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The blessings of routine
Chicago Tribune: It's easy to dismiss routines and habits as "boring." But give some of them credit for keeping you on track amid the uncertainties of daily life, as well as freeing up brain space to dream, to create fresh ideas, to solve problems. "Habits help us get through the day with minimal stress and deliberation," says social psychologist Wendy Wood, provost professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California whose research focuses on the effect of habits on behavior. Read the whole story: Chicago Tribune
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Spending Your Money to Make Someone Else Happy
The New York Times: In the early 1990s, I went to Philadelphia on a Mormon mission and lived in a tough section of the city. One day I received a letter from a friend. In it was $100 and instructions to spend it doing something nice for someone else. No spending the money on myself. It was the holiday season, and I figured it would be fun to provide a great dinner for a family we had recently met who was clearly going to go without. We bought a turkey, stuffing, all the fixings, a pie and small gifts. I still remember leaving the box of food on the doorstep, knocking a few times and running.
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Exercise Does a Body – and a Mind – Good
We’ve heard it time and time again: exercise is good for us. And it’s not just good for physical health – research shows that daily physical activity can also boost our mental health. But what
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Some anti-obesity campaigns may backfire, researchers say
Los Angeles Times: As U.S. health authorities prosecute an all-out war against obesity, a small cadre of researchers is warning that the nation's 78 million obese adults and 12.5 million obese children are already suffering collateral damage. The message that they will become victims of self-inflicted disease, poor role models for their families and a drag on the economy unless they lose weight has left many obese Americans feeling depressed, defeated and ashamed, these experts say.
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Psychopathic Traits: What Successful Presidents Have in Common
TIME: Political partisans delight in labeling opposition leaders as malign or even psychopathic — but it turns out that U.S. presidents with high levels of certain psychopathic traits may actually do better on the job, no matter what their party affiliation, according to new research. The study, which was based on presidential performance ratings and personality assessments by hundreds of historians and biographers in several different surveys, found that one psychopathic characteristic in particular was linked to success in presidency: fearless dominance.
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Why Wikipedia Does Belong in the Classroom
ReadWriteWeb: The proper place of social media in the classroom remains a mystery to most people, with Wikipedia standing as the biggest, baddest new media nemesis of them all. In the 80s, Neil Postman wrote, “You cannot do political philosophy on television. Its form works against the content.” To Postman, television was a medium that privileged entertainment, whose decontextualized method of communicating the ephemeral at blazing speeds made linear argument and true learning impossible. Wikipedia remains misunderstood because many educators have yet to recognize the distinction between Wikipedia as a tool for teaching and Wikipedia as a tool for research.
