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Why Dads Get Short Shrift on Father’s Day — and Dads Are O.K. With It
TIME: When it comes to their respective days of honor, why do dads get funny ties and moms get diamond-heart necklaces? Why do we spend 40% more on Mother’s Day than Father’s Day? Some seemingly ungrateful children (and a few dads) offer explanations. Every year since the National Retail Federation has been keep track, the amount consumers spend on Father’s Day gifts has been significantly less than the average spent on Mother’s Day. This year, average Father’s Day spending is expected to be around $120, compared with $169 for moms. To get to the bottom of this apparent inequity, I interviewed scores of dads and kids about Father’s Day.
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The Third Metric for Success
The Huffington Post: I just returned from NYC from an invitation only conference on the third metric for success: beyond money and power, hosted by Arianna Huffington. I'm not one for mindless flattery, so it is with great sincerity that I say that Arianna is a force to be reckoned with. She's extremely bright and incredibly effective so perhaps it's no surprise that the event was so successful. For me, however, the event cut both ways. It's been forever since I attended a conference without being a speaker. This was even more unusual since the event was really a conference on the importance of being mindful. Not being acknowledged by speaker after speaker was a blow to my ego.
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A Smart Answer to the Season of ‘I’m Bored’
The Wall Street Journal: When it comes to summer vacation, Victoria Lau works hard to keep her 6-year-old's days interesting and full. The South San Francisco, Calif., stay-at-home mom sets a weekly activity plan, which includes regular swimming and karate lessons and everything from exploring the local library to crafting origami butterflies and mucking around with Play-Doh. Still, she says, Carter has already voiced the dreaded summer lament. "My son does get bored," she says.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science and Clinical Psychological Science: Immediate Effect of Internal Reward on Visual Adaptation David Pascucci and Massimo Turatto Can exposure to rewards influence our visual experiences? To answer this question, the authors had participants perform a discrimination task during an adaptation period meant to induce the tilt aftereffect -- a visual illusion in which prolonged exposure to an oriented stimulus affects the perception of subsequent stimuli orientations.
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AAA study on cell phones in cars: “Hands-free is not risk-free”
Los Angeles Times: Hands-free phone use while driving — for talking or, especially, for texting — is just plain dangerous, said researchers at the University of Utah who have studied distracted driving for more than a decade.
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The fiction of memory: Elizabeth Loftus at TEDGlobal 2013
TED Blog: Elizabeth Loftus begins her talk at TEDGlobal 2013 with the tragic story of Steve Titus, who was arrested in 1980 because he sort of matched the physical description of, and drove a similar car to, a man who had raped a woman in his area. Looking at a photo lineup, the victim told police that Titus looked “the closest” to the man who had raped her. But by the time the trial began, the victim had become certain that Titus was the attacker. Memory scholar Elizabeth Loftus worked on this case, and became fascinated by the question: How did the victim’s memory go from uncertain to certain?
