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So You Flunked A Racism Test. Now What?
NPR: You're probably at least a little bit racist and sexist and homophobic. Most of us are. Before you get all indignant, try taking one of the popular implicit-association tests. Created by sociologists at Harvard, the University of Washington, and the University of Virginia, they measure people's unconscious prejudice by testing how easy — or difficult — it is for the test-takers to associate words like "good" and "bad" with images of black people versus white people, or "scientist" and "lab" with men versus women.
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The Ordeal That Made Me a Student of Humanity
The Wall Street Journal: In 1984, as a 17-year-old high-school student in Israel, I was a member of a youth movement that focused on study, civic work and preparation for military service. Our graduation ceremonies often featured big fires, intended to dramatize our patriotic fervor. That year, some of our leaders had brought back military supplies to help make the blaze especially intense. One Friday afternoon, as we began putting away these materials, there was an accident. Nobody knows exactly what happened, but a spark must have been struck somewhere. A large magnesium flare—the kind that the Israeli military uses to light up a battlefield—exploded right next to me.
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The Best Screen Time
Slate: BOSTON—The library in Boston’s Haynes Early Education Center is a bright, cheery space filled with well-stocked bookcases, tables ringed by small wooden chairs, art supplies, cushions for story time, and dozens of laminated vocabulary words strung below an oversize paper alphabet. But one of the most important learning tools here is a small gray box lit by a blinking green LED, perched well above kid-height on a yellow wall by the door. It’s the Wi-Fi transponder that brings broadband Internet to the fingertips of about 175 small children—preschool through first grade, mostly from low-income black and Hispanic families.
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One Head, Two Brains
The Atlantic: In 1939, a group of 10 people between the ages of 10 and 43, all with epilepsy, traveled to the University of Rochester Medical Center, where they would become the first people to undergo a radical new surgery. The patients were there because they all struggled with violent and uncontrollable seizures. The procedure they were about to have was untested on humans, but they were desperate—none of the standard drug therapies for seizures had worked.
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The Science of Why You Crave Comfort Food
TIME: It's not just because these foods are tasty. It's because they make us feel less alone In mid-July, I was visiting my hometown in Minnesota when I happened upon the unmistakable scent of something deep-fried. I was at a concert, and no matter how off-brand a dietary choice of corn dogs and cheese curds may be for a health writer, I went for it. How could I not? I spent two thoroughly enjoyable summers during college working at the Minnesota State Fair, and that experience continues to make corn-and-grease-dipped hot dogs not only appetizing but somehow irresistible, too. ...
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How Intelligence Shifts With Age
The Wall Street Journal: Is the saying “older but wiser” just an old wives’ tale? We all know people who are as foolish at 60 as they were at 20 and others whose smarts have cruelly diminished with age. Meanwhile, legions of seniors who used fountain pens as children now deftly tap out texts on their tablets. So what’s the truth about old dogs and new tricks? A study of adult intelligence, published in March in the journal Psychological Science, pits these maxims against the data. The results challenge some common assumptions—including the idea that mental acuity, like athletic prowess, always declines with age. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
