Rotundus.com

This still amuses me enough to post it:

What we discovered is that expression alone is sufficient to created marked changes in the autonomic nervous system. When this first occurred, we were stunned. We weren't expecting this at all. And it happened to both of us. We felt terrible. What we were generating were sadness, anguish. And when I lower my brows, which is four, and raise the upper eyelid, which is five, and narrow the eyelids, which is seven, and press the lips together, which is twenty-four, I'm generating anger. My heartbeat will go up ten to twelve beats. My hands will get hot. As I do it, I can't disconnect from the system. It's very unpleasant, very unpleasant.

- Paul Eckman, cited on p. 206/7 of Blink

These marchers deserve credit: Dalhousie course teaches students how to stage a peaceful demonstration

Here's an example of one course you can take at a Canadian university: "Over banging drums, the students chanted, 'The poor can’t eat profit.' ... This was no ordinary protest. These students were rallying for marks. They’re taking a new course at Dalhousie University that teaches them how to be activists. Fifteen per cent of their final mark depended upon the organization and execution of the rally." No doubt students aren't in any way required to advocate any sort of particular political stance... right...

It's All About Me: But Is Narcissism A Disorder?

Is narcissism the new (or perhaps old) normal? "The American Psychiatric Association recently announced it's considering lifting narcissistic personality disorder — along with four other personality disorders — from its highly influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders."

An evaluation of airport x-ray backscatter units based on image characteristics

The Israeli's mentioned before that this sort of approach to airport security had holes. Here now is a little more of the science as to why.

Upper-Class People Have Trouble Recognizing Others' Emotions

"A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds surprisingly, that lower-class people are better at reading the emotions of others."

One interesting thing to note is that according to the US Customs and Immigration Service:

marriages arranged through these services would appear to have a lower divorce rate than the nation as a whole, fully 80 percent of these marriages having lasted over the years for which reports are available.

That would appear to be in spite of U.S. law that would incentivize divorce and abuse claims in such cases. Claiming domestic violence by an American husband appears to be the quickest way to a green card. This is something that the women in these case are also pretty much guaranteed to be aware of courtesy of the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act. American women, by constrast, aren't required, as far as I can call, to be aware of domestic violence legislation. (Most of the provisions of the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act appear to be pretty reasonable... I wonder a little about the limitations on freedom of speech it imposes though).