http://www.artsjournal.com/ideas.shtml Copyright 2010 Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:13:20 -0800 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.33 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss "Despite the importance of humour to human psychology, it is only the advances in brain imaging during the past decade that have enabled neuroscientists to pin down how the brain reacts when a joke tickles us. Armed with this knowledge, they are now solving the puzzle of why some jokes are funny to some people but leave others cold."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/the_neuroscienc_3.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/the_neuroscienc_3.shtml ideas Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:06:18 -0800 "A tribal language thought to have existed for 65,000 years has disappeared forever in India's Andaman Islands, taken to the grave with its last speaker."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/an_ancient_lang.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/an_ancient_lang.shtml ideas Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:01:28 -0800 John "Chipman argues, plausibly, that we are now at an equivalent period to the early 1950s. Just as strategists had to devise whole new doctrines to cope with the nuclear age, so they will have to come up with new ideas to cope with the information age."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/internet_friend.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/internet_friend.shtml ideas Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:21:51 -0800 A new study "finds an ostensibly meaningless physical activity -- moving marbles upward -- can cause people to think more positive thoughts."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/movement_mood.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/movement_mood.shtml ideas Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:09:08 -0800 Results of a study in Switzerland "suggest that it may indeed be possible to detect whether a person is about to break a promise based on brain activity, well before the promise is actually broken."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/of_brain_waves.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/of_brain_waves.shtml ideas Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:54:54 -0800 http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/adolescents_you.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/adolescents_you.shtml ideas Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:39:48 -0800 "[D]oes the sense of purpose we feel as we leave school really stick with us as the years go by? And does it influence the kind of adults we grow into? Newly published research suggests the answers are yes and yes."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/our_college_car.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/our_college_car.shtml ideas Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:46:08 -0800 "[D]espite the importance of humour to human psychology, it is only the advances in brain imaging during the past decade that have enabled neuroscientists to pin down how the brain reacts when a joke tickles us. Armed with this knowledge, they are now solving the puzzle of why some jokes are funny to some people but leave others cold."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/finding_the_fun.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/finding_the_fun.shtml ideas Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:30:54 -0800 "For the good of us all, step away from the Rolex. The mere exposure to luxury goods can have a corrosive effect on decision-making that pushes individuals to put their interests over the interests of others, according to a Harvard Business School study."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/merely_seeing_e.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/merely_seeing_e.shtml ideas Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:42:28 -0800 Throw the suspect into a pool: if he floats, he's guilty; if he sinks, he's innocent. Or make the perp hold a red-hot iron, and if God heals the burn in three days, she is blameless. Today such methods of justice are dismissed as ignorant and barbaric, but a U. Chicago professor argues that, by leveraging defendants' own superstitions, trial by ordeal made it "possible to secure criminal justice where it would have otherwise been impossible to do so."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/medieval_trial.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/medieval_trial.shtml ideas Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:24:16 -0800 "Research in embodied cognition has revealed that the body takes language to heart and can be awfully literal-minded. ... The body embodies abstractions the best way it knows how: physically. "... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/research_our_bo.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/research_our_bo.shtml ideas Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:57:14 -0800 "This seems to be true across cultures, across time, all over the world. No one is sure where this feeling comes from. Scientists have theories, of course, and one of them is that when you experience something for the very first time, more details, more information gets stored in your memory."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/why_does_it_fee.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/why_does_it_fee.shtml ideas Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:54:41 -0800 One of the hottest topics in psychology today is something called "cognitive fluency." Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard.... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/easy_going_why.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/02/easy_going_why.shtml ideas Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:01:13 -0800 http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/the_long_tail_r.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/the_long_tail_r.shtml ideas Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:24:06 -0800 http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/competition_nat.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/competition_nat.shtml ideas Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:45:28 -0800 "Adaptive perfectionism" (the good kind) correlates with "striving for excellence, organizational skills, tendency to plan ahead and holding others to high standards"; "maladaptive perfectionism" with "concern over mistakes, need for approval, tendency to ruminate over past performances and perceived [external] pressure."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/perfectionism_h.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/perfectionism_h.shtml ideas Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:59:47 -0800 http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/things_are_out.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/things_are_out.shtml ideas Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:58:22 -0800 http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/five_stages_of.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/five_stages_of.shtml ideas Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:49:59 -0800 "In a study published in the January 18 issue of PLoS One, subjects were able to accurately identify candidates from the 2004 and 2006 U.S. Senate elections as either Democrats or Republicans based on black-and-white photos of their faces. And subjects were even able to correctly identify college students as belonging to Democratic or Republican clubs based on their yearbook photos."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/democrat_or_rep.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/democrat_or_rep.shtml ideas Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:53:24 -0800 "India has become to American yoga what France is to American cuisine: an ancient source of wisdom to be reinterpreted, democratized and repackaged by its acolytes here." Much of that reinterpretation is now happening around food: "yogier-than-thou" vegans; the use of bacon as "a yogic teaching tool"; a coach telling her class, "Ssssmell the squassshhhh waaaafting through the air."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/when_urban_food.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/when_urban_food.shtml ideas Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:44:58 -0800 "Thousands of people have altered long-held behavior overnight. Businesses are operating differently. The way people eat, shop and interact with each other has changed. And hundreds have been moved to fiery message-board debates about the proper role of government and at what point it's gone too far."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/a_behavioral_ec.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/a_behavioral_ec.shtml ideas Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:04:52 -0800 "Knowing something is the right thing to do takes work -- brain work -- and our brains aren't always up to that."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/the_reason_for.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/the_reason_for.shtml ideas Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:51:24 -0800 "Our results suggest that a principal mechanism whereby popularity ratings affect consumer choice is through the anxiety generated by the mismatch between one's own preferences and the others'. This mismatch anxiety motivates people to switch their choices in the direction of the consensus."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/of_music_and_ch.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/of_music_and_ch.shtml ideas Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:55:57 -0800 "The average young American now spends practically every waking minute -- except for the time in school -- using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation."... http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/always_on_study.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/always_on_study.shtml ideas Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:25:50 -0800 http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/in_us_schools_f.shtml http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2010/01/in_us_schools_f.shtml ideas Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:44:24 -0800