requirement that scientists procure very specific marijuana plants. One long-term study in New Zealand compared the IQs of people at age 13 and then through adolescence and adulthood to age 38.
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WHY ARE BABIES SO DUMB IF HUMANS ARE SO SMART?
The New Yorker: As a species, humans are incredibly smart. We tell stories, create magnificent art and astounding technology, build cities, and explore space. We haven’t been around nearly as long as many other species, but in many respects we’ve accomplished more than any have before us. We eat them and they don’t eat us. We even run scientific studies on them—and are thinking about re-creating some of those that have gone extinct. But our intelligence comes with a curious caveat: our babies are among the dumbest—or, rather, the most helpless—that exist. A baby giraffe can stand within an hour of birth, and can even potentially flee predators on its first day of life.
