Behavioural experts have found that infants begin to lie from as young as six months. Simple fibs help to train them for more complex deceptions in later life. Infants quickly learnt that using tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing could win them attention. By eight months, more difficult deceptions became apparent, such as…
What is it for? Why is it there? Did whoever put it up realize that if there were no sign, there would be no need to warn about it? Is this a joke from the developers? Is it a lesson in recursiveness? Is it a philosophical prop? —Bizarre Sign (Lushlush) Does it mean “Don’t forget to…
Doctors backed away on Sunday from a controversial proposal to designate video game addiction as a mental disorder akin to alcoholism, saying psychiatrists should study the issue more. —Experts oppose video game addiction designation (Reuters | C|Net) Similar:By Inferno's Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 15) Dominion / Cardassian edg…In Purgatory's Shadow #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch…
At a packed session for academic librarians attending the annual meeting of the American Library Association, in Washington, the topic was how to help students who have learned many of their information gathering and analysis skills from video games apply that knowledge in the library. Speakers said that gaming skills are in many ways representative…
The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn, and it isn’t supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order. It wasn’t made for the benefit of kids and families as those individuals and institutions would define their own needs. School…
“I’m scared, cold, sad, hungry, lonely, thirsty!” — Carolyn Jerz (age 5) My daughter should be asleep, but instead she is awake in her room, and has just offered her usual list of reasons for why she desperately needs parental attention at 10:40pm. This creature was also up at 6:30 this morning. Similar:This morning I…
The college-educated humans, all of whom are not allergic to bee-sting venom and possess both cerebral and muscular capacities several orders of magnitude beyond that of the insect, proceeded to retreat in abject fright from its half-millimeter stinger, which, when used, causes a twinge of discomfort followed by mild irritation and kills the bee. According…
—How children lost the right to roam in four generations (Daily Mail) Interesting article on how over the years parents are holding onto their children more and more tightly. See also Henry Jenkins, “Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces.” Similar:This morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque…
“As for my own point of view, I see creative writing not so much as a form of self-expression (or in the case of problem students, acting out), but of learning to express one’s ‘otherness,’ in the sense of being able to use one’s imagination to devise stories or poems out of, as Keats called…
In Japan, emoticons tend to emphasize the eyes, such as the happy face (^_^) and the sad face (;_;). “After seeing the difference between American and Japanese emoticons, it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical American and Japanese smiles,” he said. —Americans and Japanese Read Faces Differently (Live Science) Similar:This morning I…
i am in an abusive relationship right now have been in it for 7 months now. i dont feel the best. we allways fight he makes me feel like crap like i am nothing like everything is my fault. he promises me he ownt ever do it again this has happened over 20 times. and…
Every culture has its pathologies, and ours is self-reliance. From some mix of our frontier past, our Little House on the Prairie heritage, our Thoreauvian desire for solitude, and our amazing wealth we’ve derived a level of independence never seen before on this round earth. We’ve built an economy where we need no one else;…
Rumours that Chiang, 23, was the mass murderer swept across the world after links to his gun-obsessed blogs were posted on social networking website Facebook and similar sites. More than 180,000 people visited his sites, with many noting the similarities between him and the man described in accounts of the Virginia Tech tragedy. Some went…
Gamers like me have spent years railing against ill-informed parents and politicians who’ve blamed games for making kids violent, unimaginative, fat or worse. But now we’re in a weird position: We’re the first generation that is young enough to have grown up playing games, but old enough to have kids. So it turns out that,…
The researchers then studied 68 men and found that those who played even one racing game took more risks afterward in traffic situations on a computer simulator than those who played another type of game. Then the researchers had 83 men play either a racing game or another type of game, and found that those…
To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit–General Knowledges are those Knowledges that Idiots possess. —William BlakeBlake on Generalization (The Poetical Works of William Blake) Jotted in the margins of his copy of another author’s work. Similar:This morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque…
Then how the pussy-cats did mew What else, poor pussies, could they do? They screamed for help, ’twas all in vain, I So then, they said, “We’ll scream again. Make haste, make haste! me-ow! me-o! She’ll burn to death,- we told her so.” So she was burnt with all her clothes, And arms and hands,…
We think of precociousness as an early form of adult achievement, and, according to Gladwell, that concept is much of the problem. “What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement.” To be a…
What makes Ledonne think that a video game is the best way to try and deconstruct the tortured minds that led to Columbine? Gaming is essentially escapist entertainment and while there are plenty of violent games out there to help you get off, if that’s what gets you off, no one has ever confused a…
I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually…