The Toy Museum of NY

Computerspielemuseum

Exploratorium: the museum of science, art, and human perception

International Spy Museum

Dick Bruna Huis

The Toy Factory and Big Rocking Horse

Miniaturk

Pacific Pinball Museum

MINT Museum of Toys

In the late 1960s, researchers submitted hundreds of four-year-olds to an ingenious little test of willpower: the kids were placed in a small room with a marshmallow or other tempting food and told they could either eat the treat now, or, if they could hold out for another 15 minutes until the researcher returned, they could have two.

Most children said they would wait. But some failed to resist the pull of temptation for even a minute. Many others struggled a little longer before eventually giving in. The most successful participants figured out how to distract themselves from the treat’s seduction — by turning around, covering their eyes or kicking the desk, for instance — and delayed gratification for the full 15 minutes.

Follow-up studies on these preschoolers found that those who were able to wait the 15 minutes were significantly less likely to have problems with behavior, drug addiction or obesity by the time they were in high school, compared with kids who gobbled the snack in less than a minute. The gratification-delayers also scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT.

MORE: The Key to Health, Wealth and Success: Self-Control

Scientists have now continued this research with a subgroup of 60 participants, now in their 40s, whose level of self-control remained stable from childhood into adulthood. (The study does not include those who struggled to delay gratification early on, but learned to master temptation as they matured.)

The authors, led by B.J. Casey, professor of developmental psychobiology at Cornell University, wanted to know whether the kids who couldn’t wait to get the treat, the “low delayers,” would show an underlying inability to exert self-control in adulthood, or whether their self-discipline failed only in certain, emotionally charged cases. “Is it the case that these individuals have difficulty controlling their impulses or is it also due to sensitivity to just how alluring the cues are?” Casey says.

The researchers also wanted to see if low-delaying adults showed differences in brain activity compared with those who had greater self-control.

Participants were asked to perform two versions of a computer task. In one version, the volunteers had to press a button when they saw an image of either a male or a female face bearing a neutral expression. Those who were first asked to identify male faces would eventually be switched to identifying female faces (and vice versa), which required participants to suppress their impulse to respond to the previously correct answer. This test measured people’s ability to exert self-control in the absence of emotional material.

In the second, emotionally “hot” version of the test, people were asked to press a button in response to a happy or fearful face. Previous research has shown that people find seeing happy faces rewarding — so the researchers expected low delayers to have trouble preventing their responses to them when required. Indeed, the high delayers were significantly better at not pressing the button when a smiling face flashed on the screen.

MORE: Mind over Mind? Decision Fatigue Saps Willpower — if We Let It

Researchers also scanned the brains of 26 of the participants while they completed both tests. They found that high delayers showed more activity than low delayers in a region of the prefrontal cortex associated with impulse and behavior control, particularly while completing the task involving emotionally charged expressions. Meanwhile, low delayers showed more activation of a deeper region of the brain associated with pleasure, desire and addiction, especially in response to the happy faces.

You might say that high delayers have better mental brakes, while low delayers are driven by a stronger engine. “The low delayers don’t tend to activate the prefrontal cortex as much as the high delayers do. The high delayers are very effective at being able to regulate their behavior and not activating this deep system,” Casey says. “There’s not as much of a push-and-pull for the high delayers.”

But the differences emerged primarily when people were faced with “hot,” emotional cues, not when they had to choose between neutral faces. That suggests that low delayers aren’t globally unable to control impulses, like people with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); rather, they have trouble stopping themselves in the context of particular temptations.

“What the [researchers] found is that their 11 participants who had lifelong low self-control did not have a problem with controlling their brains’ actions in ordinary circumstances,” notes Terrie Moffitt, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, who was not associated with the study. “Instead, their distinctive brain activity started to emerge only when something alluring and rewarding was shown to them.”

Moffitt says she has had similar results in her own study of 1,000 people whom she followed from age 3 to 38.

Both Moffitt and Casey stress that low delayers don’t lack general intelligence and that they have qualities that are extremely important to society. In uncertain times, delaying gratification can be the wrong choice, and people who follow their emotional impulses can become great explorers or entrepreneurs. (Apple’s Steve Jobs is a classic example).

But there’s no doubt that low delayers can also get into serious trouble. Moffitt describes one such participant who told her, “Believe me, I understand all about saving for retirement, but I haven’t saved any money because when I see a hot motorcycle, I buy it!”

MORE: Who Are Teens’ Sexual Role Models? Turns Out, It’s Their Parents

But there’s nothing that says low delayers can’t change. Moffitt’s research has found that in fact, childhood self-control isn’t very strongly correlated with adult self-mastery. For example, the “correlation between participants’ rank on IQ tests from childhood to adulthood is .70 on a scale from -1 (total change) to +1 (total stability). That’s stable!” Moffitt says. “But the same correlation for self-control skills is only .30, indicating that many people change as they grow up, and fewer people remain stable.”

Previous work with the preschoolers and the marshmallow test showed that high-delaying kids often found success not only by distracting themselves from tempting situations but also by reframing them to lower their emotional temperature. For example, they would imagine that the marshmallow was a cloud or just a picture of a marshmallow instead of an actual edible treat.

Perhaps these same techniques can be employed in other situations. “What this study may suggest is that we should inform people about ways in which we can ‘cool down’ the ‘hot’ cues for those individuals who have the most difficulty suppressing actions toward them,” Casey says.

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The gorge is 1600 meters long and you walk along the river on a wooden trail, passing a series of rapids and stunning waterfalls, the most beautiful one being Šum.

From there you can walk up a small footpath through Hom to the church of St Catherine, an ancient pilgrimage church with a stunning view.

Entry to the gorge costs 4 Euro, and the best time to visit is at noon, when the sun reaches down through the gorge.

Partnach Gorge – Germany
This was actually the gorge that gave me the inspiration for this post – we visited the gorge just the other day, and it was absolutely spectacular.

The otherwise green and lush gorge had turned into the most amazing winter wonder, with bizarre ice formations and several meters tall icicles thick as walls.

It looked as though whole waterfalls had frozen in motion, if you’re looking for a beautiful (and open) gorge to visit in winter, this is it.

Entry to the gorge is 3 Euro (2 if you have a visitor card, which you always get when staying in a hotel in Garmisch)

Verdon Gorge / Canyon Verdon– France
The Verdon Gorge is the largest canyon in Europe, and by many regarded as the most beautiful.

Named after its startling turquoise-green color, the Verdon river attracts millions of visitors to explore the 25 kilometer long river Canyon.

The most impressive part of the gorge is between Castellane and Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, where the river has created a 700 meter steep ravine through the limestone rock/mass.

There are many ways to appreciate and explore the gorge, from abseiling from the rocks to the bottom, to take scenic drives around the top, river cruising, rafting or kayaking on the lake or even rock climb on the limestone cliffs.

The Rhine River – Germany
The Rhine river is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe, reaching its way through Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, France and Netherlands.

It has played a huge part in European history, something which you can tell by the large number or castles and fortifications that line the river.

The Rhine Gorge (located in the middle Rhine) is the most beautiful section of the river. Along the gorge you see quaint country villages, vineyards on top of hills and more than 40 castles!

Many of the castles are strategically positioned on rock overhangs, as the river often marked the borders between countries and kingdoms.

The best way to explore this UNESCO World Heritage site is to take one of the Rhine river cruises which stops along the way at different castles and villages.

Liechtenstein Gorge – Austria
Austria has several well known gorges, but this is one of the prettiest, the 4 kilometers long gorge is very narrow and steep, but the walkways are well maintained.

Boulders covered in moss, a beautiful waterfall and rainbows wherever the sun reaches the water mist are things you’ll see while walking through the gorge – entry fee: 4 Euro (guest card holders: 3,50 Euro)

We’ve consulted with our destination experts and selected some of our favorites from top vacation destinationsaround the world. We’ve broken our list into three sections – top overall pools, top kids pools and top swim up pool bars.

Here is part one featuring the world’s best overall pools. If you are a pool person, set your sights on these . . .

Riviera Maya – Barcelo Maya Palace Deluxe
If size matters, this is the pool for you. (As you can see in the picture above) A massive beachfront pool complex featuring a lake like main pool complete with swim up bar, waterfalls, in-pool lounge chairs and cocktail tables, zero depth entry and a 50 person whirlpool island plus a separate lap pool, games pool and kids pool and water park!

Cancun – Excellence Playa Mujeres
A freeform infinity edge pool that hugs the beach. Since this is an adults only resort, there is plenty of private space, from over water hammocks to palm fringed islands with cabana beds!

Riviera Nayarit – Grand Velas
An oasis of tranquility with a three tier infinity edge pool that disappears into Banderas Bay and the beautiful Pacific sunsets. It’s the details that get this pool on the list, from the intricate stone work on the pool deck to the lush landscaping and five diamond service.

Los Cabos – Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach
With six total swimming pools staggered throughout this hillside resort, it is the pool at the top that stands out. The Sky Pool is located mountain top and offers stunning 360 views of the resort, the rugged mountain landscape and the Pacific Ocean.

Los Cabos – Fiesta Americana Grand Los Cabos
Literally a tropical oasis in the desert landscape of Los Cabos. This unique pool meanders throughout the manicured grounds with hidden coves, bubbling waterfalls and a variety of environments to lay back in your lounge, pull out a favorite book and soak it all in.

Costa Rica – The Springs Resort & Spa
Eighteen natural rock and freeform pools fed by natural hot springs spread throughout the mountainside resort with views overlooking the Arenal volcano. With pool names like The Lagoons, Lost Springs, The Lost One and Monkey Slide, it sounds like a scene from an adventure movie!

Punta Cana – Majestic Elegance
A 1,000 foot long freeform lagoon style pool stretches from the lobby to the beach, meaning that no matter where your room is you are only steps to the pool. Towering palm trees, secluded beach beds and plenty of space have this one high on our list.

Jamaica – Gran Bahia Principe Jamaica
Three interconnected lake style pools literally surround the resort, providing plenty of space and 180 degree access to the sun!

St Lucia – Sandals Grande St Lucian
A total of 5 interconnecting lagoon like pools, 6 whirlpools, swim up suites and a beach front swim up pool bar – all surrounded by the tropical paradise of St Lucia.

Related

Space tourist proposes Mars trip
IN BBC NEWS:

Asteroid makes near-miss fly-by
An asteroid hurtled past the Earth earlier this year in something of a cosmic near-miss.
Buy insurance. Tick. Health check. Tick. Drive sensibly. Tick. As a general rule, we humans like to control our lives. But let’s face it, all of this caution is a complete waste of time if a huge rock from space has your name on it.

Take the recent ‘near-miss’ by the poetically-named asteroid 2012 BX34, which was only discovered two days before it sailed past within 40,000 miles (60,000km) of Earth. What if it had been heading straight for us?

A wonderful report from the US National Research Council (NRC) says that on average there should be 91 deaths per year from asteroid strikes – a remarkably precise figure and one that deserves some digging.

Try to think of when you last heard about an asteroid striking the earth. There really aren’t that many of them, or at least that many that are noticed or reported in newspapers.

One of the last significant impacts occurred on 30 June 1908, when an asteroid or comet exploded 6.2 miles (10km) above a secluded forest in Tunguska, Siberia, flattening trees over an area of 625 sq miles (1600 sq km), which surprisingly few people cared about at the time due to the remoteness of the region and the fact that there seem to have been no casualties.

Calculations suggest that if it had landed 4 hours and 47 minutes later, it would have hit St Petersburg(1), in which case people might have cared a lot, particularly as it was rather a delicate time in Russian history. According to estimates, such an airburst occurring over New York would cost $1.19tn to insurers in property damage, not to mention causing approximately 3.2 million fatalities and 3.76 million injuries.

But that has not occurred. In fact, there are surprisingly few reports of fatalities involving asteroids. A few cars in the United States have been damaged and there was a case of a cow being killed in Valera, Venezuela in 1972 – the unfortunate animal was duly eaten and bits of the meteorite were later sold to collectors. A home outside Paris was also recently hit by an egg-shaped meteorite, but the appropriately-named Comette family were away at the time.

So how can the NRC be so precise? Well, to understand we need to understand how astronomers and statisticians think about these risks.

As these threats come in all shapes and sizes astronomers have established a classification system to help gauge the potential level of risk. If asteroids or comets come within one-third of the distance from the Earth to the Sun – just over 30 million miles (48 million km) – they are labelled as Near Earth Objects (NEOs). ‘Near’ is clearly a relative term, though this does show how comparatively close asteroid 2012 BX34 came. Fortunately, there are observatories watching over us and Nasa’s Near Object Program is keeping count of what is passing through our local area. By December 2011, over 8,500 NEOs had been found and named, with around 500 being added to the list every year.

If an object is found that is at least 480ft (150m) across, and which will pass closer than 20 times the distance between the moon and the Earth (around five million miles, or eight million km), it earns itself the status of Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA). If anything this big were to hit the Earth, the consequences would be serious. So far 1,271 of these have been found, of which 151 are of more than 0.6 miles (1km) in diameter, a size that could be globally catastrophic.

Working out the chances of an Earth-asteroid collision and the damage it would cause is not like an insurer dealing with a collision between two cars: there is almost no direct historical data, so astronomers create equations relating to the size of an asteroid, how many there are around, how often they might hit the Earth and what the explosive force of any impact would be. These estimates are continually being revised and are subject to some esoteric disputes.Asteroids in the 16-32 feet (5-10m) diameter range find their way to Earth around once per year, releasing energy equivalent to approximately 15,000 tons of TNT when they explode: about the same as the bomb detonated over Hiroshima. Most go unseen and unrecorded. An airburst of an 80ft (25m) asteroid would release energy equivalent to around one million tons of TNT, or one megaton (Mt), equivalent to around 65 Hiroshima bombs. That same NRC report estimates an average of 200 years between such impacts.

The Tunguska devastation in Siberia is thought to have been caused by an asteroid of around 160ft (50m) diameter exploding 6 miles (10km) up, releasing 10Mt of energy. The NRC estimates an average interval of 2,000 years between events of this size, although other studies have suggested that Tunguska-like events could be caused by objects as small as 100ft (30m), which would equate to nearly a 50:50 chance of such an event occurring in a given lifetime(2).

Bigger asteroids start being considered as ‘continental-scale events’, although it is tricky to predict what damage such a major impact would cause. Due to the differing coverage of the Earth’s surface, there is a 70% chance that any such impact would hit the ocean, and models have suggested a 1,300ft (400m) asteroid could cause a tsunami 650ft (200m) high(3), although with regards to possible consequences, there is great uncertainty about whether such a wave would break on the continental shelf, whether the population could evacuate, and so on.

Mass extinctions

Nasa estimate that there are currently around 900 Near Earth Objects of over 0.6 miles (1km) across, and if one hit us it would release around 100,000Mt of energy. Such an impact would almost certainly be globally catastrophic. Thankfully, such strikes should only be expected every 700,000 years, but even bigger collisions have occurred. Considerably more than just one cow perished when a 6 mile (10km) wide, 100,000,000Mt lump hit the Yucatan peninsula in modern-day Mexico 65 million years ago: this impact is credited with changing the climate and wiping out the dinosaurs. But such mass extinction events are only estimated to come along every 100 million years or so. So not much need to worry there, then.

In terms of future threats, the current catalogue indicates no serious risk from asteroids that we know of. The biggest known danger Nasa can point to is a 1 in 600 chance of a collision with the 460ft (140m) 2011-AG5 asteroid sometime in the 2040s. But most asteroids less than 1,640ft (500m) across remain undiscovered, and although these would be unlikely to cause a global catastrophe, they could certainly take us by surprise. 2008 TC3 was 6-16ft (2-5m) across and weighed around 80 tons when it exploded over the Sudanese desert on 7 October 2008. It was the first asteroid to ever be detected before impact, but it was only picked up 19 hours prior to its destruction, and one can imagine the crisis if its predicted path had passed over a big city. It exploded with a force of around 2,000 tons of TNT and 10kg of fragments were picked up afterwards – though thankfully nobody was hurt.

Is it worth getting up?

So, once again, back to that figure of 91 deaths.

This now begins to make more sense when you realise that it is an average taken over millennia, in which almost all years show no deaths, but a few isolated events cause massive casualties. In fact, the figure of 91 deaths is almost evenly balanced between more frequent, smaller-scale impacts, and statistically very infrequent globally catastrophic impacts.

So, I know what you are now thinking: what is the risk of being killed by an asteroid in my bed – or anywhere else for that matter – in my lifetime?

As I said in my first column, statisticians like to define such risk events in terms of micromorts: that is, a one-in-a-million chance of dying. Since there are 7 billion people on Earth and 91 people are expected to die every year from an asteroid impact, this works out at 1/77 micromorts per person per year – about the same risk as a 3 mile (5 km) car journey, but much less risky than riding a motorcycle for 60 miles (97km) in the UK (around 10 micromorts).
Assuming a lifetime of around 77 years, this comes to the delightfully round number of one micromort per lifetime from asteroids. Which, as risks go, is hardly the end of the world.

References

1. Woo G. Calculating Catastrophe. 1st ed. Imperial College Press; 2011. 368 p.

2. Boslough MBE, Crawford DA. Low-altitude airbursts and the impact threat. International Journal of Impact Engineering. (2008) 35: 1441–1448.

3. Ward SN, Asphaug E. Asteroid Impact Tsunami: A Probabilistic Hazard Assessment. Icarus. (2000) 145:64–78.

I think Jacques the taxi driver knew what my problem was. What my problem still is, really. I’m a big coward. Adventures are fun — I like them — but in the beginning of a trip I just want to get where I’m going, have something to eat, perhaps have a shower. After that, exploring is fine.

Jacques knew this because we’d chosen to get into his taxi instead of using the Metro like the other one billion people in Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport. That would have cost us about seven euros, taken 20 minutes and been way too easy.

Jacques knew that the only reason we got into his taxi was that we thought it was going to be easier.

Our Favorite Paris Hotels

His was the first taxi in line outside the airport. He looked just like Lou Reed, so we decided that we could probably trust him. He leaped out from behind the wheel and helped us with our bags.

After driving for about 10 minutes, joining a busy flyover of traffic, it occurred to me to tell him where we were actually going. “Sure!” he said, winding down his window to indicate with his hand. “We’ll go there now.”

We got to talking. This was a good thing.

“All this on the left,” he said, pointing out of the window, “is the old town. This motorway is like a big wall. Everything inside it is old Paris, historical Paris, and everything outside it is new. Most of the people live outside the motorway. That’s how it is.”

He pointed out of the other side of the car at a formation of shiny skyscrapers. They looked as if they were in need of a clean. “See those?” he said. “The rock climber Alain Robert climbed up those in the 90′s. He did it with his bare hands and no ropes or anything.”

I looked at the buildings. They were outside the motorway.

“And when he finished,” the taxi driver grumbled, “they took him down off the roof and drove him straight to court.” He shook his head.

Paris Travel Guide

Farther into town, Jacques (as we’d learned was his name) decided to drive around the Arc de Triomphe five times to show us how easily he could do it. “I don’t understand why people are so afraid!” he shouted over his shoulder as the tires squealed and the meter clicked up a couple of digits.

We passed a swish-looking hotel on the Place de la Concorde. It had balconies and footmen and little potted plants. Jacques took a moment to tell us that this was where the President of France had spent his first night after being elected.

“With,” he growled accusingly, turning around in his seat to look at us, “a woman that was not his wife…”

After unnecessarily prolonging our route even further so that he could shout at the Eiffel Tower — “Go on! Try it! It’s good luck! In Paris, we call her the fat lady!” — we arrived at our hotel. The fare was enormous — the price of a nice meal for two.

“That’s what it is,” Jacques shrugged when I expressed my surprise. He looked even more like Lou Reed than he had at the airport.

Have you ever argued with a Lou Reed look-alike taxi driver over a colossal fare obviously inflated by a ridiculously lengthened route that included backtracking, deviations, extra tangents and oddly recurring streets, not to mention five times round the Arc de Triomphe?

Neither have I. Jacques had me down from the start. I am a coward.

It was a great way to see the city, no doubt. I actually enjoyed it far more than I would have enjoyed the Metro. But, I realized after shelling out nearly all of the notes in my wallet, it was definitely one of the more expensive guided tours I’ve ever been on.

Have you ever been taken for a ride while traveling?

It appears to be plausible. Science fiction is full of machines that can peer inside our heads and decipher our thoughts, and science, it seems, is catching up. The news abounds with tales of scientists who have created “mind-reading” machines that can convert our thoughts into images, most of these stories including a throwaway line about one day recording our dreams. But visualising our everyday thoughts is no easy matter, and dream-reading is more difficult still.

The task of decoding dreams comes down to interpreting the activity of the brain’s 100 billion or so neurons, or nerve cells. And to interpret, you first have to measure. Contrary to the hype, our tools for measuring human brain activity leave a lot to be desired. “Our methods are really lousy,” says Professor Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Some techniques, like electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), measure the electric and magnetic fields that we produce when our neurons fire. Their resolution is terrible. They can only home in on 5-10 millimetres of brain tissue at a time at best – a space that contains only a few hundred million neurons. And because of the folded nature of the brain, those neurons can be located in nearby areas that have radically different functions.

More recently, some scientists have used small grids of electrodes to isolate the activity of a handful of neurons. You get much better spatial resolution, but with two disadvantages: you can only look at a tiny portion of the brain, and you need to open up a hole in the volunteer’s skull first. It is not exactly a technique that is ready for the mass market.

Other methods are indirect. The most common one, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), is the darling of modern neuroscience. Neurons need sugar and oxygen to fuel their activity, and local blood vessels must increase their supply to meet the demand. It’s this blood flow that fMRI measures, and the information is used to create an activation map of the brain. However, this provides only an indirect echo of neural activity, according to Gallant. “Imagine you tried to work out what was going on in an office, but rather than asking people what they did, you went into the kitchen to see how much water they used,” he says.

Seeking Yoda

Despite these weaknesses, Gallant has repeatedly used fMRI to decipher the images encoded in our brain activity. For his latest trick, three of his team watched hours of YouTube clips while Gallant scanned the visual centres of their brains. He plugged the data into a mathematical model that acted as a brain-movie “dictionary”, capable of translating neural activity into moving images. The dictionary could later reconstruct what the volunteers saw, by scanning hours of random clips and finding those that matched any particular burst of brain activity.

The reconstructed images were blurry and grainy, but Gallant thinks that this will improve with time, as we develop better ways of measuring brain activity, better models for analysing it and faster computers to handle the intense processing. “Science marches on,” he says. “You know that in the future, it will be possible to measure brain activity better than you can today.”
While Gallant decodes what we see, Moran Cerf from the California Institute of Technology is decoding what we think about. He uses tiny electrodes to measure the activity of individual neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in creating memories. In this way, he can identify neurons that fire in response to specific concepts – say, Marilyn Monroe or Yoda. Cerf’s work is a lot like Gallant’s – he effectively creates a dictionary that links concepts to patterns of neural activity. “You think about something and because we learned what your brain looks like when you think about that thing, we can make inferences,” he says.

But both techniques share similar limitations. To compile the dictionaries, people need to look at a huge number of videos or concepts. To truly visualise a person’s thoughts, Cerf says, “That person would need to look at all the concepts in the world, one by one. People don’t want to sit there for hours or days so that I can learn about their brain.”

Dream album

So, visualising what someone is thinking is hard enough. When that person is dreaming, things get even tougher. Dreams have convoluted stories that are hard to break down into sequences of images or concepts. “When you dream, it’s not just image by image,” says Cerf. “Let’s say I scanned your brain while you were dreaming, and I see you thinking of Marilyn Monroe, or love, or Barack Obama. I see pictures. You see you and Marilyn Monroe, whom you’re in love with, going to see Barack Obama giving a speech. The narrative is the key thing we’re going to miss.”

You would also have to repeat this for each new person. The brain is not a set of specified drawers where information is filed in a fixed way. No two brains are organised in quite the same fashion. “Even if I know everything about your brain and where things are, it doesn’t tell me anything about my brain,” says Cerf.

There are some exceptions. A small number of people have regular ‘lucid dreams’, where they are aware that they are dreaming and can partially communicate with the outside world. Martin Dresler and Michael Czisch from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry exploited this rare trait. They told two lucid dreamers to dream about clenching and unclenching their hands, while flicking their eyes from side to side. These dream movements translated into real flickers, which told Dresler and Czisch when the dreams had begun. They found that the dream movements activated the volunteers’ motor cortex – the area that controls our movements – in the same way that real-world movements do.

The study was an interesting proof-of-principle, but it is a long way from reading normal dreams. “We don’t know if this would work on non-lucid dreams. I’m sceptical that even in the medium-term future that you’d ever have devices for reading dreams,” says Dresler. “The devices you have in wakefulness are very far from reading your mind or thoughts, even in the next couple of decades.”

Even if those devices improve by leaps and bounds, reading a sleeping mind poses great, perhaps insurmountable challenges. The greatest of them is that you cannot really compare the images and stories you reconstruct with what a person actually dreamt. After all, our memories of our dreams are hazy at the best of times. “You have no ground-truthing,” says Gallant. It is like compiling a dictionary between one language and another that you cannot actually read. One day, we might be able to convert the activity of dreaming neurons into sounds and sights. But how would we ever know that we have done it correctly?

And since I decided that this year would be a year of less hectic traveling and more focus on my business, Asia is really tempting me as I know it’s a good place to be based for a couple of months.

Here are three reasons why Asia is a good place to be based in…

The Easiness

Things are just so easy, like finding an apartment for example – I searched for months for an apartment in different ski resorts in Europe and it was such a hassle.

I really love Europe and I would love to make it my base, but gosh – could they make it any more difficult to find a place for someone who doesn’t live there already!

Most apartments want a three year commitment – who knows where they want to be in three years?

In places like Thailand, all you need to do is walk to the reception in one of the big apartment complexes and pay for a month’s stay, or simply book it online – and then you’re done – can it get any easier?

The Prices

And then there are of course the prices that are another reason for those who want to live on the cheap – the only expensive part of a trip to Asia is the ticket to get there, but once you’re there things are pretty cheap.

I also like the idea of being able to go for short and holidays to Singapore every once in a while – taking Hong Kong holidays and being able to explore and experience a completely new culture is always exciting, and with Air Asia you can get some crazy cheap deals.

While Europe has a lot of variety it is still nothing like the culture clashes you find in Asia as a European.

The Food

It’s funny, I remember just how sick I was of the food last year when we were leaving Asia, and I couldn’t think of anything better than a proper German sandwich with that heavy whole grain bread and delicious cheese.

Now, I’m tired of the carb filled food and long for spicy curries and healthier options.

I guess it all comes down to balance, and I get the feeling that a trip to Asia would definitely be good for me.

But in the end, I know that all of this is part of the travel curse, to always be comparing every place with everywhere else you’ve been, always searching for a better place, for that perfect paradise.

I am starting to realize that the paradise I’m looking for won’t be found by traveling, but it’s something I’ll have to create within.

What about Time? What thoughts about traveling to Asia?