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Reprinted from BlackBook (Fall Fashion 2005).

Viewing Deja Vu

That creepy feeling that you've lived through this moment before has long eluded scientific study, so the psychology sleuths featured in Discover (Sept. 2005) are examining deja vu by recreating it in labs. In studies that exposed subjects to various subliminal words and images, researchers found that nearly half reported deja vu when they were exposed again to the same stimuli. Others get the flashback heebie-jeebies when electrodes stimulate their temporal lobes. Some epileptics regularly experience deja vu before seizures, while a handful of patients with brain damage suffer constant deja vu. Researchers hope that creepy feeling that you've lived through this moment before can help decode how our brains store memories.

Card Karma

Can meditation help your poker game?

For Andy Black, the answer seems to be yes. Last summer, after a five-year hiatus studying Buddhist teachings, the Irish card shark returned to the game and took fifth place at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas (he came in fourteenth in 1997, then quit the game in 1999). At the tournament, Black and his coach meditated each morning and sometimes read dharma texts during breaks. He recently told the Buddhist magazine Tricycle (Winter 2005) how his meditation practice and his game intersect: "When I'm playing I just try to be in the present moment . . . I find I make wrong decisions when I act out of tune with my gut sense of how things are: what this person is like, their situation at this moment, and the element of chance. My experience of Buddhist practice means that I also include how I am, how I am treating the other players, and how I respond to both winning and losing. You can disregard that feeling, just like in life, but in poker you get immediate payback. It's always the same lesson: When your actions are not in accordance with how things are, you suffer."

Working for a Living

72 hours
Hours per week of minimum-wage work, with no vacation, required to reach the federal poverty line of $19,223 for a family of four.

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