So, I'm watching the last couple of minutes of the Super Bowl (for non-U.S. Tipsters, it is a football [no, not soccer] game) and a commercial for a new movie comes on. Now, I've tried to turn off my attention when commercials come on but then I hear a voice over say something like "what if you could use more than 20% of your brain?" It is for a movie starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro (Oh! How the mighty have fallen!) titled "Limitless". My first response was "well, I hope those folks would stop making commercials like this" but I digress. This was the first time I heard of people only using 20% instead of the traditional 10% (for debunking the 10% myth of brain usage, see: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html and/or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10%25_of_brain_myth )
Now I'm wondering: "Did I mis-hear the commercial? Did they really say 20% instead of 10%?" A quick search of the InterWebs indicate that indeed, we must be getting smarter because we are now using 20%. Consider the following article that previews the movie "Limitless": http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/22/limitless-trailer-bradley-cooper So, if drugs can make you use more of your brain, clearly drugs are a good thing (which is an argument I imagine used by undergraduates who use provigil and adderall to keep pepped up during the semester). In any event, I guess we should expect students to ask about why we only use 20% of our brains and have an answer prepared for them: "Only some people in Hollywood appear to use only 20% of their brains." -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=8558 or send a blank email to leave-8558-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
