Pick of the day: Thinking about thinking

While you're reading this blog entry, you simultaneously feel your shirt on your back, the mouse in your palm, the itch on your nose. You can hear background noise -- say, another conversation across the room or the whir of the air conditioner -- and yet you have the ability to filter that out and focus on the words on the screen. This is all thanks to your brain, a fascinating, mysterious organ that I've been learning a lot more about recently thanks to the accessible and insightful writing of Jonah Lehrer, whose blog, The Frontal Cortex, has been a great addition to my bookmarks.

He has me thinking about thinking, which brings to mind this wonderful line from Norman McLean's A River Runs Through It:

"All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible."