I’ve always wondered what the point of the broad jump in the NFL combine tells us. Loosely I can see why the 40-yard dash makes sense, but the broad jump? Well turns out my thoughts are somewhat justified. Jonah Lehrer adds to my argument that the combine is a big waste of time:

Combine measures examined in this study include 10-, 20-, and 40-yard dashes, bench press, vertical jump, broad jump, 20- and 60-yard shuttles, three-cone drill, and the Wonderlic Personnel Test. Performance criteria include 10 variables: draft order; 3 years each of salary received and games played; and position-specific data. Using correlation analysis, we find no consistent statistical relationship between combine tests and professional football performance, with the notable exception of sprint tests for running backs.

Jonah Lehrer’s article, Depression’s Upside, brings up a number of interesting points on the potential upside to being depressed – whether it be that sadness doesn’t (necessarily) need to be medicated, the correlation between attention and depression or how there can be an upside to being sad (i.e. dealing with your feelings versus setting them aside). Interesting stuff I can relate to.

Jonah Lehrer on home cooking.

And then there’s the next meal. Who knows what we’ll want to eat? Because we cook, we don’t just see things as they are, raw and tough and fibrous. We look at what is and we glimpse the possible – that ugly fish can have crispy skin, and that bitter broccoli rabe would be delicious with garlic and oil. The pretty radicchio belongs in a risotto and those leftover scraps of meat will make a perfect stock. The world, it turns out, is a pretty delicious place. All it needs a little attention, and maybe just a pinch of salt.

Jonah Lehrer has a great piece in Outside Magazine on Clay Marzo who has Asperger’s syndrome’ a form of high-functioning autism. The article details how “at one” Marzo is in the water and explains some of the difficulties he faces when not in the water (where he’d rather not be). Throughout the whole article there’s an emphasis on the focus (or obsession) he has with surfing.

Once he’s on a wave, he’s not thinking about anything but the wave. He’s letting go, and you can feel that release when you watch him. I don’t want to do anything that takes away from that, because that purity is damn rare.

Jonah Lehrer summarizes a couple links about athletes choking. Good quotes and articles to read if you’re into that sort of thing. This David Foster Wallace blurb touches on the deliberate practice versus natural talent debate.

It’s not an accident that great athletes are often called “naturals,” because they can, in performance, be totally present: they can proceed on instinct and and muscle-memory and autonomic will such that agent and action are one. Great athletes can do this even – and for the truly great ones like Borg and Bird and Nicklaus and Jordan and Austin, especially – under wilting pressure and scrutiny. They can withstand forces of distraction that would break a mind prone to self-conscious fear in two.

The real secret behind top athletes’ genius, then, may be as esoteric and obvious and dull and profound as silence itself. The real, many veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player’s mind as he stands at the center of hostile crowd-noise and lines up the free-throw that will decide the game might well be: nothing at all.

I’m not entirely sure what websites you look at, but of the 300 or so I peruse daily I’ve seen a few separate instances referencing articles on day dreaming and/or mind wander (and zoning out). All are very interesting and basically state that it isn’t a bad thing, it’s just human. The WSJ gives us A Wandering Mind Heads Us Toward Insight. Discover Magazine offers The Brain Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State. And, Jonah Lehrer gives us his post Daydreaming and Booze.

Jonah Lehrer delves into the science of self-gratification and the work of Walter Mischel.

Mischel argues that intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even the smartest kids still need to do their homework. “What we’re really measuring with the marshmallows isn’t will power or self-control,” Mischel says. “It’s much more important than that. This task forces kids to find a way to make the situation work for them. They want the second marshmallow, but how can they get it? We can’t control the world, but we can control how we think about it.”

For some reason, I’m tying this to Emotional Intelligence. I think I saw the videos of Micshel’s work during a college class and the professor related it to EI.