The Longevity Diet
20th February 2020
Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!
(Some of you may have experienced problems with direct links to the books. That should be fixed now―if you still experience problems, please let us know.)[Hat tip: Campbell.]
Book of the Week
The Longevity Diet, by Valter Longo. This book provides an intriguing set of hypotheses about how to extend life, and reset bodily systems, using intermittent fasting. Longo is the real deal―a well-known researcher at UCLA who has studied this issue for years. Along with making an excellent case for intermittent fasting, Longo also recommends a more vegetarian-oriented diet that includes some fish. What we wouldn’t give to see Valter Longo and Michael Eades (of Protein Power Diet), in a debate!
MOOC of the Week
Here’s another great review of a great course by Pat Bowden of Online Learning Success: Sheep in the Land of Fire and Ice. What’s not to love about sheep in Iceland and the broad applicability of this learning? Enjoy!
A Shoutout to Mark Fisher Fitness, New York City
Barb would like to give a gigantic shoutout of appreciation to the staff of Mark Fisher Fitness. She just received their (somewhat delayed) card of appreciation, signed by loads of staff members, reading “Where do we even begin?!? Our magical staff of unicorns recently finished your course ‘Learning How to Learn’ and WE LOVED IT. We can’t wait to use our new habits in 2020 🙂 YOU’RE A QUEEN! Ting + Team MFF.” If you’re into fitness (which of course, LHTLers know is important), and live in New York City, you couldn’t do better than find kindred spirits at Mark Fisher!
An Entertaining Video on Memorizing Prime Numbers
4-time US memory champion Nelson Dellis is back with another wonderfully entertaining video on memorizing prime numbers. Even if you don’t intend to memorize any prime numbers, you’ll get useful (and entertaining) tips from Nelson on how to think about numbers.
How to Improve Students’ Executive Function
Here is a lovely article, “Disrupting the Myth about ‘Mediocre’ Students,” by neuroscientist Martha Burns. Her description of Mr. Stevens’ approach to teaching gives both teachers and parents insight into how to develop kids’ abilities to focus and learn better. We were also intrigued to learn through this article of Reading Assistant Plus, through which students independently read aloud to a computer, and a virtual tutor gives real-time corrective feedback. This is one of the killer app AI applications in education that Terry talked about in the New York Times!
An Interesting Take on Bullying
This wonderful article in Daily Wire [corrected attribution], “We Teach Our Kids To Be Doormats And Then Wonder Why There Is A ‘Bullying Epidemic’,” provides a provocative, contrary take on bullying, and why it has apparently increased so dramatically over the years. It seems current approaches to bullying may well be yet another case of pathological altruism.
That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!
Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team
- Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
- And Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
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