Word: split-second
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...amygdala loathes unpredictability of the kind we are currently enduring. Lab experiments with rats and humans show that both species prefer predictable electric shocks over unpredictable shocks. That's because, on a normal day, the brain works by following shortcuts. We recognize patterns in order to make split-second judgments about what we are seeing. Shortcuts are ruthlessly efficient, which is important for an organ that only uses about 40 watts of power per operation. But the more uncertainty we face, the more shortcuts our brains use. And the shortcuts lead to a slew of predictable errors...
...100m butterfly is always the closest individual race in Phelps' repertoire. In Athens, he barely beat out teammate Ian Crocker, winning by .04 second. (Crocker finished fourth - .55 seconds behind Phelps - on Saturday.) That time, it was Phelps who streaked to the wall while still underwater, as Crocker remained airborne. But in an instinctive split-second decision this time around, Phelps made the right one to come up before his touch. "When I did chop that last stroke I really thought it cost me the race," he said. "I ended up making the right decision. Trying to take a short...
...200m butterfly final. Just behind her was her Chinese compatriot Jiao Liuyang, who claimed the silver. Australian Jessicah Schipper took the bronze. "I didn't expect I could swim so fast," said a delighted Liu, who demolished Schipper's previous world record by 1.22 seconds - an eternity in the split-second world of swimming...
...Arguably, though, the sheer engineering ingenuity of the F1 teams has diminished the sport's appeal. All 11 teams contesting the championship this year have produced machines of amazing quality. And all F1's pilots possess extraordinary gifts, not least the ability to make split-second decisions on steering, gear changes and strategy under the most trying conditions. But sport at the highest level is about separating the great from the really good, and some engineering advances have muddied the process. Part of all cars' armory from 2002-'07 was traction control, an electronic aid that kicks in when...
...American community that he isn't black enough, the racism in the white community that, thank goodness, he isn't too black. In his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote that "when people who don't know me well, black or white, discover my background ... I see the split-second adjustments they have to make, the searching of my eyes for some telltale sign. They no longer know...