Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Architecture in Helsi.... well, just architecture
We shape our buildings. After that, they shape us.
- attributed to Winston Churchill
Nice thought, no?
- attributed to Winston Churchill
Nice thought, no?
Friday, December 08, 2006
Ut-oh, she's reminiscing...
Life never gets easier. In fact, it will only continue to get more difficult. We just become better at handling it. And this is supposed to even things out...
An excerpt from a BBC article posted yesterday:
At the University of Pittsburgh in the US, developmental psychologist Beatriz Luna has been analyzing how adolescents' brains work to try to work out why they behave as they do. And she says the answer is in a bit of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. "It doesn't do anything particularly itself," she says. "It just organizes and arranges everything else in the brain. And what we find is that adolescents are showing an almost exaggerated dependence on prefrontal cortex, where the adult doesn't need to." In other words, teenage brains are not as effective as adult brains at working out how to behave. They are not too good at assessing risk, and they are particularly ill-equipped to analyze competing demands on them. But according to another American academic, Cynthia Lightfoot, who has also made a study of adolescent behaviour, taking risks is not necessarily something that teenagers do simply because their brains are not fully developed yet. "An awful lot of adolescent risk-taking is in fact incredibly rational," she says. "Much of it serves important developmental functions such as exploration, learning about yourself, and learning about the world."
I was, and this is admittedly lame, looking at the myspace profiles of young teenagers in my hometown and trying to pinpoint the differences between them and my 16 year old self. Similar problems, similar priorities. And I was trying to remember what life was like for me when I was 16. What did I worry about then? Where did I think I'd be by 23? Have I lived up to those expectations? Did I take more risks back then? I don't have any real answers here, just pondering...
An excerpt from a BBC article posted yesterday:
At the University of Pittsburgh in the US, developmental psychologist Beatriz Luna has been analyzing how adolescents' brains work to try to work out why they behave as they do. And she says the answer is in a bit of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. "It doesn't do anything particularly itself," she says. "It just organizes and arranges everything else in the brain. And what we find is that adolescents are showing an almost exaggerated dependence on prefrontal cortex, where the adult doesn't need to." In other words, teenage brains are not as effective as adult brains at working out how to behave. They are not too good at assessing risk, and they are particularly ill-equipped to analyze competing demands on them. But according to another American academic, Cynthia Lightfoot, who has also made a study of adolescent behaviour, taking risks is not necessarily something that teenagers do simply because their brains are not fully developed yet. "An awful lot of adolescent risk-taking is in fact incredibly rational," she says. "Much of it serves important developmental functions such as exploration, learning about yourself, and learning about the world."
I was, and this is admittedly lame, looking at the myspace profiles of young teenagers in my hometown and trying to pinpoint the differences between them and my 16 year old self. Similar problems, similar priorities. And I was trying to remember what life was like for me when I was 16. What did I worry about then? Where did I think I'd be by 23? Have I lived up to those expectations? Did I take more risks back then? I don't have any real answers here, just pondering...
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