A scrapbook for my philosophical essays on the world, casual observations, and personal rants.

Times Square certainly has changes a lot over the past 100 years since it was renamed — I think it, more than any other place in the city, has changed the most. Gizmodo took a look at its history and wondered what it takes to keep the glitzy billboards and jumbo screens working. Some of the details are a little geeky but If you want to know what goes on behind the curtain (pun intended), it’s a good read.

via The Loop

Joanna Geary crowdsourced a list of 30 third-party twitter apps for journalists. Tim Carmody, who’s writing for Kottke this week, highlighted a few of his favorites.

If there is one thing that Twitter could do better (besides increasing the character limit to 256 — which I think would be better for more “mainstream” users) is better list management. I was planning on spending an hour or two just going through my lists and followers one Saturday just so I can get a bit more out of the service. Using something like TweetBe.at — and the other services listed — might be helpful.

I keep my “following” list pretty low — and I think I should lower it still. I’ve created lists by subject and added people to them so, when I need to, I can easily find relevant content without the cluttering my main feed. Some lists I keep are for NYC/Hoboken emergencies (when Hurricane Sandy hit the area), the New York Yankees and New York Giants, and Apple news.

via Kottke

I would bet that most people believe that social skills are one of (if not the) most important skill to have in life. Sure your technical skills — whether they be finance, medical, or IT is important — but without social skills, you just won’t develop the opportunities to use or grow them. But having social skills doesn’t mean being social all the time. There are some who believe that not being social, on occasion, has benefits too:

…an emerging body of research is suggesting that spending time alone, if done right, can be good for us — that certain tasks and thought processes are best carried out without anyone else around, and that even the most socially motivated among us should regularly be taking time to ourselves if we want to have fully developed personalities, and be capable of focus and creative thinking. There is even research to suggest that blocking off enough alone time is an important component of a well-functioning social life — that if we want to get the most out of the time we spend with people, we should make sure we’re spending enough of it away from them. Just as regular exercise and healthy eating make our minds and bodies work better, solitude experts say, so can being alone.

One ongoing Harvard study indicates that people form more lasting and accurate memories if they believe they’re experiencing something alone. Another indicates that a certain amount of solitude can make a person more capable of empathy towards others. And while no one would dispute that too much isolation early in life can be unhealthy, a certain amount of solitude has been shown to help teenagers improve their moods and earn good grades in school.

Being alone has been linked to creativity and the post cites great religious figures like Jesus and Mohammed as using periods of solitude to further their thoughts. Other known scientific and literary greats were known to enjoy being by themselves.

Of course, there are differences between being social, having “me” time, and being anti-social. It’s something that, like everything else in life, must be used in moderation; teenagers benefited from a well balanced social life that included some quite time alone — including a better social experience when they were with others.

via The Daily Exhaust

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I used to bite my nails. According to Tom Stafford, who still bites his, Gordon Brown, Jackie Onassis, and Britney Spears are or were nail biters, too. He cites papers that suggest 45% of teens bite their nails and you can imagine that some of them would continue to do so as adults. He did a bit of research on the act of nail biting which doesn’t have underlying psychological causes:

First off, there is the fact that putting your fingers in your mouth is an easy thing to do. It is one of the basic functions for feeding and grooming, and so it is controlled by some pretty fundamental brain circuitry, meaning it can quickly develop into an automatic reaction. Added to this, there is a ‘tidying up’ element to nail biting – keeping them short – which means in the short term at least it can be pleasurable, even if the bigger picture is that you end up tearing your fingers to shreds. This reward element, combined with the ease with which the behaviour can be carried out, means that it is easy for a habit to develop…

I don’t even know what got me to stop biting my nails other than, one day, deciding I didn’t want to do it anymore.

via