i’ll have coffee and donuts, hold the coffee

Don’t like coffee but need a lift? Get summa-dese.

 

“Bohannon says he’s developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods, without the bitter taste of caffeine. Each piece of pastry is the equivalent of about two cups of coffee.”

 

Thanks to the overcaffeinated gizmodians.

 

 

Technorati tags: caffienated donuts

reactivate my nucelus accumbens

Remember my post about shopping and the nucleus accumbens? Well, there’s more to the N.A. than just buying stuff.

Clive Thompson had an article about music and the mind a couple of weeks ago in the New York Times. Unfortunately, the NYT wants you to fork over five bucks to read it, but Clive, great guy that he is, has the article permanently hosted on his excellent Collision Detection blog.

It’s a long, but thoroughly fascinating look at pop music, psyche, and emotion in the research of Dr. Daniel Levitin.

“he came up with an elegant concept: He stopped people on the street and asked them to sing, entirely from memory, one of their favorite hit songs. The results were astonishingly accurate. Most people could hit the tempo of the original song within a four-percent margin of error, and two-thirds sang within a semitone of the original pitch, a level of accuracy that wouldn’t embarrass a pro.

“When you played the recording of them singing alongside the actual recording of the original song, it sounded like they were singing along,” Dr. Levitin said.”

 

While you’re there, check out Clive’s post about baby squirrels who can predict the future… no joke.

 

 

Technorati tags: Dr. Daniel Levitin, neuroscience of music, baby squirrels

and here i am with no microphone!

Woah! Here’s something I’ve wished for before. Midomi is a new site, just launched today, that claims to be able to find a song based on your performance of it.

Maybe somebody who has a mic can check it out and let me know if it works.

Hat tip to Zdnet.

Technorati tags: midomi