The Good Guy Contract Twenty years ago, the first woman I ever loved broke my heart. Like many break ups, the end came in stutters and sine waves rather than as an abrupt but mercifully irreversible amputation. However, for reasons I couldn't understand yet quickly began to resent, my ex-girlfriend continued to ask favors of me. And I continued to grant them. Then one morning while chanting I found myself ruminating about how inappropriate it was of her to keep asking, and the more I thought about it, the more irritated I became. At that exact moment, the phone rang. I knew it was her calling—and sure enough, after I'd finished showering, one of my roommates confirmed it and added that she'd asked that I call her back before I left for school. As I walked toward the phone I told myself that when she asked me for the favor for which I knew she'd called, I'd refuse. I hung up—and laughed out loud. So I decided to begin chanting with the determination to free myself from my inability to refuse her favors.
Alien world is blacker than coal Public release date: 11-Aug-2011 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: Christine Pulliamcpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu 617-495-7463Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet - a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b. Their measurements show that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it blacker than coal or any planet or moon in our solar system. "TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it's truly an alien world," said astronomer David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead author on the paper reporting the research. In our solar system, Jupiter is swathed in bright clouds of ammonia that reflect more than a third of the sunlight reaching it. TrES-2b orbits its star at a distance of only three million miles. Kipping and Spiegel determined the reflectivity of TrES-2b using data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft.
Charlie Kaufman: Screenwriters Lecture Download Charlie's lecture as a .pdf. Charlie Kaufman: Thank you very much. I’m actually really happy to be here; at least that’s what I’m telling myself. So rather than being up here pretending I’m an expert in anything, or presenting myself in a way that will reinforce the odd, ritualised lecturer-lecturee model, I’m just telling you off the bat that I don’t know anything. I even feel odd calling myself a writer or a screenwriter. I’m a person who does this and I struggle with it. It is very much like when I have a job writing a screenplay. It’s a tricky thing; no-one wants to come up here and bomb. But I’ve gone through a lot of different versions of what this evening would be. But it is the way it is with my work; I feel you sort of need to stay where you are, in the moment, with the work. But another thing this introduction has done is to have allowed me to feel like I can go ahead and do this. And they’re very good at their jobs. What can be done? This is from E.
Introduction to Psychology - Download free content from MIT Last speaker of language Any language is determined to be an extinct language when the last native or fluent speaker of that language dies. There are some 500 languages out of a total of 6,000 being classified as nearly extinct because "only a few elderly speakers are still living".[1] Last known speakers of languages[edit] See also[edit] Notes[edit] Jump up ^ Believed to have been the last monoglot Cornish speaker, as opposed to other speakers such as Dolly Pentreath who could also speak English. References[edit] The Top 10 Psychology Studies of 2010 | Psychology Today - StumbleUpon The end of 2010 fast approaches, and I'm thrilled to have been asked by the editors of Psychology Today to write about the Top 10 psychology studies of the year. I've focused on studies that I personally feel stand out, not only as examples of great science, but even more importantly, as examples of how the science of psychology can improve our lives. Each study has a clear "take home" message, offering the reader an insight or a simple strategy they can use to reach their goals , strengthen their relationships, make better decisions, or become happier. If you extract the wisdom from these ten studies and apply them in your own life, 2011 just might be a very good year. 1) How to Break Bad Habits If you are trying to stop smoking , swearing, or chewing your nails, you have probably tried the strategy of distracting yourself - taking your mind off whatever it is you are trying not to do - to break the habit. J. 2) How to Make Everything Seem Easier J. 3) How To Manage Your Time Better M. J.
Melencolia I The engraving measures 24 x 18.8 cm.[1] Interpretations[edit] Detail of the magic square The work has been the subject of more modern interpretation than almost any other print,[2] including a two-volume book by Peter-Klaus Schuster,[3] and a very influential discussion in his Dürer monograph by Erwin Panofsky.[4] Reproduction usually makes the image seem darker than it is in an original impression (copy) of the engraving, and in particular affects the facial expression of the female figure, which is rather more cheerful than in most reproductions. One interpretation suggests the image references the depressive or melancholy state and accordingly explains various elements of the picture. An autobiographical interpretation of Melencolia I has been suggested by several historians. Notes[edit] Jump up ^ "Melencolia I (Die Melancholie)" (in Deutsch). References[edit] Brion, Marcel. External links[edit]
PARALLAX - StumbleUpon English dialect vocabulary The Word Map Observing Lexical Variation All languages change over time and vary according to place and social setting. We can observe lexical variation - differences in words and phrases - by comparing the way English is spoken in different places and among different social groups. Despite the belief that dialect words are no longer very widely used, there remains a great deal of lexical diversity in the UK. Listen to these extracts of speakers using regionally specific vocabulary: meak, didle & crome: another skill, uh, when we used to clean the dykes out all by hand with the old meak and the old didle and crome — that‘s all lugging Show Commentary peevers but what, what do you remember playing as a child – as a child – hmm – eh, skipping ropes - oh yes – eh, peevers. nain I remember my nain – when I was about four – she couldn‘t speak a worl, word of English, always Welsh, Welsh, Welsh mistall and we‘d to get up and go down in – in wintertime – go down into the mistall we called it See Also
5 Psychological Experiments That Prove Humanity is Doomed | Cracked.com - StumbleUpon Cracked.com's new book is now on sale. What follows is one of 22 classic articles that appear in the book, along with 18 new articles that you can't read anywhere else. Psychologists know you have to be careful when you go poking around the human mind because you're never sure what you'll find there. Oh, we're not talking about the occasional psychopath who turns up. The Asch Conformity Experiment (1953) The Setup: Solomon Asch wanted to run a series of studies that would document the power of conformity, for the purpose of depressing everyone who would ever read the results. Subjects were told that they would be taking part in a vision test, along with a handful of people. The Result: Questions the subjects were asked were like the puzzle shown here: All they had to do was say which line on the right matched the one on the left. Yet, sadly, 32 percent of subjects would answer incorrectly if they saw that three others in the classroom gave the same wrong answer. "Wait, you're right! C.
47 Mind-Blowing Psychology-Proven Facts You Should Know About Yourself I’ve decided to start a series called 100 Things You Should Know about People. As in: 100 things you should know if you are going to design an effective and persuasive website, web application or software application. Or maybe just 100 things that everyone should know about humans! The order that I’ll present these 100 things is going to be pretty random. Dr. <div class="slide-intro-bottom"><a href=" Why Do Some People Learn Faster? &124; Wired Science&&124; Wired.com The physicist Niels Bohr once defined an expert as “a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Bohr’s quip summarizes one of the essential lessons of learning, which is that people learn how to get it right by getting it wrong again and again. Education isn’t magic. Education is the wisdom wrung from failure. A new study, forthcoming in Psychological Science, and led by Jason Moser at Michigan State University, expands on this important concept. The Moser experiment is premised on the fact that there are two distinct reactions to mistakes, both of which can be reliably detected using electroenchephalography, or EEG. The second signal, which is known as error positivity (Pe), arrives anywhere between 100-500 milliseconds after the mistake and is associated with awareness. The experiment began with a flanker task, a tedious assignment in which subjects are supposed to identify the middle letter of a five-letter series, such as “MMMMM” or “NNMNN.”
the largest whorfian study EVER! (and why it matters) Let me take the ball Mark Liberman threw on Monday and run with it a bit. Liberman posted a thorough discussion of Fausey and Broditsky's neo-Whorfian English and Spanish speakers remember causal agents differently. Specifically, he invited readers to carefully examine the methodology of the experiments themselves, and not just focus on the conclusions. Ways to go: Methodological considerations in Whorfian studies on motion events. This paper addressed experiments involving motion events like rolling and falling whereas Fausey and Broditsky's work addressed agentivity like breaking and popping, but there's enough overlap to warrant some comparison, particularly since the Bohnemeyer et al. paper specifically addresses methodology wrt Whorfian experiments. But before I get into the details, let me state clearly why I think this is important. Now the fun stuff. In this typology, English is a satellite-frame language and Spanish is a verb-frame language. [... (figure from page 7)
How To Install a Power-Up Button On Your Body For the last few months I have been habitually drawing a thin circle on the top of my left hand. The idea was that every time I noticed this circle, I would be reminded/compelled to return to a present, zen state. This worked so well that I decided to have it tattooed on a few nights ago. I’ve since discovered the immense potential (and fun) of attributing specific ‘powers’ to parts of your body or objects. Read on to understand what I’m talking about! Placebo is Powerful Thanks to the power of belief, you can can turn anything into a power-up button of any kind. Examples: 1) Consciousness Injection Whenever I notice the tattoo, I press on it with one finger and pretend that I have just received a huge intravenous injection of consciousness/energy/alertness. I am now infinitely more aware of my surrounds, my thoughts and my emotions. 2) Personality Switch James Bond is my hero. Suddenly I have the all-knowing, sly grin of agent 007. **Don’t forget to switch your alter-ego ‘OFF’. Go Power-Up!