Blink



During my freedom from the mine, I've already had a few VOC adventures. I'll get to those later. I also did lots of reading. I started and finished Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" which was the most interesting book I've read in a long time. The author uses anecdotes and experiment results to discuss the act of "thinking without thinking"; the ways in which our mind works to make snap decisions based information we don't consciously understand. Gladwell writes about the work of the psychologists Tomkins and Ekman, the former a man literally capable of 'mind reading'. See the excerpt. If that snippet was interesting, then read on: Ekman went on to categorize every possible expression using combinations of facial muscle movements, into his Facial Action Coding System. See the wikipedia article. This ability intrigued me and I've since found a flash learning tool to see how this facial action coding system looks.

I recommend the book to anyone, but my copy is currently circulating around the VOC house at 4527 W 15th. You can borrow it once my roomies have finished with it.
Mike's photo adventure weblog: Blink

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Blink



During my freedom from the mine, I've already had a few VOC adventures. I'll get to those later. I also did lots of reading. I started and finished Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" which was the most interesting book I've read in a long time. The author uses anecdotes and experiment results to discuss the act of "thinking without thinking"; the ways in which our mind works to make snap decisions based information we don't consciously understand. Gladwell writes about the work of the psychologists Tomkins and Ekman, the former a man literally capable of 'mind reading'. See the excerpt. If that snippet was interesting, then read on: Ekman went on to categorize every possible expression using combinations of facial muscle movements, into his Facial Action Coding System. See the wikipedia article. This ability intrigued me and I've since found a flash learning tool to see how this facial action coding system looks.

I recommend the book to anyone, but my copy is currently circulating around the VOC house at 4527 W 15th. You can borrow it once my roomies have finished with it.