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Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Be back on the 7th.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Joe Navarro with Body Language Basics.
SPY-CATCHER
Fortunately for us we evolved a system to immediately communicate to others how we feel and what we sense. If not for this, a room might be dangerously hot - not just warm and a swim in a lake might turn into hypothermia. If we had to think, even for a few seconds, at every perilous encounter (imagine a coiled rattle snake by your leg) we would have died out as a species. Instead we evolved to react to threats or anything that might harm us and not to think (the "freeze, flight, fight response" I talk about in Louder Than Words).
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Extravert/Introvert Collection Continues
Psychology Today Article :
"Do Introverts and Extroverts See Reality Differently?"
So read the LiveScience headline, in an article describing research findings that extroverts answer survey questions with more extreme responses than introverts do. It doesn’t matter what type of question it is. Whether asked to rate how much they liked a photo of a nature scene, or how disgusted they’d be upon finding a caterpillar in their salad, the results were the same – extroverts reported more intense reactions than introverts did.
This raises the question: do extroverts actually experience life in extremes, or are they just more inclined to declarative statements? If the answer is the latter, then extroverts’ instinct for hyperbole can interfere with “scientists’ efforts to paint an objective view of the world,” writes LiveScience reporter Rachael Rettner.
According to one scientist I spoke to while researching my book, however, the answer may be the former, at least when it comes topositive emotions like joy and delight. Extroverts are known for “up-regulating” these feelings – for accentuating the positive, says Rick Howard, University of Nottingham psychology professor, while introverts are more likely to simply take their emotions as they find them.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Nancy Wake: A True Hero Will Be Missed.
This was Captain America in our real world. She faught the Nazi, led revolutionaries into battle, and made men cook for her, not the other way around. Unfortunately she died at 98 this past week. I just wanted some recognition to go to this fine example of a hero.
NANCY WAKE, known as "The White Mouse".
She helped establish communication lines between the British military and the French Resistance in 1944 that were deemed crucial to weakening German strength in France in advance of the Allied invasion.
By her own account she once killed a German sentry with her bare hands, and ordered the execution of a woman she believed to be a German spy.
Ms. Wake received so many medals for her wartime service, she said, that she lived out her old age on the proceeds from their sale.
Britain and the United States awarded her their highest civilian honors. France gave her the Legion d’Honneur, the highest military honor it bestows.
She once described herself — as a young woman — as someone who loved nothing more than “a good drink” and handsome men, “especially French men.”
The German military described her as “la souris blanche,” or “the white mouse,” for her ability to elude capture.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Moon on Moonlighting
From 2009
The science fiction film Moon premiered at select theaters around the country on Friday. I sat down with the movie's director, Duncan Jones, in March to talk about filmmaking, artificial intelligence,philosophy, theory of mind, science fiction, and his childhood. Acondensed rendering of the interview appears in the current issue of Psychology Today. Here's a more complete version. Spoiler alert.
THE INTERVIEWDuncan Jones: Pretty much [what happened in the movie], because there was a lot of of me in it. A lot of me and Sam [Rockwell, the lead actor]. I grew up as an only child, as did Sam. That's one of the things that we shared that gave us a good starting point for discussing how we were going to do the film. But I think the film kind of asks the question, What would it be like if you met yourself? And over time, I think, I've become pretty okay about myself. But it did take a long time. I'm 38 now so when I was younger I used to have a lot of concerns and I didn't really know my place in the world and it took me a long time to feel comfortable in my own skin.
White Collar's Most Wanted.
