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North Korea and Penn State

In an excellent talk last week about North Korea — linked to his book The Cleanest Race — Brian Myers, a professor in South Korea, said that people don’t fear dying, they fear dying without...

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Widespread Loneliness

I’m fond of arguing that the Ten Commandments was a very political document. Notice it’s aimed at men? Notice that women aren’t protected, much less children? That’s because men had all the power. No...

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Boring + Boring = Pleasant!?

Fact 1: For the last few weeks, I’ve been studying Chinese using a flashcard program called Anki. It’s an excellent program but boring. I’ve never liked studying — maybe no one does. Fact 2: I’ve had a...

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Mood and Attentiveness

In Jonah Lehrer’s article about the benefits of depression, nothing seemed solid until I came across this: [Joe] Forgas [an Australian psychology professor] placed a variety of trinkets, like toy...

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Assorted Links

the I Practice My Own Methods Developed From Self-Experimentation group. Which, when this was written, had one member. She has Parkinson’s Disease and found that yoga helps. “I started watching yoga...

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The Silver Lining of a Cloud of Volcanic Ash

A New York Times article on the volcanic ash preventing air travel ended like this: Leo Liao, a Hong Kong businessman who was stranded at the Frankfurt airport, was cheerful and philosophical....

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The Hockey Stick Illusion

Recently a WSJ columnist told this story: I was chatting with a friend who, over the years, has helped her kids slog through the obligatory science-fair projects. “The experiments never turned out the...

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Lucky Charms Can Work

Speaking of good-luck charms, a study at the University of Cologne found in four different experiments with four different tasks that people did better when they believed that they somehow had Lady...

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Power Makes You More Dismissive

An excellent essay by Jonah Lehrer describes a pair of studies I didn’t know about: In a recent study led by Richard Petty, a psychologist at Ohio State, undergraduates role-played a scenario between a...

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“That’s Why You’re So Easy to Hate”

This is what one bloggingheads commentator said to the other. Was the speaker-listener combo (a) man to man, (b) man to woman, (c) woman to man, or (d) woman to woman? As you can guess, woman to woman....

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Health Care Stagnation

In December, the Los Angeles Times reported — very briefly — that from 2007 to 2008, life expectancy in the United States declined by 0.1 year. It should have been the lead story of every newspaper in...

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“We are Heroes, They are Villains”: My Brilliant Students

At Tsinghua University, which is like a Chinese MIT, I am teaching a small class (25 students) called Frontiers of Psychology. It is required of freshmen psychology majors. There are a few students...

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Danny Kahneman’s Decision Making

A lovely article by Michael Lewis about Daniel (“Danny”) Kahneman, my former Berkeley colleague, emphasizes his indecision whether to write a popular book about his work. Should I or shouldn’t I? He...

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Assorted Links

A “safe starch” lowers HDL. DIY clinical trials omega-3 content versus mercury content of fish: a handy guide. Predictions of climate models versus reality. I have only seen careful...

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The Value of a Diagnosis of Asperger’s

In a recent post I said Marcia Angell was too hard on psychiatric diagnosis. Long before perfection, diagnoses can be useful. For example, Alexandra Carmichael recently found out she has something...

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Willat Effect Experiments With Tea

The Willat Effect is the hedonic change caused by side-by-side comparison of similar things. Your hedonic response to the things compared (e.g., two or more dark chocolates) expands in both directions....

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This American Life Retracts Daisey Show

This American Life has retracted the Mike Daisey show it did a few months ago because it turns out several details — not trivial ones — were wrong. Daisey knew this, and kept the TAL producers from...

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Occupational Specialization as Far Back as the Bronze Age

Linear B is an ancient form of Greek, used around 1500 BC (the Bronze Age) in Mycenean Greece. Stuff written in Linear B gives us one of our oldest views of human life and can reveal things that other...

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Myopia Increases Innovation

Big public works projects inevitably cost far more than the original budget. I heard a talk about this a few years ago. The speaker gave many examples, including Boston’s Big Dig. His explanation was...

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What is Teaching?

Russ Roberts says: Great teaching is more than passing on information. For that you can read a book or watch a video. A great teacher provokes and takes you on a journey of understanding. That requires...

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