Bird’s-Eye: We start with Frontal Cortex, which looks at a recent Wired article about Alcoholics Anonymous and what we know (or don’t) about why AA is successful (or isn’t). A hilarious video looks at the experience of driving under the influence of a variety of different drugs; Subnormality has a cartoon that shows how the creative process functions; and flavorwire has a graphic to sum up fashion cycles.

* Alcoholism The Frontal Cortex

Brendan Koerner has a really fantastic article in the latest Wired on Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). It’s a fascinating exploration of the organization, from its hallucinogen inspired birth (Bill Wilson was tripping on belladonna when he found God in a hospital room) to the difficulty of accurately measuring the effectiveness of AA:

The group’s “cure rate” has been estimated at anywhere from 75 percent to 5 percent, extremes that seem far-fetched. … Yet a growing body of evidence suggests that while AA is certainly no miracle cure, people who become deeply involved in the program usually do well over the long haul. In a 2006 study, for example, two Stanford psychiatrists chronicled the fates of 628 alcoholics they managed to track over a 16-year period. They concluded that subjects who attended AA meetings frequently were more likely to be sober than those who merely dabbled in the organization.

Koerner also investigates AA from the perspective of the brain. He focuses on the prefrontal cortex, that chunk of tissue behind the forehead that allows us to exert self-control, to order club soda instead of whiskey

* Drugs You Shouldn’t Do While Driving Video Maniacworld

* The Creative Process: The Scenic Route cartoon subnormality

* Fashion Cycle Paul Hiebert flavorwire