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Here at the (Implicit) Fitness Center
It’s fair to say that the filmmaker Alexander Payne takes a grim view of aging in America. In last year’s darkly comedic road film Nebraska, the highly praised Bruce Dern plays the alcoholic and incompetent Woody Grant, who suffers under the delusion he has won a million dollar sweepstakes prize. And Payne’s earlier About Schmidt is unrivaled as the most depressing cinematic depiction of retirement ever. Jack Nicholson plays the title character with sympathy, but there’s no getting around his pathetic and lonely existence. Both Grant and Schmidt are models of decrepitude as well. They embody our worst fears about the elderly body’s inevitable deterioration.
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Networking Style May Predict Profits for Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship is a risky endeavor. Of all new firms, around one-third will close within the first two years and over half will have closed within their first four years. However, one thing that has been shown to greatly improve the odds of success for new businesses: face-to-face networking. A team of psychological scientists, led by Jeffrey M. Pollack of North Carolina State University, investigated how different approaches to networking might end up impacting the bottom line for entrepreneurs.
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The Problem With Studying “Deviant” Video Games
Slate: The debate over the connection between playing video games and real-world behavior has subsided a bit since the days of its Columbine-era peak cacophony. But it’s very much an ongoing controversy, and one with important ramifications given the sheer popularity of video games. A new study purporting to show a long-term link between risk-glorifying game play and various deviant behaviors highlights just how tricky a subject this is—and psychologists' ongoing internecine battle over this issue.
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Why Just Reading About Bedbugs Is Making You All Itchy
New York Magazine: I have been itchy all damn day after reading this post by our Daily Intelligencer pals on the return of bedbugs, and I suspect I’m not the only one. As one commenter put it: "Welp thanks for this now I've got psychosomatic itchy spots all over because i take the N Train all the time ... i fought the scourge back in '12 and still feel em on me. STILL FEEL EM CRAWLING ON ME." I hear you.
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Study: Not Getting Enough Sleep Can Lead to False Memories
Mashable: A lack of sleep may cause you to develop memories of events that never actually happened, according to a new study from researchers at Michigan State University and the University of California, Irvine. Stephen Frenda, who helped lead the study, explains he wanted to look specifically at how sleep loss affects people's recollections of detailed events. The experiment involved 104 people who were asked to look at pictures of a crime scene. One group was allowed to go to sleep; the other group had to stay awake all night in the lab. Read the whole story: Mashable
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Have and Have Not: The Widening Gap
The Huffington Post: The late Peter Drucker is widely viewed as the inventor of modern corporate management, although before his death he was discouraged by the short-sightedness of many business leaders. He was especially concerned about the widening pay gap between CEOs and the average worker -- a trend he had observed with alarm for decades. As far back as 1984, Drucker had warned that the pay gap should not exceed 20-to-1. Anything beyond that, he believed, would foster mistrust and resentment and erode the kind of teamwork needed for long-term growth. The actual pay gap today is 354-to-1. So why aren't workers marching and picketing and otherwise complaining about this inequity?
