An old Greek fable famously tells the story of a fox, who tries really hard to get his hands on a tasty vine of grapes. The fox tries and he tries, but eventually fails in all of his attempts to acquire the grapes; at which point the fox calmly continues with his life by convincing himself that he really didn’t want those grapes that badly after all…

Although there is a common wisdom in this tale of how we deal with being thwarted in our desires, a more modern psychological account of the fox’s tale may look a little different: i.e. if the fox in our tale had been reading today’s psychological journals he may have concluded, more precisely, that had he continued in his efforts, and finally obtained the grapes, THEN he may not have liked them as much.

To see why the fox may have concluded this, we must first consider that from a physiological (and pharmacological) perspective, wanting something and liking something do not necessarily go hand-in-hand, and that they certainly aren’t the same thing. For example, a drug addict really, really wants her fix, but many addicts genuinely report not particularly liking their subsequent drugged out experiences. Additionally, a number of psychological studies show that liking and wanting can be independently manipulated, and that often times both operate at a subconscious level.

{ Daniel R Hawes | Continue reading }

As an illustration of the approach to media we are proposing, consider the case of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election in 2003 to the governorship of California. Schwarzenegger’s victory has often been attributed to his status as a Hollywood star, as if that somehow guaranteed success.

But this explanation, in our view, falls far short. If it were adequate, we would have to explain the fact that the vast majority of governors and other political officeholders in this country are not actors or other media celebrities, but practitioners of that arcane and tedious profession known as the law. If Hollywood stardom were a sufficient condition to attain political office, Congress would be populated by Susan Sarandons and Sylvester Stallones, not Michele Bachmanns and Ed Markeys.

Something other than media stardom was clearly required. And that something was the nature of the legal and political systems that give California such a volatile and populist political culture, namely the rules that allow for popular referendums and, more specifically, make it relatively easy to recall an unpopular governor. California has, in other words, a distinctive set of political mediations in place that promote immediacy in the form of direct democracy and rapid interventions by the electorate. It is difficult to imagine the Schwarzenegger episode occurring in any other state.

{ Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen | The University of Chicago Press | Continue reading }

Many entrepreneurial and driven bros aspire to be members of the billionaires club. However, we all know that “pimpin’ ain’t easy.” Billionaire bachelors and captains of industry can’t just date or marry an everyday simpleton when there’s the risk of losing ten figures of wealth and power to a money-hungry gold digger. There’s simply too much on the line when your annual income is higher than the gross domestic product of some third-world nations. Perhaps this is why there are so few billionaire bachelors in the world. According to the personal wealth arbiters at Forbes magazine, there were only 72 single and ready-to-mingle bachelors and bachelorette with billionaire status in 2009.

{ BroBible | Continue reading }

photo { Mirage magazine/Facebook page | Mirage magazine }

related { Dating study: women prefer ‘men who are kind’ }

It starts with a barely perceptible blurring of vision from time to time - the sort of thing you might chalk up to getting older. But when you get it checked out, there is disturbing news: you have a disease called age-related macular degeneration, or AMD. (…)

People typically develop AMD after the age of 50, and it affects nearly 1 in 10 of those over the age of 80. It is the most common cause of blindness in the west.

It can progress slowly or quickly, but there is no cure. (…)

Now, however, a possible treatment for dry AMD is on the horizon.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading }

related { Mechanized cooks invade the kitchen | NY Times | Full story }

Corvids – crows, ravens, jays, and magpies – are well known to be among the most intelligent of birds. Along with parrots, corvids have been a frequent subject of avian intelligence studies. Experiments have documented problem-solving and tool use, both in the lab and in the wild. Many of the recent experiments have tested intelligence in New Caledonian Crows (Corvus moneduloides), but tests of Ravens (Corvus corax) and Rooks (Corvus frugilegus) have also found problem-solving capabilities. New Caledonian Crows are a common subect for research because they are known to use a variety of tools in the wild.

{ A D. C. Birding Blog | Continue reading }

I used to think feminists had  a lot of things to worry about, such as the fact that even the most educated and capable of women still make 78 cents on a man’s dollar, that women are still subject to many more crimes of physical and domestic violence than men, and that hard-won reproductive rights are in danger of being systematically withdrawn without our consent. (…)

Who knew? Facial hair is, apparently, a feminist issue.

{ The Chronicle of Higher Education | Continue reading }

For whatever reason–plane crash, riptide, sailing misadventure, a bad case of Ocean Fury–you find yourself in the middle of the sea with nothing but miles of water around you. And, to your horror, here comes that heavy string music and a circling fin slicing through the water.

Luckily, from multiple websites and news stories about shark survival you remember the Shark’s Achilles Heel: Punches to the face. Specifically, the tender nose area. You wind up to belt that fishy bastard in the schnoz, and make your testicles proud.

The Result: First let’s look at a shark. Can you find his nose? Yep, it’s that incredibly narrow point in front that drops precipitously into a slimy, downward sloping ramp right into his 5,000,000-toothed mouth.

Take into account the fact that you’re bobbing around in the water like a buoy full of meat, facing off against a lightning-quick predator with several million years of practice in eating things that punch it in the nose, and you’ll see that chances are your fist will just deflect down into that aforementioned gaping hole of teeth like Boba Fett into a Sarlacc Pit. Now if your plan to defeat the shark is too feed yourself to him until he grows tired of the taste of you, you’re off to a great start.

But experts say that even if you hit the shark-nose punching lottery, you won’t have scared him off, just dazed him, giving you a minute or so tops. Now, if this particular shark is suffering from ADD, then great: You’re in the clear now. He’s off to chase a shiny thing or update his twitter feed 82 times an hour. But if not, all you’ve done is managed to piss the shark off and give him a minute to ponder how revenge is a dish best served in a blood-filled bag resembling you.

{ 7 common survival tactics (that will get you killed) | Cracked | Continue reading }

related { Can a book teach you how to survive? }

{ Sleep, say US feminists, is the next big issue for women to address — doing less and enjoying more duvet time is the way to go. | Times | Full story }

photo { Abbey Drucker }

Nazi theft of Greek gold during the Second World War is to blame for the country’s faltering finances, Athens claimed yesterday. It came as new protests about the economy turned violent.

Greece said the real culprit for its problems were the Nazis, whose occupation lasted from 1941 to 1945.

‘They took away the Greek gold that was at the Bank of Greece, they took away the Greek money and they never gave it back,’ said Deputy prime minister Theodoros Pangalos. ‘I don’t say they have to give back the money necessarily but they have at least to say “thanks”.’

{ Daily Mail | Continue reading }

Where is all that Greek gold?

Last week I mentioned the (what seemed to me and much of the world) odd incident of Greek politicians talking about the need for Germany to pay its debts to Greece. I got this response from a Greek reader. Comments afterword.

“Dear Mr. Mauldin,

I am an avid reader and I just wanted to correct you about a comment in one of your articles, “The Pain in Spain”, specifically:

‘Somehow they forgot about the German government paying 115 million deutschmarks in 1960 — not a small sum back then.’

This repayment of 1960 is undeniable. but the total amount owed was $10 billion ($3.5 billion for the return of the gold stolen and the repayment of the war loans Greece was forced into giving Germany, and $7 billion in war reparations awarded to Greece in 1946). As the DM/$ parity was then four for one, this means they gave Greece $29 million out of the $10 billion owed.

Germany also proclaims that they have given Greece over the years, in one form or another, €16.5 billion. But the fact of the matter is that despite these alleged payments, the issue of the war loans and gold is still not settled.

Greece has never stopped asking for the money to be paid back … it is estimated that this sum owed now totals $70 billion [I assume the Greeks want interest – JM]. So even taking into account the €16.5 billion, more than $50 billion is still owed.

Helmut Kohl refused to even discuss the repayment, presenting as an excuse that this amount was owed by the whole of Germany and until Germany is unified the issue could not be discussed.

Guess what, Germany is unified….

Best Regards,
Anthony Kioussopoulos

P.S. Do not take my e-mail as a refusal to acknowledge the fault of successive Greek governments in creating this mess; just take it as a correction for a specific issue.”

+++++

The point here is not that Anthony is 100% right, though his statements have the ring of authenticity. The point is that the Greeks believe it. And thus my lack of surprise last week when I noted that leading Greek politicians of both the conservative and liberal parties were talking the same line. This is an issue that runs across the Greek political spectrum. And that makes the situation all the more intractable, as emotional responses are not the stuff of rational debates.

{ John Mauldin | Continue reading | PDF }

Conformity is such a strong influence in society that it’s impossible to understand human behaviour without it. Psychological experiments show that people will deny the evidence of their own eyes in order to conform with other people.

Understanding when we conform has all kinds of practical real-world benefits, depending on your aims: it can help you understand your own behaviour as well as understand how others will behave under a variety of different situational pressures. Everyone should be aware of these factors and how they affect the most important areas of their social life.

Here are the ten timeless influencers of conformity:

{ PsyBlog | Continue reading }

cartoon { Doug Savage }

Lyotard focused on the idea of narratives. Past periods, Modernism in particular, had been fond of what he called “meta-narratives,” all-inclusive narrative frameworks that explained everything, more or less.

{ The Smart Set | Continue reading }

{ sorry, unsourced photos/email }

All NYC parades to be cut by 25% and restricted to 5 hours in a $3.1M money-saving move [with nice pic] Plus: Police announce Parade crackdown.

Two Diamond District wholesalers were arrested for staging a bizarre $4 million jewel heist in broad daylight on Dec. 31, 2008 on West 46th Street, involving two purported thieves disguised as Hasidic Jews.

Wall Street bonuses were up 17 percent to over $20 billion in 2009, the year taxpayers bailed out the financial sector after its meltdown.

M.T.A. to lay off more than 1,000 employees.

Central Park’s latest coyote visitor was spotted on the ice of The Pond.

Until 1993, Hoffmann had lived in the well known Chelsea Hotel in New York City, which Hoffmann later said she enjoyed.

Allen Tannenbaum: New York in the 70s.

The art collection of James and Barry, New York.

Frustrated owner bulldozes home Ahead of foreclosure.

The Chinese, for example, eat dog (as well as cats, but I’m going to focus on dogs here).

Top Italian food writer suspended from TV show after for recommending stewed cat to viewers as a “succulent dish.”

Diapers’ contents could change way of finding intestinal disease. The procedure uses fecal samples rather than the oft-dreaded colonoscopy.

For the first time in the republic’s history, government officials are being asked to grant a trademark for the nickname a man has given to his abdominal muscles.

Stalker pheasant terrorises English village. He has reportedly attacked men, women, children, baby-strollers, bikes, dogs and even cars.

For 900 euros ($1,200), clients of Ultime Realite (”Ultimate Reality”), a firm in eastern France, can buy a basic kidnap package where they’re bundled away, bound and gagged, and kept incarcerated for four hours.

Pole dancing as an Olympic sport? Yes, say the athletes and advocates behind the fledgling international discipline.

Topless sledging proves surprisingly popular.

Foot-long surgical instrument found in the abdomen of a woman who was operated on five months ago.

Lower Merion School District sued for cyber spying on students.

Woman shoots at hubby after he refused to give her some of their tax return money.

In 2009, crime went down. In fact it’s been going down for a decade. But more and more Americans believe it’s getting worse. Why do we refuse to believe the good news?

Police officer says divine intervention is fighting crime.

Even in a recovery, some jobs won’t return.

Guess who produced the most toxic CDOs?

Many young writers and journalists I meet are close to penniless. They have almost not a hope of supporting themselves in the pursuit of their calling.

Business culture steers flow of ideas, study says.

Does the U.S. produce too many scientists?

Can blogs change traditional scientific writing?

NASA research finds the last decade was the warmest on record, and 2009 one of warmest years.

Why the media seems biased when you care about the issue.

Why winning is a mental construct.

The complex relationship between age and scientific creativity.

Insincere flattery. New research suggests that one’s initial conscious reaction - discounting the flattery as a self-serving ploy - may mask a more durable implicit positive emotional association with the flatterer.

A study on dream smoking.

The top ten bioethics stories of the decade.

ICU room assignment can affect survival.

Up to 20 percent of combat soldiers and an estimated 1.4 million U.S. civilians sustain traumatic brain injuries each year. But the mechanics behind these injuries have remained mysterious. New research suggests exactly how a blow to the brain disrupts this complex organ.

Synthetic lethality: A new way to kill cancer cells.

Ibuprofen may ward off Parkinson’s

Placebo treatments stronger than doctors thought. [?]

Stop funding homeopathy, say British MPs.

Hot and heavy matter runs a 4 trillion degree fever.

Cellphone traces reveal you’re so predictable.

Can you trust a Facebook profile?

Non-private person: Openness is becoming the default social norm.

What babies know and we don’t.

Imagine how our world would change if, when the truth really mattered, it became impossible to lie.

The case against banning the word ‘retard.’

Advice for artists seeking gallery representation.

4 people who faced disaster—and how they made it out alive. Realted: 5 unexpected survival kit essentials.

The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook.

A history of media technology scares, from the printing press to Facebook.

Flash is old. Apple’s preferred media architecture, HTML5, is the future of the web.

Computers turn flat photos into 3-D buildings.

iPad, the forgotten details.

What is pornography? If you know something is happening and can’t see it, there might still be some appeal.

For myself personally, all I can say for certain is that Jesus was an end-times preacher who offered up some radical, compelling shit. Beyond that, it gets pretty hazy.

My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark.

What happened to all the angry, powerful women in ’90s rock?

Is an animal’s agility affected by the position of its eyes?

A new VH-1 documentary celebrates the landmark television show Soul Train, but as Stanley Crouch writes, the real power of looking back at Soul Train is seeing what black culture has lost.

Feature documentary about The Doors.

With the death of JD Salinger last week, a remarkable era in US literature came to its end.

Club DJ-ing can’t be that hard, can it?

My gun will shoot anybody’s anus. and Xzibit use his dick like a Visa.

The odds an adult ever uses swear words in conversation is 1 in 1.27.

Tequila balls, the Kabukicho version of jello shots.

An evening stroll through Mumbai: Just down the street from the Gateway of India, across from the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, is the Gupta Juice Center.

10 bizarre asian festivals.

The 10 craziest Facebook groups.

What drug dealers can teach the digital world. [video]

If surgeons remove part of your brain, how do they fill up the space?

List of unusual deaths.

CIA forced to complete all scheduled torture in one hectic weekend.

Last spring the Art Institute of Chicago unveiled its most significant acquisition to date. It was neither a painting nor a sculpture, but Renzo Piano’s Modern Wing.

World’s first cologne exclusively for gay men.

I’m trying to learn things about motion. I consulted Motionographer today to that end, and found Nuit Blanche.

H5’s Logorama.

{ Novalis, Henry of Ofterdingen, published posthumously in 1802 }

{ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot, 1868-1869 }

Armand: Don’t you believe in love, Marguerite?
Marguerite: I don’t think I know what it is.
Armand: Oh, thank you.
Marguerite: For what?
Armand: For never having been in love.

{ Quoted from George Cukor’s Camille, 1936 }

photo { Thomas Ruff, Nudes ez14, 1999 }

What’s your permanent age?

I’ve observed that everyone has a permanent age that appears to be set at birth. For example, I’ve always been 42-years old. I was ill-suited for being a little kid, and didn’t enjoy most kid activities. By first grade I knew I wanted to be an adult, with an established career, car, house and a decent tennis game. I didn’t care for my awkward and unsettled twenties. And I’m not looking forward to the rocking chair. If I could be one age forever, it would be 42.

When I ask people about their permanent age, they usually beg it off by saying they don’t have one. But if you press, you always get an answer. And the age they pick won’t surprise you. Some people are kids all their lives. They will admit they are 12-years old. Other people have always had senior citizen interests and perspectives. If you’re 30-years old in nominal terms, but you love bingo and you think kids should stop wearing those big baggy pants and listening to hip-hop music, your permanent age might be 60.

Another way to divide people is by asking if they live in the present or the future. I live in the future. I don’t dwell on the past. I’m always thinking about what’s next. (….) Some people are locked in the past; it sneaks into all of their conversations and colors their perceptions more than it should. They spend their lives either consciously or unconsciously trying to turn the future into the past. They tend to be unhappy.

{ Scott Adams | Continue reading }

photo { Steve Buscemi by Abbey Drucker }

Erotomania is a type of delusion in which the affected person believes that another person, usually a stranger, is in love with him or her.

The illness often occurs during psychosis, especially in patients with schizophrenia or bipolar mania.

Erotomania is also called de Clérambault’s syndrome, after the French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934).

The term erotomania is often confused with obsessive love, obsession with unrequited love, or hypersexuality (hypersexuality replaces the older concepts of nymphomania (furor uterinus) and satyriasis.).

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

The Reagan assassination attempt occurred in Washington, D.C. on Monday, March 30, 1981.

President Reagan and three others were shot and wounded by John Hinckley, Jr. with a .22-caliber pistol.

Reagan was the first serving United States president to survive being shot in an assassination attempt.

{ Reagan assassination attempt | Wikipedia | Continue reading | Google Images | Related: In a 1982 speech, President Ronald Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to America’s national security, putting a too-literal gloss on the phrase “war on drugs.” }

The motivation behind Hinckley’s attack stemmed from an obsession with actress Jodie Foster due to erotomania. While living in Hollywood in the late 1970s, he saw the film Taxi Driver at least 15 times, apparently identifying strongly with Travis Bickle, the lead character.

Hinckley arrived in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, March 29, getting off a Greyhound Lines bus and checking into the Park Central Hotel. He had breakfast at McDonald’s the next morning, noticed U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s schedule on page A4 of the Washington Star, and decided it was time to make his move.

Knowing that he might not live to tell about shooting Reagan, Hinckley wrote (but did not mail) a letter to Foster about two hours prior to the assassination attempt, saying that he hoped to impress her with the magnitude of his action.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | The Trial of John Hinckley, 1982 | Hinckley bought two identical .22-caliber revolvers in Rocky’s Pawn Shop in Dallas on Oct. 3, 1980 | Photos: John Hinckley, Jr. | Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. }

The promise—and the hype—of changing your DNA through behavior.

Studies showing how experience alters genes have been few and far between—which is why a new one on smoking and diet caught my eye.

The study of these kinds of changes in genes is called epigenetics. Crucially, the changes do not involve alterations of gene sequences, those famous A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s that the Human Genome Project figured out. (…)

Scientists are now making specific, actionable discoveries in epigenetics. This week, for instance, researchers are reporting that eating leafy green vegetables, folate (found in these veggies as well as in some fruits and in dried beans and peas), and multivitamins can affect the epigenetics of genes involved in lung cancer in a way that could reduce the risk of getting the disease, especially from smoking.

{ Sharon Begley/Newsweek | Continue reading }