Overconfidence: good AND bad
You’d think overconfidence would be a bad trait to have. This article discusses why it can be good. From Discover Magazine, Jan-Feb 2012:
The Too-Sure Thing
Overconfidence can help explain wars, financial disasters, and collapsed civilizations. Social scientist James Fowler explores how such a destructive social trait manages to thrive.
Twitter reveals innate mood swings
A recent study analyzing tweets globally suggests that innate biological rhythms play a big role in our moods.
Researches Use Twitter to Track Global Mood Swings
Smile!
People like a happy face, but not all smiles are equal. LaFrance’s new book Lip Service looks at the complex effects of smiling. From Canadian Business:
The winning smile: Harder than it looks
Bribery is wrong, but…
U of Toronto profs find culture affects how we feel about bribery. From the Toronto Sun, October 9, 2011:
Study links bribery with collectivism
The Sibling Effect
Based on reading the Time article (below), Jeffrey Kluger’s new book, The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us, should be a fascinating read.
Playing Favorites
By Jeffrey Kluger Monday, Oct. 03, 2011
A Scientific Dating Insight: Create Uncertainty
Science says that playing hard to get is a good idea: it acts like an aphrodisiac for those who like you, and turns away those who don’t (good riddance, no time wasted).
From Scientific American:
A Scientific Dating Insight: Create Uncertainty
The aphrodisiac effect of not knowing how much they like you
Chronic stress kills
So it’s not stress itself that hastens your body’s deterioration, but chronic stress — the kind of stress that comes from lack of control (whether it be from low social standing or menial job with bad boss). Which brings me back to the idea that religion is meant to be a reliever of chronic stress mainly because it adds partial control (as in praying to change whatever you cannot change yourself). A vaccine against chronic stress might be much nicer and would help those poor atheists too. 
Until that happens, there is a bunch of things you can do to relieve stress — check out the list at the end of the article. (It does not mention praying.)
Anyway, here is the article from the August 2010 Wired magazine:
Under Pressure: The Search for a Stress Vaccine
Marketing: the idea factory
The company IDEO popularized human-centered design thinking. Way to create a better product, way to sell more of a product or both? From The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, April 25, 2008:
The Idea Factory
By CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH
Read more »
How Birth Order Affects Your Personality
For one, the more older siblings one has, the lower one’s IQ. Also, firstborns are more likely to associate with firstborns, middle-borns with middle-borns, last-borns with last-borns, and only children with only children.
Article from the January 2010 Scientific American Mind (also see The secrets of birth order):
How Birth Order Affects Your Personality
For decades the evidence has been inconclusive, but new studies show that family position may truly affect intelligence and personality
Do your balls hang low?
Do they wobble to and fro? Hilarious follow-up to the Secrets of the Phallus, explaining all that’s hangin’…
From Scientific American, November 19, 2009:
Why do human testicles hang like that?
About
Although it started out as a means of practising expressing myself, this blog is turning out to be more of a compendium of interesting information I come across. One of these days I’ll have to actually write something as opposed to cut and paste.
