The evidence for fish oil’s benefits to the brain, as well as a wide range of other bodily functions and conditions, just keeps piling up. Yet another recent study demonstrates dramatic improvement in academic performance in Junior High students. The Omega 3 oils in fish (DHA and EPA) have been found to control the inflammation that causes chronic health problems like arthritis, fend off depression, prevent cognitive decline, and behavioral problems, improve memory, lower blood pressure and cholesterol and address other health issues, such as macular degeneration, and menstrual pain. This single nutrient has to be the king of brain buffs.

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Or so says the The Universal Traveler. Are most inventions merely “new ways of combining old bits and pieces?”

Once there was a shaman, as the story goes, passed down through oral tradition (the story that is, the shaman was too heavy to be handled such), and one of his most important tribal roles was finding new hunting trails. When game became scarce the tribe would come to him for answers. And he would draw a map on a piece of buffalo hide. On the map he etched the surrounding mountains and streams, and all the important landmarks of the area over a large radius. Then he’d wad up the map, squeeze it (probably sprinkle some ‘magic’ dust for job security) and then unfold it. Its creases now revealed new paths for game trails. Hunters chose those that seemed to make sense and off they went, discovering plentiful new bounty along directions they would not have otherwise explored.

We invented a similar device for exploring new territories of ideas using the rules described by Koberg and Bagnall in an out-of-print version of the book above. Want to come up with the next Google or Flickr or YouTube? Try it out. The technique is called Morphological Analysis. It can be done with pen and paper for about three dimensions, but you can explore many more with the iDeAZing widget. Plus, it’s hard to wad up a 10 dimensional map on paper.

Limber up your Neurons

Brain Flex is an experimental (and free) composition of brain wave frequencies designed to perform the following:

• If you are in a stuck, negative or unproductive state it can lead you someplace else.
• If you are already feeling good, it can make you feel even better.
• If you’d just like to exercise your mind, running it through a series of state changes by altering its external stimulation in unpredictable ways, it can do this too.

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can I rule the world now?

Maybe. But first, some housekeeping. Before discussing what happened, let’s talk about some of the theories used to explain away the effect. If you haven’t done the experiment yet, please try it here first. The rest of this will make much more sense.
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Einstein demonstrated that time is relative.

But the rabbit-hole goes much deeper. Quantum physics discovered that consciousness is entangled in matter in some inexplicable ways; but other than the very fast, or very small, or very large, we tend to assume our “ordinary” reality conforms more to the laws of Newton. Simple cause and effect unfolding with clockwork constancy —well, it’s time to shatter this assumption. Let’s stop time.
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Replace coffee with this mp3 designed to entrain your brain

If you’ve stopped drinking coffee but miss the buzz, this one’s for you. Wake up in the morning, afternoon —get extra mental energy and focus before studies or meetings with this 10 minute entrainment from grasshopper.com. Digital Espresso uses a research protocol successful with patients of CFS, depression, ADHD and found to reliably increase energy and motivation. Put on some headphones, kick back, close your eyes and let the pulses massage your brain and the frequencies wake up those slacker neurons. A high speed connection is recommended. Click the play button to listen to now

or, if you would like to download this for your iPod, you can do so here. Just right click and Save Link or Save Target to your local disk.

This audio free to share under a Creative
Commons Music Sharing License.

Or just create your own virtual reality

In 1988 a professor at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota started an experiment with students of average IQs. The students, exercising their minds with a specific protocol, demonstrated IQ gains ranging from 2.3 to 0.9 per hour. They measured a 20 point increase in IQs over the 40 hour duration of the experiments —additional gains after this period appeared to be open-ended. Perhaps not so incidentally, the exercise was found to increase creativity, vivid mental imagery, cross-hemispheric communications and verbal fluency in addition to facilitating access to subconscious processes.
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