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The Science of Beer Goggles, DARPA’s Fake Caves, and a 143-MPH Lawnmower
A smorgasbord of reading in this week’s “Linkfest”
Monday. There’s one of these every week, eh? Damn.
But hey: You what also arrives each Monday? My “Linkfest”, filled with reading material selected just for you!
Allons-y …
1) 🌳 Why Trees Improve Our Mental Health
The evidence is piling up on how proximity to nature improves our health: Lower blood pressure, lower stress, higher creativity, lower risk of heart disease, longer life. I wrote about this last fall in a piece on urban forests for the Atlantic, and in a column for Wired on “biophilia”.
But why exactly do trees and nature have this effect? No-one quite knows, but there’s some interesting speculation in this NPR segment on trees and mental health. My favorite observation is from psychologist Michelle Shiota —who notes that trees moor us in time …
“Some of those benefits may come from looking at something that is so much larger than you and so much older than you and will exist long after we’re gone.”
