Mindframe

The airlines have an interesting policy. Unofficially, it’s called the 1% Defection Rule, and it goes something like this. Imagine that you’re the head of an airline and you want to maximize profit. Your strategy might include offering uncompromising service to guarantee customers will always fly with you. The problem with this strategy is it begins to get expensive; more service = more money (don’t kid yourself, those little bags of peanuts add up). This cuts into corporate revenue, making your shareholders grumpy, and putting your very livelihood in jeopardy. So instead, being the genius you are, you come up with another strategy: provide just enough services to keep your customers from defecting to the other guy’s airline. It’s just like your buddy the hunter, who takes you into the forest and tells you the old joke about outrunning a Grizzly Bear. He doesn’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than you . This kind of thinking can be seen in the evolution of the airp...

"Where do you get your ideas from?" It's the interview question that haunts every writer, artist, filmmaker, and inventor. Though the answer may disappoint, we can't seem to stop asking. We want to know what divine pixie dust separates the geniuses from the rest of us poor schmucks. Was Steve Jobs really a creative genius, the visionary techno-wizard who, with a wave of his hand summoned from thin air the Mac computer, iPhone, iPod and iPad? Or was he more man behind the curtain, subsisting for months at a time on only broccoli ? In his four-part documentary series “ Everything is a Remix ,” filmmaker and TED talker  Kirby Ferguson is curiously silent on the broccoli issue. He does, however, have something to say about the nature of creativity.  His central premise is that few ideas come from a vacuum. Instead, most creators, from George Lucas to DJ Danger Mouse, work off of pre-existing ideas. From a neuroscience standpoint, this checks out. The ...

Feeling stressed? Having a bad day? Did you know that a monkey, a peanut and a hungry scientist might hold the answer to turning things around? Around 1997, some Italian neuroscientists in Parma were fooling around with a macaque monkey, trying to isolate the brain neuron that controlled the monkey’s elbow movement.  They hardwired the monkey’s brain with a sophisticated sound detection apparatus and then placed a bowl of peanuts in front of the monkey. Each time the monkey reached for a peanut, it triggered the elbow neuron, and the search was on. I’ll cut to the chase. After a morning of hard work, you can imagine their elation in hearing the loud click of the winner neuron.  The story goes that they then rushed off to lunch. In their haste, however, they forgot to unhook the monkey. When they returned, one of the scientists, apparently not fully sated (could it be that they don’t have hearty luncheon fare like Chef Boyardee in Italy?) reached into the monkey’s cage...

Why do we continue to eat when we are full? Why do we smoke cigarettes when we know they cause cancer? Why do we not exercise more when so many studies link exercise to a myriad of long term benefits?   Above is Chinatown’s Doyer Street. I took this picture a couple of weeks ago on a quiet Saturday morning. This humble corner––purported to be the only curved street in all of NYC––is sometimes known as “the Bloody Angle.” Back in 1909, it was the deadliest spot in the city, even more notorious than the Five Points of Scorceses’s The Gangs of New York . By this time, in the face of persecution and a shameful degree of government neglect, the Cantonese population in Manhattan had organized itself around a series of merchant associations, or tongs. Many tongs were truly concerned with providing much-needed services to the community. However, the On Leong and Hip Sing, two of the most powerful groups, would’ve put the Godfather to shame. The Bloody Angle was where the the On L...

What do Jonah Lehrer and the USA men’s Olympic gymnastic team have in common? They both blew up this week. In both cases, the bombs were self detonated, but the collateral damage for Lehrer is likely to be far worse. On Wednesday, despite its lack of a head, an attitude, or any moving parts, our gymnasts found the pommel horse nearly impossible to ride. It doesn’t buck you off as much as defy you to scootch around atop it at breakneck speed as it patiently waits for your basal ganglia––home of your pommel horse routine––to hand over the reigns to your prefrontal cortex––home of your second-guessing analytical self. That handoff can’t happen smoothly because of that half-second delay between your rational and emotional brain. A half-second is an eternity to neurotransmitters, more than enough time to screw up. For the gymnasts, once the prefrontal cortex grabs ahold, you can kiss the medal round goodbye. When you stop to think about what you’re doing, your routine splinters into ...