I think I “run” faster when listening to my iPod because I have it cranked it up so loud — I have middle-aged hearing loss, also known as “Why do today’s youth mumble? It’s a sign of disrespect!” disease — that it masks the sound of my panting. That can’t be a good thing.

In only vaguely related news, I find fascinating the explanatory hypothesis of why we have out of body experiences. If I understand it (and there is no chance that I do), the idea is that the brain constructs the sense of having a persistent body by synthesizing the various streams of internal and external sensations. When those streams fall out of synch, the brain, which would rather be wrong than confused, synthesizes a body standing slightly outside of the one it’s actually in. Ah brains! Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em! [Tags: brain ipod exercise aging middle_age out_of_body science ]

Categories: misc dw