Commodification of Self
the geography of happiness
Denmark is the happiest country and Zimbabwe the least.
Destruction Therapy
Castejon, in northern Spain, sponsored an anti-stress session for locals in which they supplied sledgehammers and appliances and let everyone go to town.
Dear clusterflock
What helps?
the power of because
When people asked to cut in line to use a photo copier the approval rate was 60%. When people asked to cut in line and added a reason — because I’m in a rush — the approval rate jumped to 94%, even when the reason was meaningless: because I need to make copies.
why do we lie?
A pretty exhaustive (and exhausting) list.
probabilities
If no one agrees with you, you should be quite worried. If only a small number of people agree with you, you still should be quite worried. I don’t think it’s a numbers game, but I think whatever view you end up with, it doesn’t have to be a majority point of view, that reasons have weight, not just adding up whoever agrees with you. But you still ought to say at the end of the day, look all those other people are against me, maybe I think I’m right probability 57 to 43, but on any truly controversial question among intelligent people, you should never think it’s 95 to 5 in your favor.
What do you think?
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
Is there a word that comes to mind as you watch this guy?
Dear Clusterflock
Do you tend to prefer readings which reinforce or call into question your sense of self?
monkey love
Chimps calm each other after aggression with hugs and kisses.
“If a kiss was used, the consoler would press his or her open mouth against the recipient’s body, usually on the top of the head or their back. An embrace consisted of the consoler wrapping one or both arms around the recipient.”
The result was a reduction of stress behavior such as scratching or self-grooming by the victim of aggression, Fraser and colleagues report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The F Face
The facial expressions we make when we are scared serve a biological purpose.
“Our hypothesis was that different changes on the face would lead to different amounts of sensory intake,” said Joshua Susskind, a psychology graduate student at the University of Toronto who worked on a study testing the function of facial expressions. “The idea is that fear is for vigilance. You’d expect that changes on the face, such as opening the eyes, would be characteristic of fear, because you’re trying to assess more information in your environment.”
Iguana Two Cubicles Over
There’s a marine iguana a couple of cubicles over. He thinks it’s funny to blow salt over the partition when Linda’s on the phone. Mostly, he’s a pretty cool guy.
If you can read this, I’m full of rage
People with bumper stickers, regardless of message, are much more likely to interact aggressively with others on the road than those without. Turns out the stickers represent territoriality.
Verbal Abuse Vase, for Cindy
Have you ever felt the need to let rip with a stream of expletives, yells and screams, but not been able to as you’d piss-off your noise-sensitive neighbors? Well, with a little help from the Sakebi no Tsufu “Shouting Vase” you’d be able to make as much noise as you like—get it all out, dump all your stress—and still be pretty much inaudible to everyone else. The plastic device is basically a muffler for your yells, with internal baffles that suppress the sound you make. It’s available in Japan for around $48, and I wish it was buyable here: it would’ve been perfect when I jammed my thumb in a door yesterday and my wife was snoozing nearby.
(via marginal revolution)
Distracting Miss Daisy
And so I came to reflect on the mundane details of traffic-control policies in Great Britain and the United States. And I began to think that the American system of traffic control, with its many signs and stops, and with its specific rules tailored to every bend in the road, has had the unintended consequence of causing more accidents than it prevents. Paradoxically, almost every new sign put up in the U.S. probably makes drivers a little safer on the stretch of road it guards. But collectively, the forests of signs along American roadways, and the multitude of rules to look out for, are quite deadly.
I Am Going to Buy This Book
This has potential to be amazing.
With that simple question and an enormous white suggestion box, the New York City based collaborative Illegal Art canvassed the five boroughs, collecting suggestions from passersby of every stripe the young, the old, the filthy rich, the homeless, the mouthy, and the shy. “Love each other or perish.” “Take breath mints when offered.” “Give me a break!” In true New York style, the suggestions are by turns hilarious, nonsensical, angering, and heartwarming. Some people held the suggestion box prisoner while they wrote suggestion after suggestion; others ignored the box, but then came scrambling back with a sudden idea. One woman scribbled as she walked down Wall Street: “More time in the day.” One man in Harlem, when asked if he would like to make a suggestion, said, “Isn’t it obvious? World peace.” Or at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, a woman sadly wrote her misspelled suggestion and then held it up for all to read: “Never brake up with someone on a bridge.” With over 350 entries and 50 photos of the suggestion box in action, Suggestion is authentic, honest, and totally appealing a testiment to the the public’s innermost desire, whether it’s free beer, free daycare, or free pumpkin pie every Thursday.
(thx Leo)
no squirrel was harmed in the taking of these pictures
Metaphor as Synesthesia
Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran speculates a connection between synesthesia and metaphor.
The essence of art is, arguably, metaphor, and its practitioners are especially prolific — and metaphor is just a convenient shorthand for the connection of unlinked cognitive phenomena. That’s exactly what appears to happen in the minds of synesthetes. Far-flung parts of their brain have unusually high levels of cross-wiring.
from the awesome
Dunkin Donuts has pulled an ad that featured Rachael Ray in a scarf that Michelle Malkin said looked too much like a Middle Eastern keffiyeh and thus represented “the murderous Palestinian jihad“.
Fucking donut selling appeasers.
Dream
Last night I dreamed I was watching a a small plane writing with white smoke on a blue sky. What was it writing?
Fuck, man~how’s it going?
it’s only — a year — a-way!
Y’all. We’re a year away from clusterflockstock.
clusterflock wall of shame, Rick Neece, for Danny, 1987
I was once flipping channels on the TV late one night (actually, it might have been Danny flipping and I just wasn’t asleep yet). He happened across “Charlie Rose,” talking to a man I thought I recognized. “Go back.” I said. Charlie was talking to Harold Bloom who was talking about the “aesthetic” of literature. He said something like, “In the words of the divine Oscar Wilde, ‘all bad poetry is sincere.’ And if Maya Angelou’s poem, delivered on the inauguration of Bill Clinton, is any indication, Ms. Angelou’s poetry is most astonishingly sincere.”
So with that thought held in mind, here is my “sincere” offering. A poem I wrote Danny, in 1987, on the occasion of his 25th birthday:
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clusterflock wall of shame, Elizabeth Perry, Selected Works
Here are selected poems (from memory)
Written in third grade:
The sun is a candle shining bright
It fills our galaxy with all its light
The earth is a ball of land and sea
With room for homes for you and me.
In sixth grade, we studied haiku:
Perky young sparrow
Why are your feathers so dark?
Do you never wash?
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music changes wine’s taste
Add this to the growing list of studies on the subjectivity of the human mind and wine. Turns out, not only are people incapable of telling white wine from red, or the quality of wine based on price — even when it’s the same wine — now it has been found that the music you listen to while drinking the wine enhances the flavor.
The red was altered 25% by mellow and fresh music, yet 60% by powerful and heavy music. The results were put down to “cognitive priming theory”, where the music sets up the brain to respond to the wine in a certain way.
Video Highlights of the Marc Hauser, Errol Morris interview
Seed posted video of the Marc Hauser, Errol Morris interview I posted yesterday.