Fire and Knowledge

If you believe in a God that uses violence to “save” humanity, you’ll start believing that violence is permissible in certain circumstances, such as suicide bombing or invading other countries to spread democracy, Crossan says.

The human addiction to violence, though, is so ingrained that even the authors of the New Testament had trouble accepting Jesus’ nonviolence, Crossan says.

So they did a little editing.

Crossan’s proof: Jesus preaches nonviolence at the beginning of the New Testament. By the book of Revelation, he’s leading armies through heaven to kill evildoers.

“Christianity both admits and subverts the historical Jesus,” Crossan says.

from John Dominic Crossan’s ‘blasphemous’ portrait of Jesus

According to a 2006 report by the Federation of American Scientists, students recall just 10% of what they read and 20% of what they hear. If visuals accompany an oral presentation, retention rises to 30%. But “if they do the job themselves, even if only as a simulation,” students can remember 90%.

—Adam L. Penenberg, How Video Games Are Infiltrating–and Improving–Every Part of Our Lives

[Games] offer those clearly articulated rewards for each point players score and new level they achieve, games trigger the release of dopamine, a hormone in the brain that encourages us to explore and try new things. Since we like the feeling we get when our brains are awash in dopamine, we’ll do whatever it takes to get it, over and over again. Video and computer games, as well as slot machines, are particularly good at this. They offer “threshold effects,” where prizes or level changes are dribbled out to keep us hooked. It’s the same system that drives compulsive gamblers and cocaine addicts.

It’s also what makes it possible for gamers to enter a mental state called “flow,” in which they’re completely immersed in what they are doing and lose track of time. (In sports, it’s called the “zone,” when a basketball player, for example, feels as if he can’t miss a shot.) In 2003, two researchers at the University of Southern California studied the impact of violent video games on brain activity. Test subjects climbed into an MRI machine and played a popular shoot-’em-up. These machines tend to be cramped and noisy; people usually want a break after 20 minutes. But the test subjects were happy to remain crammed inside one for an hour or more.

—Adam L. Penenberg, How Video Games Are Infiltrating–and Improving–Every Part of Our Lives

Very interesting, and a great example of using video to provoke thought:

Also, “torture porn” is a pretty apt name.

And that’s what [a startup is] like – all superlatives. Your highs are super high. Crack. Your lows are unexplainably low and lonely. It’s the startup roller coaster world. And I miss it.

—Mark Suster, Should You Really Be A Startup Entrepreneur?

The Next Big Thing already exists. It’s just a matter of thinking like an artist — of trying to take something that already exists and repurposing it for something it wasn’t intended for.

—Biz Stone, as quoted in “Social Media Grows Up”