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The seven healthy sins: Sometimes the bad can also do good
Vancouver Sun: Everything in moderation. I think of those three words as my mother’s superhero buzzphrase. Not quite as catchy as Bart Simpson’s “Don’t have a cow, man,” or Captain Marvel’s “Shazam!” but possibly more instructive. After decades of scare stories on TV and in magazines and newspapers about the dangers of red meat, alcohol, marijuana and sexually transmitted diseases, it’s a wonder anyone even gets out of bed in the morning. It’s dangerous out there. Liquor, red meat and anger can seriously harm you. And let us not forget the moral, legal and medical complications that travel hand-in-glove with marijuana and sex.
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Beautiful people more productive: study
Sydney Morning Herald: A new book written by an economics professor at the University of Texas-Austin concludes that beauty brings many real benefits. Daniel S Hamermesh has studied the economics of beauty for about 20 years. In Beauty Pays, which was published recently by Princeton University Press, he concludes that attractive people enjoy many advantages while those who are less attractive often face discrimination. Using his research and worldwide studies he's collected, Hamermesh notes that beautiful people are likely to be happier, earn more money, get a bank loan with a lower interest rate and marry a good-looking and highly educated spouse.
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Want to lose weight? Shut your mouth
CNN: Anita Mills was 382 pounds when a family doctor gave her four simple rules to lose weight: 1. Eat 8 ounces of food every 3 hours 2. No sugary drinks 3. Do not skip meals 4. Do not tell anyone what you're doing Now 242 pounds lighter, Mills credits that last tip for helping her through the most difficult months of her weight loss journey. Not having someone questioning every bite or trying to persuade her to relax on weekends helped her focus on the goal. Read the whole story: CNN
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Did journalism sink your 401k? And more surprising insights from the social sciences
Boston Globe: Learning to love the rules We all chafe against the rules sometimes, but new research suggests that restrictions are a lot easier to accept than the possibility of restrictions. In one experiment, people read about the prospect of lower speed limits that were either certain to happen or likely to happen. If the lower limits were certain, people had a more positive attitude about them, whereas if the lower limits were likely but not certain, people were more negative. In another experiment, people read about the prospect of a ban on cellphone use while driving.
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Super memory, obsessive behavior: Do they share brain space?
Los Angeles Times: Memory researchers at the University of California Irvine are developing a large collection of remarkable research subjects, who themselves maintain a remarkably large collection of memories. They are people with "highly superior autobiographical memories," and UC Irvine researchers so far have found at least 22 -- and possibly as many as 32 subjects in this country alone -- who can remember with extraordinary accuracy and in extraordinary detail the events of their lives and the days on which they occurred.
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Fetus can sense how Mom’s doing psychologically
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Science has learned that a developing fetus receives messages from the mother, everything from hearing mom's heartbeat to the music she might direct toward her belly. But a new study in the journal Psychological Science suggests that the fetus can pick up on signals and respond to a mother experiencing depression. Researchers at the University of California-Irvine recruited pregnant women and checked them for depression before and after the mothers delivered their babies. They also tested the babies after delivery to see how their development was progressing. Read the whole story: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
