Ashland is a great town to visit. Besides the OSF, the are many unique shops and good restaurants.

My original hotel reservation was at the LaQuinta on I-5, five minutes from town. But Debbie thought she would look online to see if there was something a little more interesting.

And she found something. The Ashland Springs Resort. Not very far from the LaQuinta, but significantly more enjoyable. We stayed in an Irish cottage. It had a living room, bedroom, bathroom and mini kitchen. It also had a double jetted tub that filled directly from the hot springs. Gourmet breakfast, afternoon hors d’oeuvres and wine tasting were included in the rate, which was only about $20 more per night than the LQ.

At the OSF we saw Hamlet, which was staged in a more modern setting, but with the original text. This was a great show and not having seen a production before the modern set seemed to fit very well. The role of Hamlet was played by Don Donohue, an actor who has performed at the OSF for ten years. We recognized him from previous plays we have seen. I highly recommend this show, and many performances are sold out. But if you check with the box office or online within a week prior to the day you want you may be able to find tickets. I was able to get tickets for Hamlet in the A+ section on Saturday for the following Wednesday’s show.

We also saw Twelfth Night in the Elizabethan Theater, which is the grand outdoor theater. Twelfth Night was the first show we ever saw at OSF. We were heading to California on vacation when the kids were younger and all six of us went.

We left Ashland and headed to Newberg, where we spent the night and headed into the Dundee Hills to visit some wineries. I did a little research ahead of time and decided I would like to visit The Four Graces, Argyle, Archery Summit and Stoller wineries. Actually, Stoller was recommended by the people at The Four Graces.

• Four Graces has some nice, affordable wines. We bought three bottles of their 2009 Estate Exclusive Riesling. Funny buying Riesling from an area known for Pinots.
• Argyle specializes in sparkling wines. I am not a big fan of most sparkling wines, but these were quite good. We bought a bottle of their 2006 Knudsen Vineyard Brut.
• Archery Ridge had the most expensive wines, including a $100 wine on the tasting flight.
• Stoller had gorgeous grounds and we actually had gone to Safeway in McMinville and bought bread and a few other items and had lunch at Stoller while drinking their 2007 JV Estate Pinot Noir. Sitting in the shade in lounge chairs, looking over the vinyards. Ahhhhhh. We also purchased a bottle of their 2008 SV Estate Chardonnay and a bottle of 2009 JV Estate Pinot Noir Rosé.

We ended the week in Portland. Our stay included standing in line for an hour (literally) to buy donuts from Voodoo Doughnut, and a visit to Powell’s bookstore. We also spent time on the riverfront and walked through the madhouse known as the Oregon Brewers Festival.

Great week, though too short as with most vacations. But we were happy to get back to some Grady time.

The article discusses research by Kevin Dunbar is a researcher who studies how scientists study things — how they fail and succeed. He conducted a number of studies, but the ones I found interesting had to do with using an MRI to see brain activity when people to shown different information.

For example, a group of non-physics majors at Dartmouth were shown two video clips. One was of two different size balls falling at the same rate, and another clip of the larger ball falling at a faster rate. We know from Galileo’s experiment at the Tower of Pisa that the two actually fall at the same rate.

This group of students was first shown the clip of the two balls falling at the same rate. These students were not as astute as we are, and the two balls falling at the same rate was not logical to them. The MRI indicated increased blood flow to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is located near the center of the brain. The ACC is usually associated with the perception of error and is often referred to by neuroscientists as the “oh shit” circuit.

He also showed the same clips to a group of physics majors from Dartmouth. They had a similar reaction in the ACC when they viewed the clip of the ball falling at different rates since they knew the rates should be the same.

Similarly, both groups had activity in another part of the brain when they viewed the clip they felt was the most accurate. This area is called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, or DLPFC. This is an area just behind the forehead and is one of the last areas of the brain to develop in young adults. It plays a major role in suppressing so-called unwanted representations, getting rid of those thoughts that don’t square with our preconceptions.

According to the Wired article, “the DLPFC is constantly censoring the world, erasing facts from our experience. If the ACC is the ‘Oh shit!’ circuit, the DLPFC is the Delete key. When the ACC and DLPFC ‘turn on together, people aren’t just noticing that something doesn’t look right,’ Dunbar says. ‘They’re also inhibiting that information.’

So if we perform some action and get the result we expect, we congratulate ourselves for being right. If we don’t get the result we expected, we assume we did something wrong and discard the results, even if they are accurate. Which made me think of the quote by Sherlock Holmes:

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

This was a very interesting article and I highly recommend it.