I'm Hippocrates. You've probably heard of my oath, ladies. It's quite popular.

Over on the Boston Globe site, there’s an interesting article by Jonah Lehrer about the value of daydreaming. Lehrer and a good number of doctors believe that daydreaming is the default state of humans not busy with tasks. It’s during this “down time” when they think we do a lot of our most important thinking. It seems that a lot of inspiration comes when we’re actively working on things, but the ability to “float” toward answers seems equally valuable.

Dr. Marcus Raichle, a neurologist and radiologist at Washington University, who was one of the first scientists to locate the default network in the brain, tells Lehrer that “when your brain is supposedly doing nothing and daydreaming, it’s really doing a tremendous amount.”

Lehrer posits that “the ability to think abstractly that flourishes during daydreams also has important social benefits. Mostly, what we daydream about is each other, as the mind retrieves memories, contemplates ‘what if” scenarios, and thinks about how it should behave in the future. In this sense, the content of daydreams often resembles a soap opera, with people reflecting on social interactions both real and make-believe. We can leave behind the world as it is and start imagining the world as it might be, if only we hadn’t lost our temper, or had superpowers, or were sipping a daiquiri on a Caribbean beach. It is this ability to tune out the present moment and contemplate the make-believe that separates the human mind from every other.”