CNN: Scientists identify sexy dance moves.

”Neave and his team think head, trunk, wrist and knee movements show how healthy, vigorous and strong a man is — and thus reveal his ‘reproductive quality,’ they said in a statement announcing their findings.” Find a mover who’s got some flab, and you’ve scored, I suppose.

Miller-McCune Online: It Turns Out There Is Accounting for Taste.

”Individuals prefer genres that share similar content, irrespective of the medium through which it is conveyed [snip] Entertainment preferences are more a function of substance than style.”

Salon: 9/11 widow: The media duped us.

“Do we think no Muslims died in the towers? My husband, Eddie Torres, killed on his second day of work at Cantor Fitzgerald while I was pregnant with our first child, was a dark-skinned Latino, often mistaken for Pakistani, who came here illegally from Colombia. How did ‘9/11 victim’ become sloppy shorthand for ‘white Christian’?” Read the entire thing.

New West: Facebook Is Jumping the Shark.

”Next time you’re on Facebook, take a look at yourself. [snip] You’re rejecting actual, personal interaction with any other human being in your presence, in favor of a one-dimensional, impersonal form of communication. That’s not social. That’s the very definition of anti-social.” Someone needs a vacation from social media, I think.

CNN: My not-drinking bothers friends.

”If people really want to know the brutal truth of why I quit, I tell them. I blacked out. I behaved badly. I couldn’t predictably control my intake. I made poor decisions. I experienced gut-twisting, head-imploding hangovers. Anxiety choked me. But these truths are a buzz kill.” Alcohol is not integral to ‘having a good time.’ That runs against the common perception these days. You’ll get more out of being sober and saying ‘yes’ to things you normally say ‘no’ to ... like, new experience.  That’s transformative. Getting silly drunk in order to step out of one’s comfort range is just sad, really.

PhysOrg: Study examines association between urban living and psychotic disorders.

”The clearest geographic pattern within this distribution of rates is that urban areas have a higher incidence of schizophrenia than rural areas.” So David Lynch is wrong ...

HuffPost: Money Can Buy Happiness, Study Finds - But Only Up To $75,000.

”Happiness got better as income rose but the effect leveled out at $75,000, Deaton said. On the other hand, their overall sense of success or well-being continued to rise as their earnings grew beyond that point.”

The Atlantic: Unnecessary ER Visits.

”But if your sick child is feeling well enough to grab every toy in the toy bin and hurl it across the room, the chance they have anything that won’t wait until their PCP can see them on Monday is between small and nonexistent.”

Big Questions Online: The Online State of Nature.

”I have thought a lot about why people get so hostile online, and I have come to believe it is primarily because we live in a society with a hypertrophied sense of justice and an atrophied sense of humility and charity, to put the matter in terms of the classic virtues.” I think we hoped in the early days of blogging that open discussions would inoculate against ignorance. Instead, like-minded individuals seem to congregate in flocks, pushing their beliefs to extreme levels. This can be seen in a beneficial niching of interests and hobbies, but also in the dangerous isolation of belief systems or political philosophies. We humans desire to be right, right without the effort of questioning our basic belief systems, right as if rightness were one of our appendages. It’s easier to seek those who agree, than to look at difficult issues and analyze them.  Esp. when introspection runs up against how you were raised, and how you were educated. I see so many teens and 20-somethings on Facebook who profess the philosophy of Captain Morgan over anything substantive or worthwhile. Ignorance is celebrated, education is reviled.

Extending further — we watch television, read books, view movies in which characters come up against crisis, and then undergo a change of character.  It’s a basic writer’s technique for any work of fiction — required, even — yet it’s not an accurate representation of what happens in real life.  People in reality can change, but they’re slow to do so — if they do so at all. Yet we expect others — friends, business associates, celebrities, our political leaders, our religious leaders — to go through crises and change for the better. How often we’re let down on this point!  We need “Seinfeld” back again ... a group of people who *never* progress, who show clearly that we need to change ourselves in order to not be miserable self-centered individuals.

I find it all a funny combo of ignorance and naivete, and the need to shout it all from the rooftops [I’m looking in a mirror as I type this phrase]. We all fall into the abyss from time to time, but the sheer number doing it these days is astonishing. 

I recommend writing drafts of posts or comments, and then stepping away from them for a period of time.

As I should have done before writing and posting this.

Chicago Tribune: Does a book’s popularity guarantee its movie’s success?

”The film version of ‘Eat Pray Love’ took in $24 million its opening weekend — a tally AdAge calls ‘satisfactory’ — but it was bested by ‘The Expendables,’ the over-the-hill tough-guy action movie. In the weeks since, the book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ has stayed in the top three — respectable but not stunning. Meanwhile, the paperback of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ is back at the top of our nonfiction bestseller list.”

What Makes Them Click: Your Most Vivid Memories Are Wrong.

I think the takeaway is that distinct details are likely inaccurate, while the event itself is accurate.

CNet: Men treat virtual girlfriends to beach vacations.

“If you visited the Japanese hot springs resort of Atami recently and spotted a disproportionate number of men gazing longingly at their smartphones, it probably wasn’t because they were playing Angry Birds. This summer, the beach town became a vacation hub for guys who like to treat their girlfriends to sun-and-fun holidays. Girlfriends, that is, who only exist on-screen.” Have human relations devolved so far?

ABC News: Grown Men Travel With a Stuffed Animals: Teddy Bears, Dogs in Businessmen’s Suitcases.

WHAT?!!!

Eurekalert: SAMe for treatment of adults with major depressive disorders?

”A new study conducted by investigators at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) suggests that S-Adenosyl Methionine (SAMe), an over-the-counter dietary supplement, can be an effective, relatively well-tolerated, adjunctive treatment for adults with major depressive disorders who do not respond to their treatment with antidepressant medication.” Don’t play with SAM-e, however.  Read the side effects, and consult a physician.

NY Times: Phys Ed: Playing Music During Exercise.

“On the other hand, when the tempo of the songs was upped 10 percent, the men covered more miles in the same period of time, produced more power with each pedal stroke and increased their pedal cadences. Their heart rates rose. They reported enjoying the music — the same music — about 36 percent more than when it was slowed.” Time to drop the slow stuff out of my personal workout mix!

Eurekalert: Parenting study: Italians strict, French moderate, Canadians lenient.

“Italian parents are seen as more demanding in rules and authorizations. They take more punitive actions when rules are broken and are less tolerant of peer socialization. They uphold family regulations and require their adolescents to ask for authorizations until a much later age.” I wonder which adolescents are better adjusted as adults.

The Atlantic: Deficit Fears and the Pollster-Pundit Complex.

“This article is part of an unfortunate pollster-pundit complex where columnists, who are supposed to inform the public, instead recite public opinion without proper context or criticism, creating an infinite feedback loop that loses the central question: Is the public right? Halfway into the article, Zuckerman finally gets there: ‘Of course, the question remains whether public sentiment coincides with sound economics.’”

Michigan State U: Spouses do not grow more alike, study finds.

”The conclusion: Spousal similarity is better explained by selection than gradual convergence. The one exception to this pattern was aggression. ‘It makes sense if you think about it,’ Humbad said. ‘If one person is violent, the other person may respond in a similar fashion and thus become more aggressive over time.’”

Scientific American: Why We’re Suckers for Stories of Our Own Demise.

”You might think that the enterprise of science, with its method and its facts, would inoculate us against the most extravagant doomsday obsessions. But it doesn’t. If anything, it just gives us more to worry about.” Just like we’re suckers for conspiracy theories. I was trapped by an individual at Indian Market who was bound and determined to prove to me that Obama wasn’t born in America.  I made a comment about McCain and Panama, and this individual said, “Yeah, but commonwealths pay taxes, don’t they?” We all have the habit of assembling only the facts that support our conclusions. I did eventually extricate myself, diplomatically, and gave him a couple of things to think about in the process. I don’t think he’ll see an “enemy” Democrat in quite the same way again, anyway.

Obit Magazine: The Murder that Changed the Movies - 50th Anniversary of Pyscho.

”Time magazine lamented ‘one of the messiest, most nauseating murders ever filmed. At close range, the camera watches every twitch, gurgle, convulsion, and hemorrhage ... The nausea never disappears.’” The article includes a Youtube clip. In case you want everpresent nausea.

NY Times: Schnabel’s Polaroids.

First commenter says: ”You can give a monkey a Polaroid camera and the images that are produced can look fantastic. So does a dull and grainy image shot by a monkey make it art?” Same argument was made about regular films, too. I used to have this argument with my assistant, frequently. If a piece is beautiful, does the nature of the artist make it illegitimate? Etcetera.  Lively lunch conversations. We never did resolve it - I don’t know that it can be resolved. Art is subjective, so it’s no surprise artists would be too.

That being said, these limited mediums in the hands of famous artists plainly show their creativity is a step above the norm; you begin to recognize the volumes of dreck we suffer through daily. There IS a difference, and it IS important to recognize.

NY Times: Technology Leads More Park Visitors Into Trouble.

”‘Watch Donald get gored,’ she said as her companion hustled toward a grazing one-ton beast for a closer shot with his own camera. Seconds later, as if on cue, the buffalo lowered its head, pawed the ground and charged, injuring, as it turns out, Ms. Hayes.” When I first visited Yellowstone in ‘73, I was watching an elk from a little too close. My sister yelled at me to step back, when an extremely overweight woman suddenly pushed to get by me to take a snap with her little film camera, and almost knocked me into the beast’s feet.  The elk (with a towering rack of antlers) spared both of us, but it was damned close to ending badly.

The woman then waddled back to her vehicle (her husband never got out to look at anything), revved the engine, and took off to the next sightseeing spot on their whirlwind tour of the park.

I don’t think the tech is to blame, in other words. Stupidity goes down to the bone.

NY Times: What ‘Fact-Checking’ Means Online.

”But if the Web has changed what qualifies as fact-checking, has it also changed what qualifies as a fact? I suspect that facts on the Web are now more rhetorical devices than identifiable objects.” Only if we let them. But then, there’s a complicating factor ... see this previous post.

Eurekalert: New study finds new connection between yoga and mood.

They studied group yoga, not solo practice. Bet there’s a difference.

Slate, Book Review Jack London’s many sides emerge in James L. Haley’s Wolf.

”At one point, London says socialism’s strength is that it ‘transcends race prejudice’ — but then that prejudice returns, just as vicious as before. When he visits Hawaii, he is in awe of its native culture, but then demands the United States conquer it just the same.” Color me shocked ... I didn’t realize this about the man.  The very first book I ever ‘got into’ as a child, the one that took me from passive reading to involved, connected reading was ”White Fang”.  Funnily enough, I never bothered to read “Call of the Wild”, the more popular of his books. Every time I cracked it, it never seemed as interesting as the former.