All forms of birth control are immoral, according to many Christian conservatives. We’ve previously written about this absurd position here and here. The Chicago Tribune recently reported on a formal conservative effort to prohibit all forms of birth control: Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement's success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal…
"Macaca," that is. Salon.com is reporting that Sen. George Allen is denying the claims in a separate Salon article by three of Allen’s former football teammates that Allen used a racial epithet and demonstrated racist behavior during college. Within hours of Allen's denial, though, two additional acquaintances of Allen's had…
Worms are fascinating critters. There’s no getting around it. Or maybe they’ve just seemed fascinating, ever since I first read Gary Larson’s hilarious 1999 book, There’s a hair in my dirt! A Worm’s Story.
Now, though, worms have made it to the big screen. Last week I took my two young children to a movie called “How to Eat Fried Worms.” We all enjoyed the movie, which provided some lessons on eating earthworms, as well as a lesson or two on getting along. Click here for more information on the movie, which features a large cast of youngsters, along with Tom Cavanagh and Kimberly Williams.
There’s an interesting side story here. I was surprised that the book on which the movie is based has been the target of censors:
Because of the novel’s content, the idea of eating worms as part of a bet is thought to be disgusting by some, it has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000 at number ninety six.
Amazing, eh? But back to the main topic of my post. I’d like to tell you the story about how I ate worms . . . but I can’t. I didn’t even come close.
Watching “How to Eat Fried Worms” reminded me of the time I was visiting Guangzhou, China in 2001 with my wife and our newly adopted daughter. We were traveling with a large group …
Take a look at this Ellis Weiner post on Huffpo. His main point? He claims that something has been long overlooked, despite its current obviousness: The reason Americans think the Democratic Party is "weak on terror" or "weak on security" is because Democrats don't stand up to Republicans. Could anything…
Erika’s post regarding Psychology’s Top Blunders brought to mind another pitfall to those who do psychology. One aspect of Erika is post is that priming can corrupt the results of projection testing. This reminded me of an article I recently read regarding attempts to measure how “happy” people are. The article is “Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion.” I found the article in the June 30, 2006 edition of Science (http://www.sciencemag.com/ -available only to subscribers online).
Experimenters have often tried to find how satisfied someone is with his or her life, but such questions elicit a global evaluation. People tend to exaggerate the importance of a single factor on their overall well-being. The authors refer to this as the “focusing illusion.” This illusion can be the source of error in personal decision-making.
Here’s an example. First, assume the experimenter asks these two questions in this order: 1) “How happy are you with your life in general?” and 2) “How many dates did you have last month?” In this case, there is no statistical correlation between the two questions. When you reverse the order of this questioning, however, the correlation becomes highly significant. “The dating question evidently caused that aspect of life to become salient and its importance to be exaggerated when the respondents encountered the more general question about their happiness.” The authors indicate that these focusing effects have also been observed when the respondent’s attention is first directed to their marriage or health.…