-
When the future looks cold and scary, you can always wrap yourself in the Canadian flag
The Globe & Mail: This week Conservative MP John Carmichael and Heritage Minister James Moore stood in the lobby of the House of Commons flanked by Canadian flags, in the manner of car salesmen surrounded by banners saying, “Your buck goes farther here” and “Check under the hood and see!” They were publicizing Mr. Carmichael’s private member’s bill, an Act Respecting the National Flag of Canada, which would defend the country from the sadly underreported scourge of flag-hating. If Bill C-288 makes it into law, all Canadians will have the right to fly our national flag – and woe betide those who try to prevent them.
-
Mother’s Love May Keep the Doctor Away
Fox News: An extra dose of motherly nurturing insulates children from lifelong health problems associated with poverty, a new study says. The study found that people whose parents did not finish high school were 1.4 times more likely to develop a condition called metabolic syndrome by middle age than children raised by college-educated parents. Metabolic syndrome is a precursor to diabetes and heart disease. However, among people from less-educated households, those who said they had a very nurturing mother were less likely to develop metabolic syndrome, according to the study published Friday (Sept. 23) in the journal Psychological Science.
-
Easily Embarrassed? Others Trust You More, Study Shows
LiveScience: The next time you blush after tripping over your own feet in public, don't try to hide it — a new study finds that showing your embarrassment actually makes other people view you as more trustworthy. "Embarrassment is one emotional signature of a person to whom you can entrust valuable resources," study researcher Robb Willer, a social psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
-
Everybody Thinks They’re Typical: Seeing Yourself in Others
The Atlantic: Who's the more typical American, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama? According to a European study, the answer depends on who's answering the question. How people see themselves is a potent force that affects how they see others. The study posed the question of what the typical European man looked like to natives of Germany and Portugal. Not surprisingly, the Germans thought that the typical European looked more German, while the Portuguese thought that the typical European had a distinctly Portuguese cast. Other studies have shown that people who belong to a group think that a typical group member has characteristics similar to their own. But those studies were done using words.
-
Domestic violence gets evolutionary explanation
NewScientist: What can evolution tell us about domestic violence? Two researchers in the US suggest such violence has ancient origins and that establishing evolution's role could help to better identify those at risk. Others argue that the research makes simplistic assumptions, and warn that some people will interpret the research as an excuse for violence. Each year more than 500,000 women in the US alone report to the police violent attacks by current or former male partners. There is a reason why domestic violence is so widespread, says David Buss, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Texas in Austin: it carries a selective advantage, tied with reproductive success.
-
Teens get smarter as their minds get quicker
Yahoo India: Washington, Sept 28 (ANI): A group of psychologists at University of Texas at San Antonio has found that adolescents become smarter because they become mentally quicker. This is the first time psychologists have been able to confirm this important connection. To find the relationship between these two phenomena, the UTSA psychologists analysed the results of 12 diverse intelligence and mental speed tests administered to 6,969 adolescents (ages 13 to 17) in the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Intelligence was measured by performance on cognitive tests of diverse abilities, such as vocabulary knowledge, math facts, and mechanical comprehension.
