January 2010
Thousands of Haiti babies ‘could die from milk donations’ | News
Thousands of Haitian infants are at risk of illness and death because wellwishers are supplying the wrong food, world health chiefs warned today.
The main threat to infants aged up to six months is powdered baby milk mixed in unclean water, which can cause diarrhoea, dehydration and death.
Bottles and teats which cannot be...
American Indians in Children's Literature →
am bookmarking this because i should be working right now but i definitely want to come back to this later when i finally get from under this mountain of work…
War, Peace and the Role of Power in Sherif’s... →
fascinating on power, group dynamics, and how conflicts can end…
The Truth About Self-Deception | PsyBlog
This experiment is neat because it shows the different gradations of self-deception, all the way up to its purest form, in which people manage to trick themselves hook, line and sinker. At this level people think and act as though their incorrect belief is completely true, totally disregarding any incoming hints from reality.
So what this study suggests...
Why Thought Suppression is Counter-Productive | PsyBlog
According to this theory, here’s what happens when I want to stop a recurrent thought in its tracks: First I distract myself by intentionally thinking about something else. Secondly, and here comes the irony, my mind starts an unconscious monitoring process to check if I’m still thinking about the thing I’m not supposed to...
Stanley Milgram: Obedience to Authority Or Just Conformity? | PsyBlog
During the course of the experiment, each time the ‘learner’ made a mistake the participant was ordered to administer ever-increasing electrical shocks. Of course the learner kept making mistakes so the teacher (the poor participant) had to keep giving higher and higher electrical shocks, and hearing the resultant...
Why We Don’t Help Others: Bystander Apathy | PsyBlog
Whatever the status of this incident the facts of the study are well-known. Participants were invited into the lab under the pretext they were taking part in a discussion about ‘personal problems’ (Darley & Latane, 1968). Participants were talking to a number of unknown others, varying from just one up to four in each of the...
‘fundamental attribution error’. This is the aforementioned tendency to assume that other people’s behaviour reflects on their personality rather than on the situation they are in. Contrary to our instincts, however, studies such as this one demonstrate that it is frequently the situation that controls our actions more strongly than personality.
If you saw the trainee priest...
Daniel Gilbert and colleagues put these two theories head-to-head in a series of experiments to test whether understanding and belief operate together or whether belief (or disbelief) comes later (Gilbert et al., 1993).
In their classic social psychology experiment seventy-one participants read statements about two robberies then gave the robber a jail sentence. Some of the statements were...
How Other People’s Unspoken Expectations Control Us | PsyBlog
So to manipulate this, just before the conversation, along with biographical information about the person they were going to meet, the men were given a photograph. Half were shown a photograph of a woman who had been rated for attractiveness as an 8 out of 10 and half were given a photo of a woman rated as a 2 out of 10.
Then the men...
Jacob M. Appel: Medical Kidnapping: Rogue... →
“Anarcha was an African American slave woman. She was one of the seventy-five...”
– Anarcha The Mother of Gynocology
“This sentence contains a provocative statement that attracts the readers’...”
– This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post - Coyote Crossing
Power : The Frontal Cortex →
jadedhippy:
amandaw:
If you can read no more than two paragraphs today (ok, three, including this one?) let it be these:
abbyjean:
The Economist reviews an interesting new study that investigates the immorality of power:
The scientists argue that power is corrupting because it leads to moral hypocrisy. Although we almost always know what the right thing to do is power makes it easier to...
“But why stop at drug testing? Let’s make people prove they haven’t disobeyed any...”
– “drug testing as a means of preventing abuse of goverment funds” @ my private casbah (via oscillating) (via ihatethismess) (via apsies)
YES YES YES FUCK YES and I get angry for the same reason when people try to pull this shit with “illegals” too. Everybody who drives speeds, does that mean we...
Climate Change: Losing the Ineffable →
If we understand what the problem truly is, only then can we find solutions. Copenhagen failed, most especially it failed the people in this article. What now? How is climate change a spiritual problem and what can we do? Derrick Jensen offers two crucial differences between indigenous cultures that survived for thousands of years and Western culture: “If we want to stop this culture from...
“We value certain things in Western Society, and one of those things is How...”
– The Cult of Busy: Introductory Thoughts
“This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well....”
– Susan Polis Schutz (via justbesplendid)
“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for. ”
– Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird) (via justbesplendid)
on academia and activism
the thing is i know that a lot of academics are also activists and vice versa. thank god. there is that exchange. but to gloss over some of the real power differences between the titles does a serious disservice to finding a way to social justice and liberation.
i say this because a lot academics are not only activists but act as managers/gatekeepers in the activism world. actually i am...
“And when you are expecting something from that “subject”–whether it be...”
– flip flopping joy » Blog Archive » Dichotomy of humanity
“A WONDERFUL THING happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize...”
– Beyond Hope | Derrick Jensen | Derrick Jensen | Orion Magazine
“Everyone sounded eerily calm on the phone. No one was screaming. No one was...”
– Haiti, the earthquake, and my family : The New Yorker
“Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens...”
– Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction | CommonDreams.org
1 tag
formspring.me
Why blogging?
damn. that is the million dollar question, now isnt it…?
i mean i believe blogging has been amazing. as a writer i have loved it as a medium. and as a reader it has given me access to so many folks i would probably have never known they existed if it wasnt for the internet and the blogging interface.
i started blogging b/c i really wanted to connect with...
1 tag
formspring.me
what was the worst film you ever saw? what made it so triflin’?
i dont even remember the name. but it is officially the worst movie ever. about some lady getting married. it starts with: it is the dream of every woman ever since she was a little girl to have a wedding…it is the most impt day of her life…blah blah blah. the acting is insipid. the plot, what...