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Person worth following – David Eagleman. David Eagleman is one of my favorite neuroscientists. In addition to his contributions in the realms of theory and the analysis of experimental results, Eagleman builds some amazing, life-transforming technology. One such piece of technology is a vest that allows for something call “sensory substitution.” This vest takes in some type of information from the outside world, and converts it into different forms of vibration that the wearer can feel. Eventually, the wearer develops the ability to derive meaning from this vibration. Quite a lot of meaning, as it turns out.

David Eagleman describes the vest, and some of its incredible potential applications in this TED talk:

Eagleman has some great philosophical theories is well. In the video below, he describes a new belief system he invented called possibilianism. The ideas he outlines serve, in my opinion, as a wonderful antidote to the dogmatism that is so common among both militant atheists and religious fundamentalists.

Note: If you’d like to read more about possibilianism, click here.

Informative website – Our World in Data

• If you want to develop a better understanding of the most important macro trends of our world, this site is for you.

Book Highlights from The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan 

• “Few plants can manufacture quite as much organic matter (and calories) from the same quantities of sunlight and water and basic elements as corn.”

• “Since 1985, an American’s annual consumption of HFCS (High fructose corn syrup) has gone from forty-five pounds to sixty-six pounds.”

• “One reason that obesity and diabetes become more prevalent the further down the socioeconomic scale you look is that the industrial food chain has made energy – dense foods the cheapest foods in the market , when measured in terms of cost per calorie.” 

• “A recent study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared the “energy cost” of different foods in the supermarket. The researchers found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips and cookies; spent on a whole food like carrots, the same dollar buys only 250 calories.

• “On the beverage aisle, you can buy 875 calories of soda for a dollar, or 170 calories of fruit juice from concentrate.”

• “It makes good economic sense that people with limited money to spend on food would spend it on the cheapest calories they can find, especially when the cheapest calories — fats and sugars — are precisely the ones offering the biggest neurobiological rewards.”

Drone Photo of Aspen, Colorado