Today's Wierd Facts
13/8/02 21:57![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eredienI am currently reading Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence, by John R. Skoyles and Dorion Sagan (the son of the late Carl Sagan). It is done as a sequel and update of sorts to Carl Sagan's earlier The Dragons of Eden, which is also a good book. Perfect summer reading for me: intriguing chapters I can finish in an hour or less, with a little bit of biotech and music theory and neuroscience thrown in that I don't have to be a bio major to understand. Anyway...
p. 102: "Studies of people who live alone show that a lack of daily contact carries about the same risk of shortening lifespan as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day."
Um, wow. Second fact.
p. 58, on Alpha waves in the frontal cortex: "But in meditation, such as...zen, yoga, and qi gong, it [the waves of the alpha state] lasts longer and changes, increasing slightly in amplitude and becoming more coordinated and slightly lower in frequency than normal."
I want to read the scientific papers referenced in that one. Something I'd heard before but hadn't found any solid scienfitic literature about.
p. 102: "Studies of people who live alone show that a lack of daily contact carries about the same risk of shortening lifespan as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day."
Um, wow. Second fact.
p. 58, on Alpha waves in the frontal cortex: "But in meditation, such as...zen, yoga, and qi gong, it [the waves of the alpha state] lasts longer and changes, increasing slightly in amplitude and becoming more coordinated and slightly lower in frequency than normal."
I want to read the scientific papers referenced in that one. Something I'd heard before but hadn't found any solid scienfitic literature about.