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Parentology: Will the Vinci computer help babies?
Los Angeles Times: A computer for babies may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a Canadian company has just made it reality. Last month Rullingnet Corp. launched Vinci, a 7-inch touch-screen tablet that sells for $389 to $479 and is marketed exclusively for children 4 and younger. To some parents, Vinci is an exciting, if pricey, step in the future of early childhood education. For others, the idea of buying a tablet for a baby is excessive, if not downright creepy. As Rullingnet points out, this is a serious computer.
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The ‘Silent Majority’ Agrees With Me, Voters Believe
Psychologists have found that we tend to think people who are similar to us in one explicit way—say, religion or lifestyle—will act and believe as we do, and vote as we do.
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A ‘self’ portrait of an artist with memory loss
The Washington Post: Art, its creators will tell you, is the result of introspection, the often painful process of digging into the past, into dreams of what might be and nightmares of what was. The painter Marc Chagall, for example, never forgot the tiny, mud-spattered village in Eastern Europe where he grew up. Images of it cropped up in the corners of his works throughout his life. William Faulkner could never have produced his doomed Southern aristocrats without his family’s haunted past, nor could Kurt Vonnegut have written about the horrors of war without the experience of being a soldier. But what happens to an artist whose memory is drained, who has almost nothing to draw on?
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How Far Will Dolphins Go to Relate to Humans?
The New York Times: In a remote patch of turquoise sea, Denise L. Herzing splashes into the water with a pod of 15 Atlantic spotted dolphins. For the next 45 minutes, she engages the curious creatures in a game of keep-away, using a piece of Sargassum seaweed like a dog’s chew toy. Dr. Herzing is no tourist cavorting with marine mammals. As the world’s leading authority on the species, she has been studying the dolphins for 25 years as part of the Wild Dolphin Project, the longest-running underwater study of its kind. “I’m kind of an old-school naturalist,” she said. “I really believe in immersing yourself in the environment of the animal.” Immerse herself she has.
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Surprise: Spoilers Make Stories Better
Boston Globe: Reviewers of movies and novels must obey one prime directive: never, ever reveal what happens at the end (or, at the very least, preface the inside info with a warning: SPOILER ALERT!). Now, though, a new study by Jonathan Leavitt and Nicholas Christenfeld at the University of California, San Diego suggests that spoilers aren't so bad. In fact, Leavitt and Christenfeld find that people enjoy stories more when they know the ending in advance. The study, called "Spoilers Don't Spoil Stories" and published in the September issue of Psychological Science, couldn't be simpler.
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Volle Blase, voll konzentriert
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger: Die Blase drückt, und man will nur noch eins – auf die Toilette. Plötzlich drehen sich alle Gedanken nur noch darum. Je akuter das Bedürfnis, desto stärker wird die Umgebung ausgeblendet. Nun könnte man meinen, dass durch diese Fixierung die Konzentration nachlässt. Ein belgisch-niederländisches Psychologenteam behauptet das Gegenteil. Seine These: Mit voller Blase kann man besser denken. Im Rahmen einer Studie, die in der Fachzeitschrift Psychological Science veröffentlicht wurde, verabreichten die Wissenschaftler freiwilligen Probanden unterschiedliche Mengen Wasser.
