‘The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.’ —Nietzsche
These fictional examples suggest that creativity and dishonesty often go hand-in-hand. Is there an actual link? Is there something about the creative process that triggers unethical behavior? Or does behaving in dishonest ways spur creative thinking? My research suggests that they both exist: Encouraging people to think outside the box can result in greater cheating, and crossing ethical boundaries can make people more creative in subsequent tasks.
Every day, the same, again
Woman, 63, ‘becomes PREGNANT in the mouth’ with baby squid after eating calamari
Park Avenue surgeon implants woman with heart-shaped eye jewelry
To get one of those apartments, on average, you need to plunk down the equivalent of almost $300,000. Household rental system in South Korea
Most hotels actually lose money on room service.
Does Daylight Saving Time Affect Voter Turnout?
Hormones and Women Voters: A Very Modern Scientific Controversy
Some new evidence about just how quickly our unconscious minds can process incoming information
How to learn like a memory champion
Does clown therapy really help anxious kids?
What the mind of a psychopath looks like
The surprising similarities between pole dancers and financial dealers [PDF]
Electric animals that aren’t eels
New spectroscopy technique makes it faster & easier to find out how much horse is in your burger
The last place on Earth… without life
Nearly Every Star Hosts at Least One Alien Planet
Why we find some languages more beautiful than others
The internationalized art world relies on a unique language.
What it Was Like to Travel to Iran With Andy Warhol in 1976
Once derided as being like a plastic bag with the erotic appeal of a jellyfish, the female condom is being reinvented as the next big thing in safe sex.
‘Lick This’ App Teaches Oral Sex Via Phone-Licking
Butt Shaped Lamp Can Be Pinched On, Slapped Off [Thanks Tim]
In 2005, levamisole was found in almost 2 percent of the cocaine seized by the DEA. In 2007, the frequency went up to 15 percent, and by 2011 a staggering 73 percent of all cocaine seized by the DEA had been cut with levamisole.
How to curate your own group exhibition
Shooting Into the Corner, 2008-2009
Richard Prince is selling inkjet prints of Twitter screenshots (another one)
‘Max I can loose is 100%. Max I can gain is unlimited.’ —Shit /r/Bitcoin says
The arguments for ditching notes and coins are numerous, and quite convincing. In the US, a study by Tufts University concluded that the cost of using cash amounts to around $200 billion per year – about $637 per person. This is primarily the costs associated with collecting, sorting and transporting all that money, but also includes trivial expenses like ATM fees. Incidentally, the study also found that the average American wastes five and a half hours per year withdrawing cash from ATMs; just one of the many inconvenient aspects of hard currency.
While coins last decades, or even centuries, paper currency is much less durable. A dollar bill has an average lifespan of six years, and the US Federal Reserve shreds somewhere in the region of 7,000 tons of defunct banknotes each year.
Physical currency is grossly unhealthy too. Researchers in Ohio spot-checked cash used in a supermarket and found 87% contained harmful bacteria. Only 6% of the bills were deemed “relatively clean.” […]
Stockholm’s homeless population recently began accepting card payments. […]
Cash transactions worldwide rose just 1.75% between 2008 and 2012, to $11.6 trillion. Meanwhile, non traditional payment methods rose almost 14% to total $6.4 trillion.
{ TransferWise | Continue reading }
The anal stage is the second stage in Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychosexual development, lasting from age 18 months to three years. According to Freud, the anus is the primary erogenous zone and pleasure is derived from controlling bladder and bowel movement. […]
The negative reactions from their parents, such as early or harsh toilet training, can lead the child to become an anal-retentive personality. If the parents tried forcing the child to learn to control their bowel movements, the child may react by deliberately holding back in rebellion. They will form into an adult who hates mess, is obsessively tidy, punctual, and respectful to authority. These adults can sometimes be stubborn and be very careful over their money.
related { Hackers Hit Mt. Gox Exchange’s CEO, Claim To Publish Evidence Of Fraud | Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox? }
‘One is always wrong, but with two, truth begins.’ –Nietzsche
Two fields stand out as different within cognitive psychology. These are the study of reasoning, especially deductive reasoning and statistical inference, and the more broadly defined field of decision making. For simplicity I label these topics as the study of reasoning and decision making (RDM). What make RDM different from all other fields of cognitive psychology is that psychologists constantly argued with each other and with philosophers about whether the behavior of their participants is rational. The question I address here is why? What is so different about RDM that it attracts the interests of philosophers and compulsively engages experimental psychologists in judgments of how good or bad is the RDM they observe.
Let us first consider the nature of cognitive psychology in general. It is branch of cognitive science, concerned with the empirical and theoretical study of cognitive processes in humans. It covers a wide collection of processes connected with perception, attention, memory, language, and thinking. However, only in the RDM subset of the psychology of thinking is rationality an issue. For sure, accuracy measures are used throughout cognitive psychology. We can measure whether participants detect faint signals, make accurate judgments of distances, recall words read to them correctly and so on. The study of non-veridical functions is also a part of wider cognitive psychology, for example the study of visual illusions, memory lapses, and cognitive failures in normal people as well as various pathological conditions linked to brain damage, such as aphasia. But in none of these cases are inaccurate responses regarded as irrational. Visual illusions are attributed to normally adaptive cognitive mechanisms that can be tricked under special circumstances; memory errors reflect limited capacity systems and pathological cognition to brain damage or clinical disorders. In no case is the person held responsible and denounced as irrational.
photo { Slim Aarons }
Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real
“Saying there are differences in male and female brains is just not true. There is pretty compelling evidence that any differences are tiny and are the result of environment not biology,” said Prof Rippon.
“You can’t pick up a brain and say ‘that’s a girls brain, or that’s a boys brain’ in the same way you can with the skeleton. They look the same.” […]
A women’s brain may therefore become ‘wired’ for multi-tasking simply because society expects that of her and so she uses that part of her brain more often. The brain adapts in the same way as a muscle gets larger with extra use.
photo { John Gutmann, Freaky Faces Graffiti (Masks Graffiti), San Francisco, 1939 }
The Sphinx Without a Secret
Le pop art dépersonnalise, mais il ne rend pas anonyme : rien de plus identifiable que Marilyn, la chaise électrique, un pneu ou une robe, vus par le pop art ; ils ne sont même que cela : immédiatement et exhaustivement identifiables, nous enseignant par là que l’identité n’est pas la personne : le monde futur risque d’être un monde d’identités, mais non de personnes.
We must realize that if Pop Art depersonalized, it does not make anonymous: nothing is more identifiable than Marilyn, the electric chair, a tire, or a dress, as seen by Pop Art; they are in fact nothing but that: immediately and exhaustively identifiable, thereby teaching us that identify is not the person: the future world risks being a world of identities, but not of persons.
{ Roland Barthes, Cette vieille chose, l’art, 1980 }
art { Andy Warhol, Foot and Tire, 1963-64 }
related { David Cronenberg on Foot and Tire }
As the rain splashed the nickel
At Kean University, students are dying (as it were) to get into Norma Bowe’s class “Death in Perspective,” which has sometimes carried a three-year waiting list. On one one field trip to a local coroner’s office, Dr. Bowe’s students were shown three naked cadavers on metal tables. One person had died from a gunshot, the other from suicide and the third by drowning.
The last corpse appeared overweight but wasn’t; he had expanded like a water balloon. A suspect in a hit-and-run case, he had fled the scene, been chased by police, abandoned his car and jumped into the Passaic River. On the autopsy table, he looked surprised, his mouth splayed open, as if he realized he had made a mistake. As the class clustered around, a technician began to carve his torso open. Some students gagged or scurried out, unable to stand the sight or the smell.
This grim visit was just one of the excursions for Dr. Bowe’s class. Every semester, students also leave the campus in Union, New Jersey, to visit a cemetery, a maximum-security prison (to meet murderers), a hospice, a crematory and a funeral home, where they pick out caskets for themselves. The homework is also unusual: Students are required to write goodbye letters to dead loved ones and to compose their own eulogies and wills.
JFK ✈ YOUR BEDROOM
Both men and women erred in estimating what the opposite sex would find attractive. Men thought women would like a heavier stature than females reported they like, and women thought men would like women thinner than men reported they like.
Results suggest that, overall, men’s perceptions serve to keep them satisfied with their figures, whereas women’s perceptions place pressure on them to lose weight.
In this model of time, nothing returns
Our brains show more activity in their emotional regions when the music we are listening to is familiar, regardless of whether or not we actually like it.
related { Young Musicians Reap Long-Term Neuro Benefits }
and { By Licking These Electric Ice Cream Cones, You Can Make Music }
‘The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.’ –Nietzsche
fMRI studies show that the same areas of the brain become activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain.
{ Psychology Today | Continue reading | Thanks Tim }
Every day, the same, again
‘Too drunk’ gambler sues Las Vegas casino over $500,000 debt
Fortune Teller Scams Young Woman Out Of $200K
Wealthier people are more musical, research
5% of people have “no real response to music,” study
Early treatment ‘cures’ second US HIV-positive baby
“exposure to an unstructured, uniform stimulation field, elicits in most observers pseudo-hallucinatory percepts” Hallucinating without drugs, the profundity of silence, and the thalamocortical circuit
The Reality Behind the Stock-Picking Prowess of S.E.C. Staff Members
The man who discovered the Stroop effect never realised the massive impact he had on psychology.
Scotland, one of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom (along with England, Northern Ireland, and Wales), will hold a referendum on independence this September. If it succeeds, Britain’s iconic flag may need a makeover.
Study: More Children Growing Up In Single-Parrot Households
During the chase, Nakamoto was seen throwing bitcoins out the window to deter his pursuers
Every day, the same, again
California court says drivers can read maps on their phones
Americans use twice as much water as they think they do, study says
1 in 10 Americans think HTML is an STD, study finds
First LSD tests in decades show terminal patients gained valuable and lasting insights
Want to remember something? Have some coffee.
5 percent of calories should be from sugar
Many psychotherapists dream about their clients
A study suggests that taking Truvada everyday reduces HIV transmission risk by 99 percent.
Study after study has shown that those who live with children are less satisfied with their lives than those who do not. Is there something wrong with these empirical analyses?
LCD Soundsystem James Murphy wants to to change the sound of the New York City subway turnstiles. He has worked out a unique set of notes for every station, one of which would sound each time a passenger swipes his or her MetroCard.
Finally, an app that lets you rent out your toilet
The person who takes a photo is legally the owner; the person who owns the camera or organized the shoot is not the owner. Who owns the rights to Ellen’s selfie?
Brooklyn Tattoo Artist Inks His Dog
Richard Prince kicked off Instagram Previously/related: Praise The Fucking Lord
These Are the “Most Hipster” Bands, According to Science
Origins of Joy Division’s “Unknown Pleasures” cover
‘I’m running the Shakespeare Monologue booth at this year’s Van’s Warped Tour. It’s $5 for tragedies.’ —Jeb Lund
It’s a concept that had become universally understood: humans experience six basic emotions—happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise—and use the same set of facial movements to express them. What’s more, we can recognize emotions on another’s face, whether that person hails from Boston or Borneo.
The only problem with this concept, according to Northeastern University Distinguished Professor of Psychology Lisa Feldman Barrett, is that it isn’t true at all.
art { Richard Hamilton, Swingeing London 67 (f), 1968-9 | Acrylic paint, screenprint, paper, aluminium and metalised acetate on canvas }
Even if you knew the entire past history of the universe, this would not contain the information about what the particles will do in the experiment
Quantum physics is famously weird, counterintuitive and hard to understand; there’s just no getting around this. So it is very reassuring that many of the greatest physicists and mathematicians have also struggled with the subject. The legendary quantum physicist Richard Feynman famously said that if someone tells you that they understand quantum mechanics, then you can be sure that they are lying. And Conway too says that he didn’t understand the quantum physics lectures he took during his undergraduate degree at Cambridge.
The key to this confusion is that quantum physics is fundamentally different to any of the previous theories explaining how the physical world works. In the great rush of discoveries of new quantum theory in the 1920s, the most surprising was that quantum physics would never be able to exactly predict what was going to happen. In all previous physical theories, such as Newton’s classical mechanics or Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity, if you knew the current state of the physical system accurately enough, you could predict what would happen next. “Newtonian gravitation has this property,” says Conway. “If I take a ball and I throw it vertically upwards, and I know its mass and I know its velocity (suppose I’m a very good judge of speed!) then from Newton’s theories I know exactly how high it will go. And if it doesn’t do exactly as I expect then that’s because of some slight inaccuracy in my measurements.”
Instead quantum physics only offers probabilistic predictions: it can tell you that your quantum particle will behave in one way with a particular probability, but it could also behave in another way with another particular probability. “Suppose there’s this little particle and you’re going to put it in a magnetic field and it’s going to come out at A or come out at B,” says Conway, imagining an experiment, such as the Stern Gerlach experiment, where a magnetic field diverts an electron’s path. “Even if you knew exactly where the particles were and what the magnetic fields were and so on, you could only predict the probabilities. A particle could go along path A or path B, with perhaps 2/3 probability it will arrive at A and 1/3 at B. And if you don’t believe me then you could repeat the experiment 1000 times and you’ll find that 669 times, say, it will be at A and 331 times it will be at B.”
{ The Free Will Theorem, Part I | Continue reading | Part II | Part III }
‘In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.’ —Spinoza
When a coin falls in water, its trajectory is one of four types determined by its dimensionless moment of inertia I∗ and Reynolds number Re: (A) steady; (B) fluttering; (C) chaotic; or (D) tumbling. The dynamics induced by the interaction of the water with the surface of the coin, however, makes the exact landing site difficult to predict a priori.
Here, we describe a carefully designed experiment in which a coin is dropped repeatedly in water to determine the probability density functions (pdf) associated with the landing positions for each of the four trajectory types, all of which are radially symmetric about the centre drop-line.
{ arXiv | PDF }
Hell is the impossibility of reason
Men want sex more than women do. (While I am sure that you can think of people who don’t fit this pattern, my colleagues and I have arrived at this conclusion after reviewing hundreds of findings. It is, on average, a very robust finding.) This difference is due in part to the fact that men, compared to women, focus on the rewards of sex. Women tend to focus on its costs because having sex presents them with bigger potential downsides, from physical (the toll of bearing a child) to social (stigma).
Accordingly, the average man’s sexual system gets activated fairly easily. When it does, it trips off a whole system in the brain focused on rewards. In fact, merely seeing a bra can propel men into reward mode, seeking immediate satisfaction in their decisions.
Most of the evidence suggests that women are different, that a sexy object would not cause them to shift into reward mode. This goes back to the notion that sex is rife with potential costs for women. Yet, at a basic biological level, the sexual system is directly tied to the reward system (through pleasure-giving dopaminergic reactions). This would seem to suggest a contrasting hypothesis that perhaps women will also shift into reward mode when their sexual system is activated. […] Women, more than men, connect sex to emotions. Festjens and colleagues therefore used a subtle, emotional cue to initiate sexual motivation – touch. Across three experiments, Festjens and colleagues found that women who touched sexy male clothing items, compared to nonsexual clothing items, showed evidence of being in reward mode.
{ Scientific American | Continue reading }
“If a stranger came up to a woman, grabbed her around the waist, and rubbed his groin against her in a university cafeteria or on a subway, she’d probably call the police. In the bar, the woman just tries to get away from him.”
[…]
“The current study was part of an evaluation of the Safer Bars program, a program we developed to reduce aggression in bars, primarily male-to-male aggression,” said Graham. “However, when we saw how much sexual aggression there was, we decided to conduct additional analyses. So these analyses of sexual aggression were in response to how much we observed – which was considerably more than we were expecting.”
photo { John Gutmann, Memory, 1939 }
