The Good News about Race in America

5/18/12. Interview with Abigail Thernstrom.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577369913528826798.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Are You Dead Yet?

5/17/12. Dr. Sally Satel reviews Dick Teresi's book: "The Undead: Organ Harvesting; The Ice-Water Test, Beating-Heart Cadavers - How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death."

http://www.tnr.com/print/book/review/undead-dick-teresi

Snapshots of Some Peer Reviewed Research in Psychology

5/17/12. A recent sample of research in psychology.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/05/inbrief.aspx

The Essence of Science Explained in 63 Seconds

5/17/12. Richard Feynman.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/17/152913171/the-essence-of-science-explained-in-63-seconds

Mental Illness-Comprehensive Evaluation or Checklist?

5/17/12. In the New England Journal of Medicine (May 17, 2012), psychiatrists Paul McHugh and Phillip Slavney trace the history of the DSM --- a revolution in psychiatric understanding gone wrong. We have a psychiatric classification system that consists of lists of symptoms for each of the many maladies of the mind --- a list of symptoms akin to a cookbook of ingredients with no recipes.

McHugh and Slavney describe causal families or perspectives of DSM diagnoses ---- diseases, personality dimensions, motivated behaviors, and life encounters ---  "distinctive ways of affecting mental life, to name them 'perspectives' and by that metaphor to emphasize how understanding a case from one causal viewpoint might blind the diagnostician to contributions from others."

In his new book "Psychology's Ghosts," distinguised Harvard child psychologist Jerome Kagan develops McHugh's and Slavney's "Perspectives" in his critique of the DSM-5 and suggestions for improving our treatment of the mentally ill.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMp1202555

For more background on "Perspectives," I recommend the following article by Paul McHugh:

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press/2001/august/McHugh.htm

On Bernard Lewis

5/14/12. Historian of the Islamic world.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304743704577380390207004120.html

Why Athletes Choke

5/14/12.

"...A fundamental paradox of human psychology is that thinking can be bad for us. When we follow our own thoughts too closely, we can lose our bearings, as our inner chatter drowns out common sense. A study of shopping behaviour found that the less information people were given about a brand of jam, the better the choice they made. When offered details of ingredients, they got befuddled by their options and ended up choosing a jam they didn’t like..."
http://moreintelligentlife.com/node/4463

Six Developmental Trajectories Characterize Children With Autism

5/14/12. In "Pediatrics," May 1, 2012.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/5/e1112.full

Can You Call a 9 Year Old a Psychopath?

5/13/12. Yes.

Can you change the behavior patterns and psychology of this 9 year old:  ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html?hpw

Diagnosing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in Psychiatry

5/13/12.

In the 1980 DSM and four revisions, we have lots of ingredients and no recipes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/opinion/break-up-the-psychiatric-monopoly.html?_r=1

11 Ways You Can Use Humor to Help Your Career

5/11/12.

http://www.onlinecollege.org/2012/05/09/11-ways-you-can-use-humor-to-help-your-career/

Psychiatry's "Bible" Gets an Overhaul

5/10/12. A cookbook with symptoms --- and no biological etiologies.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=redefining-mental-illness

Earned Success and Learned Helplessness

5/9/12. Too many fall into the well of learned helplessness.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304749904577385650652966894.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Advice to 2012 Graduates: Tone Down Egos and Shape Up Minds

5/8/12. From Bret Stephens.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577389750993890854.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The other war on poverty: Finding meaning in America

5/6/12. Leon Kass, M.D.

http://www.aei.org/speech/society-and-culture/free-enterprise/the-other-war-on-poverty-finding-meaning-in-america/

Monday Quotation

5/7/12.

"Play your role with passion, even if you suspect that it is expendable, and allow the compassion you had as a child to balance the urge to always maximize the self."

Last line in "Psychology's Ghosts: The Crisis in the Profession and the Way Back," by Jerome Kagan. 

My Way on the Highway

5/6/12. Joseph Epstein reviews Paul Ingrassia's "Engines of Change."


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577367902695345414.html?KEYWORDS=joseph+Epstein+on+cars

What Accounts for the Artistic Fertility of Cultures?

5/6/12. Charles Murray unleashes his mighty mind and historical studies of human accomplishment on this complex question.

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Future-tense--IX--Out-of-the-wilderness-7357

An Interview with Biologist E.O. Wilson

5/3/12. On altruism and the new enlightenment.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2012/04/e_o_wilson_on_altruism_and_the_new_enlightenment.single.html

The Brain. It Makes You Think. Doesn't It?

5/2/12. David Eagleman and Raymond Tallis, neuroscientists both, offer their views.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/29/neuroscience-david-eagleman-raymond-tallis

10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You

4/29/12.  Listen up.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577366332400453796.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Book Review: "Why America is Still the Best Hope"

4/29/12. Dennis Prager on Dennis Prager.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/296824/why-america-istill-best-hopei-dennis-prager

Book Review; "no matter what...they'll call this book racist. how our fear of talking honestly about race hurts us all."

4/28/12. Thomas Sowell reviews Harry Stein's profiles in courage on race.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/04/28/who_is_racist_part_ii_113993.html

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

4/26/12. Eight experts discuss these great writers.


http://www.themillions.com/2012/04/tolstoy-or-dostoevsky-8-experts-on-whos-greater.html

Jerome Kagan: "Psychology's Ghosts"

4/26/12. Carol Tavris reviews Jerome Kagan's new book.

Carol Tavris:

"In his long and distinguished career, Jerome Kagan, now emeritus professor of psychology at Harvard, has written numerous books for general audiences on major discoveries and controversies in his field, particularly in his specialty of child development. In works such as "Three Seductive Ideas" (1998), he developed a style of discussing three or four different topics in a series of essays, interweaving each with data and observations across psychology, history and culture, and tying them together with an overarching theme. Or not..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304537904577277760260276148.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?

4/24/12.


http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/

25 Facts to Share at Your School during Sexual Assault Awareness Month

4/24/12. More victims of sexual assault need to stand-up for themselves and accept available help.

http://www.bachelorsdegreeonline.com/blog/2012/25-facts-to-share-at-your-school-during-sexual-assault-awareness-month/

The Creative Monopoly

4/24/12. David Brooks on creativity, competition, capitalism, and monopoly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/opinion/brooks-the-creative-monopoly.html?_r=1&hp

Rethinking the War on Drugs

4/23/12. We have lost the long war on drugs. Calls for legalization are not the answer.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303425504577353754196169014.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

The Secret Service Secret: "Once I Had A Secret Love"

4/23/12.

Truth always trumps fiction.

The Secret Service scandel reminds me of the 1953 song, "Secret Love," first performed by Doris Day.
Groucho Marx said he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.

"Once I had a secret love...
...And my secret love's no secret anymore."

90 Quotes from Thomas Sowell

4/19/12. Wisdom ---

"The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department."

"The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers."

 

http://www.great-quotes.com/quotes/author/Thomas/Sowell

America's Crisis of Character

4/19/20.

Peggy Noonan of the WSJ:

"People in politics talk about the right track/wrong track numbers as an indicator of public mood. This week Gallup had a poll showing only 24% of Americans feel we're on the right track as a nation. That's a historic low. Political professionals tend, understandably, to think it's all about the economy—unemployment, foreclosures, we're going in the wrong direction. I've long thought that public dissatisfaction is about more than the economy, that it's also about our culture, or rather the flat, brute, highly sexualized thing we call our culture..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303513404577354221282508372.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

In 1984, Charles Murray wrote that America was "Losing Ground." During the 1990's, President Clinton and his team reformed the welfare system based in large part on Murray's findings about how much ground we lost.  In 2012, Charles Murray wrote that "America is Coming Apart," --- focused only on white America. I hope the next President and his team find ways to  promote social policies that mitigate and reverse the high rates of divorce, out-of-wedlock births, single parents, fatherless families, the increase in perpetual adolescents, and erosion of educational excellence mixed with low expectations for growing up to earn a living, instead of being entitled to be taken care of by the government..--- S. Ceresnie

More Puns

4/19.12.

I changed my iPod's name to Titanic. It's syncing now.

When chemists die, they barium.

Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.

I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time.

How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I'd never met herbivore.

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can't put it down.

I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

They told me I had type-A blood, but it was a Type-O.

Why were the Indians here first? They had reservations.

We’re going on a class trip to the Coca-Cola factory. I hope there's no pop quiz.

I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.

Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils?

Broken pencils are pointless.

I tried to catch some fog, but I mist.

What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.

England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.

I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.

I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.

I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.

Haunted French pancakes give me the crêpes.

Velcro ­ what a rip off!

A cartoonist was found dead in his home. Details are sketchy.

Venison for dinner again? Oh deer!

The earthquake in Washington obviously was the government's fault.

Be kind to your dentist. He has fillings, too.

Catastrophic Thinking is On the Rise

4/19/12.

Predictions of the end of the world...and the end of the world...and the end of the world - never stop.

In 1964, for example, social psychologists Leon Festinger, Henry W. Reiker, and Stanley Schacter published, "When Prophecy Fails:  A Social Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World."

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_2_apocalyptic-daze.html

Alternative Medicine is Becoming Mainstream

4/16/12. Evidenced based medicine is not the holy grail of treatment. Evidence for etiology, diagnosis, treatments, and course of illness must be evaluated by professionals with their good judgment and clinical experience. What is good practice for one patient may not be good practice for another.

(see Dr. Jerome Groopman's et al. article on the paternalism of best practices: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577311641531125820.html?KEYWORDS=groopman )

Alternative medicine fills strong patient needs --- to be acknowledged, listened to, and understood. Some alternative medicine treatments are placebos, some are dangerous, some strange, others funny.

An example. Many years ago I evaluated an 8 year old boy who was doing poorly in school. After a work-up, ruling out anxiety, depression, and learning disabilities, I found that this youngster fit the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. As part of treatment, I recommended the parents consult their child's physician to consider pharmacotherapy. The child's mother objected to my recommendation to consider a carefully monitored trial of medication to treat her son's ADHD and took her son to an M.D. holistic doctor. Several months later, the parents returned and when I asked what the holistic doctor recommended they said, "First the doctor put our son on a very strict diet - so strict it was impossible to follow. When the diet didn't work, the doctor recommended caffeine suppositories for our son --- that's when we decided to come back to you."

The child's schoolwork and self-esteem improved with medication,  psychological education and psychology therapy for the child.

Be careful choosing alternative medicine  - without getting a second opinion. It is good to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out.

http://www.economist.com/node/21552554

MONDAY QUOTATIONS

4/16/12.

"Don't be afraid when you have no other choice."

--- Yiddish proverb


"The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible."

--- David Olgivy


"I intend to live forever. So far, so good."

--- Steven Wright


"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they were never going to be born."

--- Richard Dawkins


"Capitalism is in trouble because of its belief that everyone can take care of himself. It does not know how to help those who cannot help themselves. On the other hand, socialism is in trouble because it believes that no one can take care of himself.'

--- Eric Hoffer


"The thought of death has now become a part of my life. I read the obituaries every day just for the satisfaction of not seeing my name there."

--- Neil Simon


'I don't want to achieve immortality through my work...I want to achieve immortality though  not dying'

--- Woody Allen

Best and Worst Jobs 2012

4/12/12.

Psychologist is 41.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303772904577336230132805276.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Book Review: Death

4/10/12.


"I intend to live forever. So far, so good."

--- Steven Wright


Andrew Stark reviews Shelley Kagan's "Death:"

"The relationship between a person and his death, said the Greek thinker Epicurus, is a strange one. It is roughly akin, if we may leap forward a couple of millennia, to the relationship between Superman and Clark Kent. Whenever one is present, the other is nowhere to be seen. As long as a person is alive, his death has not yet happened. And of course once his death occurs, he is no longer around. Since no one will ever encounter his own demise, Epicurus concluded, it should cause him no concern.

Shelly Kagan's "Death" furnishes a lucid guide to a range of philosophical claims of this sort, such as whether we can know what it's like to be dead or why life is valuable in the first place..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577322122867587912.html?KEYWORDS=book+review+on+death


"Either the man is dead or my watched stopped."

--- Groucho Marx

"I rich people could other hire other people to die for them, the poor would make a good living."

--- Yiddish saying

Psychology and Ideology: Nature, Nurture, and Politics

4/10/12.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt:

"There is one difference, however, that is widening into a chasm and threatening to split the nation into two dysfunctional halves: left vs. right. Voters themselves have spread out only a bit in the last 10 years: Gallup reports a decline in the number of people calling themselves centrists or moderates (from 40 percent in 2000 to 36 percent in 2011), a slight rise in the number of conservatives (from 38 percent to 41 percent), and a slight rise in the number of liberals (from 19 percent to 21 percent).
But the political class, the political parties, and the media have completely changed their game since the 1980s. Politics used to be hardball: very competitive, but at the end of the day, Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill could meet for a drink and a private conversation. Congressmen and senators had the sense that they all belonged to a grand institution. They had enough in common, and enough friends across the aisle, that they could work together on solving the nation’s biggest challenges, from facing down the Soviets to dismantling Jim Crow.

Not any more. Now it’s cage-match wrestling, and there is a lot more blood. As long-serving former congressman Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) put it in September, “This is not a collegial body any more. It is more like gang behavior. Members walk into the chamber full of hatred.”

What is going on here? Part of the answer will come from historians who can trace out the events of recent decades and their effects on our political institutions. But part of the answer must come from psychology. In the last 10 years we psychologists have discovered a great deal about the origins of ideology and why ideology makes it so hard for people to understand, respect, and accept each other. This research partly confirms what Gilbert and Sullivan said in the light opera Iolanthe: “Nature always does contrive / That every boy and every gal / That’s born into the world alive / Is either a little Liberal / Or else a little Conservative!” But the story is more interesting than that..."

http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/10/born-this-way/singlepage

Medical Hypnosis: Getting Healthy

4/10/12.

"...Indeed, scientific evidence is mounting that hypnosis can be effective in a variety of medical situations, from easing migraine headaches to lowering blood pressure, controlling asthma attacks, minimizing hot flashes and diminishing side effects from chemotherapy..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577333751488988824.html?KEYWORDS=hypnosis

Random Thoughts

4/10/12.

Thomas Sowell:

"...People who believe in evolution in biology often believe in creationism in government. In other words, they believe that the universe and all the creatures in it could have evolved spontaneously, but that the economy is too complicated to operate without being directed by politicians..."

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell041012.php3

Growing Out of Poverty

4/9/12. Not all the news is bad.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0409gs.html

Evolution Revolution

4/8/12.

Michael Gazzaniga on E.O. Wilson:

"At a certain point in their careers, great jazz musicians are almost bound to disappoint their fans. Think of John Coltrane venturing into free jazz in the late 1960s or Miles Davis going electric a few years later. The vision that made them great the first time pushes them into new territory, and the magnitude of their early accomplishments—and the number of admirers they have attracted—makes their public's sense of betrayal all the more bitter. All they can do is keep playing, undaunted by the dissent..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577311553569846904.html

A universe without purpose

4/7/12.

Lawrence M. Krauss:

"...As a cosmologist, a scientist who studies the origin and evolution of the universe, I am painfully aware that our illusions nonetheless reflect a deep human need to assume that the existence of the Earth, of life and of the universe and the laws that govern it require something more profound. For many, to live in a universe that may have no purpose, and no creator, is unthinkable..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-krauss-cosmology-design-universe-20120401,0,4136597.story

Backup Health-Care Plan

4/6/12. Yes. It has come to this.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/backup-health-care-plan-involves-nation-sharing-on,27847/

The Supreme Court Lands in Oz

4/5/12
Daniel Henninger:

'I am confident," announced the president of the United States, "that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." And so it was on Monday that Barack Obama, anticipating a loss before the Supreme Court, added the third branch of government to the list of villains he will run against in his re-election campaign..."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303299604577323802316101544.html

From Neuroses to Neurons

4/4/12. Dr. Raymond Tallis reviews Dr. Eric Kandel's book, "The Age of Insight."

Dr. Tallis:

"Eric Kandel's ambition in "The Age of Insight" is admirable: to narrow the gaps between science and the arts. And he would seem uniquely qualified. Besides having a deep knowledge of art, he won a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his exquisite work on the neural basis of memory. "The Age of Insight" starts well, with a lively account of intellectual circles in Vienna at the turn of the last century. When he leaves this milieu, however, his attempts to connect aesthetics with neuroscience are disappointing
..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304023504577319903439493784.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

The New Genetics of Autism

4/4/12.  From The National Institute of Mental Health. The more we learn about genetics of a psychiatric disorder the more we learn about how important the environment is.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2012/the-new-genetics-of-autism-why-environment-matters.shtml?utm_source=govdelivery&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govdelivery

In the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/health/research/scientists-link-rare-gene-mutations-to-heightened-risk-of-autism.html?_r=1&hp

What to do After Obamacare

4/3/12. Uncommon common sense on insurance, medical care, and affordability.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577313250871503904.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

A Brief Therapy Heals Trauma in Children

4/3/12.

Jane Brody:

"Every year millions of children from all walks of life become victims of, or witnesses to, abusive or violent events that can result in long-lasting symptoms of distress. The events can range from sexual and physical abuse to involvement in a natural disaster, fire or serious motor vehicle accident..."
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/a-brief-therapy-helps-heal-trauma-in-children/

Puns for Everyone

4/12/12.

http://thewritersquotes.com/for-lexophiles/

Stop Panicking about Bullies

4/1/12.

Nick Gillespie:

"...But is America really in the midst of a "bullying crisis," as so many now claim? I don't see it. I also suspect that our fears about the ubiquity of bullying are just the latest in a long line of well-intentioned yet hyperbolic alarms about how awful it is to be a kid today..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577311664105746848.html?mod=e2tw

Rise of Medical Expertocracy

3/31/12.

Drs. Pamela Hartzband and Jerome Groopman:

"Should everyone take vitamin D, and if so, how much? At what age and how often should a woman have a mammogram? Should a healthy man be screened for prostate cancer, and if cancer is diagnosed, how should he be treated?..."

"...For patients and experts alike, there is a subjective core to every medical decision. The truth is that, despite many advances, much of medicine still exists in a gray zone where there is not one right answer. No one can say with certainty who will benefit by taking a certain drug and who will not. Nor can we say with certainty what impact a medical condition will have on someone's life or how they might experience a treatment's side effects. The path to maintaining or regaining health is not the same for everyone; our preferences really do matter..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577311641531125820.html?KEYWORDS=groopman

The World's Leading Laugh Scientist

3/30/12. No joke.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/121946

Documentary on Bullying

3/30/12.

Joe Morgenstern:

"Bully" doesn't dwell on the bullies themselves. That's fair enough; we know what they do and, at least in a general sense, why they do it. The subjects of this valuable documentary are the bullied, those who suffer cruel and all-too-usual punishment in our middle schools and high schools for being different and defenseless. One of them, a 16-year-old girl named Kelby, offers a different way of looking at rain. "The world," she says, "has taken in so much sadness that it can't hold it anymore." Watching the film may cause scattered showers in the region of the eyes, but it should also provoke dismay with a succession of school administrators who respond to the problem of bullying by denying it, sidestepping it or shrugging it off with an attitude that a grief-stricken father in rural Georgia characterizes as "kids will be kids, boys will be boys, they're just cruel at this age."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577311351616032244.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopBucket

Brain Wiring - a No-Brainer

3/29/12. Research report from the National Institute of Mental Health.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2012/brain-wiring-a-no-brainer.shtml?utm_source=govdelivery&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govdelivery

The Trayvon Martin Tragedies

3/28/12.

Juan Williams:

"The shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida has sparked national outrage, with civil rights leaders from San Francisco to Baltimore leading protests calling for a new investigation and the arrest of the shooter.

But what about all the other young black murder victims? Nationally, nearly half of all murder victims are black. And the overwhelming majority of those black people are killed by other black people. Where is the march for them?..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577307613183789698.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

Back to the Future

3/27/12.

Thomas Sowell:

"When a 1942 Supreme Court decision that most people never heard of makes the front page of the New York Times in 2012, you know that something unusual is going on.
What makes that 1942 case -- Wickard v. Filburn -- important today is that it stretched the federal government's power so far that the Obama administration is using it as an argument to claim before today's Supreme Court that it has the legal authority to impose ObamaCare mandates on individuals.

"Roscoe Filburn was an Ohio farmer who grew some wheat to feed his family and some farm animals. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture fined him for growing more wheat than he was allowed to grow under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which was passed under Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce..."
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/03/27/back_to_the_future_113627.html

The Brain on Love

3/26/12.

Diane Ackerman:

"A RELATIVELY new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you..."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/the-brain-on-love/

Obamacare and the Constitution

3/26/12. Richard A. Epstein, a Professor of Law at New York University Law School, describes how the individual mandate unravels the core of the health-care law.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/112101

Why Won't They Listen?

3/26/12. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt offers a corrective intellectual and emotional experience for our conflicts of visions expressed in liberal and conservative politics.

Some say a liberal is a conservative who has been mugged by reality. Others observe that a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.html?_r=2&nl=books&emc=edit_bk_20120323&pagewanted=all

The Tradgedy of Trayvon Martin

3/26/12. Heather MacDonald puts this tradgedy in perspective.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/294357/why-manipulate-tragedy-trayvon-martin-heather-mac-donald

Between 'Jersey Shore' and Rick Santorum

3/25/12.

Kay Mymowitz,

"...How do you explain a country that makes an unabashed Catholic social conservative a leading presidential candidate while devouring a reality show about the smuttiest bumping and grinding ever to hit prime time?..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304724404577299424128682402.html?KEYWORDS=hymowitz

Are Straight People Born that Way?

3/24/12.

"Time for a thought experiment: Are straight people born that way? When I put the question to a number of sexology colleagues, they thought it a good question -- indeed, a hard question..."
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/are-straight-people-born-that-way/254592/

The Five Best Books: Psychological Mysteries

3/23/12.

Jane Harris:

1. Pale Fire

By Vladimir Nabokov (1962)

'A Jack-in-the-box, a Fabergé gem, a clockwork toy, a chess problem . . . an infernal machine . . . a cat-and-mouse game." Thus, upon its publication in 1962, one critic described this extraordinary novel. "Pale Fire" is all this and more: both a satire and a mystery; a daunting intellectual challenge but one that has many rewards for Nabokov fans, not least the satisfaction of his gorgeous prose and the way that this book turns us all into detectives. The novel presents a long poem by recently murdered American poet John Shade, with a commentary written by Shade's friend Charles Kinbote, an academic from a country named Zembla. Kinbote claims to have been entrusted with preparing the dead poet's manuscript for publication. But how reliable a narrator is he?...

2.
3.
4.
5.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203358704577235631790801346.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Joseph Epstein: Old Age and Other Laughs

3/22/12.

Joseph Epstein:

"I recently bought something called catastrophic health insurance for my college-student granddaughter—a policy that has a high deductible but is in place lest, God forfend, she needs to undergo a lengthy and expensive hospital stay. The insurance agent who sold it to me is a man named Jack Gross, whom I occasionally see walking around the streets of my neighborhood and who always greets me, often with a new joke. Being an insurance salesman and having me there in his office, Jack couldn’t resist asking me if my wife and I have assisted-living insurance, a policy designed for older people that pays for caregivers (or minders, as the English, more precisely, call them), thus allowing those suffering from dementia or other devastating conditions to avoid nursing homes. Assisted-living insurance is very expensive, especially if one first acquires it in one’s 70s, the decade my wife and I are now in.
“
Thanks all the same, Jack, but we have no need for assisted-living insurance,” I said. “We have pistols.”

“Great,” he replied, nicely on beat. “I just hope when the time comes to use them you are able to find them.”

The problem with that amusing response is that it has an uncomfortably high truth content..."

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/old-age-and-other-laughs/

Advice from Einstein

3/22/12.

On life's highest ideals:

[E]verybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavors and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/einstein-on-kindness-our-shared-existence-and-lifes-highest-ideals/254768/

How Does the Brain Secrete Morality?

3/22/12.

Ronald Bailey:

“The brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile,” asserted 18th century French physiologist Pierre Cabanis. Last week, the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies convened a conference of neuroscientists and philosophers to ponder how our brains secrete thoughts about ethics and morality. The first presenter was neuroeconomist Gregory Berns from Emory University whose work peers into brains to see in which creases of gray matter those values we hold sacred lodge. The study, “The Price of Your Soul: neural evidence for the non-utilitarian representation of sacred values,” was just published in thePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/03/21/how-does-the-brain-secrete-morality/singlepage

TED

3/22/12. A Web site of dazzling enertaintment, state of the art knowledge. and fascinating stories and ingenius information that may change your life.

Noel Bairey Merz: The single biggest health threat women face

Myshkin Ingawale: A blood test without bleeding

T. Boone Pickens: Let's transform energy -- with natural gas

Mark Raymond: Victims of the city

Scott Summit: Beautiful artificial limbs

Brené Brown: Listening to shame

Rob Reid: The $8 billion iPod

Jonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence

How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries

Deep ocean mysteries and wonders

Questions no one knows the answers to

The cockroach beatbox

Larry Smith: Why you will fail to have a great career

Kelli Anderson: Design to challenge reality

A TED speaker's worst nightmare

Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a better government

 

http://www.ted.com/

The Family Meal and The Good Life

3/21/12. World famous expert on positive psychology, Professor Christopher Pedersen discusses what would a positive psychologist recommend for the family meal and good parenting.

Professor Chistopher Pedersen:

"I recently prepared a lecture on parenting from a positive psychology perspective. Although psychologists have had much to say about parenting, often the focus has been on eliminating undesirable actions on the part of kids, like talking back, tantrums, and tattling. These behaviors are of course annoying, but what about encouraging desirable actions? A depressed child after all seems well-behaved, if by that we mean one who causes no hassles, at least in the short run. But parents want their children to be more than moribund. They want them to be happy and socially engaged, animated and motivated, accomplished and of course kind and decent. What does psychology have to say about the positive in children?.."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-good-life/201203/the-family-meal

10 of the Most Surprising Findings from Psychological Studies

3/22/12.

Psychology has a reputation for being the science of common sense, or a field that simply confirms things we already know about ourselves.
One way of battling this misconception, explains Jeremy Dean — a PhD candidate in psychology and master of ceremonies at the always-awesome PsyBlog — is to "think about all the unexpected, surprising, and just plain weird findings that have popped out of psychology studies over the years." Here are ten of his favorite examples.

http://io9.com/5894500/10-of-the-most-surprising-findings-from-psychological-studies

Brian Lamb's America

3/20/12.

David Brooks:

The quintessential C-SPAN moment came during a Booknotes program in 1991, while host Brian Lamb was interviewing Martin Gilbert, the author of a biography of Winston Churchill. Gilbert was talking about the interplay between private scandal and public life when the following exchange took place:

GILBERT: When Churchill was 20 and a young soldier, he was accused of buggery, and, you know, that's, you know, a terrible accusation. Well, he ended up prime minister for just quite a long time.

LAMB: Why was he accused of buggery and what is it?

GILBERT: You don't know what buggery is?

LAMB: Define it, please.

GILBERT: Oh dear. Well, I -- I'm sorry. I thought the word we -- buggery is what used to be called a -- the -- an unnatural act of the Oscar Wilde type is how it was actually phrased in the euphemism of the British papers. It's -- you don't know what buggery is?

Over the twenty years that C-SPAN has been in existence, its founder Brian Lamb and his colleagues have pioneered a distinct interviewing style. The questions are flat, short, and direct. And they are centered around facts. The guests might be longwinded or erudite or both, but usually what sets them off is some six-word question about a specific fact. You get the impression that if Brian Lamb were called in to interview Jesus the first questions out of his mouth would be: "It's said you fed the multitudes with loaves and fish. What kind of fish was that? How many people does it take to make up a multitude?",,,

 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/010/645fudii.asp

Gladys Knight

3/20/12.

I watched Gladys Knight on "Dancing with the Stars" last evening. She was terrific.

I wonder if she ever had a Pip replacement.

When the Good Do Bad

3/20/12.

David Brooks:

"It’s always interesting to read the quotations of people who knew a mass murderer before he killed. They usually express complete bafflement that a person who seemed so kind and normal could do something so horrific..."       

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/opinion/brooks-when-the-good-do-bad.html?_r=1&hp

The Web's Cockeyed Cupids

3/18/12.

A good marriage, a wise teacher said, is made in the unconscious.

 Jonah Lehrer on the false premises of Internet dating.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304537904577277830191481536.html?KEYWORDS=lehrer

Eric Kandel's Visions

3/15/12.

"...In the 1960s, Kandel found clinical psychiatry, his initial calling, to be insufficiently empirical and turned his back on it. In what he later called "the most difficult career decision of my life," he turned down the chairmanship of the Harvard Medical School psychiatry department for the pleasures of working with the sea snail Aplysia, a move that even some of his fellow neuroscientists found alarming, given their focus on the vertebrate brain. His key findings on the snail, for which he shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, showed that learning and memory change not the neuron's basic structure but rather the nature, strength, and number of its synaptic connections. Further, through focus on the molecular biology involved in a learned reflex like Aplysia's gill retraction, Kandel demonstrated that experience alters nerve cells' synapses by changing their pattern of gene expression. In other words, learning doesn't change what neurons are, but rather what they do..."

http://chronicle.com/article/Eric-Kandels-Visions/131095/

James Q. Wilson: A Gentleman and a Scholar

3/14/12. Christopher DeMuth, a lawyer, is a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. He was the President of the American Enterprise Institute from 1986 to 2008. Mr. DeMuth gives an intellectual tour of the life and times of his friend and mentor, James Q. Wilson.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/gentleman-and-scholar_633415.html

Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck

3/14/12. To write clearly, you must think clearly.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/12/john-steinbeck-six-tips-on-writing/

The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank

3/14/12. Such characters - such geniuses ----

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-letters-of-sigmund-freud-and-otto-rank/2012/03/05/gIQA1PbpxR_print.html

The Big Hoax

3/13/12. 

Thomas Sowell:

"There have been many frauds of historic proportions -- for example, the financial pyramid scheme for which Charles Ponzi was sent to prison in the 1920s, and for which Franklin D. Roosevelt was praised in the 1930s, when he called it Social Security. In our own times, Bernie Madoff's hoax has made headlines.

"But the biggest hoax of the past two generations is still going strong -- namely, the hoax that statistical differences in outcomes for different groups are due to the way other people treat those groups..."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/03/13/the_big_hoax_113456.html

Open Culture

3/12/12. An interesting Web site.

http://www.openculture.com/

How To Be Creative

3/11/12,

Jonah Leher:

"...But creativity is not magic, and there's no such thing as a creative type. Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It's a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it. New research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing products and to solve the toughest problems. A surprisingly concrete set of lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves and our work..."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577265632205015846.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_6

What About the Kids Who Behave?

3/11/12. The liberal racism of low expectations and no responsbility.

By JASON L. RILEY
The Obama administration is waving around a new study showing that black school kids are "suspended, expelled, and arrested in school" at higher rates than white kids. According to the report, which looked at 72,000 schools, black students comprise just 18% of those enrolled yet account for 46% of those suspended more than once and 39% of all expulsions.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the administration is "not alleging overt discrimination in some or all of these cases," but that's certainly what he's implying when he bleats on about the "fundamental unfairness" of the situation. "The undeniable truth," said Mr. Duncan in a press call this week, "is that the everyday education experience for too many students of color violates the principle of equity at the heart of the American promise." Of course, if racial animus toward blacks explains higher black discipline rates, what explains the fact that white kids are disciplined at higher rates than Asian kids? Is the school system anti-white, too?...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204603004577271422640770022.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Changing Your Emotional Style

3/7/12. The research of psychologist Richard Davidson:

http://www.theemotionmachine.com/changing-your-emotional-style

Why 'Ritalin Gone Wrong' is Wrong

3/7/12. The psychiatrist author is right.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-harold-koplewicz/ritalin-gone-wrong_b_1244935.html

What Drives a Prostitute?

3/8/12. Results of a study in Denmark.

http://sciencenordic.com/what-drives-prostitute

Narrowing the New Class Divide

3/8/12. Charles Murray, author of "Coming Apart," offers some ideas about coming together.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/opinion/reforms-for-the-new-upper-class.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

Joseph Epstein: "Old Age and Other Laughs. Am I Losing It?"

3/7/12.

Joseph Epstein has written a brilliant article on getting old (Commentary," March 2012).

Mr. Epstein ends his article:

"...At 75, I feel I am playing with house money - the rest of my life, as people used to say before the worry with cholesterol set in, is gravy. Lovely it would be to stay in the game for another 10 years or so, and I hope I am able to do so. But if some bright young oncologist or grave neurologist informs me that the time has come for me to cease flossing, I shall be mightily disappointed but scarcely shocked or even much surprised. On such occasion I hope to retain the calm to count my blessings, which in my case have not been few. Among them will be that I have lived in freedom during a time of unprecedented prosperity, been allowed to do work of my own choosing that has been appreciated and decently rewarded, while never having been called upon to betray my friends or my ideals. Another blessing has been that thus far I have dodged the land mines, the flying darts, and the machine gunner, and arrived at old age..."

Amen

(n.b. see 3/22/12 post for the entire article)

Another Child is Dead

3/7/12. The horror of child abuse.

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120304/OPINION03/120229486/-1/opinion?p=1&tc=pg

The Rediscovery of Character

3/6/12. David Brooks on James Q. Wilson

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/opinion/brooks-the-rediscovery-of-character.html?_r=1&hpw

James Q. Wilson (1931 - 2012)

3/6/12. Thomas Sowell writes:

"There are undoubtedly many people who are alive today because of James Q. Wilson, who died last week. He was not a doctor or medical scientist, nor was he a fireman or coast guardsman who rescued people from immediate dangers.

James Q. Wilson was a scholar who studied crime. He saved lives because his penetrating analyses of crime, and the effect of the criminal law, debunked the theories of other intellectuals, which had led judges and legislators to ease up on criminals -- leading in turn to skyrocketing rates of crime, including murder..."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/03/06/james_q_wilson_1931-2012_113376.html

A Quest to Understand How Memory Works

3/5/12.

INSIDE THE MIND Dr. Eric R. Kandel at Columbia University Medical Center

"...As a student at Harvard in the 1950s, you aspired to be a psychoanalyst. Was this because of your Viennese background?

In part I was drawn to it because it promised much. In the 1950s and early 1960s, psychoanalysis swept through the intellectual community, and it was the dominant mode of thinking about the mind. People felt that this was a completely new set of insights into human motivation and that its therapeutic potential was significant. It was seen as the treatment that solved everything in the world, from schizophrenia to ingrown toenails. It’s amazing how it was oversold. When this turned out to be more hope than reality, things flipped in the other direction. In my case, I didn’t pursue it because I fell in love with research.

Did this overselling discredit psychoanalysis?

I think so. And it’s a shame. There are many fantastically interesting components to it that are worthwhile. The problem of psychoanalysis is not the body of theory that Freud left behind, but the fact that it never became a medical science. It never tried to test its ideas. When you asked, “How come there are not outcome studies?” you were told, “You can’t study this. How are you going to measure it?”

In fact, there were questions it was possible to ask. For instance, under what circumstances does psychoanalysis work better than a placebo? Does it work better than other kinds of therapy? Who are the best therapists for what kinds of patients..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/science/a-quest-to-understand-how-memory-works.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all

Teller Reveals His Secrets

3/5/12. Some mysteries of magic - revealed.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-His-Secrets.html?c=y&story=fullstory

William Zinsser

3/4/12. The Friday writings of William Zinsser in the "American Scholar." Treat yourself to one of the best.

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-complete-zinsser-on-friday/

Book Review: "How We Age"

3/4/12.

Review - How We Age
A Doctor's Journey into the Heart of Growing Old
by Marc Agronin
Da Capo, 2010
Review by Nassir Ghaemi, MD MPH
Feb 21st 2012 (Volume 16, Issue 8)

Any man or woman in his or her mid forties, like Marc Agronin and me, will have many questions about old age. One's grandparents go, then one's aunts and uncles, and then there are one's parents. Even some friends, the same age or younger as a middle-aged proband, go. If you live through your youth, which is full of questions, you reach the middle of life, where even more questions arise. When does it ever end? What is it like to be old? And then what?

Agronin has a special perspective: he is both a middle-aged, red-blooded American male. And he is a geriatric psychiatrist. He asks these questions in his professional, as well as his personal, time.

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6423&cn=139

James Q. Wilson. "Angry about inequality? Don't blame the rich."

3/4/12. James Q. Wilson ---- a recent article from an intellectual giant.

"...Making the poor more economically mobile has nothing to do with taxing the rich and everything to do with finding and implementing ways to encourage parental marriage, teach the poor marketable skills and induce them to join the legitimate workforce. It is easy to suppose that raising taxes on the rich would provide more money to help the poor. But the problem facing the poor is not too little money, but too few skills and opportunities to advance themselves..."

http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/poverty/angry-about-inequality-dont-blame-the-rich/

James Q. Wilson. The Moral Sense

3/4/12.

Roger Kimball on Professor Wilson's book,  "The Moral Sense:"

We must be careful of what we think we are, because we may become that.
—James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense

 

"Wilson, whose previous books include Thinking about Crime, Bureaucracy, and other works concerned with public policy, writes about morality as a public fact. The language of virtue and morality has had a tough time lately. 'Our reluctance to speak of morality,' he notes, 'and our suspicion, nurtured by our best minds, that we cannot ‘prove’ our moral principles has amputated our public discourse at the knees.' Consequently, part of his purpose in this book is 'to help people recover the confidence with which they once spoke about virtue and morality.' It is not, he writes,

an effort to state or justify moral rules; that is, it is not a book of philosophy. Rather, it is an effort to clarify what ordinary people mean when they speak of their moral feelings and to explain, in so far as one can, the origins of those feelings.

 

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/03/03/james-q-wilson-1931-2012/

James Q. Wilson. Man of Reason

3/4/12.

Heather MacDonald:

"...Wilson’s Public Interest article set the pattern for his intellectual career. Over the next 45 years, Wilson would continue patiently to point out when the emperor had no clothes, to exercise skepticism toward conventional wisdom, and to derive his ground-breaking insights from a close attention to the facts on the ground..."

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0304hm.html

The Evidence on E.M.D.R.

3/3/12.

http://consults.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/the-evidence-on-e-m-d-r/?src=rechp

James Q. Wilson RIP

3/2/12. There is so much to learn from Professor Wilson. - a lived life.

http://www.artsandlettersdaily.com/

http://www.city-journal.org/

http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/harvey-mansfield

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0304hm.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/nyregion/james-q-wilson-dies-at-80-originated-broken-windows-policing-strategy.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203986604577257441657700290.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203986604577257520312428352.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2012/03/james-wilson-the-architect-the-broken-window-community-policing-strategy-died-today-was/pEBmati6hZOyMd1H3tMlDI/index.html


Type James Q. Wilson into the search window of my blog --- and find nine of his recent articles.