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Human behavior in a post-rational world
A lot of hay has been made in recent years out Paul Ekman's idea that some basic facial expressions are universal -- that all people express and recognize emotions like anger, fear and disgust in the same way, no matter where they grew up. In one famous study, for instance, people who lived in an ...
Eastern Congo has been overrun with armed groups since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Their ongoing war has killed more than 5 million people and caused millions more to suffer, as non-combatants have been displaced, impoverished, press-ganged, infected with diseases, mutilated and/or raped. These ...
Being a social animal saves you a lot of trouble. You don't need to grow huge claws or massive armored plates to protect yourself; your weapons and your shield are in your relationships to other members of your pack. In many bird species, a flock will ``mob'' a predator. And in Alaska I've seen ...
A number of evolutionary psychologists have claimed men and women have innate, inescapable differences in their approach to sex. It's supposed to be a logical consequence of the two genders' different reproductive strategies. The theory is, as the old rhyme goes, Higgamous, Hoggamous, woman's ...
My last post was focussed on how white parents talk about race. The reason, of course, is that African-Americans and other minorities in the U.S. aren't in the same boat when it comes to these questions. Claiming that they are -- that we should talk about racism as if it's the same problem for ...
Today is the autumn equinox. Fall begins tonight, so: Goodbye, summer 2009. The photo: Brooklyn, September, 2009. By Michel Setboun, used with his kind permission.
In a guessing game played with photos of African-Americans and whites, a bunch of Boston fifth graders acted like little Stephen Colberts: they pretended they just don't see race. In contrast, kids in the third grade frankly talked about racial difference, and scored better than their elders ...
I've been happy with my wifi router for the most part, but its signal isn't that strong at the furthest part of the apartment from where it sits. I've sometimes thought about buying boosters or antennae or some other gadget to try to improve the situation. Turns out there was a cheaper solution ...
A Congressman calls the President of the United States a liar (extra credit for being wrong on the facts). A dispute over health-care politics ends with a brawl, and both parties get first-hand exposure to medical-care issues, because Mr. Pro-reform has bitten off the finger of Mr. Anti-reform. ...
I had a neighbor years ago, a nice woman in a happy second marriage with two adult kids and two elderly parents. Devoted to Martha Stewart's algorithms for a gracious life. The last time I spoke to her she was painting her front door yet again because she wasn't satisfied with the color from two ...
America's health-care debate is like a grown-up version of the silly '90's-era ``culture wars'': Today's fights are exposing profound and serious differences between ``progressive'' and ``conservative'' worldviews. There is some research to suggest that these differences are rooted in ...
The fuel that drives science forward is a combustible mixture of two contrary principles. The first is that the universe follows rules. The second is that the universe is full of surprises. If you accept only one of those two, you can't have science. Universally true explanations that can't be ...
In the raging debate over healthcare here in the U.S., there is one point on which everybody, from Newt Gingrich to Barack Obama, seems to agree: We should be spending more to prevent expensive diseases from striking in the first place, and thereby save society a great deal of money in the long ...