The trick is to keep breathing
When a person you care about is feeling sad, the standard response in civilized society is to say “everything will be ok” in some shape or form. This decreases the perceived negativity of the situation, and that causes the person to lower their sadness to a level that corresponds to a new, more positive, outlook.
Unfortunately, some new research shows that there are drawbacks to downplaying a situation’s negativity too much. When you attempt to show a situation is not as bad as a person thinks, the implied message is that the person’s level of sadness is beyond what’s socially acceptable. After all, if the person should be this sad, you wouldn’t be telling them to cheer up. It turns out that perceived societal expectations about when a person should be sad play a big role in making negative emotions worse. Specifically, when people feel sad, but think that others don’t expect them to feel sad, their negative emotions are amplified.
Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by the impact
Let me tell you about the problem confronting us. The brain is a 1.5 kilogram mass of jelly, the consistency of tofu, you can hold it in the palm of your hand, yet it can contemplate the vastness of space and time, the meaning of infinity and the meaning of existence. It can ask questions about who am I, where do I come from, questions about love and beauty, aesthetics, and art, and all these questions arising from this lump of jelly. It is truly the greatest of mysteries. The question is how does it come about?
When you look at the structure of the brain it’s made up of neurons. Of course, everybody knows that these days. There are 100 billion of these nerve cells. Each of these cells makes about 1,000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons. From this information people have calculated that the number of possible brain states, of permutations and combinations of brain activity, exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe.
The question is how do you go about studying this organ? (…)
Here’s a person who is perfectly coherent, intelligent, can discuss politics with you, can discuss mathematics with you, play chess with you, asserting that his left arm doesn’t belong to him. (…)
If they can label you, give your syndrome a name, they can charge you, charge an insurance company, so there has been a tendency to multiply syndromes.
There’s one called, by the way, Chronic Underachievement Syndrome, which in my day used to be called stupidity. It actually has a name and it’s officially recognized. Then there is a syndrome called De Clerambault Syndrome. De Clerambault Syndrome refers to, believe it or not, a young woman developing an obsession with a much older, famous, eminent, rich guy and develops the delusion that that guy is madly in love with her but is in denial about it. This is actually found in a textbook of psychiatry, and I think it’s complete nonsense. Ironically, there’s no name for the converse of the syndrome where an aging male develops a delusion that this young hottie is madly in love with him, but is in denial about it. Surely, it’s much more common and yet it doesn’t have a name. Right?
artwork { Keith Haring }
And you ask for captain Charon with the mud on his kicks
May 31, 1884: John Harvey Kellogg patents flaked cereal. (…) He was highly incensed by masturbation and campaigned zealously, if not rabidly, for its discontinuation. He warned that masturbation caused acne and recommended the “treatment” of carbolic acid on the clitoris in order to stop females from participating in the unsavory practice. Carbolic acid is very dangerous when applied to skin.
photo { Steven Meisel }
Today has been cancelled go back to bed
Every fall into love involves [to adapt Oscar Wilde] the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping that we will not find in the other what we know is in ourselves – all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise and brute stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one, and decide that everything that lies within it will somehow be free of our faults and hence loveable. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through union with the beloved, hope somehow to maintain [against evidence of all self-knowledge] a precarious faith in the species.
artwork { Jeremy Geddesart }
‘Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure — that of being Salvador Dali.’ –Salvador Dali
For most of us, the set of behaviors we call personality, or self, forms initially in a family of three, four, or five individuals, then develops as it is exposed to the larger worlds of school and, in our teens perhaps, our town, our country. The richness of our individual personalities is a measure of the complexity of the relations that sustain us.
photo { Veerle Frissen }
Planets crash into dust. I just let it fade away.
Many economists expect catastrophic consequences if any country exits the euro. However, during the past century sixty-nine countries have exited currency areas with little downward economic volatility. The mechanics of currency breakups are complicated but feasible, and historical examples provide a roadmap for exit. The real problem in Europe is that EU peripheral countries face severe, unsustainable imbalances in real effective exchange rates and external debt levels that are higher than most previous emerging market crises. Orderly defaults and debt rescheduling coupled with devaluations are inevitable and even desirable.
Exiting from the euro and devaluation would accelerate insolvencies, but would provide a powerful policy tool via flexible exchange rates. The European periphery could then grow again quickly with deleveraged balance sheets and more competitive exchange rates, much like many emerging markets after recent defaults and devaluations (Asia 1997, Russia 1998, and Argentina 2002).
(…)
The breakup of the euro would be an historic event, but it would not be the first currency breakup ever. Within the past 100 years, there have been sixty-nine currency breakups. Almost all of the exits from a currency union have been associated with low macroeconomic volatility. Previous examples include the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1919, India and Pakistan 1947, Pakistan and Bangladesh 1971, Czechoslovakia in 1992-93, and USSR in 1992.
Previous currency breakups and currency exits provide a roadmap for exiting the euro. While the euro is historically unique, the problems presented by a currency exit are not. There is no need for theorizing about how the euro breakup would happen. Previous historical examples provide crucial answers to: the timing and announcement of exits, the introduction of new coins and notes, the denomination or re-denomination of private and public liabilities, and the division of central bank assets and liabilities. This paper will examine historical examples and provide recommendations for the exit of the Eurozone.
The move from an old currency to a new one can be accomplished quickly and efficiently. While every exit from a currency area is unique, exits share a few elements in common. Typically, before old notes and coins can be withdrawn, they are stamped in ink or a physical stamp is placed on them, and old unstamped notes are no longer legal tender. In the meantime, new notes are quickly printed. Capital controls are imposed at borders in order to prevent unstamped notes from leaving the country. Despite capital controls, old notes will inevitably escape the country and be deposited elsewhere as citizens pursue an economic advantage. Once new notes are available, old stamped notes are de-monetized and are no longer legal tender. This entire process has typically been accomplished in a few months.
The mechanics of a currency breakup are surprisingly straightforward; the real problem for Europe is overvalued real effective exchange rates and extremely high debt. Historically, moving from one currency to another has not led to severe economic or legal problems. In almost all cases, the transition was smooth and relatively straightforward. This strengthens the view that Europe’s problems are not the mechanics of the breakup, but the existing real effective exchange rate and external debt imbalances. European countries could default without leaving the euro, but only exiting the euro can restore competitiveness. As such, exiting itself is the most powerful policy tool to re-balance Europe and create growth.
artwork { Victor Castillo }
‘The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.’ –Christopher Hitchens
In 1986, Guantanamo became host to the first and only McDonald’s restaurant within Cuba.
A Subway sandwich shop was opened in November 2002. Other fast food outlets have followed. These fast food restaurants are on base, and not accessible to Cubans.
It has been reported that prisoners cooperating with interrogations have been rewarded with Happy Meals from the McDonald’s located on the mainside of the base.
In 2004, Guantanamo opened a combined KFC & A&W restaurant at the bowling alley and a Pizza Hut Express at the Windjammer Restaurant. There is also a Taco Bell, and the Triple C shop that sells Starbucks coffee and Breyers ice cream.
All the restaurants on the installation are franchises owned and operated by the Department of the Navy. All proceeds from these restaurants are used to support morale, welfare and recreation (MWR) activities for service personnel and their families.
‘There is something wrong with a regime that requires a pyramid of corpses every few years.’ –George Orwell
I think that good sex can keep a relationship together, but can’t make it function at any sort of meaningful level. I feel that intimacy—i.e. kissing, cuddling, or any proximal form of contact—is way more important than sex.
Understand the realities: First, sex slows down when you have kids, in both frequency and intensity due to the physical and communicative demands the kids place on a relationship. I saw a couple once where the guy said that as newlyweds he and his wife would have sex everyday—anal, too—and it was so intense she was trying to fit his cock and balls in her mouth simultaneously. They had kids. He logged more hours at the office due to their financial needs; she was exhausted from taking care of the kids all day; they spent less time together, and sex dropped to once a week. (…)
I put a good sex life behind things like philosophical alignment in financial security, child discipline, trust, not allowing your insecurities to impose on your partner, job satisfaction, substance abuse, and most importantly, selflessness. (…)
The idea of two people changing together and—more importantly— accepting each others changes over a 50-year span is delusional unless that person is undeniably your best friend in the whole world. Ever.
What is romantic love? Can it last forever? This article considers how romantic love adapts in long term relationships. Recently some theorists proposed adaptive reasons for romantic love to endure, which contradicts a common idea that romantic love dwindles over time in exchange for companionship.
photo { Dioni Tabbers & Hana Jirickova photographed by Ellen Von Unwerth for Common & Sense }
Fire on fire, rain on my face
Researchers in the Face Perception Group at University of Nottingham took photographs of 34 Caucasian and 41 black African men’s faces in carefully controlled conditions and measured the skin color of the faces.
The team found that in both the African and Caucasian populations the attractiveness ratings given by the women was closely related to the amount of “golden” color in the skin. Their findings have been published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. (…)
In evolutionary terms, people who can identify healthy fertile mates will be more successful at leaving offspring.
“The attractive color in our face is affected by our health—especially by the amount of colorful antioxidant carotenoid pigments we get from fruit and vegetables in our diet,” says Stephen.
“These carotenoids are also thought to be good for our immune and reproductive systems, making us healthy and increasing our fertility. The masculinity of the face had no effect on the attractiveness of the face.
“Our study shows that being healthy may be the best way for men to look attractive.
artwork { Joseph Kosuth, Cathexis, 1981 }
‘Le hasard c’est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu quand il ne veut pas signer.’ –Théophile Gaultier
The noun ‘sin’ is feminine in German (die Sünde) but masculine in Russian (rpex). (…)
They investigated 790 paintings of German, French, Italian and Spanish artists that represent a personification of abstract entities such as sin, love, time and justice. Afterwards they compared the personified gender with the grammatical gender of the artist’s mother tongue.
What they found out: Personified gender matched the grammatical gender in 78% of the cases. (…)
It may give answers to German women who always have to wonder why southwestern European men are so much more charming: In Italiy, France and Spain the sin is a man.
{ United Academics | Continue reading | More: Frontiers in Psychology }
photo { Juergen Teller }
Not being in the mood is the only mood my wife is ever in
Ever since I left my native village in the Bavarian Forest more than 25 years ago, I have been returning for regular, even if infrequent, visits. Over the years, there have been many changes and two of them have been particularly noticeable to me:
(1) Language shift: When I left, I knew how to read and write German but I couldn’t speak the national language. In that I would have been a typical representative of my generation. This has changed dramatically since then and most people I meet are now bilingual and switch between German and Bavarian with various degrees of comfort. (…)
(2) Commercial sex: When I left, the availability of commercial sex was invisible. For all I know, it didn’t exist. Now, as you travel east from Munich on the autobahn, there are numerous billboards signaling the presence of the sex industry, including a huge structure saying “Sex shop” somewhere close to Landshut that is visible from miles away. With the commercials in the papers and the fliers advertising for the sex industry, the semiotic landscape is similar to the one I described for Switzerland in this article. Furthermore, tales of the exploits of men who visit prostitutes just behind the border in the Czech Republic and the marriages that have fallen apart as a result of all this are now a ubiquitous part of village gossip.
artwork { Mike Worrall }
He almost sees people as Legos moving around
The infinity or nunc stans [eternal Now] of thought (…) arises only when the arrow of infinite future possibility or anticipation meets with the infinite trajectory of the past as uncovered in memory. Infinite, here, does not mean eternal. It simply means that, so long as one lives, there is a non-denumerable infinity of possible future willings or anticipations, as well as of possible interpretations of past memories; there are a non-denumerable, unfixed number of possible past moments and future anticipations while one continues to live, as life is not absolutely predetermined. The present is described as a “diagonal” that intersects or transverses the past and the future. The constitutive moments of time, namely, the past, the present, and the future, are called “forces.”
{ The Role of forgetting in our experience of time | Parrhesia | | PDF }
photo { Alexander Harding }
Every day, the same, again
Electric cigarette explodes in man’s mouth.
Bizarre details emerge from investigation of Athens credit card cloning ring.
Naked bondage role-playing lands two in jail. Couple tell police that episode in busy parking lot was just a Valentine’s Day game.
IPO planned for Empire State Building.
We should not allow a man to punch his girlfriend in the face and continue his career unabated.
Man’s body lays undiscovered in home for four years after suicide, and is only discovered by realtor who came to repossess house. He found Mr Carter’s ‘nearly skeletonized’ remains on his stairway, a gunshot in his head, and a handgun on his chest.
Novelty-seeking, a personality trait long associated with trouble, turns out to be one of the crucial predictors of emotional and physical well-being. [NY Times]
Drugs delivered wirelessly. Implanted microchip that releases medications on command has been tested in people for the first time.
All genes aren’t indispensable. Even healthy people may have about 20 genes that are completely inactivated, a new study finds.
Study Finds Goats Adjust Their ‘Accents’ Based On Social Surroundings.
Leaf-cutting ants are less productive as their colonies expand, new research suggests, indicating that there is a limit to how big a colony can get.
From New England to Peru, an unprecedented number of dolphins have been beaching themselves in recent weeks, and experts are grappling as to why.
Scientists Move Closer to Creating an Invisibility Cloak.
Mathematical Model Computes Snow Flake Shapes for the First Time.
Seven equations that rule the world.
Human activity is adding nitrogen even to waterways isolated from direct human contact.
Someone asked me recently how the price of a cocktail is determined.
The Internet makes magic disappear. YouTube has killed the magician’s art, and threatens the stores where tricks have been passed down for generations.
How to Charge an ipod with fruits. [Thanks Tim]
Military Adapts Pro Sports Software To Speed Decision Making.
A mystery of mysteries: “If you could even guess the nature of this castle’s secret, you would get down on your knees and thank God it was not yours.”
Not many people think of shantytowns, illegal street vendors, and unlicensed roadside hawkers as major economic players. But according to journalist Robert Neuwirth, that’s exactly what they’ve become. Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World Economy.
Why Do Vampires Prefer Louisiana?
A statistics professor says he can predict crime before it occurs.
The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician.
Because card counting is not illegal, most casinos can only ask players to leave.
The Mad Men Experiment: Does Boozing Lead to Funnier Ads. [Thanks Tim]
Saint Valentine is the patron saint of both lovers and epilepsy – sadly, a little known fact.
The Role of Brands in Human Culture. (interviews)
We celebrate Nietzsche for being anti-everything, but why is there no anti-Nietzsche? Malcolm Bull’s new book aims to answer this question.
A Life without Affects and Passions: Kant on the Duty of Apathy. [PDF ]
Visualizing citations in research literature.
Petit recueil de 18 moisissures argumentatives pour concours de mauvaise foi.
Scientists discover world’s smallest chameleon in Madagascar.
A medical chart of Tom Waits’ upper body.
The Alternative Swedish Dictionary.
Let’s not forget the environmental impact - how flowers were killed to make that wreath?
